North and South (Annotated)

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Even though environmental change has been discussed in academic and policy circles for about thirty years now, it has not yet brought about anything close to a theoretical consensus. The multitude of different and often contradictory theories on human-environment interactions call for a critical review of the current state of the art in order to facilitate future research on sustainable development, natural resource management and resource conflicts.

One of the approaches that has emerged as most promising is political ecology, which stands at the centre of this review. Political ecology is a relatively new field of research that has been widely discussed and much used in recent analyses of interactions between humans and the environment. However, despite its prominence key concepts of political ecology remain ambiguous. Among the questions that political ecology deals with are: Scholars do so from different viewpoints and relying on very different disciplinary backgrounds geography, anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, history and management.

Very often diametrically opposed paradigms and theories for instance, neo-liberal vs. Political ecology seemingly provides conceptual tools for analysis rather than an encompassing theory of human- environment relations. I would also like to thank swisspeace for making this research possible.

There is still much work to be done to shape a comprehensive theory of political ecology that will be able to serve as a solid foundation for scientific research. The aim of this paper is thus to provide an overview of major theories, discussions and contributions in the disparate field of political ecology. In so doing, it is hoped that this critical review and the annotated bibliography will be useful for future research on human-environment interactions. The first section of the paper will provide a short introduction to the conceptual foundations of political ecology and the core ideas and concepts that shaped it.

A number of major perspectives of political ecology will be discussed in the second section of the paper. In the conclusion I attempt to briefly summarise the the different intellectual orientations that prevail in current scientific discourse. The second part of this working paper consists of an annotated bibliography on political ecology in development research. The bibliography is supplemented by a thematic and a regional index of authors and their works. Foundations of political ecology 2. Foundations of political ecology Theoretical approaches of political ecology are marked by a plurality of disciplinary backgrounds.

Nonetheless, some generalisations can be drawn about a number of approaches from which individual studies in political ecology have emerged. In this section of the paper, I examine the precursors or what Paulson et al. Furthermore, the altercations that political ecology scholars had with other research traditions shall be briefly resumed since these discussions were hugely influential in shaping political ecology as a theoretical body.

By retracing the intellectual origins of political ecology, I intend to demonstrate how and why political ecology has become what it is today. However, in actual fact political ecology - without being defined and named as such - had its origins already in the s. On the one hand natural scientists such as agronomists, geologists, etc. On the other hand social scientists such as anthropologists, sociologists and geographers started to look more closely at the political role of nature for societies.

Historically, the role of nature itself had been deemphasised in the constitution of the social sciences. When sociology emerged as a scientific discipline at the beginning of the 20th century, nature was completely blinded out, the focus being solely on society, i. The motivation for this was, of course, to distinguish the newly established social sciences from the then dominant physical and natural sciences Goldman and Schurman , In the s, the focus of development studies lay mostly on modernization and dependency theories Greenberg and Park , 6.

Cultural ecology focused mostly on cultural adaptations to the environment Bryant and Bailey, , 16f including cultural practices religious rituals or similar , specific subsistence patterns of behaviour and social practises either shaped by environmental circumstances or operating as regulators of environmental stability Forsyth , 8.

This approach has encountered substantial critique from social anthropologists who have dismissed cultural ecology as too simplistic, technical, ahistorical and accused it of portraying societies as a product of environmental circumstances rather than adopting a more sociological viewpoint.

Preoccupation with environmental issues could be found in many a discipline. There was the emergence of Green Politics and the sustainable development discourse, perpetuated and popularised in the media following the Brundtland Report in Peet and Watts , 3. On the other hand an increasingly important body of work on environmental security dealing with questions of conflict and resource scarcity appeared in the s. But from the s onward, scholars started to frame environmental problems as a manifestation of broader political and economic forces, positioning that the deep-rooted, complex sources of these problems needed to be addressed by far-reaching changes in local, regional and global political and economic processes Bryant and Bailey , 3.

In a first phase many scholars resorted to neo-Marxist theories to overcome the perceived apoliticism of cultural ecology and its limitation to isolated rural communities. To achieve this, they started to incorporate the impacts of international markets, social inequalities, and larger-scale political conflicts into their analysis Paulson et al.

From the mids on, scholars started to broaden their scope by allowing a wider range of theoretic influences to guide their observations of specific environmental problems Bryant and Bailey , This newly emerging discipline of political ecology was marked off against cultural ecology, being less functionalist and ahistorical and taking the existing, historically shaped social structures as the starting point for analysis. It differed also from human behavioural ecology HBE , another then prevailing approach, insofar as HBE is strongly rooted in economy and relied on simple formal models, game theory and a more qualitative approach Winterhalder , 4.

Most importantly, these new vague of research dissociated itself from population pressure theories or neo-Malthusian approaches. People and degradation - Neo-Malthusian narratives By the end of the s and even before, the conventional approach to looking at environmental questions had its base in a neo-Malthusian framework. The original theorem of Malthus stated that while food production levels grow at a linear rate, human population grows at geometric rate if unchecked.

