Political Ecology Perspective Research Articles

De- and repeasantisation through wolves: a political ecology of predator-friendly farming

While wolves are often described as 'ecological engineers', this article reframes the image of this predator as a socioecological engineer. Adopting a more-than-human political ecology perspective, I highlight the imbrication of wolf agency with the political economy of farming in co-shaping processes of agrarian change in Tuscany, Italy. A multispecies ethnography elucidates how wolves are simultaneously contributing to and undermining a modernization of sheep husbandry practices in the region. This entanglement of wolf agency in processes of de- and re-peasantization is politically relevant, affecting human-wolf relations and local levels of conflict. Through their return, wolves are necessitating shifts in farming practices and affecting the topology of agricultural landscapes, favoring either an intensification of husbandry regimes (i.e., more sheep raised indoors) or a greater competitiveness of family-led free-ranging farms with a high availability of family labor. Emphasizing this aspect is important to politicize current discussions surrounding coexistence, and supports the rise of practices that are considered to be most socially, culturally, and ecologically valuable. A focus on wolf agency in this case entails 'thinking with' wolves in co-designing alternative (co)existences, providing a more nuanced understanding of socioecological change and human-wolf relations. This article informs critical scholarship on the value of moving beyond dualist lenses while still maintaining a focus on structural processes. These are an important though not unidirectional force of change. Reframing wolves as socioecological engineers calls for further research exploring such entanglements of human and non-human agencies in the coproduction of agrarian change and human-wildlife relations.

Waste picking in the age of COVID-19: an environmental justice perspective

All over the world, waste and its disposal are becoming a more prominent issue, as landfills swell up and growing evidence points to its contribution to climate change and environmental degradation. In the developing world, waste pickers sort through solid waste and sell it to vendors, who will recycle the product into something consumable. The work they do is vital to climate change mitigation, as well as urban cleanliness. In a way, waste pickers, especially in India, are vehicles of environmental justice, but they are often discriminated against and subjected to inhumane working conditions. In this environment, the pandemic hit, making waste pickers’ already precarious life even worse. This paper attempts to fill the gap in the academic literature by compiling a systemized literature review of the impacts of COVID-19 on waste-pickers’ lives using an environmental justice perspective. The review also uses a Feminist Political Ecology perspective to illuminate the double jeopardy that female waste pickers face in the era of COVID-19, which academia often ignores. Ultimately, this paper shows that COVID-19 exacerbated the preexisting injustices that the waste picker community face and created an immense burden on women. This paper will show that it is important to notice the differentiation between female and male waste picker challenges, especially at the crux of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper has important policy implications as well as research considerations for both environmental justice and feminist political ecology scholars.

Understanding the Experiences of Small-Scale Commercial Afforestation Farmers and Governance Conflicts in Manguzi, South Africa: Political Ecology Perspective

Understanding the Experiences of Small-Scale Commercial Afforestation Farmers and Governance Conflicts in Manguzi, South Africa: Political Ecology Perspective

Political ecology of tourism: A bibliometric analysis

The tourism sector significantly impacts global environmental change and resource management. The social and economic aspects of tourism are also worthy of examination from the political ecology perspective. In this context, there is a growing need for academic studies examining tourism’s environmental, social, and economic components. This study is conducted to meet this need and provide an in-depth analysis of the works on political ecology in tourism. This research aims to assess scholarly investigations within the tourism domain employing a political ecology framework, utilizing bibliometric analysis as the methodological approach. Within this scope, publications in the literature have been quantitatively examined, and the studies’ prevalence, interactions, and developmental trends have been revealed. The WoS database identified 192 studies published between 1998 and 2023 on the subject. The analysis of leading journals, authors, countries, and keywords related to the topic indicates the following: There has been a noteworthy surge in the number of scholarly inquiries about political ecology within the scientific realm associated with tourism. In addition, the leading country on the subject is the United States. Finally, conservation and ecotourism become the main focal points of studies on political ecology. In summary, it is anticipated that this study will provide a substantial contribution to the existing literature in the domain of political ecology within the context of tourism, offering guidance for researchers in the design and execution of subsequent studies.

Decentralisation, informal mining, and environmental health: A political ecology perspective on Ghana’s mineral wealth management.

Decentralisation, informal mining, and environmental health: A political ecology perspective on Ghana’s mineral wealth management.

