Political Ecology Research Research Articles

From Green to Black: A Voluminous Political Ecology of the Extraction–Conservation Nexus

Within political ecology research, a dominant focus on the hard physicality of the world limits engagement with how events taking place on land mediate and are mediated by other material spaces like the atmosphere. This article engages with burgeoning research on the extraction–conservation nexus to show how the clearly demarcated land-based boundaries on which nexus thinking relies limit an awareness of how processes of conservation and extraction cohere and take shape in and through the aerial atmosphere. The article substantiates this argument with case studies on Guyana and Suriname, two countries that have been working on avoiding deforestation through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation for over a decade in the aim of mitigating climate change. In each case, we examine three years of news reporting on recent, major oil finds in the Guyana-Suriname Basin. The news reports, set against longer term research, demonstrate a narrative pivot from “green,” land-based avoided deforestation narratives to “black,” offshore extractive ones. The reports show that reference to the competing atmospheric effects of the mutual pursuit of these activities is scarce, even at a time of rapidly intensifying climate change. Hence, we argue that a voluminous analysis of the extraction–conservation nexus integrating a vertical awareness of the ever-present and unbounded atmosphere harbors potential for orienting a less contradictory politics of climate change—one that recognizes how activities deemed oppositional on land take shape in the shared, unbounded atmosphere. These activities consequently go on to affect other spaces and places in indirect, often unpredictable ways.

Business responsibility and government complicity in environmental conflicts: a quali-quantitative analysis of global patterns

ABSTRACT Our paper aims at widening political ecology research on business’ responsibility and public governance conditions in cases of violation of Environmental-related Human Rights (ERs), by adopting a quantitative perspective. We focused on a subset of socio-environmental conflicts (SECs) that directly connect with the violations of ERs. We propose a quali-quantitative analysis to explore the country distribution of the incidence of violations of ERs leading to SECs (VERCs) worldwide; the extent to which these can be associated with the involvement of business companies; and the general governance conditions spatially associated with the emergence of VERCs, regardless of the involvement of businesses. Through statistical regression analysis, we showed that the evidence of business’ implication in VERCs and of the lack of adequate public governance conditions suggest the need to complexify our perspective with a more nuanced understanding of the patterns of liability and complicity between diverse actors involved in SECs.

Can political ecology be decolonised? A dialogue with Paul Robbins

AbstractIn the intricate tapestry of environmental discourse, the field of political ecology emerges as a powerful lens through which we scrutinise the interplay of power, nature and society. This paper stages a dialogue with Paul Robbins to examine environmental justice, the decolonisation of political ecology, colonialism, sovereignty, climate change and capitalism. The dialogue challenges the conventional narratives of sovereignty and underscores the imperative of genuine decolonisation—beyond metaphorical interpretations—calling for the restitution of land and authority to Indigenous Peoples and other historically marginalised communities. The dialogue highlights the importance of moving away from capitalist systems that exacerbate environmental degradation. The dialogue calls for decolonising political ecology by including diverse perspectives, methodologies and ontologies and underlines the importance of control over productive resources. It emphasises that addressing the impacts of colonialism requires recognising and honouring the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples and suggests that political ecology can contribute to decolonisation by focusing on sovereignty and supporting legal and institutional frameworks that empower marginalised communities. The paper discusses the way forward and the future trajectory of political ecology by suggesting that future research in political ecology should focus on diverse economies, embrace emerging technologies and rework academic institutions to value knowledge co‐production.

Unearthing extractive subjects: Power and subjectivity at the extractive frontier

Work in political ecology and related fields emphasizes the importance of subjectivities to understand power relations and dynamics in nature-society interactions. In practice, though, few studies provide detailed analyses of subject formation. Moreover, the role of subjectivities has remained underexplored in the literature on resource frontiers. This special issue addresses these gaps, exploring processes of subject formation in relation to the material practices, discourses, and governance arrangements of resource extraction in frontier settings. This introductory essay reviews conceptual debates on subjectivities in political ecology and identifies the diverse ways that papers in the issue engage with these debates. It focuses on four thematic areas: 1) subject formation in relation to shifting political economies of extraction; 2) interactions between subject formation “from above” and “from below”; 3) subjectivities and/in emotional geographies; and 4) the spatiotemporal scales of extractive subject formation. The essay concludes by identifying avenues for future research on resource extraction and subjectivities, arguing that a focus on subjectivities can help advance political ecology research across the board.