Therefore, Malthus predicted a decrease of available food per capita with ensuing famines and the eventual extinction of the human race. This general idea of ecologic determinism was taken up and broadened to include other resources than food, namely arable land. The assumption was made that population pressure on resources PPR leads to resource scarcity.

Within the mainstream environmental conflict and security studies published since the beginning of the s, a great number of scholars analyse conflict or war as a result of resource scarcity. One of the best-known neo-Malthusian scholars who links resource scarcity to conflict is Homer-Dixon ; ; Foundations of political ecology there are resource scarcity induced conflicts that are driven by political and economic factors Dalby, a, This rather unconvincing conclusion, his neo-Malthusian mindset, methodological shortcomings, the simplicity of the models employed and various findings that indicate contrary outcomes have led to widespread criticism of his work by scholars, making Homer-Dixon one of the most-cited, but most-criticised scholars in the field of environmental conflict research and subsequently, in political ecology Tiffen et al.

The authors describe the intertwined and reciprocal relations between land use and the environment in the case of soil erosion not, as had often been the case previously, as just a result of human action, but as caused by, and resulting in, very distinct forms of societal structure Peet and Watts, , 6. Their analysis of soil degradation amalgamates the following concepts of marginality: The idea of the marginal unit used in land rent theory, the ecological concept of marginal zones where population pressure on flora or fauna is high, and the concept of marginality where the population of raw material producing zones do not get their due share of the revenues 19ff.

As mentioned before, the most widespread analytical frameworks examining environmental change and its societal effects had their origins in evolutionist or Malthusian conceptions. In effect, the message is that anthropological concerns — not to mention those of other social sciences — can be left out of the analysis.

Painter and Durham , Blaikie and Brookfield underpin their approach with an important body of research, mainly analysing different forms of land use in various countries in a historical perspective. They then illustrate their theories with an in-depth case study of land degradation and soil erosion in Nepal.

Subsequently, this local focus of analysis has been taken up by a multitude of scholars as, for instance, Peters on Botswana , Park on the Senegal and Nile River basins or Sheridan on Arizona From the end of the s to the mids, political ecology visibly gained popularity as a new field of research. In most of the contributions political ecology served as an analytical lens used to document and analyse specific case studies, where the look at the broader social circumstances proved helpful and effective to analysing environmental change and conflict situations.

Bryant and Bailey , firmly rooted in the tradition of Blaikie and Brookfield , focused on analysing the actors that hold stakes in the environment. Their book is divided in chapters, which examine the different actors involved in land use state, business, multilateral institutions, NGOs, grassroots actors separately, as well as their motivations, agency and the limitations to their actions.

Case studies as the one by Ilahiane describe local land use patterns in their historical and social context. In the case of Ziz Valley, Morocco, small-scale irrigation functions through labour exploitation of the low-status ethnic Haratine by the traditionally high-status Berbers and Arabs Here tradition and religious beliefs are instrumentalised to coerce Haratine into maintaining the dam system, while giving them only secondary access to the water Le Billon explains how the tension between different parties in Cambodia leads to illegal logging.

In this case disorder and violence are instrumentalised to gain access to timber. Furthermore, a great number of scholars focus especially on the activities and struggles of grassroots actors. Recent studies in this field include Escobar on concepts of biodiversity and indigenous knowledge , Igoe on pastoralists in Tanzania and Obi on Nigeria and Kenya In contrast to neo-Malthusian theories of resource scarcity and conflict, a recent stream of resource conflict analysis has emerged, mostly pursued by le Billon , de Soysa and Ross a.

Their resource-centred political economy approach argues that it is the abundance of resources, rather than their scarcity that causes conflict and that the characteristics of natural resources are intimately connected to characteristics of conflicts. This hypothesis is illustrated by a listing of various conflicts all over the world where the correlation between the form of the conflict and the resources at stake are pointed out.

Here the assumption is made that individuals will respond rationally to resource availability and act accordingly e. Collier and Hoeffler There are indeed enough cases where the costs and risks of violent conflict outweigh the possible benefits by far, but nonetheless violent conflict arises. More recent approaches to natural resource conflicts include psychological explanations as for example brought forward by Williams b , who draws new insights from prospect theory. But most political ecology scholars do not have this primary focus on violent conflict only, as they tend to see conflicts and conflicting interests inherent to social relations as well as human-nature interactions.

Therefore, their focus is on the social structures and constructions that shape access to, and control over, natural resources. In the next section, selected political ecology perspectives that are crucial to understand current political ecology scholarship are presented and discussed in more detail. Perspectives of political ecology 3. Perspectives of political ecology Even though much research has been carried out under the heading of political ecology throughout the s, there are still very few works that summarise and integrate these various contributions into one coherent body of political ecology.

I have chosen to focus on three major current approaches of political ecology that are central to questions concerning environmental change and its political implications.

These three exemplary approaches of and to political ecology are chosen for different reasons. The deconstructivist approach was selected because of its overall importance in the research field, evident in the sheer number of papers and publications on the subject as well as because of its theoretical contributions.

And lastly, the entitlements approach is a relatively new approach that merits closer examination as it brings into play issues of human rights and social justice. Clearly, the different vantage points of these approaches and the diversity of disciplinary background of the scholars in these various fields make it far too difficult to elaborate a comprehensive new theory of political ecology that would give equal consideration to each of these different schools of thought.

