Political Ecology Notes

Political Ecology

GG2509, David Flood, February 2025

Outline

• Recap: Political Economy
• Political Ecology
• Political vs Apolitical Ecology
• Issues of Power & Scale
• Foci of Political Ecology
• Conclusions

Political Economy

• Political economy enquires:
  • Who has access to resources?
  • Who profits from whom?
  • Where do impacts occur?
  • What is done with profit?
• Capitalists own the means of production and secure the conditions of production.
• Workers must sell their labor at a low price.
• Capitalism is susceptible to crises (contradictions).
• Second contradiction of capitalism… (further explanation needed based on previous lectures).

Definition of Political Ecology

Political Ecology: Study of environmental issues informed by political economic concepts (Peet, 2020).

Political Ecology Details

• PE is a diverse body of research/field of practice to better understand human-nature relations.
• PE emerged in the 1970-80s based on Third World studies, peasant studies, and agricultural studies.
• PE represents a stark response to a-political ecological approaches.
• Political ecologists examine power relationships and question traditional claims about environment and development.
• Political ecologists argue that “the global” can be studied in “the local” (Batterbury, 2018; Benjaminse & Svarstad, 2021; Cederlof & Loftus, 2023; Peets, 2020, Robbins, 2018).

Three ways of understanding political ecology

• AS AN APPROACH
• AS A REALITY
• AS A PRAXIS

Elaboration of the Three Ways of Understanding Political Ecology

Political Ecology: Key Theses

• Degradation and marginalization
• Conservation and control
• Environmental conflict and exclusion
• Environmental subjects and identity
• Political objects and actors
  (Batterbury, 2018; Cederlof & Loftus, 2023; Robbins, 2018)

Political Ecology: Key Theses Elaboration

Apolitical Ecology vs. Political Ecology

Apolitical Ecology

• Appears as objective.
• Overlooks the influence/presence of humans.
• Ignores social processes such as colonization and dispossession.
• Overfocuses (and blames) proximate local forces.
• Fails to notice multiple scales.
• Leaves out issues of power and broader political implications.
• Follows particular narratives in the managerial and technocentric spectrum (e.g. eco-scarcity, modernization).

Political Ecology

• Explicitly political (does it mean subjective?).
• Enquires about the conditions about the environment and the peoples living and working within it.
• Understands society-nature relations as multi-scalar.
• Includes power dynamics and the influence of various actors.
• Represents an alternative to a-political ecology.
  (Batterbury, 2018; Cederlof & Loftus, 2023; Robbins, 2018)

Soil Erosion: A Political Ecology Story

• Traditionally, soil erosion in the Third World was assumed as a result of overexploitation of resources in a context of overpopulation.
• Blaikie (1985): what about the political-economic context leading to soil erosion?
  (Blaikie, 1985; Peets, 2020; Robbins, 2018)
• Integration to global markets marginalized peasants and moved them to less productive, and highly susceptible to erosion, lands.
• Peasants had to transform land to subsist resulting on increasingly eroded land.
• Soil erosion was the result of peasants under conditions of threat to livelihood.
  (Blaikie, 1985; Peets, 2020; Robbins, 2018)

Silent Violence

• Crisis of starvation in the Sahel region in the 1970s-1980s due to drought.
• Watts (1983): how is that the local farmers and herders in that region are not well-adapted to the common problem of drought?
  (Peets, 2020; Robbins, 2018; Watts, 1983)
• Hausa farmers had a well-adapted local relief system.
• Global expanding colonial capitalism disrupted the system articulating only commodity production.
• However, subsistence production (food!) was left unattended.
• Focus was placed on alternatives (e.g. export crops and mining) worsening land quality.

Power

• Power as a resource
• Power as a social relation
• Power as ideology
• Power as discourse
• Power as knowledge
  (Benjaminsen & Svarstad, 2021; Cederlof & Loftus, 2023)

Scale

• How do the local integrates global processes?
• How does the global manifests in local lived realities?
• Scale: analytical tool, interaction and relations, and struggles and processes
• What do they reveal and hide?
  (Benjaminsen & Svarstad, 2021; Cederlof & Loftus, 2023)

Hatchet and Seed

• The goal of PE is to ‘take the hatchet’ to environmental myths, using both scientific and social scientific studies to expose the false assumptions and unsuitability of certain ecological models.
• As a ‘seed’, PE aims to generate fresh and socially useful ideas to shape a better future based on advocacy, legal challenges, or activism.
  (Batterbury, 2018; Benjaminsen & Svarstad, 2021; Cederlof & Loftus, 2023; Robbins, 2018)

Political Ecology of Conservation

• Political Ecology understands conservation as a matter of control and access to resources and territory.
• Conservation appears as a benign effort.
• Conservation implies a competition over territory and jurisdiction.
  (Benjaminsen & Svarstad, 2021; Vaccaro, 2013; Wilshusen et al., 2002)
• PE identifies issues of forced displacement and unequal participation.
• Benjaminsen & Svarstad (2021) identify two – coexisting – conservation discourses:
  • Fortress conservation
  • Win-win conservation
    (Robbins, 2018; Vaccaro, 2013; Wilshusen et al., 2002)

