Political ecology: past, present, and future

Environmental JusticeVol. 13, No. 3 RoundtableRoundtable on the Pandemics of Racism, Environmental Injustice, and COVID-19 in AmericaModerator: Sacoby M. Wilson, Participants: Robert Bullard, Jacqui Patterson, and Stephen B. ThomasModerator: Sacoby M. WilsonAddress correspondence to: Sacoby M. Wilson, 4200 Valley Drive, 2234D School of Public Health, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA E-mail Address: [email protected]Dr. Sacoby M. Wilson is an associate professor and director of Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health (CEEJH), Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, School of Public Health, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA. Search for more papers by this author, Participants: Robert BullardRobert Bullard is a distinguished professor of Department of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy, Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas, USA.Search for more papers by this author, Jacqui PattersonMs. Jacqui Patterson is senior director, Environmental and Climate Justice Program, NAACP, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.Search for more papers by this author, and Stephen B. ThomasDr. Stephen B. Thomas is a professor, Health Policy & Management; director, Maryland Center for Health Equity; School of Public Health, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:16 Jun 2020https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2020.0019AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookXLinked InRedditEmail View articleFiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited byLearning on Health Fairness and Environmental Justice via Interactive VisualizationCommunity Perspectives and Environmental Justice in California's San Joaquin Valley Humberto Flores-Landeros, Chantelise Pells, Miriam S. Campos-Martinez, Angel Santiago Fernandez-Bou, Jose Pablo Ortiz-Partida, and Josué Medellín-Azuara12 December 2022 | Environmental Justice, Vol. 15, No. 6Identifying environmental factors that influence immune response to SARS-CoV-2: Systematic evidence map protocolEnvironment International, Vol. 164Beyond fairness: the Covid-19 pandemic as an expression of environmental injustice20 March 2022 | Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 6Selecting Data Analytic and Modeling Methods to Support Air Pollution and Environmental Justice Investigations: A Critical Review and Guidance Framework8 February 2022 | Environmental Science & Technology, Vol. 56, No. 5The Social and Economic Implications of Environmental Justice for the Elderly: A Case for Social Work Interventions in the Caribbean10 July 2022The Analysis of Urban Park Catchment Areas - Perspectives from Quality Service of Hangang Park -31 December 2021 | Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture, Vol. 49, No. 6Building Adaptive Capacity Through Civic Environmental Stewardship: Responding to COVID-19 Alongside Compounding and Concurrent Crises11 November 2021 | Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, Vol. 3COVID-19: Evidenced Health Disparity5 August 2021 | Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, No. 3Pandemic disruptions in energy and the environmentElem Sci Anth, Vol. 8, No. 1At the Edge of Resilience: Making Sense of COVID-19 from the Perspective of Environmental HistoryJournal for the History of Environment and Society, Vol. 5 Volume 13Issue 3Jun 2020 InformationCopyright 2020, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishersTo cite this article:Moderator: Sacoby M. Wilson, Participants: Robert Bullard, Jacqui Patterson, and Stephen B. Thomas.Roundtable on the Pandemics of Racism, Environmental Injustice, and COVID-19 in America.Environmental Justice.Jun 2020.56-64.http://doi.org/10.1089/env.2020.0019Published in Volume: 13 Issue 3: June 16, 2020Online Ahead of Print:June 5, 2020PDF download

Abstract. This exploratory study traces the emergence of climate justice claims linked to narratives of Latin American social movements for the defence of life and territory. I argue that in post-colonial settings, religious and historical injustices and socio-cultural factors act as constitutive elements of environmental and climate justice understandings which are grounded in territories immersed in neo-extractivism conflicts. Environmental and climate justice conceptualizations have overlooked the religious fact present in many Latin American socio-environmental movements. As a result, the intertwined notions of divine justice and social justice are unacknowledged. To illustrate this claim, I examine socio-environmental and climate justice claims in a cross-border region between Guatemala and Chiapas. This region has a common ethnic background but divergent historical trajectories across the border. Diverse nuances and intensities adopted by environmental and climate justice practices and narratives on both sides of the border are examined. The case study reveals the importance of religion as a force for collective action and as a channel for the promotion of place-based notions of climate justice. The text calls for the examination of the religious factor, in its multiple expressions, in the theories of climate and environmental justice.

