Political Ecology Lens Research Articles

Look after gardens and they look after you: Cultivating wellbeing in a pandemic through a popular TV gardening programme

Over the past few years there has been intense policy interest in the idea that nature-related activities such as gardening are good for wellbeing. Several studies have indeed found links between such activities and self-reported wellbeing. However, there are also sympathetic critiques of the limited conceptions of what kinds of activities are considered beneficial. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the social and cultural roots of the assumption that nature is good for us rather than treating connection to nature as an innate need. This article contributes to this task by showing how commonly held ideas about gardening and wellbeing were reproduced in the long-running and popular UK TV gardening programme Gardeners’ World ( GW) during 2020. As an exemplar of lifestyle programming, GW provides both information and entertainment and appeals to viewers to try out the techniques they observe on screen in their own gardens. Within the programme there is an emphasis on gardens as secluded havens from the outside world and on the attractive characteristics of individual plants. However, in many cases it is the work involved and the challenge that interests gardeners, as much as the qualities of the plants. Gardeners design a space and use it to express their identity. But the results of their actions are not guaranteed. Gardening can therefore be understood through a political ecology lens as a process whereby the social and nature constitute each other.

One health governance of antimicrobial resistance seen through an Urban Political Ecology lens: a critical interpretive synthesis

ABSTRACT Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a threat to animal and ecosystem health, agriculture, water, and sanitation systems, posing risks not only to human health, but also to society and the systems upon which it depends. Global health governance draws on the One Health (OH) approach to combat AMR. However, the effective implementation of these approaches faces several constraints, including governance and implementation challenges arising from the interconnected nature of AMR with other global health threats, as well as local and structural socioecological factors that affect policy outcomes, that are often overlooked in governance approaches. This article aims to clarify how scientific literature has situated OH-AMR governance responses in relation to six socioecological dimensions: global health threats, broader concerns, governance frameworks, socioeconomic factors, health equity, and environmental justice. Informed by an Urban Political Ecology (UPE) lens and guided by the Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS) methodology of Dixon-Woods et al., our critical interpretive synthesis identified 18 articles situating OH-AMR arrangements within these socioecological dimensions. The role of global governance frameworks in shaping state governance arrangements has rarely been the object of analysis in the selected studies. The synthesis highlights the connections between urbanization, AMR risks, global health threats, and broader ecological challenges, calling for a reassessment of current global and state governance approaches. The study also offers a case for the adoption of a UPE lens to address AMR and related global health challenges.

Empowering women through a gender-responsive seed multiplication program in Northern Malawi

Limited access to quality seeds remains a major challenge to improving agricultural productivity and resilience to climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in Malawi. Over the past decade, local seed multiplication programs have emerged as a promising solution to enhance farmers’ access to quality seeds in resource-poor regions. Some of such projects have incorporated gender-responsive tools to bridge the gender inequality gap in the seed system. Yet there is a dearth of research examining the impacts of seed multiplication programs on farmers’ livelihoods and in promoting gender equality in smallholder communities. This dearth of research has resulted in the underrepresentation of seed multiplication in agricultural policy. To address this void in the literature, we conducted interviews with 40 participants and three project officers from a gender-responsive seed multiplication initiative launched in 2011/12. Through a feminist political ecology lens, we investigated the program’s impact on gender equality and smallholder farmers’ livelihoods. Our results highlight prominent benefits farmers derived from the program; including livelihood diversification, seed and food security, improvements in women’s household decision-making autonomy, changing gender and social norms, and improvements in women’s leadership opportunities. However, challenges like climate change and constrained market access threaten these gains. Given these insights, we argue that gender-responsive seed initiatives can deliver on gender equality while simultaneously improving smallholder farmers livelihoods. While we advocate for the integration of gender-responsive seed multiplication initiatives into agricultural policy frameworks in Malawi, addressing market accessibility and promoting climate-resilient agricultural practices is crucial to realizing these gains.

Climate change impacts: exploring the rising climate-security nexus in Pakistan

This research aims to bring to the fore the climate security nexus in Pakistan. According to this study, the anthropogenic climate change in Pakistan has been a probable cause of internal migrations that have played an important role in exacerbating the existing conflicts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Sindh, and Balochistan provinces. The climate security nexus in Pakistan is established through a deductive approach using the lens of environmental security and political ecology. The study plays a crucial role in shaping Pakistani policy-making circles, providing insights into climate change mitigation, conflict-sensitive adaptation, and societal resilience. The study adopts an exploratory approach using primary and secondary data sources with semi-structured interviews and multidisciplinary assessment to analyse the issue comprehensively and provide accurate findings. The study concludes that the anthropogenic climate change-induced internal migration exacerbating armed conflict in the Pakistani regions of KP and Balochistan has the potential to cause significant economic losses in the future. It argues that the migration triggered by resource scarcity due to climate change can lead to armed conflict and provide fertile grounds for militant groups to gain strength.