Additionally, it is seldom possible to clearly separate these different approaches from one another since they are closely related and mutually beneficial, for example, when discourse analysis is used to examine gender relations. Discourse Analysis Discourse analysis of environmental concepts, hazards and conflicts, has become the most influential branch within the recent political ecology literature.

It is admittedly difficult to separate discourse analysis from the analysis of different stakeholders and their motivations, interests and agency, since discourses and agendas are often inextricably linked together Keeley and Scoones Indeed, the different hidden agendas produce very distinct discourses or, as Paulson et al.

Following Blaikie and Brookfield studies inspired by neo-Marxist conceptions were considerably broadened by new methods and concepts. In her study she describes the struggle between local inhabitants and the government over the use of the rainforest. Local communities redefined their legitimate right to use the forest by producing a counter-discourse. Yet deconstructivist approaches do not rely on discourse analysis only. The idea that language is not a reflection of reality, but constitutive of it cf.

Stott is the basis of the post- structuralist approach. Hence, discourses about the environment occupy a prominent role in post-structuralist political ecology. Another element stressed by post-structuralist political ecologists is the construction of environmental realities by scientific discourse. Whether an area will be classified as endangered or should be protected is often defined or at least influence by scientific and institutional discourses.

Furthermore, they criticise the sustainable development discourse as being constituted in neo-liberalism. Often concepts of land degradation or health issues and water safety are institutionalised in supranational organisations and canonised in the scientific discourse concerned with what is viewed as the most pressing problems. According to post-structuralist political ecologists this resignifying of nature has subsequently been taken up not only by the scientific community, but by the media and the broader public as well Leach and Mearns , 2; Thomas and Middleton Furthermore, biodiversity was more and more conceived of as a form of capital.

Thus, even though indigenous communities in the rainforests are now granted land rights, they are at the same time forced to become responsible for the management of these resources and become forcibly more integrated into the world economy In what has become one of the classical studies on the prevailing environmental discourses, Thomas and Middleton thoroughly dismantle contemporary perceptions and analyses of desertification and the measures adopted to counter it.

Even more so, the very idea of desertification remains a vague phrase that, to the broader public, immediately conjures images of drought, famine and distress. In the fight against desertification, traditional land use forms are vilified, pastoral nomads turned into scapegoats for desertification, which often leads to socially disruptive, disastrous sedentarisation programmes Nonetheless the authors acknowledge the positive role that the UN played in raising awareness and setting it high on the environmental agenda.

To conclude, they argue that instead of focusing on biophysical change in drylands, that are much more adaptive to climatic change than commonly assumed, analysis should aim at understanding social processes and patterns of land use that jeopardise the food security of local populations. Such thinking leads some authors to adopt a perspective according to which rural land users are seen as victims rather than agents of land degradation Iftikhar , ix. As political ecology still lacks a consistent overarching theoretical framework one could base further research on, post-structuralism and its new insights into human- environmental relations might provide an important contribution for theory-building.

This is an idea shared and elaborated in more detail by Peet and Watts as well as the contributors to their edited volume. Vayda and Walters criticise that by reconceptualising of literally everything, deconstructivists tend to see reality as constructed only and thus neglect the physical realities of nature1. Although discourse analysis provides highly critical and captivating contributions to political ecology, to the more positivist critics of discourse analysis it has its limitations when it comes to assessing and improving real-life situations and environmental degradation.

Gender Another way of looking at the environment and society is to examine power relations within and between different social actors. Besides examining and describing historical patterns and traditions of land use and ownership Blaikie and Brookfield ; Peluso , political ecology scholars have often resorted to analytical categories such as class Park , ethnicity Parajuli ; Hansis or gender in order to describe unequal patterns of power and resource access.

Especially gender has been a theme of great importance to political ecology researchers. However, this approach had its limitations. While giving women an active role in conservation programmes, the WED-approach neglected existing fundamental inequities between the sexes in the local societies concerned. Eco-feminists thought that the attitudes of women towards preservation of Creation are inherent to their very nature, i. A convincing argument for the importance and purpose of feminist political ecology is provided by Reed and Mitchell , while Leach offers a comprehensive overview of the antecedents of feminist political ecology.

Feminist political ecologists look at environmental change through the lens of gender. Feminist political ecologists do not conceive of gender as just another dependent variable like class and ethnicity, but try to disaggregate gender from class. Gender is conceptualised and proved to be a critical factor in shaping access to, and control over, resources, environmental decisions and technologies.

To examine this relation in greater detail Rocheleau et al. Their book purposely contains case studies from third world and developed countries demonstrating examples of successful environmental grassroots activism initiated by women. Hence, the scope for research on women and the environment as a well as gendered approached to the environment remains grand. Hodgson analyses the impact of state development programmes on changing family structures and gender roles of the Maasai in Tanzania.

