Political Ecology Research Articles

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.”

Socio-environmental balance: How environmental conflicts can support the climate-security nexus

This article relies on interdisciplinary debates in geography, political ecology and political sciences in order to explore how interpretative analyses of environmental conflict can support the climate and security nexus debate. It analyses mining and environmental conflicts in Burkina Faso and mobilises a framework highlighting the co-constitutive relationship between the environment and human societies. From this perspective, environmental alterations are considered a central and multicausal factor that can lead to a profound change in social and political structures and thus lead to conflicts. This article will first contextualise mining development, environmental conservation and armed conflict in Burkina Faso before reviewing the literature on climate change, environment and conflicts and describing the conceptual and methodological framework. Then, it addresses the case study of four large-scale mining sites in Burkina Faso. Finally, the last subsection explains how this case study can enrich the climate and security debate with an interpretative understanding.

Urban green spaces of İstanbul: from ‘beautifying’ efforts to ‘mega-projects’

ABSTRACT This study discusses the transformation of urban green spaces in İstanbul, focusing specifically on gardens, groves, parks, and the Northern Forests. Recent research has underscored a significant loss of green space during the 2000s, posing a threat to biodiversity and essential ecosystem services. Despite maintaining a socio-natural continuum, it is evident that the twenty-first century represents a significant departure from the past. This study identifies two pivotal periods: the ‘beautification’ efforts undertaken the young republican period and the ‘mega-projects’ of the 2000s. These periods exhibit both similarities and substantial differences in politics and spatial organization concerning the urbanization of nature. The concept of urban political ecology is incorporated here, which advocates for equal socio-natural solutions and highlights the interconnectedness between urban areas and nature. The study concludes by emphasizing the need to continue examining the winners and losers in transformation of urban green spaces and move beyond project-driven development. It contributes modestly to the growing literature by shedding light on how historically and spatially organized ecologies of urban green spaces in the context of İstanbul can help us understand the socio-spatial changes we are witnessing today, characterized by the extended urbanization of nature worldwide.

Intersectional praxis for social-ecological transformations: Lessons from North Macedonia's grassroots Green Deal

Intersectional praxis - the practical application of intersectional theorizing into action - can be highly relevant for pursuing social-ecological transformations. Yet, we know little about the benefits and challenges of trying to mobilize such praxis for pursuing transformations. In this contribution to critical feminist and political ecology scholarship, we explore this gap empirically through a case study of producing a grassroots Green Deal in North Macedonia in which intersectional theory principles were employed in a process of collective visioning and grassroots organizing around that endeavor. To identify benefits and challenges related to this process, we inquire into the documents produced and the experience of organizers coordinating and catalyzing those efforts. We find that the benefits of enacting intersectional praxis relate to strategizing and mobilizing, collective action, and intersectional solidarity building. Challenges faced included fears concerning the unfamiliarity with the concept of intersectionality, and issues related to the capacity of individuals from subaltern groups to participate in collective visioning processes under conditions of precarious existence. We conclude that grassroots organizing around the Green Deal framework could have a potential to address some critiques of mainstream Green Deals, shift narratives of socio-ecological transformations (SETs), unite different movements working towards climate and social justice, and mobilize people power under an umbrella framework that dominates the policy arena, such as the Green Deal.

Defending water and life: domestic ecologies and social reproduction in Buenaventura

During the last four decades, communities in the city of Buenaventura, Colombia’s main seaport, have mobilized in order to access public water services. Privatization, poor infrastructural maintenance, and intermittence have made access to water a matter of concern. In this context, the Committee for the Defense of Water and Life came into being in 2014, as an urban grassroots organization, making calls on the city’s population to mobilize for their right to clean water. In this article, however, we argue that the acts of defending water are not limited to the realm of collective action and overt activism against national and local governmental decisions. Rather, defending water in places such as Buenaventura is also an everyday gendered practice where water is secured and protected against other beings such as microbes and/or mosquitoes. Drawing on collaborative work, we document how women protect water in less visible scenarios such as the home. These women engage in a repertoire of domestic activities and techniques in order to obtain, store and keep water clean, as stored (and therefore stagnant) waters are never only water but are also home to large and threatening communities of organisms such as microbes and mosquitoes on their water stages. We bring political ecology indoors to reflect on how gendered domestic spaces become a dynamic and crucial ecological and political arena for the defense of water and life.