Working (around/within/against) prior appropriation: Diverse hydrosocial practices to secure water for rivers

Water scarcity in the Western US, through the lens of political ecology, can be understood as inextricably shaped by power dynamics, governance structures, and legal practices of resource allocation. Water allocation in the region is determined largely by the legal doctrine of Prior Appropriation, the 'first in time, first in right' principle. However, prior appropriation is fundamentally based in anthropocentric and settler colonial assumptions, and in light of drought, climate change, and shifting social and environmental values, the system has been critiqued as inadequate to meet contemporary water challenges. Despite challenging historical legacies, water managers in the Western US are developing a range of strategies to work around or within prior appropriation to secure environmental flows for rivers and aquatic species. In this article we use political ecology and diverse economies approaches to consider the challenges of, and challenges to, prior appropriation. We examine a diverse set of practices, work-arounds, and creative strategies being used to secure instream flows, and discuss how these strategies affirm or challenge prior appropriation, how they reinforce or challenge inequities, and how they reform or re-envision water allocation in ways that may open up potential for social and environmental justice.

A Political Ecology of Food Security in La Guajira, Colombia

Inspired by my experiences while studying abroad in Colombia, in this paper I seek to explain the environmental, social, and political causes of widespread food insecurity in the Colombian department of La Guajira, a rural, isolated desert region with a high percentage of indigenous peoples. I first perform a literature review of geographic research on food security in peripheral regions, followed by a comprehensive case study analysis of La Guajira, drawing together sources from a variety of disciplines, in English and Spanish, in order to provide a new perspective on the region’s crisis through a multiscalar political ecology lens specifically focused on human-environment interactions, marginalization, social difference, and discourses. I find that from racialized frontier capitalism in the early 1900s to contemporary neoliberal extractivism, decades of attempts to integrate the region into national and global economic markets have weakened traditional food systems and substantially increased food insecurity. More broadly, I explore how food security, local agency in food systems, and environmental sustainability can be increased by rethinking our conventional ideas of “development,” “progress,” and “isolation.”

World-making technology entangled with coloniality, race and gender: Ecomodernist and degrowth perspectives

Impelled by the intertwined expansion of capitalist institutions and fossil-fueled industry, human activity has made devastating impacts on ecosystems and earth systems. The colonial, class, racial, and gender systems that coevolved with these historical processes have long been critiqued for engineering exploitation and inequality. Yet the technologies with which these systems interact are widely portrayed as neutral and nonpartisan. This paper interrogates the purported independence of technology on two fronts. First, it uses a political ecology lens to illuminate some ways in which the generation and application of technology have been historically entangled with colonial, racial, and gender systems. Second, it considers how those entanglements have been variously obscured, acknowledged, depoliticized, and/or politicized in two realms of thought and practice: ecomodernism and degrowth. Conclusions call for bringing creative innovation of ecomodernism together with degrowth commitment to just social–ecological transformation.

Fields of contestation and contamination: Maize seeds, agroecology and the (de)coloniality of agriculture in Malawi and South Africa

Farmer-managed seed systems and the conservation of agrobiodiversity are increasingly recognized as important components of food and seed sovereignty. In contrast, hybrid, genetically modified (GM), and, increasingly, gene-edited crops continue to be promoted by Green Revolution proponents as a “climate smart” package that includes fertilizers, pesticides, purchased seeds, and links to global markets. Influencing seed laws and policies to support the uptake of modern crop varieties has been a key entry point in many countries, facilitated by networks of foreign donors, philanthropists, governments, and multinational companies. Using the case of South Africa, where GM crops have been grown for several decades, we provide insights on implications for Malawi, which passed a Seed Act in 2022, implicitly supporting GM crops. Both countries have histories of colonial agriculture with strong policy support for modern, hybrid varieties of maize, and the replacement (and displacement) of local, open-pollinated maize varieties. In South Africa, several studies have revealed the contamination of smallholder fields and seed systems. Through a political ecology lens, we explore how maize and its cotechnologies were commodified in South Africa and Malawi, and what South African experiences of GM crop adoption in smallholder farming systems can tell us about the challenges to be faced by smallholder Malawian farmers. We reveal how colonial histories and ongoing colonialities of power, knowledge, being, and nature continue to shape the character and form of agriculture in both countries, running counter to the needs of agroecological smallholder farmers and their ways of knowing and being. We conclude by envisioning what reimagined, transformed and decolonial approaches for food and agriculture might look like on the African continent, and how they might contribute toward the attainment of food and seed sovereignty and an agroecological future.