Carney looks at the distribution of labour rather than land in her case study from The Gambia. She describes the unintended? Post- colonial Gambia experienced a drastic economic downturn when the market price for its main export product, groundnut, dropped. Subsequently, a shift from equally distributed labour rights on common lands to unevenly distributed property rights took place. This led to the economic marginalisation of women by heightening the burden of labour imposed on them when at the same time the responsibility over household income was placed under the control of men However, this intervention only further aggravated the problem f.

Other gendered political ecology studies include Bezon on Madagascar , Schroeder on the Gambia or Laurie on Bolivia Critics of the gender approach point out that other social categories such as class, age or ethnicity are just as important as gender and should thus not be neglected. In addition, the critique that the biophysical ecology is not taken appropriately into account by authors like Schroeder has been voiced by Walker , Perspectives of political ecology the dynamic nature of these constructed categories, thus perpetuating their inherent inequities.

Environmental Entitlements A last important perspective of political ecology is the entitlements approach adopted by Leach, Mearns and Scoones , , or Wisborg Entitlements theories calls into question the widespread orthodoxy of a downward spiral of poverty and land degradation, which tends to see poor rural dwellers more as victims than as agents of soil erosion. Indeed, there are enough examples where, even when there is plenty of an aggregate resource food, land, e.

To make his point Sen draws a comparison with civil rights in the United States where every citizen has the constitutional right to vote. Similarly, when it comes to land and other resource access, it is not the availability of it, but the command over it that leads to sudden changes in inter-group distribution patterns Sen , Analysing three major famines Bengal , Ethiopia , Bangladesh , Sen asks whether there i was a measurable decrease of available food; ii what occupational and social status do famine victims possess; and iii whether or not famine victims suffer a sharp decrease of their entitlements to food — and if so, why f.

Sen demonstrates that in all three famines shortage of food was not the primary factor for the famine. Rather a marginalised segment of the population had suffered a collapse of their means of command over food, thus turning them into famine victims. These institutionalised property and user rights are called entitlements. The sources of this social legitimacy are various and they are often contested by the different actors that compete over a certain resource. Therefore, rather than being fixed by customary laws entitlements they are the result of a negotiation process among social actors and institutions Sheridan argues that traditional entitlements have often been contested by both colonial and independent governments in Africa,.

Yet the breakdown of these traditional forms of resource management most often resulted in ambiguous property rights In the empirical part of their contribution Leach et al. Rather political ecologists conceive the natural environment as a setting for human action, which — at the same time — is modified by such action Traditionally, women had the right to and control over the collection of these leaves. With the introduction of formal laws meant to protect woodlands on which the leaves were locates, women lost the opportunity to collect leaves and thus a means of income ff.

With this example the authors provide a telling example of how both formal and informal institutions determine the distribution of ever-changing entitlements that social actors possess. Another exemplary use of the entitlement has been provided by Wisborg who studie the distribution of entitlements, the diversity of stakeholders and related power relations in Namaqualand, South Africa. It thus does not succumb to the danger of conceiving of resource access as being static. Rather the approach acknowledges the shifting identities of actors in a highly socialised negotiation process over entitlements.

While the entitlements approach has been lauded for its ability to improve our understanding of how people gain access to and control over resources, critics argues that it is too much concerned with the local level and fails to incorporate larger economic trends into the analysis.

Perspectives of political ecology Table 1. Adapted from Johnson , f. Common Property Theory Entitlement Theory Efficiency and health of the commons as Socio-economic equality and poverty main concern. Rules restrict access to the commons. Rules enhance access to the commons. History serves as background to general Structural-historical approach: Opposing poles in political ecology As the previous section demonstrates, political ecology authors provide innovative perspectives on human-environment interactions that take into account the discursive, gendered and unequal processes shaping resource access, control and management.

If political ecology as a research field remains riddled with controversy, one of the reasons for this are the contested foundations authors base their work on. These opposing theoretical and epistemological poles are discussed in this section. A first and major area of dissent in political ecology is between positivist and post-positivist approaches to nature. Second, some scholars focus on, or start from, human agency, whereas others, more eco-centric, take nature and its realities as the vantage point for analysis.

Debates between positivists and post-positivists are heavily polarised and it is doubtful whether their positions will ever be reconciled. The post-positivists or constructivists see reality as socially constructed Forsyth , Fundamentally, both differ on the question whether only the material biophysical and social reality or whether discourse and symbolic representation should be taken into account. In contrast, a more post- positivist stance stresses issues of scale, social and environmental changes, non- equilibrium in its historical context and upholds that different perspectives in science reflect different values and are thus never completely unbiased A great deal of post-positivist scholars who are firmly rooted in discourse analysis portray neo-Malthusian scarcity scenarios as discourses to promote agendas of specific actor networks Leach and Mearns , 23; Keeley and Scoones , Their critique to neo-Malthusian theories of environmental scarcity has been essential to the development of political ecology.

An example for this debate is found with Keeley and Scoones In their article about environmental policy-making in Ethiopia, they examine both the actor networks that shape the discourse about resource management and environmental rehabilitation and the discourse itself.

