Socio-ecological Transformations Research Articles

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.

Gate-Cane: (Un)tying the knots between climate, cane, and early marriage in rural India

ABSTRACT In this article, I examine the multiple tensions and interactions between social reproduction and the trajectories of accumulation amidst climate change in India’s historically drought-prone Marathwada region. By linking everyday experiences to broader socioecological transformations, I draw on the local practice of Gate-Cane weddings in Marathwada, and situate it within the context of climate change, capitalist agriculture, and gendered labour relations. Specifically, I document the ways in which cyclical drought and peculiar labour arrangements in the sugarcane industry have multiplied the drivers and compounded the problem of early marriage in the region. I combine a feminist political ecology framework with social reproduction and girlhood theories to make a twofold argument: first, recurring dry spells, loss of local livelihoods and the urgency to migrate and survive, are aggravating the drivers of early marriage in Marathwada. Second, by absorbing the marital unit into the labour unit – marked by territorial dislocation, patriarchal control, and devaluation of young women’s and girls’ work – the sugar industry sustains and reproduces early marriage. The article is based on a multi-sited feminist ethnography, including intergenerational family conversations, group discussions, stakeholder interviews, and thick field notes documented in village households and cane fields between October 2020 and August 2021.

Decolonizing the political economy of energy transitions: new energy spaces and pluriversal politics in Mexico

This paper draws on Critical Political Economy (CPE) to explore energy transitions in Mexico. It analyzes struggles over competing energy visions from a decolonial, spatial and post-development perspective. The article frames energy transformations as more than a move away from fossil fuels: They encompass a radical overhaul of universalized Eurocentric capitalist modernity that call the state’s role as both facilitator and driver of the energy transition into question. I examine two low-carbon infrastructure projects in the state of Yucatan, Mexico to build on Bridge and Gailing’s notion of new energy spaces as the sites, scales and spatialities through which broader questions of political economy and contemporary struggles are being worked out. CPE of the energy transition must ensure that low-carbon infrastructures are not deployed as new forms of extraction, but rather as the material basis of pluriversal transitions informed by affected communities and their territorial struggles. Both studies on the political economy of energy transitions and territorial struggles can benefit from an open dialogue about how socioecological transformations are imagined, designed and implemented.

Peaks and gaps in eco-social policy and sustainable welfare: A systematic literature map of the research landscape

The social impacts of the climate crisis and the need for societal transformation to achieve climate goals require integrated research and design of environmental policy and social security. The article analyses the current state of research on eco-social policy and sustainable welfare. Based on a systematic literature review covering more than 1000 publications, the article identifies 20 research topics. Strong research progress has been made on social compensation for climate policies; economic inequality in the climate crisis; energy use patterns in housing, mobility, and nutrition; political conditions for eco-social policy; and varieties in eco-social country regimes. Future research activities should focus on the five bottlenecks detected in the emerging research topics: the reduction in the environmental burden through a change in demand structures by the welfare state; growth-independence of social security; support for socio-ecological transformations by altered financing of welfare states; eco-social insurance and institutions; and ecological mainstreaming in the domains of social security. Discussing the explanatory factors for past research activity and sketching the elements of sustainable welfare states, the article concludes with the historical importance of including ecological concerns in social security.

Fei Cheng, Modern Chinese Migration and the Socio-Ecological Transformations in Australia and New Zealand

Fei Cheng, <i>Modern Chinese Migration and the Socio-Ecological Transformations in Australia and New Zealand</i>

Rural bioeconomies in Europe: Socio-ecological conflicts, marginalized people and practices

Bioeconomy policies claim to contribute to socio-ecological transformations and decreasing rural-urban inequalities. Based on examples of four bioeconomies in rural Europe, we argue that contrary to these claims, such policies to date have not de-escalated existing social conflicts but instead have often further contributed to polarization tendencies. To live up to those proclaimed goals, bioeconomy research and policy need to deprioritize economic growth and turn to more comprehensive considerations of socio-ecological contexts and the integration of the local population and alternative practices.

Sustainable socio-ecological transformations in agriculture: cases from South Asia

ABSTRACT Climate change is becoming a defining factor for communities in South Asia. Forming one-fifth of the world population, the region increasingly faces climate-induced disasters such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, cyclones etc. This region also has one of the world’s poorest people who struggle to cope with the rapidly changing climatic conditions. Agriculture still employs many people in the region, one of the worst-hit sectors. Agriculture will become untenable in some parts of the region due to climate change. Monsoon patterns have changed, and agriculture does not guarantee sustainable income for the vast majority. Many climate change adaptations have been initiated in the region in response to the threat of climate change. Scholars and practitioners feel that these adaptations must be transformative to be effective. In this paper, we examine eight such adaptations from three South Asian Countries – Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, from the lens of transformative adaptation. We found that no single adaptation initiative meets all the criteria for sustainable socio-ecological transformations. However, there is a significant overlap between different typologies of transformation as envisaged in the paper and literature. We conclude that the concept of socio-ecological transformation is new for South Asia, so integrating it into the programmes and policies is the need of the hour.