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.

Understanding women’s roles, experiences and barriers to participation in ocean science education in Kenya: recommendations for better gender equality policy

Gender equality is critical to achieving transformative action, policies and change towards sustainable ocean management. However, historically women have been largely excluded from ocean science and management programmes, including education. Recent commitment to promoting gender equality in ocean science, notably in the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, aims to ensure women have equal opportunity to engage in ocean science education, research, management and decision-making. This paper investigates the roles of women in ocean science education, the challenges they face, the root causes of these inequalities, and the existing interventions to advance gender equality in ocean science. Focusing on Kenya as a case study, the paper uses a feminist political ecology lens to explore staff experiences and perceptions of gender (in)equality in public universities. The data gathered through in-depth interviews revealed that women's participation in ocean science were limited by perceptions of their male colleagues who did not believe that women can do certain technical jobs. In addition, career progression of women was found to be slower than men's, women were more likely to be discriminated against during promotions and denied opportunities to develop their careers, faced sexual harassment and bullying, and experienced work-family conflicts. These factors adversely impacted women's participation and career advancement and thus their potential contribution to a sustainable ocean. This research also revealed some good practices that the universities had in place to tackle gender inequalities such as gender equality policies and staff given a specific gender equality role (gender focal points). In conclusion, we stress the importance of having gender-transformative policies, an effective implementation process, having women-specific support structures and having women in leadership positions as crucial for promoting gender equality and ocean sustainability.

Digital Technologies for the Future of the Water Sector? Examining the Discourse on Digital Water

Global climate change increases the uncertainty about water, its availability and quality. Thus, the water sector is being transformed to react to the rising water demand as well as climate change and water quality issues and is transitioning into its so-called „fourth revolution“: aiming towards a more sustainable and resilient management of water, whilst simultaneously encountering the mega-trend of digitalisation. Through adopting digital technologies, the sector has the opportunity to address the 21st-century water risks early on as the new technologies will increase the knowledge of water supply, water demand and other water data which can be used to inform public policy or new investments.In this paper, I critically examine the discourse on digital water and how it is expressed, through the lens of Political Ecology. This is enriched through insights of Science and Technology Studies (STS). The discourse on digital water is characterised by two distinct argumentative pathways: On the one hand, technological solutionism presents digital technologies as the only solution to the challenges within the water sector, and on the other hand, socio-technical imaginaries of the future which constitute digital water as a new pathway within the water sector. This portrays a positive and optimistic future for the development of the water sector which is achieved through the implementation of digital technologies.

Greening informality through metabolic coordination: An urban political ecology of governing extralegal housing forms in Taiwan

Despite its significance in informing inclusive political interventions in informal settlements in different political economic contexts, the urban informality literature falls short in exploring state intervention in or policy responses towards desire-based informal housing forms characterised by extralegal construction. This article uses Kaohsiung City in Taiwan as a case study to explore how the local government has collaborated with the private sector to govern the extralegal construction prevailing in community buildings. These interventions include the use of rooftop solar power systems aimed at remodelling existing buildings and green building design prototypes created to prevent future informalities. Using an urban political ecology lens, I analyse how the municipality appropriates the values and properties of solar power systems and green architecture to unite actors, relating extralegal construction to urban metabolism. I develop the concept of ‘metabolic coordination’ to show how the state coordinates actors, resources, technologies and capital to embed an internal circuit of funding flows governing extralegal construction in a larger external circuit of capital circulation consisting of growing solar photovoltaic and green housing markets. The adopted lens of urban political ecology interrogates three interrelated aspects of embedding informality in renewed urban space: municipal interventions remaking informalities, property-led greening of informalities and its negotiation, and inequality in accessing interventions. The city uses pragmatic and adaptive approaches to control extralegal construction. These approaches allow the city to leverage informality for growth and sustainability. However, the governing schemes create new forms of injustice and inequality.