Critical Geoarchaeology: From Depositional Processes to the Sociopolitics of Earthen Life

In the last several decades, geoarchaeological research and practice have moved well beyond their foundational concerns for site formation processes and the stratigraphic integrity of artifact associations, developing significant orientations toward archaeological and social theory. This review focuses on four overlapping research emphases that have explicitly extended the reach of geoarchaeological research within the broader social sciences and humanities, including ( a) interpretive, symbolic, and social approaches in geoarchaeological research; ( b) articulations with recent developments in posthumanist and new materialist scholarship; ( c) the application of geoarchaeological investigations to historical ecology and political ecology research programs; and ( d), building on the latter, critical engagements with ongoing transdisciplinary scholarship on the Anthropocene. Taken together, these different orientations offer new possibilities for geoarchaeological research to inform anthropological concerns for social and environmental production and the ways that archaeological and geological fields of practice and discourse contribute to shaping social, political, and environmental conditions today.

Reflexivity, embodiment, and ethics of care in rangeland political ecology: reflections of three feminist researchers on the experience of transdisciplinary knowledge co-production

Although there is a growing interest in transdisciplinary knowledge co-production approaches applied to rangeland political ecology, the research paradigms and methodologies still dominating this field of research leave little room for equitable engagement with research participants and genuine action-oriented research. In this article, we provide a reflection on new practices grounded in feminist studies of science and care ethic literature to orient transgressive and engaged transdisciplinary political rangeland ecology research. Feminist epistemologies call for reflection on who produces knowledge and how such knowledge is used and shared. Feminist practices, such as reflexivity, embodiment, reciprocity, and care, cultivate awareness of the power dynamics embedded in the research process and motivate researchers to counteract asymmetrical or extractive relationships when we identify them. We first introduce the scholarship that inspires key principles of our feminist research approach and then reflect on our experiences as researchers and as activists working with Spanish and Catalan networks of women pastoralists. Three research questions guide our reflective process: (i) how can feminist theories of knowledge co-production contribute to rangeland political ecology; (ii) how can feminist methodologies be applied in practice so that collaboration between women pastoralists, their organizations, and researchers is mutually reinforcing, care-full, and action-oriented; and (iii) what are the challenges and limitations of our experiences to foster transformation and emancipation in knowledge co-production processes?

Conservation Conflict: A Political Ecology Meta-Synthesis of East Africa

Protected areas (PAs) are often seen as a solution to the biodiversity crisis, however, such conservation intervention can drive environmental change and conflict. Despite being presented as neutral and technically informed, PA establishment is highly political, often concealing social, economic, and political factors. Political ecology research examines how dominant narratives shape PA establishment, helping to better understand multi-layered conflicts involving often marginalized communities, conservation actors and wildlife in East Africa. This paper presents a meta-synthesis of PA expansion in the region, revealing the intricate relationship between conservation and conflict. The analysis identifies four key themes: ‘commodification of wilderness’, ‘the war for biodiversity’, ‘community marginalization on the periphery’, and ‘conservation biopolitics’. By novel utilization of meta-synthesis methodology, this paper contributes two-fold: themes provide nuanced regional understandings of the processes driving conservation conflicts while drawing theoretical insights from case study research which reveal the general applicability of findings from political ecology research.