Unpacking water governance dynamics and its implications for household water security in post-disaster resettlement communities in the Philippines

Water security is important globally for sustaining households, communities, and the environment. However, most studies have focused on water availability and accessibility, whereas research examining the role of power and politics in shaping water insecurity remains marginal. This study contributes to this research gap by unpacking the overlapping drivers and politics in water governance dynamics that co-produce the water insecurity of Typhoon Haiyan disaster-displaced households in resettlement villages in the Philippines. Using political ecology and water governance perspectives, we ask, What does household water insecurity look like in post-disaster resettlement villages in the Philippines? What are its drivers and how do politics and governance dynamics impact the provision of water services to these villages? Our findings suggest five overlapping drivers: the haphazard relocation of internally displaced persons to areas without access to basic facilities like water; the institutional disharmony and late involvement of water institutions in the resettlement processes; the influence of governance regime in the rapid but substandard housing development, including water distribution systems; the micropolitics in water district management affecting water projects; and the impact of maladaptive resettlement outcomes on households’ capacity to afford water. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how various drivers, including power relations and contestations in water governance, lead to household water insecurity outcomes. It ends by providing brief policy recommendations to improve institutional arrangements for the better governance of water services to resettlement communities.

Pacas Choquenzá: una experiencia poscapitalista sobre la producción de lo común

The Paca Digestora Silva [a composting technique], a system for using organic waste, arrived in 2019 in the Niza Antigua neighborhood in the Córdoba wetland, northwest of Bogotá (Colombia). Since then, the pacas (composting piles) have become a way of transforming pre-existing neighborhood dynamics and fostering the care of the common land, despite certain logics of fragmentation based on the defense of one’s own well-being. The Paca Digestora Silva is proposed here as a post-capitalist alternative that goes beyond the human-nature structural rupture so that the race for capital accumulation, reflected in landfills, can be overcome with the resignification of waste. The paper is constructed from the intersectional perspective of feminist political ecology and relates the process of pacas to the production of communality and the commons. This lens allows the analysis of care through two intertwined routes since the commons propitiate the care of a common good, and, in this care, which is reproduced in the doing in common, a community that watches over its protection and subsistence is strengthened or consolidated. This article documents community experiences with pacas and provides an alternative reading of this system, which transcends the dimension of waste utilization and demonstrates the possibility of building an ethic of care based on collective action.

Why is ‘clean’ energy opposed? the resistances to geothermal energy projects in Turkey

This study focuses on the resistance to geothermal energy projects in the Aegean region in Turkey. It explores, drawing on the analysis of documents and the fieldwork conducted in four Aegean cities, why there is a widespread local resistance to geothermal energy, which is widely promoted as environmentally benign and renewable and, as such, critical for the low-carbon energy transition. Examining the resistance from a political ecology perspective, I show how the power/resistance nexus in the field of renewable energy is shaped in those contexts where authoritarianism, populism, and geographically specific forms of capital accumulation operate in and through each other. Specifically, I demonstrate that the formulation of geothermal policy and practices to perpetuate and consolidate the power of the authoritarian populist AKP government laid the groundwork for the generation of widespread resistances by threatening to create new environmental injustices and to deepen existing class, and gender inequalities. The study also shows that geothermal energy may be as destructive as fossil fuel-based energy when not planned, regulated, or monitored effectively. It is concluded therefore that the practice of grouping renewable energy sources in a single ‘clean energy’ category should be reconsidered.

Urban flooding and the resultant pollution: What French-speaking scientists make of it?

Flood damage has increased worldwide in recent decades with a concomitant increased risk of flood-induced pollution. From the perspective of urban political ecology, we ask whether scientists acknowledge flood-induced pollution as a problem and if so how they address it. Using a mixed-methods approach, we analyse 30 semi-structured interviews with researchers in France and Quebec. Our results show that flood pollution can be framed not only in terms of its impact on the environment and our societies, but also as a social representation that varies with the spatial context. The diversity of flood-induced pollution, whether in terms of materiality, visibility, or causation, highlights the undefined contours of flood pollution for the scientific community. We identify obstacles to the emergence of this problem in the scientific arena explained by the structuring of this arena, the vagueness of the term pollution, regulation, and individual and collective approaches to resilience. We argue that these obstacles can be overcome by considering pollution as a social construct and viewing cities in a metabolic framework.

A crisis of moral ecology: Magar agro-pastoralism in Dhorpatan Hunting Reserve, Nepal

Prior political ecology studies have explored the vulnerability of pastoralism and conflicts between protected areas and pastoralist livelihoods. Some conservation regimes regard Indigenous pastoralists’ institutions, knowledge, self-governance and self-determination as incompatible with contemporary conservation on the grounds that the associated practices are unsustainable. Based on critical ethnography, this paper examines the moral ecology of Indigenous Magar agro-pastoralism in the Dhorpatan Hunting Reserve of mid-western Nepal. Traditional Magar management is in crisis due to reserve policies and practices. From a political ecology perspective, I show that the traditional moral ecology of agro-pastoralism sustains complex relationships with the rangelands. Traditional institutions uphold a moral ecology that is deeply rooted in spiritual practices and fosters a sense of responsibility for the preservation of biodiversity and nature. Current conservation policies inadequately recognise these Indigenous moral principles and weaken harmonious socio-ecological relations. In order to manage protected areas sustainably in high-altitude regions, it is crucial to manage agro-pastoralism within the framework of traditional moral ecology through Indigenous peoples’ self-governance and self-determination.