An analysis of the impact of the construction of aqueducts and dams along the Río Yaqui on the Yaquis of Sonora, Mexico, through the lens of political ecology

Speaking to political ecology, this article takes a more holistic analysis of the impacts of the political decisions taken to construct aqueducts and dams along the Río Yaqui, Sonora, Mexico, diverting water away from the traditional homeland of the Yaqui, Indigenous people of Sonora. Moving away from just the agricultural and health implications, instead I demonstrate that environmental change has political sources, and how we regard nature carries deep and often unacknowledged implications and ramifications. Particularly, the dams and aqueducts have had a severe impact on Yaqui culture, as they view the Río Yaqui as crucial culturally. In addition, this article demonstrates that environmental change alters the ability of marginal groups, such as the Yaqui, to resist other actors by showing that their autonomous political system has increasingly been eroded as the Yaqui have been forcefully integrated into the capitalism system.

Beyond legislation: Unpacking land access capability in small-scale mining and its intersections with the agriculture sector in sub-Saharan Africa

The complex relationship between mining and agriculture in Africa is deeply rooted in a complex network of spatial, political, and socio-economic dynamics. In Ghana, for instance, the forest agroecological zone, responsible for 57 % of food crop production, coincides with 61 % of mineral-rich areas. This overlap leads to significant implications, such as competition and conflicts over land, as both livelihood activities rely on a finite natural resource: land. To examine land access politics at the intersections of mining and agriculture using Ghana as a case study, we adopt a unique blend of Amartya Sen's capability approach and political ecology approach. Our study draws on secondary information, on-site observations, and primary data acquired from interviews and focus group discussions with stakeholders in both sectors. Through the lens of political ecology, our research highlights the significant powers of state actors, especially in the mining sector, on land access, exacerbating tensions and conflicts among non-state actors like small-scale miners, smallholder farmers, and traditional authorities. Additionally, by applying the capability approach, we uncover the diverse agency-driven strategies employed by non-state actors, sometimes operating outside existing laws, and we emphasize the competitive dynamics between small-scale miners and smallholder farmers as they vie for land resources to support their economic activities. We therefore argue that the spatial and socio-economic interconnectedness of mining and agriculture is rife with dramatic tensions underpinned by unequal power relations and a hierarchical structure of actors within the two sectors, with potential for zero-sum or worse than zero-sum outcomes for humans and the physical environment at multiple scales.

Industrial and small-scale fisheries relations in Ghana: A political ecology perspective on blue economy exclusion

The fisheries sector in Ghana is a significant source of livelihood for many communities along the coast. However, the sector faces several challenges, including the power dynamics between the industrial bottom trawl industry and small-scale fishers. The concept of resource scarcity has frequently been used to characterise conflicts between industrial vessels and small-scale canoes in Ghana. This paper seeks to build on this dominant narrative that resource scarcity is the key driver of conflicts, arguing that exclusion, and resistance to exclusion can also explain contemporary conflicts in marine fisheries, and that indeed apparent resource scarcity can be caused by exclusion. A political ecology lens reveals that fisheries conflict in Ghana is entwined with established and emerging socio-political domains of exclusion, namely, regulation, legitimisation, force, and the market. We explain how contradictory regulations and ambiguous boundary delimitations, combined with a long period of weak enforcement, have helped industrial trawlers exploit fisheries in ways that exclude small-scale fishers. Additionally, with foreign-aid diplomacy legitimising the expansion of foreign-owned industrial trawlers, the infiltration of illegal catch into the small-scale value chain harms local businesses. We conclude that conflict serves as both a tool and a symptom of exclusion through its connection to regulatory, jurisdictional, and political contexts, as well as market dynamics.

Vulnerable spaces, unequal responses: lessons for transformative climate resilience in Lagos

Urban coastal megacities like Lagos face flooding challenges that may be exacerbated by climate change in the future. Through an urban political ecology lens, this study engages with the dynamics of politics and power that produce differentiated flood impacts and adaptation strategies. Data from telephone interviews of 21 Lagos residents across the mainland and island areas reveal people's understanding of their flood vulnerabilities within the wider socio-political context of Lagos. In particular, state failure in the provisioning of services, amenities, and overall flood protection, shapes flood risk in Lagos. In addition, income and access to material resources inform people's experiences and ability to cope with flooding. Furthermore, citizens apply localized strategies to prepare for and cope with flooding events, particularly through Community Development Associations (CDAs). These localized strategies have implications for transformative resilience. However, these forms of endogenous resilience cannot replace attention to wider urban governance challenges in cities like Lagos.