Political Ecology of an Environmental Crisis in the Brahmaputra Valley, Assam

Political ecology as a framework for studying nature–society relations has come a long way since the 1980s, both in terms of its thematic canvas as well as theoretical robustness. Research in political ecology on hazards on the other hand has not grown as impressively, even though humanity is witnessing increased risks and disasters in the Anthropocene. Indeed, disasters are no longer “extreme events” and have come to be regarded as normal occurrences. This paper delves deeper into the question of the political ecology of hazards and vulnerability by focusing on a case study from Majuli river island in India’s northeast. It critically investigates the twin disasters of flooding and riverbank erosion in Majuli by paying attention to the role of the biophysical features of the Brahmaputra river system as well as the political economic forces at play, with a special focus on the role of the state. The paper draws on fieldwork conducted in Majuli over several years. It foregrounds the role of the state in the reproduction of the Majuli hazardscape and calls for a nuanced, disaggregated analysis of the postcolonial disastrous state.

Sovereignty as an environmental practice: the problem of territoriality and anthropocentrism

The article is a theoretical study of state sovereignty. By looking at the concept in a different way from traditional methods, it tries to discern whether sovereignty is necessarily antithetical to a sustainable world. Emphasis is put on its territoriality and anthropocentrism – both of which make it into a major obstacle when tackling global and transnational environmental problems. State sovereignty is analyzed as an environmental practice of the state, which allows for the control of resources to be used by capital. The analysis is conducted using theoretical and conceptual critique as the main method. It is based on various sources ranging from critical geopolitics and critical geography to political science and political ecology, including the concept of Capitalocene. As long as sovereignty remains utilized by the state in service to capital, it will be used to cement its ability to control space and extract resources. However, a different kind of sovereignty is imaginable and therefore the institution itself is neither friend nor enemy to environmental politics. This new understanding of sovereignty opens up new avenues for theoretical research in political ecology and International Relations, bridging the gap between traditional state-centric approaches and the transboundary nature of ecological problems.

Framing REDD+: political ecology, actor–network theory (ANT), and the making of forest carbon markets

Abstract. This paper discusses the opportunities and challenges of integrating science and technology studies (STS), especially the variant based on actor–network theory (ANT), into fields of human geography with a critical research tradition. Drawing on the experiences of political ecology and empirical research on carbon markets, it uses the example of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) to show how the turn towards such STS impacts has changed the “framing” of REDD+: from analysing REDD+ as an example of the “neoliberalization of nature” and a focus on the impacts on human forest users to detailed accounts of infrastructures and practices of making markets. Discussing the consequences of these observations and different proposals brought forward to combine ANT with political ecology, the paper argues for a conscious and reflective use of ANT-inspired STS approaches to benefit from the additional insights this approach allows while keeping the critical potential of geography alive.

Political ecology III: Praxis - doing, undoing, and being in radical political ecology research

Praxis is central to political ecology scholarship but replete with tensions and ambiguities. This report explores advancements in praxis across epistemological, methodological, pedagogical, and political dimensions. Praxis in political ecology has benefited from detailed insights drawn from Indigenous, decolonial, postcolonial, feminist, anti-racist, and multi-species scholarship, among others. Attention to praxis allows for enriched research that has the potential to be useful and transformational for marginalized communities and better inform policy-making. Political ecology can remain relevant and meaningful when praxis is foregrounded and reflexively interrogated and performed for both intellectual advancements and radical socio-ecological justice.

Sovereignty as an environmental practice: the problem of territoriality and anthropocentrism

The article is a theoretical study of state sovereignty. By looking at the concept in a different way from traditional methods, it tries to discern whether sovereignty is necessarily antithetical to a sustainable world. Emphasis is put on its territoriality and anthropocentrism – both of which make it into a major obstacle when tackling global and transnational environmental problems. State sovereignty is analyzed as an environmental practice of the state, which allows for the control of resources to be used by capital. The analysis is conducted using theoretical and conceptual critique as the main method. It is based on various sources ranging from critical geopolitics and critical geography to political science and political ecology, including the concept of Capitalocene. As long as sovereignty remains utilized by the state in service to capital, it will be used to cement its ability to control space and extract resources. However, a different kind of sovereignty is imaginable and therefore the institution itself is neither friend nor enemy to environmental politics. This new understanding of sovereignty opens up new avenues for theoretical research in political ecology and International Relations, bridging the gap between traditional state-centric approaches and the transboundary nature of ecological problems.