From the First National People of Color Congress on Environmental Leadership to WTO street protests of the new millennium, environmental justice activists have challenged the mainstream movement by linking social inequalities to the uneven distribution of environmental dangers. Grassroots movements in poor communities and communities of color strive to protect neighborhoods and worksites from environmental degradation and struggle to gain equal access to the natural resources that sustain their cultures. This book examines environmental justice in its social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions in both local and global contexts, with special attention paid to intersections of race, gender, and class inequality. The first book to link political studies, literary analysis, and teaching strategies, it offers a multivocal approach that combines perspectives from organizations such as the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice and the International Indigenous Treaty Council with the insights of such notable scholars as Devon Pena, Giovanna Di Chiro, and Valerie Kuletz, and also includes a range of newer voices in the field. This collection approaches environmental justice concerns from diverse geographical, ethnic, and disciplinary perspectives, always viewing environmental issues as integral to problems of social inequality and oppression. It offers new case studies of native Alaskans' protests over radiation poisoning; Hispanos' struggles to protect their land and water rights; Pacific Islanders' resistance to nuclear weapons testing and nuclear waste storage; and the efforts of women employees of maquiladoras to obtain safer living and working environments along the U.S.-Mexican border. The selections also include cultural analyses of environmental justice arts, such as community art and greening projects in inner-city Baltimore, and literary analyses of writers such as Jimmy Santiago Baca, Linda Hogan, Barbara Neely, Nez Perce orators, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and Karen Yamashita artists who address issues such as toxicity and cancer, lead poisoning of urban African American communities, and Native American struggles to remove dams and save salmon. The book closes with a section of essays that offer models to teachers hoping to incorporate these issues and texts into their classrooms. By combining this array of perspectives, this book makes the field of environmental justice more accessible to scholars, students, and concerned readers. CONTENTS Introduction: Environmental Justice Politics, Poetics, and Pedagogy / Joni Adamson, Mei Mei Evans, and Rachel SteinEnvironmental Justice: A Roundtable Discussion with Simon Ortiz, Teresa Leal, Devon Pena, and Terrell Dixon / Joni Adamson and Rachel Stein Politics1. Testimonies from Doris Bradshaw, Sterling Gologergen, Edgar Mouton, Alberto Saldamando, and Paul Smith / Mei Mei Evans2. Throwing Rocks at the Sun: An Interview with Teresa Leal / Joni Adamson3. Endangered Landscapes and Disappearing Peoples? Identity, Place, and Community in Ecological Politics / Devon G. Pena4. Who Hears Their Cry? African American Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in Memphis, Tennessee / Andrea Simpson5. Radiation, Tobacco, and Illness in Point Hope, Alaska: Approaches to the Facts in Contaminated Communities / Nelta Edwards6. The Movement for Environmental Justice in the Pacific Islands / Valerie Kuletz Poetics7. Toward an Environmental Justice Ecocriticism / T. V. Reed8. From Environmental Justice Literature to the Literature of Environmental Justice / Julie Sze9. and Environmental Justice / Mei Mei Evans10. Activism as Affirmation: Gender and Environmental Justice in Linda Hogan's Solar Storms and Barbara Neely's Blanche Cleans Up / Rachel Stein11. Some Live More Downstream than Others: Cancer, Gender, and Environmental Justice / Jim Tarter12. Struggle in Ogoniland: Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Cultural Politics of Environmental Justice / Susan Comfort13. Toward a Symbiosis of Ecology and Justice: Water and Land Conflicts in Frank Waters, John Nichols, and Jimmy Santiago Baca / Tom Lynch14. Saving the Salmon, Saving the People: Environmental Justice and Columbia River Tribal Literatures / Janis Johnson15. Sustaining the Urban Forest and Creating Landscapes of Hope: An Interview with Cinder Hypki and Bryant Spoon Smith / Giovanna Di Chiro Pedagogy16. Teaching for Transformation: Lessons from Environmental Justice / Robert Figueroa17. Notes on Cross-Border Environmental Justice Education / Soenke Zehle18. Changing the Nature of Environmental Studies: Teaching Environmental Justice to Mainstream Students / Steve Chase19. Teaching Literature of Environmental Justice in an Advanced Gender Studies Course / Jia-Yi Cheng-Levine

ABSTRACTClimate change is a critical global issue with far‐reaching implications for the environment, society, and economy. Political ecology examines the relationship between political systems, social inequalities, and ecological concerns in relation to climate change. It focuses on how power dynamics, resource allocation, and political decisions influence vulnerability, adaptation, and mitigation efforts, highlighting the intersectionality between politics, ecology, and climate change impacts. Climate change in the Arctic is having profound geopolitical, environmental, and socioeconomic impacts on Indigenous Peoples. However, few, if any, studies have examined these interactions from a political ecology standpoint. Herein, we review and analyze the complex relationships and power dynamics that shape and are shaped by climate change in the Arctic through a political ecology lens, developing an understanding of how political, economic, and social factors interact to drive climate change impacts and responses. We introduce the term Arctic Political Ecology to understand these dynamics. The paper examines the significance of Indigenous knowledge, environmental governance, and Indigenous Peoples' sovereignty in control over productive resources, promoting sustainable practices, and addressing the challenges posed by climate change. We highlight the need for a comprehensive approach that considers the political ecology of climate change in the Arctic to understand the interplay of capitalism, colonialism, and resource exploitation.