The political ecology of shrimp aquaculture in Tamil Nadu: A case study from Mayiladuthurai District

The primary purpose of this article is to analyze the impact of shrimp aquaculture in Tamil Nadu through a political ecology lens with a case study of a coastal village located in the Mayiladuthurai district of Tamil Nadu, India. The article firstly looks at the shrimp industry in the coastal village as a case that illustrates how global capitalism influence the local economy. Secondly, it identifies ecological degradation due to the commodification of nature and analyzes the social origins of degradation. Commodification alienates nature and people from each other, and its impacts are unevenly felt across social strata especially class, gender and caste lines. The article finally discusses the intersectionality of social difference and differentiates how the impacts of commodification are experienced and responded to.

Agency and constraint in environmental policy coherence

Whether pursuing the breadth of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals or delivering joined-up approaches within a single environmental domain, policy objectives, policy design and policy implementation should cohere vertically and horizontally. However, policy coherence remains a challenge to implement. The limited empirical scholarship on policy coherence tends to focus on policy documentation and/or the outcomes, with little attention to individual agency or social processes involved. Furthermore, there is little discussion of the normative dimensions of policy coherence and the political aspects of individual agency, indicating the need for political ecology. We conducted an empirical study within four UK catchment (watershed) partnerships, using critical interpretive policy analysis to enrich the interface between political ecology and environmental policy. We explored who practices policy coherence and how; what motivates those investing their energy into these practices; their constraints and the contradictions arising. We found that the appetite and ability to support policy coherence depends on individual agency as much as partnership structures, which are themselves situated in technocratic regimes of policy implementation. Within these regimes, agents presented as apolitical and enabling, making it challenging to research the political and social processes of policy coherence. A political ecology lens highlights how power is involved in these voluntary initiatives, potentially shoring up existing privilege inscribed into riparian habitats and their resources. Our contribution therefore responds to and amplifies the critique of traditional presentations of integrated water resource management devoid of politics.

Towards solar extractivism? A political ecology understanding of the solar energy and agriculture boom in rural China

Contemporary global climate change imperative has stimulated innovative technological systems to combine renewable energy production and other socioeconomic functions, which offer promising solutions to materialize both climate change mitigation and developmental targets. Agrivoltaics—an array of colocation models of solar photovoltaic (PV) infrastructure and agriculture—are becoming increasingly popular across the world and are widely considered a laudable green development model. Since circa 2013, agrivoltaics have started to diffuse across China, with promises of multiple socioeconomic and ecological benefits. Different from existent studies that mostly took apolitical innovation diffusion frameworks, this article draws on an in-depth case study and multiple secondary sources including information on 421 agrivoltaic projects to approach the proliferation of agrivoltaics in China through a political ecology lens. It finds that the diffusion of agrivoltaics in China has been driven neither by technological superiority nor by market-business viability but by a salient logic of solar extractivism in the name of green development. The solar extractivism is featured by: large-scale (agricultural) land acquisition, prioritization of solar electricity production, domination of renewable industries, deep engagement from local state, discourses of green transition and inclusive development, exclusionary enforcement techniques, and neglect of local socioecological systems. The stark contrast between discourses and realities reveals that the deployment of agrivoltaics embodies solar extractivism and the implicated “green agenda” served rather as a legitimation strategy for resource extraction. The solar extractivism perspective cautions against the fetishism of renewables and relevant green infrastructures in popular green development discourses and calls for critical examination of renewable integrative technical models through social justice lenses.

Unequal and unjust: The political ecology of Bangkok’s increasing urban heat island

The intensity of Bangkok’s urban heat island during the dry season can be as high as 6–7° and in the densest areas the urban heat island’s intensity is approximately 4°C. The urban heat island thus is causing a city already oppressively hot to become even hotter. The urban heat island also contributes to health problems, such as heat stroke and fatigue, particularly to those with lower incomes. We historically examine the numerous causes of Bangkok’s urban heat island, such as the lack of green space, high levels of air conditioning, and high rates of vehicle exhaust fumes. For example, Bangkok has only three square metres of green space per person which is one of the lowest in all of Asia. Local governmental weaknesses, administrative fragmentation, prioritisation of economic growth and limited buy-in from the private sector have intensified Bangkok’s urban heat island, and imposed numerous barriers to actions that would reduce heat, such as establishing green space, restructuring urban transport or creating and following an effective urban plan. Ideas mooted to remedy these problems have yet to come to fruition, largely because of bureaucratic inertia, fragmentation and divisions within the relevant lead organisations. The political ecology lens also reveals how political–economic processes largely determine the vulnerability of urban inhabitants to heat, but also that thermal governance is highly unequal and unjust. Those who contribute to and profit the most from Bangkok’s urban heat island, such as real estate developers, shopping mall owners, and automobile corporations, suffer the least from its effects, whereas low-income communities hardly contribute to this problem, yet are the most vulnerable.