International/inter-carbonic relations

If international relations can be theorised as ‘inter-textual’, then why not also – or indeed better – as ‘inter-carbonic’? For, not only is the modern history of carbon to a large degree international; in addition, many of the key historical junctures and defining features of modern international politics are grounded in carbon or, more precisely, in the various socio-ecological practices and processes through which carbon has been exploited and deposited, mobilised and represented, recycled and transformed. In what follows I seek to make this case, arguing that carbon and international relations have been mutually constitutive ever since the dawn of modernity in 1492, and that they will inevitably remain so well into the future, as the global economy’s dependence on fossil carbon continues unabated and the planet inexorably warms. Will climate change generate widespread conflict, or even civilisational collapse? How are contemporary power dynamics limiting responses to climate change? And how, conversely, might 21st-century world order be transformed by processes of decarbonisation? Building on research in political ecology, I argue that a dialectical sensitivity to ‘inter-carbonic relations’ is required to properly answer these questions. Scholars and students of International Relations (IR), I suggest, need to approach climate change by positioning the element C at the very centre of their analyses.

Epistemic communities in political ecology: critical deconstruction or radical advocacy?

Recent political ecology scholarship appears to be turning towards de-growth agendas and radical activism, notably in Europe. These postures diverge somewhat from the 'classical' political ecological tradition rooted in a critical deconstruction of dominant ideas and actors and field-based analyses. We posit a heuristic distinction between these two impulses. While both are based in critiques (Robbins' 'hatchet'), as far as the 'seed' one impulse leans more towards critical 'deconstruction', the other towards radical 'advocacy.' Through a systemic review of the political ecology literature, we seek to identify and characterize these impulses, link them to epistemic communities of knowledge production, and explain these trends. Our review incorporates qualitative analysis of key texts, as well as quantitative bibliometric and content analysis of Scopus-indexed publications referring to political ecology (1951-2019) and abstracts from all the articles published in Journal of Political Ecology, from POLLEN conferences in Europe (2016, 2018) and from DOPE conferences in the US (2013-2019). Among other things, we find that even if political ecology has long been divided between deconstructivist and advocacy approaches, the second is becoming preeminent since many political ecologists are taking a radical turn, with strong theoretically rooted attacks on the capitalist system taking place. Some political ecological research increasingly positions itself in socio-political debates related to the greening of unjust societies in the First World. This is most prominent in continental European academia (and some English universities), where political ecology is institutionally more marginal; in the remaining British and North American universities, the more deconstructivist impulse is more dominant but also more pluralistic in its orientations.

Unpacking everyday urbanism: Practices and the making of (un)even urban waterscapes

AbstractInequalities in conditions of access to water are emblematic of contemporary urban life and have long been at the center of urban scholarship. This paper considers the theoretical and empirical potential of a focus on the everyday as a contribution to critical urban water studies. Drawing on research in Political Ecology and Critical Institutionalism, we focus on the intersection of everyday urbanism and water to reflect on whether such perspectives can further understandings of socio‐natural inequalities and “real” governance challenges in the urban waterscape. We suggest that a focus on the everyday brings attention to the hybrid arrangements that constitute urban waterscapes and offers new insights to the polycentric nature of water governance, agency, and everyday urban struggles. However, we also outline limitations of these studies in unpacking the concept of the everyday and in capturing the practices through which everyday life is constituted. We explore the potential of an engagement with Practice Theory as a sensitizing lens for developing grounded understandings of everyday life, its constituent practices, and how these change over time. Concurrently, we argue that Practice Theory could be strengthened by drawing on critical approaches that explain everyday urban governance through: (1) the linking of practices to broader patterns of inequality; (2) the multiple social identities of practitioners and the variability in their exercise of agency; (3) the role of institutions as crucial mediating mechanisms and the processes through which practices become enduring institutional arrangements. We, thus, conclude that these approaches are complementary rather than competing.This article is categorized under: Human Water > Water Governance