This discourse, so they argue, and the resulting call for more soil productivity are backed by an actor network that is heavily influenced by multinational agribusiness companies In a critical rejoinder to this article Nyssen et al. Opposing poles in political ecology techniques and policies , To Nyssen et al. Throughout the rest of their paper, they make strong arguments for SWC Soil and Water Conservation policies carried out in Ethiopia today.

At the core of their argument is the physical reality of environmental degradation and the appropriate measures to counteract it. In their reply Keeley and Scoones assert that Nyssen et al. In their original paper they had criticised the widespread assumption that overall increasing land degradation is basically due to farmer and pastoralist mismanagement of the land, and the one-size fits all conservation techniques hailed as a panacea This kind of debate between positivist and post-positivist scholars can be found in various discussions about the aims and methods of political ecology.

The other antagonism in contemporary political ecology, closely linked to the debate between positivists and post-postivists, is whether the starting point of analysis should be humans and human agency or nature and biophysical dynamics. A few points deserve mention here.

NORTH & SOUTH: Annotated

Lately, scholars rooted in the ecological sciences criticised political ecology of being too focused on the social and political dimensions of resource access and of neglecting the biophysical and ecological realities of the natural environment. They call into question many political ecology studies, which deny environmental agency and capability to influence human behaviour. Deep ecology views them both as a part of nature and attributes intrinsic values and rights to non-human entities de Haan , This point of criticism comes to no surprise since it is issued mostly by physical geographers and environmental scientists.

On the other hand the question remains what research should be aiming at. When examining the impact humans and the environment have on each other and the problems that marginalised societies face, a more anthropocentric view of the environment seems adequate and justified. But again, as Paulson et al. Other recent works like Bassett and Crummey seem to confirm a trend towards reconciliation between the ecocentric and the anthropocentric views.

The following comparison Table 2. Biophysical reality of nature Post-Positivist: A last and very important aspect that needs to be taken into account concerns the disparities and tensions between the perspectives of and on the global north and south. This raises a number of questions such as who holds the interpretive predominance over definitions and truths? What is the legitimacy of foreign scientific expertise? Why the predominant focus on third world rural communities? And what are the consequences of this kind of research for different political agendas? Opposing poles in political ecology These problems are, of course, of great concern to analysts of development discourse.

But they equally deserve to be taken seriously in the context of Western countries. As McCarthy argues, that political ecology approach should be applied with the same rigour to the analysis of environmental conflicts in developed countries of the north. He brings forward the example of small, local, agricultural communities facing a deprivation of their land by governmental conservation agencies and other actors. In such situations communities often resort to civil disobedience tactics such as breaching the laws, or setting forests on fire in order to disrupt government strategies.

They justify such actions with their superior knowledge of their local surroundings and traditional user rights. Apparently, comparable situations of competition over natural resources are conceptualised and analysed differently, depending on where they are located. Sanchez , Helvarg , a point to which McCarthy unfortunately makes very few references.

Nonetheless, McCarthy makes his point clear when he adds that very often studies in the third world are sympathetic towards local movements while being extremely sceptical of international or governmental actors. Consequently, he calls for a more sceptical approach to the motives and backgrounds of local actors and for a similar degree of scrutiny of grassroots movements independently of their location. Furthermore, he rightly calls for an expansion of political ecology research to other areas of investigation.

Indeed, contributions in works like Rocheleau et al. However, this is only one side of the coin. More importantly is the fact that scientific discourse itself reflects a certain north-south bias. While discourse analyses usually carefully examine which agendas are promoted through specific discourses, other areas of the field of research may be un- intentionally reinforcing these.

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In his harsh critique of the environmental security and conflict literature Barnett argues that authors focus on violent conflicts resulting from environmental degradation and that since much of this research informs US security policy discourse, it must be viewed critically. Environmental challenges such as water-sharing are framed in a language of conflict and war rather than being discussed by reference of successful examples of transboundary water cooperation. Barnett criticises the literature for conceptualising environmental problems as a threat to international security, but in truth security of the first world..

More recent works have also started to examine transnational, North-South environmental histories, to analyse flows of trade and knowledge and to question discourses and myths of a pristine, edenic nature, the indeed culturally very different conceptions of nature and conservation. Other studies scrutinise the role of science from colonial times on and the changing values and norms of the North that often impose massive changes on societies in the South.

Amongst the themes raised are the symbolic production of nature such as European colonial imaginations of Africa that inform the conceptions of natural parks Zimmerer and Bassett Conclusions Political ecology is an interdisciplinary approach that is still in its formative phase. The concepts of scholars vary greatly and their respective perspectives on political ecology are often subject to harsh criticism by their peers. To this day the majority of political ecology research consists of analyses of local environmental changes, which are related to broader social and political structures.

Publisher's Summary

There is a need to elevate research results from their original unit of analysis onto a more general level if one seeks to contribute to the mitigation of syndromes of global environmental change. But more often, and arguably rightly so, the goal of regional political ecology is to explicitly avoid generalisations and to do justice to local realities.

Whereas political ecology continues to be under-theorized, it has proven to provide a conceptual lens for describing and analysing environmental change. One type of these local level studies relate to protected areas such as national parks, world heritage sites, etc. The sheer number of case studies that have — or at least claim to have — a political ecology focus on land degradation, resource use or resource conflict are proof of the fact that political ecology thinking provides the necessary tools for thorough, differentiated and comprehensive research.

