Society and Evironment Midterm 2

Political ecology

• combines the concerns of ecology and a broadly defined political economy

• includes the shifting dialectic between society and land-based resources, within classes and groups within society itself

Emergence of political ecology

response of modernization theory following WWII

modernization theory

with the right combination of capital , know-how, and attitude, economic growth would proceed in a linear fashion

dependency theory

• the underdevelopment of the global south is linked to colonialsim

  • reorienting of production systems to meet european needs

  • elite in developing countries teaming with developed countries to extract resources

World systems theory

• a world division or labor based on

  • the core - highly developed countries

  • semi-periphery - emerging groups of countries with high level of cheap manufacturing

  • periphery - raw material supply

Core assumptions of political ecology

• external forces play a key role in determining local processes in human-environment interaction

• environmental changes do not affect society in a homogenous way

• political, social, and economic differences account for uneven distribution of costs and benefits

Structural political ecology

focuses on how unequal global power relations created conflicts in access to, and control of, land and resources historically and in contemporary times

Poststructuralist political ecology

• emerged in the 1990s

• critiqued structural PE for focusing largely on broader structural factors without deeper analysis of local processes

• variable such as gender, race, age, socioeconomic status became very important in PE analysis

Themes of political ecology

• scalar analysis

• marginalization

• social differentiation

• power and discourse

Limits to politcal ecology

• overly deterministic and unidirectional in apportioning blame

• over theoretical and abstract

• insufficient ecology

Hazard

• a thing, condition, or a process that has the potential to cause loss of life or injury, property damage, socioeconomic disruption or major environmental damage

• many if not most hazards are exacerbated by human activities

Two types of hazards

• natural

• anthropogenic

Natural hazards

• physical

  • flooding, storm surges, landslides, droughts, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions

• biological

  • hazards from pathogens and animals

Anthropogenic hazards

• cultural hazards

  • unsafe working conditions, poor diet, drinking

• chemical hazards

  • harmful chemicals in the air, water, soil and food, nuclear power plants

Risk

• a central element in understanding the societal impacts of hazards

• risk is proportional to the probability of a particular hazard event occurring and the expected losses the event may cause

• an outcome of a hazard interacting with exposure and vulnerability

Risk as a contextual construct

• risk associated with a hazard should be constant across geographies

• people perceive and respond to risk differently

risk perception

• the tendency for people to evaluate the hazardousness of a situation, event or decision and act

• risk perception is not entirely a rational process

  • social factors

  • media framing

  • group thinking

  • social amplification of risk

Media framing of risks

• the media can distort our perceptions of the actual risk to which we are exposed

  • the risk of dying in an act of terrorism is low compared to driving on highways

Vulnerability

• conditions that increase the susceptibility of a community to the impacts of a hazard

  • vulnerability is a context in which people live

  • even when people are in control of their risk decision-making, they are not necessarily in control of the social and ecological constraints that affect their decisions

Three dimensions of vulnerability

• material vulnerability

• institutional vulnerability

• attitudinal vulnerability

Material vulnerability

• assets, income source, educational attainment

• distance to a hazard

Institutional vulnerability

• a reflection of social networks and kinship ties

• infrastructure, reliability of early warning systems, social group

Attitudinal vulnerability

the individual or group’s sense of empowerment expressed through access to disaster information, insurance, welfare

Vulnerability is understood as a function of:

• exposure

• sensitivity

• adaptive capacity

Exposure

• the location of people, infrastructure, housing, production capacities and other tangible human assets in hazard-prone areas

• it is possible to be exposed but not sensitive or vulnerable

Sensitivity

• the degree to which exposure to a hazard, affects an individual, a household or a community

• agrarian communities may be more sensitive to droughts than urban workers

Adaption

• coping strategy

• short-term measures evolving to long-term permanent changes

• adaption is not always successful - maladaption

Political Economy

• explores relationship between individuals and society and between markets and the state in the process of production and consumption

• capitalism controls the means of production for profit

• eventually, the environment must be worked harder to sustain surplus value

What is political economy’s approach to hazards?

focuses on broad scale, social, political, and economic relations of production and consumption in the global economy shape local vulnerabilities

What two levels does political economy focus on?