Illicit crops in the frontier margins: Amazonian indigenous livelihoods and the expansion of coca in Peru

ABSTRACT This paper explores illegal coca crop expansion in indigenous Amazonian communities in Peru. The ethnographic study sheds light on the historical development of these areas as frontier spaces, where the growth of illicit crops intertwines with socio-ecological transformations and gives rise to conflicts over new forms of land control, opportunities for capital accumulation, and political power dynamics. The paper argues that this expansion is shaped by dual processes: from ‘below,’ involving small-scale migrant farmers from the Andes, and from ‘above,’ primarily driven by state-led agrarian interventions. Consequently, communities experience significant tensions, as they adapt to the forces of market expansion to secure their livelihoods, while simultaneously facing risks of violence and insecurity.

Socioecological transformations at the specialized productive space in coffee and sugarcane in the context of the Green Revolution. Costa Rica (1955–1973)

This paper provides new evidence on the energy balances and energy returns of the agricultural systems specialized in coffee and sugarcane (SPS_CS) in Costa Rica between 1955 and 1973, during the peak of the Green Revolution. The analysis is developed in the Costa Rican region of that the 1955 Agricultural Census characterized as specialized in these productions of coffee and sugarcane and using the concept of Specialized Productive Spaces (SPS) developed by the researchers. Based on this regionalization as system boundaries, the authors proposed carrying out a retrospective historical analysis (1955 and 1973) to show, from the Social Metabolism approach and the multi-Energy Return on Investment (multi-EROI) accountings, the different exchanges of experience in the material and energy flows interlinking the agroecosystem funds and functioning and materials from a historical perspective. The findings suggest that this Costa Rican productive space (SPS_CS) presents moved from an agroecosystem with low energy efficiency in energy terms in 1955 that tended to improve towards an improved one in 1973, contrary to what happened in other countries of the Global North though only in the socioeconomic flows, which does not imply that the bioconversion chains have not been simplified. Results also conclude that subsistence mixed cropping may have contributed to a slower deterioration of energy efficiency in the SPS_CS. Other agroecological energy indicators more potentially related to farm-associated biodiversity show the other side of the coin: increased agrifood yields through a reduction in the total amount of photosynthesized biomass, in reused biomass by farmers, and in recirculated biomass through direct intake by non-domesticated species. As these internal recirculating flows help reproduce the living funds of agroecosystems, their contraction undermined nature-based ecosystem services that were replaced by an increase in external industrial inputs that, even as they grew, in those Costa Rican areas still held up comparatively low in the total energy throughput.

The Taking and Making of a Forest&amp;#8212;Socio-Ecological Transformations of the Aravalli Hills, India

The Taking and Making of a Forest&amp;#8212;Socio-Ecological Transformations of the Aravalli Hills, India

Resource shifting: Resourcification and de-resourcification for degrowth

Resources are a core concept in debates about socio-ecological transformations and post-growth societies, but as a concept they are rarely problematised. Drawing on a resourcification approach in which resources are understood as outcomes of various social processes, this study analyses how resources are conceptualised and understood in degrowth scholarship. Our study shows that resources are seen in two interlinked ways, first as a critique of the environmental and social costs of current resourcification practices (the becoming of resources), and second as a combination of transformative proposals calling for de-resourcification practices (the unbecoming of resources). By approaching degrowth in terms of a dynamics of resourcification and de-resourcification that we call resource shifting, we contribute to a problematisation of the concept of resource that opens new socio-ecological pathways to post-growth societies.

Ecological Calendars of the Pamir Mountains: Illustrating the Importance of Context-Specificity for Food Security.