Central to political ecology is the in-depth examination of social structures in their global and historical contexts to explain environmental change and the analysis of the various involved actors, their interests, actions and discourses. Two main branches of research stand out in this regard. There is the more conflict-orientated approach that looks at environmentally induced conflicts, political conflicts between stakeholders at different levels of administration as well as violent conflicts.

As previously alluded to the environmental conflict literature focusing on inter-group violence has been subjected to much criticism and has been denounced as deterministic, ethnocentric and neither environmentalist nor open-minded enough Barnett The other influential line of argument concerns the reflection on resource access and use and power — mainly viewed through the lens of gender. Many of these analyses continue to be influenced by a neo-Marxist framework that has lastingly shaped political ecology.

The different theoretical approaches, which can never be clearly separated one from another need not necessarily be viewed as a problem but rather make for a rich pool of ideas where further research can draw from. Besides theory-building another task that remains is the reconciliation between the more ecocentric and positivist with the more anthropocentric and post-positivist views. Moreover, political ecology scholars now face the dilemma of defining the social relevance and policy implications of their research.

On the other hand political ecology scholars need to situate themselves in the field of research by questioning their own role in the production of specific scientific discourses Paulson et al. Future analyses must take into account the North-South dimensions and disparities of environmental discourse and problems and, ultimately, come up with a more differentiated approach. Nor are local communities inherently non- sustainable resources users and automatically a threat to global environmental security and welfare- To conclude, in both cases the motivations, agendas and legitimacy of different actors — as well as of scholars and thus oneself — must be scrutinised.

The theoretical base of political ecology remains facetted and multi-angular. They provide a fruitful way of analysing the construction of conflict objectives, relations between conflict parties and environmental hazards. The most important critique levelled against constructivism concerns the fact that environmental realities and the role of nature are neglected or at least understated.

This is apoint that can not completely be dismissed. Nonetheless, a few promising attempts to shape a theory of political ecology have been made lately Peet and Watts , Bryant and Bailey , Forsyth Nonetheless, scholars obviously and in accordance with their disciplinary background and theoretical orientation favour one approach over the other.

The formulation of an overarching theory of political ecology remains an outstanding and ambitious challenge to be tackled by future scholars. Far from it, this flexibility makes the strength of political ecology. To conclude, one might argue that the lack of a coherent theoretical base of political ecology is its major weakness, the diversity of theoretical backgrounds, though, its greatest strength. Environment and Sustainability in the Third World. William Adams questions the established understanding of the problems of environment and development, stressing the inadequacy of a narrow view of environmental impacts and a limited response based on traditional conservation measures.

Adams, William M Nature conservation in the UK comprises not only a response to the perceived impacts of rationalization on nature but is itself a dimension of that process of rationalization. The paper describes the development of conservation institutions and ideologies in the UK and considers the ways in which ecology and particularly ideas of nature as equilibrium have provided the intellectual framework for conservation.

Ecology underpinned the establishment of government conservation institutions, provided intellectual strategies for classifying and objectifying nature, and provided the knowledge base for the control and management of nature. The paper discusses the implications of non-equilibrial ideas in ecology for ideas and practice in conservation and the implications of responses to them in the form of re-rationalization. Water, Rules and Gender: The management of indigenous irrigation systems has received increasing attention both from social science researchers and from those development agents who seek to change them, or to find in them a model for organizing newly developed irrigation schemes.

This article discusses how water is allocated within one such irrigation system, the hill furrow irrigation of the Marakwet escarpment in Kenya. It describes the 'formal rules' of water rights, giving particular attention to the issue of gender with respect to water rights. It then discusses the 'working rules' relevant to water allocation, involving various informal practices of sharing, buying and stealing. The implications of this complexity for understanding the operation of indigenous farmer-managed irrigation systems are examined. In this article, we identify the major discourses associated with four global environmental issues: These discourses are analysed in terms of their messages, narrative structures and policy prescriptions.

We find striking parallels in the nature and structure of the discourses and their illegibility at the local scale. La gestion par bassin versant: Basin-wide management for water-related projects and land-use planning is a principle or sustainable development. On the Mekong basin, governments, aid agencies and non-governmental organisations rely on this principle to justify their claims. Yet, most stakeholders see basin-scale institutional development as a constraint, and are not willing to support it. This paper analyses the reasons for this reluctance. Gender and Land Rights in South Asia.

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. In this comprehensive analysis of gender and property throughout South Asia, Bina Agarwal argues that the most important economic factor affecting women is the gender gap in command over property. In rural South Asia, few women own land and even fewer control it.

Drawing on a wide range of sources, including field research, the author addresses the reason for this imbalance, and asks how the barriers to ownership can be overcome. The book offers original insights into the current theoretical and policy debates on land reform and women's status.

The argument that environmental degradation will lead to conflict is a well established concern of international studies, and it dominates the literature on environmental security. One significant research programme—the Project on Environment, Population and Security— is also discussed. The article ends with an evaluation of the theoretical merits and practical effects of the environment—conflict thesis.