Household water insecurity experience in the Upper West Region of Ghana: Insights for effective water resource management

The global community is not on track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) by 2030. Many low- and middle-income countries like Ghana still struggle with water insecurity. In semi-arid regions like Ghana’s Upper West, climate change has worsened water insecurity, leading to health and livelihood consequences. In UWR, limited studies have explored water insecurity in rural areas. This study fills a knowledge gap by investigating the determinants of water insecurity in Ghana’s Upper West Region (UWR) from a political ecology of health (PEH) perspective. It comprehensively explores the interplay of social, economic, political, environmental, and health-related factors contributing to water insecurity in the UWR. The results from binary logistic regression show that households in the wealthier category (OR = 0.475, p<0.05) and those that spent less than thirty minutes on a roundtrip to fetch water (OR = 0.474, p<0.01) were less likely to experience water insecurity. On the other hand, households that did not use rainwater harvesting methods (OR = 2.117, p<0.01), had to travel over a kilometer to access water (OR = 3.249, p<0.01), had inadequate water storage systems (OR = 2.290, p<0.001), did not treat their water (OR = 2.601, p<0.001), were exposed to water-induced infections (OR = 3.473, p<0.001), did not receive any water, hygiene, and sanitation education (OR = 2.575, p<0.01), and faced water scarcity during the dry season (OR = 2.340, p<0.001) were at a higher risk of experiencing water insecurity. To mitigate the risks of water insecurity and adverse health impacts, policymakers and practitioners must work together to educate households on effective water conservation, storage, and treatment techniques. It is recommended that households harvest rainwater as a coping strategy, construct appropriate storage systems, and treat their water. Communal self-help water investments should be encouraged and supported. Given the significant aquifers and semi-arid landscape of the UWR, investing in groundwater development should be a top priority.

Environmental Risks Associated With Urban Development Projects in Kenya

Purpose: The aim of the study was to examine environmental risks associated with urban development projects in Kenya Methodology: This study adopted a desk methodology. A desk study research design is commonly known as secondary data collection. This is basically collecting data from existing resources preferably because of its low cost advantage as compared to a field research. Our current study looked into already published studies and reports as the data was easily accessed through online journals and libraries. Findings: The study revealed that urban development projects in Kenya present significant environmental risks that require careful consideration and proactive mitigation measures. The rapid urbanization and infrastructure expansion in Kenya's cities have been associated with various environmental challenges, including air and water pollution, habitat loss, soil degradation, urban heat island effects, and adverse impacts on human health. These environmental risks stem from factors such as increased vehicular emissions, industrial activities, improper waste management practices, deforestation, and inadequate urban planning and infrastructure. The concentration of population and economic activities in urban centers exacerbates these environmental pressures, further highlighting the urgent need for sustainable urban development strategies in Kenya. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: urban political ecology theory, environmental justice theory & sustainable development theory may be used to anchor future studies on environmental risks associated with urban development projects in Kenya. Prioritize the implementation of green infrastructure initiatives, such as green roofs, urban parks, and sustainable drainage systems, to mitigate environmental risks associated with urban development. Integrate nature-based solutions into urban planning and design processes to enhance ecosystem services, improve air and water quality, and reduce urban heat island effects. Advocate for legislative reforms and policy interventions that prioritize environmental sustainability in urban development planning and regulation. Implement stringent environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes for all urban development projects to ensure compliance with environmental standards and regulations.