Climate change, acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer, species extinction—all of these issues point to one thing: environmental health is a global issue that concerns all nations of the world. Now add environmental justice to the list. From South Bronx to Soweto, from Penang to El Paso, communities all over the world are finding commonality in their experiences and goals in seeking environmental justice. Environmental justice was defined by Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, in his seminal 1990 work Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality as “the principle that all people and communities are entitled to equal protection of environmental and public health laws and regulations.” In countries around the world, the concept of environmental justice can apply to communities where those at a perceived disadvantage—whether due to their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, immigration status, lack of land ownership, geographic isolation, formal education, occupational characteristics, political power, gender, or other characteristics—puts them at disproportionate risk for being exposed to environmental hazards. At a global scale, environmental justice can also be applied to scenarios such as industrialized countries exporting their wastes to developing nations. In either case, “environmental and human rights have no boundaries, because pollution has no boundaries,” says Heeten Kalan, senior program officer of the Global Environmental Health and Justice Fund of the New World Foundation in New York City. “Environmental justice organizations are starting to understand that they are working in a global context.”

There is an extensive literature on environmental governance, which refers to multi-stakeholder processes to arrive at collective decisions about how natural resources will be managed. Recent work on environmental governance has focused on outcomes in terms of social-environmental sustainability. However, questions remain about the effectiveness of environmental governance in practice for yielding sustainable social or environmental outcomes. In cases where environmental governance processes prove ineffective, political ecology offers analytical approaches involving explanations that can account for unsustainable outcomes. In addition, an emergent literature on environmental governance provides frameworks to evaluate its effectiveness by unpacking it with regard to diverse criteria. These two literatures together permit analysis of how political ecology and other potential explanations can account for ineffective environmental governance in terms of specific unmet criteria. Analysis of ineffective environmental governance is likely to be especially valuable in a comparative perspective, in which multi-case studies can reveal the extent to which political ecology explanations predominate across cases. We focus on the Amazon, a large region with high social and biological diversity and where competing stakeholders engage in conflict over governance of natural resources. We pursue a comparative analysis of five cases where environmental governance has been ineffective in terms of sustainable outcomes. In each case, we identified five key explanations for ineffective environmental governance. We then coded those explanations with regard to whether they invoke issues highlighted by political ecology. We also coded them considering environmental governance evaluation frameworks to identify the unmet criteria for environmental governance to be effective. We then pursued a comparative analysis of similarities and differences across the cases. The findings indicate that political ecology issues are predominant among explanations for ineffective environmental governance across all five cases. The results also reveal which environmental governance evaluation criteria are most often unmet among the cases. The findings highlight the importance of political ecology for understanding ineffective environmental governance, and permit delineation of specific criteria for effective environmental governance that can be the focus of strategies to improve environmental governance for sustainability.

As the climate crisis accelerates and disproportionately affects marginalised communities and countries in the global South, the need for power and social justice approaches is particularly important. Community psychology, with a long interest in the impacts of power discrepancies on the well-being of groups and communities, can offer theoretical and practical tools for addressing climate change and environmental problems without reproducing or intensifying existing inequalities and injustices. This special issue looks at communities' struggles for climate and environmental justice by focusing on how they resist, contest and overcome power inequalities. The issue consists of one perspective and six empirical articles. Most contributions come from high climate vulnerable countries and regions in the global South. Authors address current and relevant environmental and climate change issues such as renewable energy and natural resource extraction, social transformations and extreme weather events, the links between poverty, rurality and climate change, youth empowerment, and racism in climate activism. Inspired by their contributions, community psychology approaches and interdisciplinary research on environmental and climate justice, we discuss a research and intervention agenda for a community psychology of climate change.

This chapter explores the intersections between political ecology, climate change, and environmental justice, focusing on how power dynamics, economic policies, and social inequalities exacerbate environmental degradation. It highlights how marginalized communities, particularly in the Global South, are disproportionately affected by climate change despite contributing minimally to its causes. The study delves into the historical roots of environmental and climate injustices, exploring theories of distributive, procedural, recognition, and restorative justice. The intersectionality of climate justice and political ecology is examined, emphasizing the need for inclusive, equitable policies that prioritize vulnerable populations. Finally, the chapter discusses the roles of global policy frameworks, such as the Paris Agreement, and the critical importance of addressing systemic power imbalances to create sustainable and just climate solutions.