It argues that the environment—conflict thesis is theoretically rather than empirically driven, and is both a product and legitimation of the Northern security agenda. Following the great Sahelian drought of the early s, an unprecedented number of Fulani pastoralists immigrated to the Ivory Coast with their cattle. Although welcomed by the Ivorian government for their contribution to national beef production, the Fulani's presence has been bitterly opposed by Senufo peasants in the savanna region over the problem of uncompensated crop damage. Our second objective is to address the policy implications of two geographical issues rising from this paper: A third goal is to contribute to the growing convergence in cultural and political ecology around the use of multiple research methods to explain environmental-change dynamics.

Images of degradation and chaos predominate many scholarly and popular conceptions of the African environment. This interdisciplinary collection uses collaborative research from the major savanna regions that stretch across Africa to challenge these notions. It argues that the interpretation of landscapes requires a consideration of the unique political and ecological practices in Africa.

The image of environment and society in African savannas cultivated by this book is one of innovation, resilience, and spatial and temporal variability. It is an image that stresses the vitality and importance of local African knowledge for understanding environmental change. Accessibly written, this collection will appeal to general readers concerned about ecological issues in Africa. Berkes, Fikret and Carl Folke, eds. Linking Social and Ecological Systems: It is usually the case that scientists examine either ecological systems or social systems, yet the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of environmental management and sustainable development is becoming increasingly obvious.

Developed under the auspices of the Beijer Institute in Stockholm, this new book analyses social and ecological linkages in selected ecosystems using an international and interdisciplinary case study approach. The chapters provide detailed information on a variety of management practices for dealing with environmental change.

Taken as a whole, the book will contribute to the greater understanding of essential social responses to changes in ecosystems, including the generation, accumulation and transmission of ecological knowledge, structure and dynamics of institutions, and the cultural values underlying these responses.

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A set of new or rediscovered principles for sustainable ecosystem management is also presented. Linking Social and Ecological Systems will be of value to natural and social scientists interested in sustainability. Blakie, Piers and Harold Brookfield Land Degradation and Society. One of the key works that helped to shape the field of research political ecology, this groundbreaking book was one of the first studies to describe land degradation and soil erosion not only as human-induced natural process, but as a social process affecting, and caused by, the prevailing social circumstances.

Exploring the gender dimensions of reconstruction processes post-hurricane Mitch, Journal of International Development, Vol. The paper will consider the reconstruction process in Nicaragua post hurricane Mitch. First, the success of civil society co-ordinations at promoting common people- centred agendas will be highlighted and contrasted with the difficulties they have faced in becoming gender inclusive spaces. Second, the extent to which the official rhetoric they helped to promote has been translated into reality is examined, suggesting that on the ground projects remain at best women-centred.

It depicts various consequences of this depoliticisation and promotes a political ecology approach that analyses the politics of ecological change. Third World Political Ecology. An effective response to contemporary environmental problems demands an approach that integrates political, economic and ecological issues. Third World Political Ecology provides an introduction to an exciting new research field that aims to develop an integrated understanding of the political economy of environmental change in the Third World.

The authors review the historical development of the field, explain what is distinctive about Third World political ecology, and suggest areas for future development. Exploring the role of various actors - states, multilateral institutions, businesses, non- governmental organisations, poverty-stricken farmers and other "grassroots" actors, Third World Political Ecology is the first major attempt to explain the development and characteristics of environmental problems that plague parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. This paper examines how political ecology themes of tropical conservation and social justice become representational practices underpinning 'alternative' consumption in the North.

The first case considers Edenic myth-making used to assimilate concerns over tropical deforestation in the South to consumption-intensive if conservation-minded lifestyles in the North. The second case looks at fair trade and how concern about social injustice and unfair labour practices in the South is harnessed to solidarity-seeking consumption constitutive of 'radical' lifestyles.

The paper suggests these contrasting commodity cultures broadly conform to divergent positions in red green debates. It argues that both are weakened as a form of social and political 'caring at a distance' due to an uncritical acceptance of consumption as the primary basis of action. Converting the Wetlands, Engendering the Environment: In this paper, I examine how agricultural diversification and food security are transforming wetland environments in The Gambia.

With irrigation schemes being implemented in lowland swamps to encourage year-round cultivation, agrarian relations are rife with conflict between men and women over the distribution of work and benefits of increased household earnings. Economic change gives rise to new claims over the communal tenure systems prevalent in lowland environments and allows male household heads to enclose wetlands and thereby control female family labor for consolidating their strategies of accumulation.

The forms of female resistance are detailed in this paper. Collier, Paul and Anke Hoeffler Greed and Grievance in Civil War. We investigate the causes of civil war, using a new data set of wars during Rebellion may be explained by atypically severe grievances, such as high inequality, a lack of political rights, or ethnic and religious divisions in society. Alternatively, it might be explained by atypical opportunities for building a rebel organization. Opportunity may be determined by access to finance, such as the scope for extortion of natural resources, and for donations from a diaspora population.