Communities in the Pamir Mountains of Central Asia are among the most vulnerable to climate change due to their geographic location and subsistence-based livelihoods. Historically, ecological calendars supported their agropastoral lifestyles which provided anticipatory capacity to seasonal changes. Due to decades of Soviet colonization and socioecological transformations, knowledge of these ecological calendars fell into disuse. In 2016, Savnob and Roshorv, two villages in the Bartang Valley of Tajikistan, began the revitalization of these calendars using a participatory action research process through knowledge co-generation. We undertook a comparative analysis to investigate the importance of context-specificity to ensure food security and reduce their vulnerability to climate change. A preliminary analysis of the temperature regime and local language terms, relating to the positioning and quality of land, framed our methods-of-analysis. We compared the villagers' ecological calendars by focusing on indicator species, potentially threatening weather events, land-use, livelihood activities, and the role of the vernal equinox. Despite their close geographic proximity, context-specificity determined by distinct microecologies influences the timing and practice of these communities' livelihood activities. These villages have different dependencies on biotic and abiotic events, crops, and land-use; all of which affect food security and survival. These differences contributed to mutual support between the two villages, increased the availability of food, and thereby, lowered their vulnerability to climate change. As Savnob's and Roshorv's ecological calendars are updated with changing climate, they can once again enhance their anticipatory capacity while reducing their vulnerability.

The question of ‘sustainable’ technology: From socio-ecological fixes to transformations

This short contention discusses the role of sustainable technology within the energy transition to address climate change. It argues that the current modes of expanding sustainable or renewable energy technologies and associated infrastructures by profit-driven developers in the Global North provide limited socio-ecological fixes to environmental crisis, while largely reproducing the political-economic status quo of fossil capitalism. The fetish of technological fixes to address socio-ecological and socio-economic problems is illustrated with the author's reflections about personal experiences in a techno-scientific research environment. The article points to the necessity to rethink the ontology of technology in order to overcome techno-managerial shortcomings of socio-ecological fixes that hamper both transdisciplinary research and thorough socio-ecological transformations. For that purpose, Ernst Bloch's concept of alliance technology is briefly introduced.

The act of (de/re)growing: Prefiguring alternative organizational landscapes of socioecological transformations

How does transformative change that restructures humans’ relations to the Earth come into being? The proposal for degrowth calls for a drastic reorganization of societies in order to deal with the current planetary socioecological and climate crises. Yet, there is a lack of understanding of how such socioecological transformations are brought into being. In this article, we examine prefigurative processes of socioecological transformations. We introduce the concept of the act of (de)growing, a prefigurative practice in which individuals engage at a personal level as they disentangle from organizational spaces governed by growth (act of degrowing), while entangling with nonhumans (cows, sheep, plants and seeds) to consciously make something else grow (act of growing) in the place that they inhabit. Drawing on 10 personal stories of degrowth in the Nordics, we identify four interlinked dimensions of socioecological transformations that bring new degrowth inspired organizational landscapes into being (disentangling from growth; organizing with nonhumans in place; the emergence of novel subjectivities in place; and the formation of translocal networks of support). We discuss the implications that these dispersed situated forms of socioecological transformations have for breaking with the systemic inertia of societal institutions built on economic growth.

Ecological and social strategies for managing fisheries using the Resist‐Accept‐Direct (RAD) framework

AbstractFisheries management is a complex task made even more challenging by rapid and unprecedented socioecological transformations associated with climate change. The Resist‐Accept‐Direct (RAD) framework can be a useful tool to support fisheries management in facing the high uncertainty and variability associated with aquatic ecosystem transformations. Here, RAD strategies are presented to address ecological goals for aquatic ecosystems and social goals for fisheries. These strategies are mapped on a controllability matrix which explores the ability to guide a system's behaviour towards a desired state based on ecological responsiveness and societal receptivity to change. Understanding and improving the controllability of aquatic systems and fisheries can help managers to maintain the broadest suite of available RAD management strategies.

Thinking with Julio Carrizosa’s Complex Environmental Perspective

In Latin America, the humanistic thought has seen a diversity of formations seeking to account for current socio-ecological transformations. These kinds of reflections —better known in the region as Latin/South American Environmental Thinking — have focused on critiquing the structural dualisms of modern thought, such as: civilized-savage, mind-body, society-nature. Through this critique, Latin American thinkers have sought to consolidate the project of environmentalizing knowledge, integrating both scientific and non-scientific practices to face the environmental crisis. However, there are very few analyses of the different theoretical contributions that have emerged from the Latin American humanist project, particularly from Colombia. Therefore, this article analyzes the contribution of Julio Carrizosa, focusing on his conceptualization of the Complex Environmental Perspective. Ultimately, the intention is to contribute to the consolidation of a Latin American perspective on environmental humanities.