Equality, not sufficiency! Critical theoretical perspectives on the inequality-unsustainability nexus

Attention to inequality is increasingly taking centerstage in the fight against climate change and environmental devastation. More and more scholars and activists emphasize the need to put the reduction of inequality at the core of environmental and climate politics, and more and more propose a (socially just) “sufficiency” approach and politics to do so. Just sufficiency is presented as the new desirable societal pact, tasked with taking over from the current dominant growth pact driving “excess,” and replacing it with a politics of “enough,” through “collectively defined self-limitation.” However, an excess/enough lens misses the dynamics of production of inequality in the first place, with important political implications. This article thus seeks to contribute a tighter critical theoretical understanding of the inequality-unsustainability relation as a nexus historically powered by specific mechanisms of fossil, metabolic, as well as “green” accumulation. Through the theorization of these relations, one can better apprehend how inequality is not only a question of unfair distribution or exclusion from affluence demanding to be addressed through social and environmental justice, but also the condition for the modes of extraction and exploitation that produce and reproduce unsustainability. I argue that the counterhegemonic struggle must be waged on that terrain: putting limitations (not self-limitations) on the accumulation machine and its inequality-unsustainability nexus. This reading, which builds on critical theory and Marxist and feminist political ecology, is related to notions of class as structured not only by exploitation, but also, crucially by dispossession and status hierarchization. Adopting a nexus approach to inequality and unsustainability offers a critical theoretical method that can hopefully shift the assessments and orientations of the sufficiency movement away from the moral terrain of self-limitation (whose self?) toward the class politics of limits on capital needed today for socio-ecological transformation.

WHY SÁMI SING: KNOWING THROUGH MELODIES IN NORTHERN NORWAY. By StéphaneAubinet. Arctic Worlds: Communities, Political Ecology and Ways of Knowing. London and New York: Routledge, 2023. Pp. xiv + 168. Hardback, $160.00.

WHY SÁMI SING: KNOWING THROUGH MELODIES IN NORTHERN NORWAY. By StéphaneAubinet. Arctic Worlds: Communities, Political Ecology and Ways of Knowing. London and New York: Routledge, 2023. Pp. xiv + 168. Hardback, $160.00.

The Don Sahong Dam in Laos: Political Ecology, Infrastructure, and the Changing Spatialities of Impacts on Fish and People

The Don Sahong Hydropower Project (DSHPP), located in the Khone Falls area of Khong District, Champasak Province, southern Laos, near the border with Cambodia, has been amongst the most controversial hydropower dams in the Mekong River Basin. Despite considerable regional and international opposition, the dam was finally constructed, becoming commercially operational in 2020. In 2011, I expressed serious concerns about the project's potential impacts on long-distance migratory fish and associated fisheries, especially fish that migrate from Cambodia and Vietnam up the Mekong River to Laos and Thailand. However, my concerns have somewhat changed along with the circumstances, although they continue to focus on dam impacts on migratory fish. I am now particularly concerned about the indirect impacts of the DSHPP on the fishing livelihoods in the Khone Falls area, and the impacts of the dam on fish larvae and fish passing through the dam's turbines when migrating downstream. Using a political ecology approach, this paper considers how infrastructure, in this case a large hydropower dam located on the Mekong River, has altered the spatialities associated with the project in particular ways.

Silences of the Dam: The Intimate Geographies of Ethnic Lao Well-Being on the Sesan River

In the locales where hydropower dams in the Mekong River Basin have been constructed, ethnically and economically marginalized groups who depend on rivers and their tributaries for well-being often bear the greatest burdens: loss of fisheries and river-based livelihoods, riverbank gardens, and sacred sites, to name a few. In December 2018, the controversial Lower Sesan 2 Dam in northeastern Cambodia started operations, exacerbating old challenges and creating new ones for the riverine communities along the Sesan and Srepok Rivers. In this article, I employ a feminist political ecology framework to explore the varying ways that personal and community well-being are impacted in two ethnic Lao locales of Sre Kor (Na Kor in Lao language) commune and Phluk village as a result of the Lower Sesan 2 Dam. While the dam has disrupted flows of water and fish habitats and migrations, rendering new ecological circumstances, I argue that infrastructural violence can variably hide intimate geographies of well-being and un-wellness. Only by interrogating the silences of intimate geographies of the body and home in local villages and communal ethnic spaces will such impacts of violence become visible.