Street Science: Community Knowledge and Environmental Health JusticeJasonCorburn. . Street Science: Community Knowledge and Environmental Health Justice. . 2005. . MIT Press. : Cambridge, MA. . ISBN: ISBN: 0-262-53272-7. . <b>$24</b>

Investigating the political ecologies of everyday engagements with environments—including material as well as policy and ideological interactions—requires consideration of the moral economy at play, as well as the political economy and social ecology. A.V. Chayanov (1966/1925), E.P. Thompson (1971, 1991), and Jim Scott (1976) have provided useful ways to think about moral economy. They framed moral economy as a way of enacting understandings of just commons, subsistence entitlements, and desirable economic relations based on social struggle. This framing can be particularly useful in combination with political ecology approaches to investigate 'moral ecologies.' These are society-environment assemblages that are often more aspirational than enacted, but toward which considerable effort is expended, and whose moral and ecological dynamics are functionally linked, perhaps as best illustrated in recent attention to agroecology as a powerful mechanism for ensuring rights to food (De Schutter 2011a, 2011b, 2012). Given political ecology's focus on power relations, moral ecologies that do not exercise considerable power are often overlooked by political ecologists. However, even if particular understandings may not be highly efficacious in exercising power, they may have considerable influence on relational conceptualizations. This mismatch between habitual inattention to moral ecologies and their potential importance contributes to tensions within contemporary society-environment scholarship between structuralist and poststructuralist modes of engagement. Given the value of both modes, particularly for understanding what Peet and Watts (1993) describe as liberation ecologies (and the regional discourse formations that shape them), I argue that political ecology provides useful frameworks for documenting and analyzing the socio-ecological experience of regions—in terms not only of the functions of society and environment, but also of the performance and curation of knowledge about those functions.Keywords: moral economy, food systems, curation, critical regional studies, land use planning, participatory action research, environmental justice, integrated natural resource management science

The world’s oceans and coasts are awash in a sea of politics. The marine environment is increasingly busy, changing, and a site of degradation, marginalization, injustice, contestation and conflict over declining resources and occupied spaces at local to global scales. Themes of political ecology, such as power and politics, narratives and knowledge, scale and history, environmental justice and equity, are thus salient issues to understand in ocean and coastal governance and management. This subject review examines research on these themes of political ecology in the ocean and coastal environment and reflects on how the insights gained might be applied to governance and management. Political ecology provides important insights into: the influence of power in ocean management and governance processes; the manner in which narratives, knowledge, and scale are used to legitimize and shape policies and management efforts; the effects of historical trajectories on present circumstances, options, and practices; and the nature of inequities and environmental injustices that can occur in the marine environment. Moreover, ocean and coastal researchers, practitioners, and decision makers ought to engage with the political processes and injustices occurring in the ocean. Moving from critical insights to constructive engagements will ensure that political ecology helps to plant seeds of hope in the Anthropocene ocean.

This paper seeks to discuss the political role of healing practices in the context of climate and environmental justice struggles. We rely on literature and practices that have identified healing as a means for liberation from structural oppression and physical and symbolic violence, to humans, non-humans and nature – namely emotional political ecologies, transformative and healing justice and communitarian feminism. We also briefly discuss the experience of three collectives in Mexico, Colombia, and Spain who develop healing strategies as a way to emotionally support local communities exposed to territorial, environmental, and climate impacts and injustice. We argue that by further addressing the political dimensions of healing in environmental and climate justice, researchers, activists, and practitioners could expand the conceptualisation of (a) the spatial and temporal scales of climate justice by further engaging with the inter- and intra-generational emotional implications of environmental injustice, and (b) environmental and climate justice as a multidimensional and nonlinear collective emotional process.

Role of Indigenous and local knowledge in seasonal forecasts and climate adaptation: A case study of smallholder farmers in Chiredzi, Zimbabwe

A ‘co-production of knowledge' transdisciplinary approach connects different systems of knowledge that are in collaboration with each other. The transdisciplinarity presupposes bringing natural, social sciences, and Indigenous knowledge together. A growing body of literature on knowledge co-production and better control over research by Indigenous stakeholders contributes to a better collaboration of different knowledge holders. However, as power imbalance and issues of trust continue to persist, further analysis of case studies, where different knowledge holders collaborate, allow for a better understanding of how better long-term collaborations could be built. This reflection paper examines several observations and parts of interviews carried out during a recent ethnographic study on urban Indigenous identity preservation in Anchorage, Alaska in collaboration with the urban Yup’ik population. It may serve as an illustration of some challenges that might hinder the co-production of Indigenous knowledge and Western science. The observations examined in this paper may contribute to a further understanding of different approaches to learning of Arctic Indigenous and Western knowledge systems that are in need of further clarification to enable their better interaction for meeting current sustainability challenges.

Reading radical environmental justice through a political ecology lens