• macro - global level

• micro - local level

Role of local processes

• interacts with broader factors to shape vulnerability

  • political

  • socioeconomic

  • environmental

Role of local processes - political

government spending, government’s ability to implement laws, corruption, political participation

Role of local processes - socioeconomic

unemployment, poverty, social differentiation of neighborhood

Role of local processes - environmental

geography and rainfall regime

Environmental Racism(ER)

• refers to the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color due to racism

• argues that structural/institutional racism underlines the variation

Environmental justice (EJ)

• EJ focuses on the inequitable distribution of environmental qualities and risk exposure in society

  • highlights disadvantaged groups bearing the most for environmental degradation

  • means effective participation for all people regardless of race color, national origin

  • everyone enjoys the same degree of protection of environmental harm

Core themes in environmental justice

• investigating unequal patterns of exposure of different groups to mostly anthropogenic hazards and pollutants

• explaining the cause of unequal exposures

• an activist approach to correcting environmental injustices

History of the environmental justice movement in the US

• started in 1978 with the Love Canal

  • spared public awareness on the sitting of toxic waste sites

• 80s and 90s: linked tensions between the civil rights movement and mainstream environmental groups 

1978 - Love Canal

• suburban, mostly white working-class neighborhood

• built next to site used for dumping toxic waste

• toxic chemicals seeped into homes causing diverse health problems

• most famous superfund site

The not in my backyard movement (NIMBY)

• don’t dump chemicals into our homes

• the goals should be about reducing the number of hazards

• build nothing anywhere near anybody

• however, the movement moved polluting industries to other countries with less strict environmental laws

Examples of globalization of risk

• E-waste recycling in China, India, Ghana, and Nigeria

• these countries have poor infrastructure to deal with e-waste

E-waste

discarded electronic (phones, computers, tablets) having hazardous material harming local communities

Environmental Justice as a global movement

• although developed in the global north, EJ has became a global movement

• global extension was shaped historically

Examples of economic factors that shape location decisions

• industries look for soft spots

  • cheap land and labor

social political factors in explanations of environmental injustice

• poor, minority communities are not recipients of hazardous development

• poor communities can’t afford a good lobbyist - therefore these communities can’t advocate for themselves well

Racial factors in explaining environmental injustice

• minority communities are less resistant

• housing segregation limits minority groups from moving away hazardous sites

  • redlining

Redlining

financial institutions refuse to offer mortgages or offer worse rates to customers in certain neighborhoods based on racial or ethnic identity

History of redlining

• exclusionary zoning laws prohibited the sale of property to black people 

• federal government gave an institutional boost to redlining after the great depression

Racial capitalism

• economic process of gaining profit through the extraction of social and economic value from people of marginalized racial identities

• non-white people face the burden of production systems 

Planetary boundaries

quantitative assessments of the safe limits for human pressure on nine critical processes 

• one of them is climate change

• we have crossed the safe limits for 7 boundries

scientific certainties associated with climate change

• temperatures are rising globally

• clear connection between rising temperatures and rising CO2 levels

• 95% certain that humans are a primary cause of climate change

Weather

atmospheric conditions that occur locally over short periods of time

Climate

long-term regional or global average temperature, humidity, and rainfall patterns over years or decades

Natural systems changing climate

• variation in energy from the sun

• changes to earths orbit

• volcanoes and geographic activity

Why is energy output for the sun not constant

change in brightness of the sun

• sunspots

• faculae

sunspots

dark areas on the sun

faculae

brighter areas on the sun

what toxins do volcanoes release into the air?

carbon dioxide and methane

Anthropogenic climate change

climate change induced by humans - natural factors can’t account for temperature changes

What is the main cause of anthropogenic climate change?

the rising concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere

Greenhouse gases that are harming the environment

• CO2

• CH4

• CFCs

• N2O

climate change impacts

• droughts

• melting glaciers and sea level rise

• increased frequency and intensity of wildfires

• species range shifts impacting biodiversity and disrupting ecosystems

biodiversity loss: range modificiations

• example: loss of habitat in the arctic due to ocean acidification

• species can migrate now but there will be limits to their movement