Critique of Oil Sand Exploitation in Indigenous Community from a Perspective of Political Ecology

Critique of Oil Sand Exploitation in Indigenous Community from a Perspective of Political Ecology

Political ecology perspective for a new way of understanding stakeholders and value in infrastructure projects

The long-term goals and objectives that infrastructure projects aim to deliver are contextualised by complex grand challenges, which involve an entanglement of economic, social, and ecological issues. However, there have been criticisms that infrastructure projects fall short of delivering equitable value to effectively address grand challenges. These criticisms underpinned the recent calls for rethinking the purpose and definition of infrastructure projects. This essay argues that adopting a political ecology perspective can be useful to start identifying the limitations of the current understandings of external stakeholders and value in infrastructure projects, which lead to the criticised shortcomings. Political ecology considers social, ecological, and economic issues as an assemblage that manifests through power relations. Thus, for project studies, it implies a reconceptualization of external stakeholders and project value around the notions of agency, vulnerability, and empowerment. This reconceptualization provides new theoretical and practical directions for project formation, stakeholder management and project leadership in the pursuit of rethinking the purpose and definition of infrastructure projects for effectively tackling the grand challenges of our times.

Transition conflicts: A Gramscian political ecology perspective on the contested nature of sustainability transitions

Despite a broad consensus on sustainability, conflicts are increasingly prevalent in sustainability transitions. Although these conflicts significantly influence transition dynamics and socio-ecological futures, the role of conflicts in sustainability transitions remains insufficiently addressed. This paper aims to elucidate the contested dynamics of sustainability transitions by merging political ecology's emphasis on conflicts, nature, power, and justice with Gramscian hegemony theory. The integrated framework of Gramscian political ecology enables the analysis of transition conflicts as struggles for hegemony on the terrain of society-nature relations amid ecological crises. A brief comparative study of coal transitions in South Africa and Germany serves to illustrate the key insights that Gramscian political ecology offers into the contested nature of sustainability transitions, including conflict dynamics, power strategies, and barriers and potentials for radical transformative change.

The Political Ecology of Climate Remedies in Latin America and the Caribbean: Comparing Compliance between National and Inter-American Litigation

Abstract The climate crisis will continue to affect human and natural systems across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Undoubtedly, this jeopardizes entire communities’ enjoyment of human rights. In that context, the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS) is expected to respond, particularly since its organs have jurisdiction to order remedies over most LAC countries, provided they determine a rights violation. Despite the growing number of domestic human rights-based climate cases in the region, the organs of the IAHRS have yet to adjudicate and order remedies in a case concerning the climate crisis. Against this backdrop, this article inquires how to understand climate remedies from a political ecology perspective to capture the LAC climate litigation experience. Additionally, the article asks what the challenges of implementing such remedies may be. To answer these questions, first, it compares the remedial approaches of domestic courts in six finally decided climate-related cases with those of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) in ‘anti-extractivist’ cases. Second, it applies a political ecology lens to understand the elements that might hinder the implementation of the identified remedies. The article argues that the socioeconomic cost for States largely determines remedial compliance in domestic climate litigation and the IACtHR’s anti-extractivist litigation. Ultimately, the aim is to anticipate the future of climate remedies and their effectiveness at the IACtHR based on present climate litigation in LAC.

Dynamics between Actors and Interest Groups in an Environmental Politics Perspective: Case Study of Food Estate Development in Kalimantan

This research is aimed at understanding the dynamics between actors in the national food barn project during the Joko Widodo administration in Central Kalimantan for the 2020-2023 period. Through qualitative research, the research focus was carried out by analyzing several indicators using actor and interest group theory from a political ecology perspective. This research reveals that the food estate policy carried out by the government in Central Kalimantan was carried out without clear regulations and was carried out haphazardly, the actors and interest groups involved, namely the government, the private sector, civil society alliances. Based on field findings, there is a relationship between the private sector and political elites who occupy positions in government. . This research reveals the pattern of relations between government and the private sector in implementing food estate policy and also the main issues at play. Meanwhile, civil society alliance groups act as opposing groups that play an important role as critics of this policy. There are two issues on the main agenda which are strong reasons for this group to have a different attitude to the government

The driving factors of recreational utilization of ecological space in urban agglomerations: The perspective of urban political ecology

Understanding factors driving the recreational utilization of ecological space in urban agglomerations is crucial for the sustainable management of regional systems. However, existing literature focuses on the provision, distribution, and accessibility of urban green space at small scales, lacking explorations into ecological recreational spaces at an urban agglomeration scale. The current study explores the recreational utilization of ecological space in the Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration in China by using panel data regression and field investigations from the perspective of urban political ecology. The results show that the forest area proportion, natural reserve area proportion, fiscal revenue, and tourist numbers all have a positive effect on the recreational utilization rate of ecological space; the fixed assets investment exerts unstable prohibitive impacts on the RUoES rate, and the wetland area proportion presents a negative effect on the RUoES rate; land use rights and regional governance structure exacerbate the imbalanced distribution of the rate across different cities. The research contributes to the existing literature by researching urban ecological space from a recreational perspective and at a broader spatial scale, thereby promoting the theoretical integration of recreational geography and political ecology.