Ecological uncivilisation: Precarious world-making after progress

Responding to the proposition that learning to live in the Anthropocene involves learning how to die, this article problematises the modes of world-making upheld in some of the contemporary proposals for the global reorganisation of societies towards just, socio-ecological transitions beyond the techno-fixes of geoengineering, green growth, and their attendant ideals of progress. Specifically, it critically examines one such proposal that, inspired by process philosophy, has proven deeply influential in China’s recent shift in ecological (geo)politics: the idea of an ‘ecological civilisation’ based on principles of ontological relationality, democratic responsibility, and a new alliance between the sciences and the humanities. The article argues that while such a project rejects the substantive values of modern progress, its regulative notion of civilisation retains the modern story of progress as a mode of valuation and therefore reinscribes imperial, colonial values at the heart of ecology. In response, the article suggests that learning to die in the wake of ecological devastation requires making life outside the modern coordinates of progress, which is to say living without the ideal of civilisation. Seeking to expand the political imagination at a time of socio-ecological transformations, it calls for ‘ecological uncivilisation’ as a permanent experimentation with improbable forms of world-making and methodologies of life that are envisaged thanks to ongoing histories of decolonisation and not in spite of them; that strive to live and die well but not always better.

Integrating knowledge within and between knowledge types in transdisciplinary sustainability research: Seven case studies and an indicator framework

Transdisciplinary research aims to generate knowledge through science-practice interactions and is attracting increasing attention in sustainability science. However,sustainable development is characterized by vast complexities and context specificities, with a broad spectrum of relevant actors. Transdisciplinary research projects targeting at socio-ecological transformations, therefore, require the integration of different bodies of knowledge from diverse actors to gain an accurate and comprehensive understanding of existing problems and potential solutions. This knowledge integration involves both the active exchange of knowledge and the creation of a joint understanding of problems and solutions. Hence, the focus of this article is to analyse how and why knowledge integration is successful in transdisciplinary research processes. We conceptualize and define knowledge types and goals of knowledge integration. By analysing seven transdisciplinary research projects, we develop and empirically test indicators for knowledge integration. We examine knowledge integration (i) within three specific knowledge types (systems, target, and transformative knowledge), and (ii) between these different knowledge types. Furthermore, we reflect on the roles of researchers and non-academic actors. The description, comparison and discussion of knowledge integration lead to the identification of barriers and success factors to improve such processes in transdisciplinary research activities.

Envisioning just transformations in and beyond the EU bioeconomy: inspirations from decolonial environmental justice and degrowth

The European Union (EU) is adhering to decarbonization of its economy to tackle what is narrowly framed as ‘environmental issues’ of our socioecological and civilizational crises—including, but not limited to, climate change and biodiversity loss. A shift to bio-based economy (bioeconomy) is an important component of this effort. This paper applies theoretical ideas from decolonial environmental justice and degrowth, placed in the wider context of transformations, to analyse the EU bioeconomy policy within the global context, and to draw lessons and recommendations for just transformations in the EU bioeconomy policy. I identify five dominant logics and approaches in the EU bioeconomy that act as barriers for just transformations and propose alternative ones that can support such transformations. Barriers and alternatives include (1) framing ‘nature’ as a resource and service provider for humans, who are seen as separate from nature, and the need to abandon human–nature duality; (2) dominance of economic green growth and technoscientific policy solutions, and the need to place planetary justice at the centre of tackling socioecological crises; (3) a limited approach to justice, and the need to act upon climate and epistemic justice, including self-determination and self-governing authority; (4) the EU’s ambition for global leadership and competitiveness in global bioeconomic markets and governance, and the need to redefine global governance towards partnerships based on the principles of solidarity, mutual respect, reconciliation and redistribution of power and wealth; (5) hegemonic politico-economic structures and actor coalitions in charge of the EU bioeconomy, and the need for decentralized bottom-up leadership coalitions that promote direct democracy, local autonomy and sovereignty beyond state. I conclude with reflections on the politics of change and risks of co-optation, with a hope to inspire decolonial and just socioecological transformations in and beyond bioeconomy.

Community Governance tensions of rural drinking water utilities in periurban territories (Chile)

Unlike the private concession model applied in urban zones, rural water sanitation services in Chile are managed by rural drinking water (RDW) committees or cooperatives, under a community governance model. This article seeks to understand the tensions and conflicts faced by RDW community governance in the peri-urban territories of regional capitals, which are at the frontier of the private drinking water management model. Based on a political ecology and hybrid governance approach, this research proposes the hypothesis that, on facing urban expansion and water scarcity, the neoliberal institutional framework tends to favour drinking water market governance in peri-urban territories. With this aim, and through semi-structured interviews and participatory observation, focusing on three RDW cases located in the peri-urban zone of Talca, this study develops a critical discourse analysis of community managers and government regulators, identifying their perceptions and positions on current socio-ecological transformations, and community governance tensions. Consistent with the proposed hypothesis, from discourse analysis, it is possible to infer the potential risks of privatization, derived from the implementation of Law No. 20,998, which regulates rural water sanitation services.