Political Ecology of Participation

• PE aims to unveil the power dynamics behind ‘participatory’ processes (e.g. participatory approaches to conservation).
• PE argues that participatory approaches can hide unequal power distribution.
• Do all actors have the same influence on decision-making processes?
  (Bixler et al., 2015; Cooke & Kothari, 2001)

Urban Political Ecology

• UrPE emerged as a response to rapid urbanization.
• Cities are more than a set of buildings.
• Cities are a set of socio-ecological processes determined by a historical and geographical context.
• Cities can be understood as the result of metabolic human-environment processes.
• Flows of water, energy, and food are transformed by labor into urban areas.
• Infrastructure is key for the provision of those flows.
  (Benjaminsen & Svarstad, 2021; Cederlof & Loftus, 2023; Harvey, 1996; Robbins, 2018)
• How do those processes benefit some groups over others?
• Why are the outcomes of flows uneven?
• What are the roots of uneven and unjust urban landscapes?

Feminist Political Ecology

• Emerged as a critique to the impact of green revolution investments in agriculture in the 1970s.
• Environmental degradation has gendered impacts.
• Access, control, political activism, and knowledge about nature, in some cases, differ between genders.
• Intersectional approaches.
• Emotional political ecologies (e.g. affect, solidarity, empathy).
  (Benjaminsen & Svarstad, 2021; Robbins, 2018; Sultana, 2009)

Virtual Political Ecology

• Labor, water, energy, land and emissions flow asymmetrically from peripheries to developed regions.
• These resources are not tangible; therefore, they are virtual.
• Flows of resources and labor are mediated through markets, institutions, culture.
• Flows are uneven and unfairly distributed.
• What social relations are embedded in a commodity (e.g. avocado)?
  (Benjaminsen & Svarstad, 2021; Cederlof & Loftus, 2023; Giampietro, 2023; Harvey, 1990)

Criticism of Political Ecology

• PE overfocuses on the global majority world.
• PE has a strong rural nature.
• PE is too radical.
• PE lacks empirical research.

Critical Reflections

• Ecological systems are political, and the peoples living and working in them and researchers or influenced by political and economic processes.
• As a hatchet and seed, political ecology is a strong critical approach but also a source of optimism for new socio-nature relations.
• PE invites researchers to be more critical and to focus on the root causes of environmental degradation.
• PE is not only reserved for researchers; PE is also practice!
• PE is a call for a more just, equitable, and sustainable future.

Conclusions

• Political ecology is concerned on revealing the winners and losers, the hidden costs, and the unequal power that underpins environmental degradation.
• Political ecology calls for better, less coercive, less exploitative, and more sustainable ways of doing things (in relation to the environment).
• Political ecology is not a mere claim-making exercise on environmental issues without empirical research, PE is a research-based approach.
• While political ecology began with a focus on rural areas and global majority countries, it is now an approach used in urban areas and global minority countries as well.
• Political ecology brings a deeper analysis of human-nature relations (e.g. urban metabolism and virtual flows).

Recommendations

• Movies: Avatar I
• Social media: Pollen Blogs
• Book: Silent Violence (M. Watts)

References

• Peet, J. R. (2020) “Radical Geography,” in Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Second Edition [Online]. Elsevier Ltd. pp. 197–205.
• Benjaminsen, T. A. & Svarstad, H. (2021) Political ecology : a critical engagement with global environmental issues. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Cederlöf, G. & Loftus, A. (2024) Discovering political ecology. London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
• Blaikie, P. M. (1985) The political economy of soil erosion in developing countries. London ; Longman.
• Watts, M. J. (1983) Silent violence : food, famine & peasantry in Northern Nigeria. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press.
• Harvey, D. (1990) Between Space and Time: Reflections on the Geographical Imagination. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. [Online] 80 (3), 418–434.
• Harvey, D. (1996) Cities or urbanization? City (London, England). [Online] 1 (1–2), 38–61.
• Batterbury, S. (2018) “The social construction of nature”, in: Castree, N., Hulme, M., Proctor, J.D. (Eds.), Companion to Environmental Studies. Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY, pp. 439–442.
• Giampietro, M. (2023) “Multi-scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism” in Villamayor-Tomas, S., Muradian, R. (Eds.), The Barcelona School of Ecological Economics and Political Ecology. Springer, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 109-121.
• Robbins, P. (2018) Political Ecology: a critical introduction, 3rd edition. Wiley.
• Bixler, R.P., Dell’Angelo, J., Mfune, O., Roba, H., 2015. The political ecology of participatory conservation: institutions and discourse. Journal of Political Ecology 22. https://doi.org/10.2458/v22i1.21083
• Cooke, B., Kothari, U., 2001. Participation: The New Tyranny? Zed Books.
• Vaccaro, I., Beltran, O., Paquet, P.A., 2013. Political ecology and conservation policies: some theoretical genealogies. Journal of Political Ecology 20. https://doi.org/10.2458/v20i1.21748
• Wilshusen, P.R., Brechin, S.R., Fortwangler, C.L., West, P.C., 2002. Reinventing a Square Wheel: Critique of a Resurgent “Protection Paradigm” in International Biodiversity Conservation. Society & Natural Resources 15, 17–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/089419202317174002
• Sultana, F., 2009. Fluid lives: subjectivities, gender, and water in rural Bangladesh. Gender, place, and Culture, 16(4), pp. 428-444