Monitoring extinction: defaunation, technology and the biopolitics of conservation in the Atlantic Forest, Brazil

Due to habitat fragmentation, Brazil's Atlantic Forest is considered one of the world's most threatened biodiversity hotspots. Much of the biome has become extinct of its largest-bodied mammals,leading some to refer it as a 'half-empty forest.' One of the ways conservation actors are responding to this crisis is by utilizing Global Positioning System(GPS), camera trapping, and remote sensing satellite imagery. Together, these tools enable the collection of data at unprecedent levels. By intensifying wildlife monitoring, it is thought that better-directed actions can be taken to avoid species extinction. Although there is a nascent body of research in political ecology examining the role of these new technologies in conservation,so far there has been little exploration of what this implies for the transformation of the governance of conservation spaces. Bringing together literatures on biopolitics of conservation and conservation technologies, this article reflects on the ways new technologies are changing the biopolitical governance of conservation in the Atlantic Forest. I argue that the increase of information flows, together with the ability to process data through models and algorithms, intensifies the capability of biopolitical governance to justify claims for new protected areas, while changing ecological subjectivities. With the increased use of remote sensing technologies, some ecologists are being distanced from the field, and are consequently having less interactions with rural communities. As pressures on biodiversity increase, this may facilitate advocacy for coercive conservation measures that have adverse impacts on local communities.

Rights, justice and climate resilience: lessons from fieldwork in urban Southeast Asia.

Recent transformative resilience research calls for urban climate interventions that better meet the needs of low-income and other marginalized groups. Such initiatives, it is suggested, must move beyond technocratic and superficial solutions to address the systems and structures that create climate vulnerability. While these are important theoretical developments, there is still much to be learned about how to support transformative resilience on the ground. This paper situates transformative resilience theory in practice with lessons from a five-year research partnership in Southeast Asian cities. We argue that for resilience research to advance rights and justice, knowledge production and mobilization efforts must be conceptualized as active parts of the transformation process. Bringing together conceptual and methodological insights from resilience, political ecology and governance learning research, we offer three pathways for transformative resilience and present examples of how they can be operationalized in Southeast Asia and beyond.

Critical Reflexivity in Political Ecology Research: How can the Covid-19 Pandemic Transform us Into Better Researchers?

It is not just the world but our ways of producing knowledge that are in crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed our interconnected vulnerabilities in ways never seen before while underscoring the need for emancipation in particular from the hegemonic knowledge politics that underpin “business-as-usual” academic research that have both contributed to and failed to address the systemic challenges laid bare by the pandemic. Political ecologists tasked with knowledge generation on vulnerabilities and their underlying power processes are particularly well placed to envision such emancipatory processes. While pausing physically due to travel restrictions, as researchers in political ecology and rural development at the same university department, we want to make a stop to radically rethink our intellectual engagements. In this article, we aim to uncover “sanitized” aspects of research encounters, and theorize on the basis of anecdotes, feelings and informal discussions—“data” that is often left behind in fieldwork notes and personal diaries of researchers—, the ways in which our own research practices hamper or can be conducive to emancipation in times of multiple interconnected health, political, social, and environmental crises. We do so through affective autoethnography and resonances on our research encounters during the pandemic: with people living in Swedish Sapmi, with African students in our own “Global North” university department and with research partners in Nepal. We use a threefold focus on interconnectedness, uncertainty and challenging hegemonic knowledge politics as our analytical framework. We argue that acknowledging the roles of emotions and affect can 1) help embraceinterconnectednessin research encounters; 2) enable us to work withuncertaintyrather than “hard facts” in knowledge production processes; and 3) contribute to challenginghegemonic knowledge production. Opening up for emotions in research helps us to embrace the relational character of vulnerability as a pathway to democratizing power relations and to move away from its oppressive and colonial modes still present in universities and research centers. Our aim is to contribute to envisioning post-Covid-19 political ecology and rural development research that is critically reflexive and that contributes to the emergence of a new ethics of producing knowledge.

NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION AS THE PROBLEM OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY IN THE REGIONS OF LATIN AMERICA

The actual questions of environmental safety in the context of ideas of global evolutionism taking into account modern tendencies. The ecological situation in the country demonstrates the processes of deterioration and waste of natural resources, energy and habitat, as well as critical conditions in the quality of life of the population. Researchers in political ecology structure allocated direction: mechanism of environmental decision-making society and its political, economic and intellectual elites; the formation of a way of life, economic activity and culture, depending on the environment; the formation of its own environment by society; interaction of different societies solving the problem of access to natural resources and their transformation into a public resource; creation of systems of activity, their organization, infrastructure and hierarchy; the consequences of using performance systems; modern global geopolitical and ecological-political situation. Political scientists have tried to highlight and approve a new part of knowledge - political ecology - with its own laws, patterns and conclusions. The authors express the hope that the continuation of the development of the scientific theme of political ecology will allow in discussions and disputes to develop a scientific apparatus that allows us to obtain knowledge at what point in global history we are, what is permissible and unlawful for us to do, where we should go. All those conclusions that undoubtedly affect the life of both an individual and social systems. The article examines the problems that Latin American researchers are studying: how states face environmental problems, how they understand these problems and what decisions they make. Thus, a collision state and political systems to environmental issues, evaluation of possible management decisions and their consequences, the scientific analysis of the consequences of such decisions in the competition state systems is the subject of the political ecology research. The conceptual apparatus of political ecology includes the following positions: biosphere wars, wars for the division and redistribution of biosphere resources. Unlike economic wars, wars of the rich, who has something to share and who does not think about survival, biospheric wars are waged extremely cruelly - for the complete capture of biosphere resources and the total destruction of their previous users; resources of the biosphere: air, water, soil, forests, subsoil, biological resources of various natural zones, the minimum necessary biodiversity for the comfortable existence of man as a biological and social species in the biosphere of planet Earth and developed outer space; environmental diplomacy - ways and methods of achieving control over biosphere resources by diplomatic means that are optimal for the development of the state; bioresource management - a system for making management decisions regarding the use and conservation of biosphere resources; biosphere restructuring is a change in the species and landscape diversity of the biosphere due to human activity. Key words: ecology, management, biosphere, landscape diversity, environmental diplomacy, the environmental problems of the state, democracy.

Conceptualizing alternatives to contemporary renewable energy development: Community Renewable Energy Ecologies (CREE)

Privately-owned, state-owned and public-private renewable energy (RE) projects are increasingly criticized by social scientists. They can involve dispossessions, management and financial inequalities, and environmental problems. Research also indicates that Community Renewable Energy (CRE) projects are not without problems and dangers. In this article, I go beyond critique of renewable energy projects, without abandoning them, in the face of mounting climate and ecological crises. I employ a productive approach to rethink RE development, that combines the diverse and community economies perspective developed by J.K. Gibson-Graham with political ecology research on alternative economies. Building on this approach and RE and CRE literature, I develop the notion of Community Renewable Energy Ecologies (CREE). CREE signify community economies involved in small-scale RE prosumption (production and consumption), or medium-scale RE prosumption and sale of energy. They adopt non-and alternative capitalist relations of ownership, production,exchange and circulation. CREE are engaged in collective ethico-political decision-making, and an oikopolitics embodying care for and affective relations with humans and more-than-humans. Such decision-making and oikopolitics are directed towards more 'thriving' and egalitarian socio-ecological futures. I identify particular ethico-political orientations for CREE and provide specific considerations for their constitutive elements (e.g. ownership,finance, labor, infrastructure). CREE reflect one of multiple possibilities for alternative sustainabilities in a pluriversal world.