Opportunity may also depend upon factors such as geography: We test these explanations and find that opportunity provides considerably more explanatory power than grievance. Economic viability appears to be the predominant systematic explanation of rebellion. The results are robust to correction for outliers, alternative variable definition, and variations in estimation method. The Shifting Middle Ground: Over the past decade in Brazil, the convergence between international environmentalism and indigenous cultural survival concerns led to an unprecedented internationalization of local native struggles.

The Indian-environmentalist alliance has benefited both parties, but recent events suggest that it may be unstable and may pose political risks for native people. The limitations of transnational symbolic politics as a vehicle for indigenous activism reflect tensions and contradictions in outsiders' symbolic constructions of Indian identity. However, another kind of link concerns the analytical issues that studies of food insecurity or famine and conflict have in common, particularly from the perspective of economics.

This paper focuses on this last link, progressing from a brief discussion of the economics of famine to a critical discussion of the mainstream economics of conflict. In particular, I show what can be done with neo-classical economic concepts to analyse the causes of war. However, there is a range of criticisms of economic analyses of the causes of conflict that merit more debate. Others concern the argument that, while economics is central to the origins of conflict, an economic analysis that explains such phenomena from the starting point of microeconomics and methodological individualism is questionable.

Conflict, Ecology and the Politics of Environmental Security. In this article, Dalby reiterates the current debate about the relationships between environment and conflict. By juxtaposing recent works by Homer-Dixon Diehl and Gleditsch and Hastings , the article contrast the diverging views and addresses the methodological and ideological controversies.

Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. Since the end of the Cold War, environmental matters - especially the international implications of environmental degradation - have figured prominently in debates about rethinking security. But do the assumptions underlying such discussions hold up under close scrutiny?

In this first treatment of environmental security from a truly critical perspective, Simon Dalby shows how attempts to explain contemporary insecurity falter over unexamined notions of both environment and security. Adding environmental history, aboriginal perspectives, and geopolitics to the analysis explicitly suggests that the growing disruptions caused by a carbon-fueled and expanding modernity are at the root of contemporary difficulties. Environmental Security argues that rethinking security means revisiting the question of how we conceive identities as endangered and how we perceive threats to these identities.

The book clearly demonstrates that the conceptual basis for critical security studies requires an extended engagement with political theory and with the assumptions of the modern subject as progressive political agent. De Haan, Leo J. The question of development and environment in geography in the era of globalisation, GeoJournal, Vol. This paper focuses on how livelihood and the question of development and environment in a globalising era should be examined.

It discusses various views in geography on the question of environment and development, and it explores the concept of sustainable livelihood. De Soysa, Indra It also gave me a good argument to rebut.

I will definitely be using this information in my paper. This is web based article from About. Also of course any scholars. The article is really short and does not really have much information that is really interesting or new. I expected the article to be very useful from the title but found that there is little information on the relationship but more on just what has happened in the past.

I do not think it will be very helpful in writing my paper. The audience is again anyone who reads The New York Times, or. The article is about the relationship between Japan and North Korea, and.

National Centre of Competence in Research

It talks about what North. Korea is saying toward Japan and their rational for it. The New York Times. The audience is of course any New York Times readers, but also anyone interested in the situation, or world relations in general. There does not seem to be any bias, although The New York Times is usually considered to be a liberal news paper. This article is about how the US is using China to convince North Korea to stay calm and not provoke anyone during this transition period.

It also discusses how South Korea is nervous and wanting to strengthen military presence. It also discusses Kim Jong Un and weather is position is just for show or for real. This article although informative and helped me get a sense of the tension in the area does not seems to useful for me. It was more for just research, and I will likely not directly use anything from this article in my paper.

This is a web based article from BU Today and is in the form of a interview. The author is asking questions of William Keylor who is a professor of international relations and history. The audience is anyone interested in the situation in North Korea, and also anyone at Boston University both students and staff. Their does not seem to be much of a bias, although Keylor believes in taking a harsher stance toward the North. The interview keeps him talking about multiple issues, which keeps it from being too biased. The article talks about the new situation in North Korea, a bit about Kim Jong un, and then goes into what Keylor believes will happen with power, worst case scenarios, North Koreas nuclear power, and then finally what other countries should do to toward the North.

This article was really useful for my topic, especially the first inquiry paper. Although there are a few irrelevant questions, most were right on track with what I want to know and am researching. I was not sure if a university news paper would have good information but was surprised. The info from this interview definitely is useful to me. The audience would be anyone interested in North Korea, international affairs, or just news. The article is from Fox News which is often criticized for having a bias toward the Republican party.

This article though seems to not have much bias, it is talking about North Korea and what the US wants to happen now with a new leader. There is not much room for a bias because it is just reporting what has been said. The article talks about how the US is ready to start a new chapter with North Korea, and hopefully take steps toward resolution and hopefully denuclearization.

It discusses the death of Kim Jong Il and how the US and even other countries are really interested in trying to restart all talks. It also talks about that the North has been testing nuclear devices, and that although not trusting of the US the North is willing to talk for food aid.

• Inside Gray Matters
• The Great Green Wave of Existence
• Music from Big Pink: Roman (German Edition)
• Tangled Souls
• Vietnam: A Battalion Surgeon Returns