Uma crítica das definições de migração climática e ambiental: rumo a uma ecologia política da migração

Abstract This article analyses the concept of environmental and climate migrations, uncovering inherent complexities and contradictions within their official definitions. The analysis traces the historical roots of environmental migration discussions, beginning in the 1980s. Methodologically, the study scrutinizes the definitions provided by international organizations and advocates for a political ecology framework inspired by Sayad's sociology of migrations. It challenges prevailing concepts such as "environmental refugees" and "climate refugees," highlighting the contentious nature of these terms. The article emphasizes the need to move away from an emergency-oriented approach and instead adopt a political ecology perspective that explores human mobility within socio-ecological contexts. It critiques the predominant focus on climate-induced displacement, arguing for a more comprehensive understanding grounded in political and historical dimensions. By transcending epistemological reductions, the study contributes to ongoing debates on current migration issues, urging a more nuanced and inclusive approach to addressing the intricate challenges posed by environmental changes and human mobility.

Factors influencing the creation of high-impact oil and gas geophysical seismic cutlines in an ecologically-sensitive landscape in northeastern British Columbia, Canada

Oil and gas (OG) resource extraction has adverse impacts on landscapes despite the socio-economic benefits that trickle down to society. Whereas many recent studies have focused on direct landscape change from OG activities, this study focuses on factors associated with the creation of high-impact OG seismic cutlines, geophysical survey paths that have widths of more than 5.5 m. Using geographic information systems and a spatially-explicit logistic regression framework, we model the relationship between high-impact seismic cutlines and associated explanatory variables (e.g., seismic cutline type, land ownership type, etc.) by drawing on political ecology perspectives. The study finds that mechanically-cut seismic cutlines are 514.34 times significantly more likely to be high-impact seismic cutlines as compared to hand-cut seismic cutlines. We find that seismic cutlines found on private land are 0.05 times significantly less likely to be high-impact type as compared to those found on crown (public) land. These findings suggest that societal land use decisions and preferences are likely to influence the creation of spaces for different levels of OG land user–environment interactions. Thus, land use managers are presented with unique land use challenges that require environmental management strategies for dealing with the impacts of OG activities on the environment.

Reimagining international relations in times of ecological crisis: A dialogue on multispecies justice

This article departs from a political ecology perspective to build a critique against the predominant anthropocentrism in international relations. It argues that the acknowledgement of the agency of non-human beings, and their inclusion and representation in political decision-making processes, is not only essential to create socioecological sustainability in the multispecies communities that we are all part of, but that it is also, fundamentally, a matter of justice. The article introduces the concept of multispecies justice as a possible ally in a dialogue for the reimagining of international relations, both as a discipline and as institutional practice, so that the latter can more adequately, effectively, and fairly respond to the current context of planetary crisis. As an illustrative example of what multispecies justice is (or can become) in practice, the article resorts to the case of rivers and to some of the non-anthropocentric initiatives that have been arising for their protection, conservation, or restoration.

Understanding Anti-Dam Resistance Politics: A Historical and Territorial Study of Two Megadams in Coastal Ecuador

Megadams are controversial ventures. Despite their contentious benefits, the negative impacts on local communities are enormous. This has prompted substantial disapproval and resistance, particularly from the communities that endure the most of its adverse effects. While many megadams have been constructed in the face of opposition, others have been halted or altered as a result of the fierce protests of affected people and their allies. A better understanding of the latter is key to promoting equitable and just water governance throughout the implementation of hydraulic infrastructure. Based on ethnographic and historical research carried out between 2014 and 2017, the article shows the power relations, social actors and historical-contextual factors that have influenced the development of the Daule-Peripa and Baba megadams on the Ecuadorian coast. From a political ecology and subaltern studies perspective, this article describes and analyses the social, territorial, and historical interconnectedness of the local communities of Patricia Pilar and Daule-Peripa dam in coastal Ecuador that successfully stopped the construction of a dam and had a great influence on its final hydraulic design. I argue that, given the adequate socio-political conditions and a systematic process of knowledge and experience exchange among affected communities, anti-dam struggles can emerge with significant capacity to influence in their favour the megadam implementation processes and other hydraulic infrastructures.