Evaluating a forestry partnership between a private company and local people in East Kalimantan, Indonesia: a political ecology approach

Evaluating a forestry partnership between a private company and local people in East Kalimantan, Indonesia: a political ecology approach

Urban Political Ecology of Concrete

Matthew Gandy considers four ways of understanding how concrete intersects with urban political ecology to reveal new cultural and scientific developments

An Analysis of Validebağ Grove from the Lens of Urban Political Ecology

An Analysis of Validebağ Grove from the Lens of Urban Political Ecology

Corrigendum to ““Living systems infrastructure” of Kolkata: exploring co-production of urban nature using historical urban political ecology (HUPE)”

Corrigendum to ““Living systems infrastructure” of Kolkata: exploring co-production of urban nature using historical urban political ecology (HUPE)”

The political ecology of justice outcomes of lithium mining: The case of Salar del Hombre Muerto, Argentina

Electromobility and lithium-ion batteries are seen as key for the global energy transition, but injustices have been identified in several stages of the life cycle of electric vehicles, particularly in the resource extraction stage. Little is known about the micropolitics driving the acceptance or contestation of lithium mining by communities directly affected by this activity in the highland Andes of South America. In this paper, we explore complaints and demands made by communities living near Salar del Hombre Muerto, a salt flat in the Argentinian province of Catamarca where lithium has been extracted for decades. Having collected ethnographic data from conversations with affected communities and during public meetings and hearings, we applied a coding process using political ecology and energy justice conceptual frameworks. This led to the identification of place-based complaints and demands associated with distributive, procedural, and recognition justice. We further discuss our findings in terms of recent literature on lithium mining to provide explanations of the justice outcomes identified. Although lithium mining may not be the sole cause of (at least some of) these injustices, it nevertheless generates expectations and catalyzes attempts to end marginalization in areas where local and regional institutions are incapable of doing so.

"Blood on the floor:" The nickel commodity frontier and inter-capitalist competition under green extractivism

Major companies in the mining industry are strategizing to benefit from the expected rise in demand for energy "transition minerals" that underpin current technologies of decarbonization (such as batteries and wind turbines). This article elucidates their current strategies of accumulation through the case of BHP, the world's largest mining company. We draw on political ecology and commodity frontier theory in order to grapple with inter-capitalist competition under the current moment of green extractivism by examining firm and state practices in the nickel commodity frontier. Empirically, we examine the changing role that nickel has played in BHP's asset portfolio during the past decade where it has attempted to significantly accumulate from the expansion of the nickel commodity frontier. Yet, despite this centering of the expansion of the nickel commodity frontier for its particular strategy of accumulation under green extractivism, it has so far been unsuccessful. Given this potential for failure of company practices in commodity frontiers, we argue that green extractivism should not always and everywhere be seen as a story foretold.

“An Un(Even) Playing Field? A Political Ecology of Tourism Impacts in Upper Mustang, Nepal”

ABSTRACT Before the onset of the COVID-19, tourism was one of the world's largest industries; as the pandemic wanes, recovery in the tourism industry is anticipated. While scholarly research on sustainable tourism has expanded, local perceptions of tourism impacts are comparatively understudied. Additionally, the role of power relations in tourism dynamics have been poorly theorized. As a geo-politically sensitive border region, only opened to foreign visitors in 1992, Upper Mustang, Nepal, is an ideal region to explore the dynamics. Using a political ecology approach, this paper examines core facets of tourism impacts and benefits, while incorporating history-driven power relationships. Results from 116 interviews in 24 villages show that perceived impacts of tourism were primarily dictated by geographical location, specifically communities’ centrality to trekking routes and level of interactions. This uneven distribution of tourism benefits can be attributed to power relationships emerging from historically established social structures that predate tourism itself.

Alien Plants between Practices and Representations

In Finland, the European spruce (Picea abies) and the beach rose (Rosa rugosa) have very different cultural resonances and ramifications, but they also have many similarities. In this study, we examine these species through the concept of ‘plantiness’ to reveal the political ecology behind the categories of native and alien, demonstrating the national and biological belonging of said species. We ask why people want to protect certain species and not others – which ultimately amounts to deciding which plants are permitted to exist and which are not. Acknowledging that natural changes occur constantly, we also ask how people come to decide what counts as the ‘status quo’ that should be protected. We create a synthesis from our disciplines: palaeoecology, which focuses on the ecology of the past; cultural history and ethnology, which explore historical and contemporary times; and linguistics, which focuses on a long time period from prehistoric to contemporary times.

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

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