Political Ecology(Geog305)

Week 1. Class 2.Zoë A. Meletis

Sept. 5 & 10th, 2014projectearthblog.blogspot.com

Introductions• To class members (check; new additions?)• To course outline• To political ecology– Your initial understandings– Those of others

• (2012+) Issue to watch: (Public hearings on the) proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline

Actors involved? Motivations? (agendas? funding? investments?)

Costs, benefits, and risks? (geography of these)Discourse and narratives (words and stories;

spins?)2013/4+ (Reactions to JRP’s Recommendations)

Your suggestions re PE (first class)

Introduction• What does Robbins say about wilderness?

www.destination360.com

Key themes in Introduction (Robbins)

• Viewing wilderness (Yellowstone)• As produced by humans• As a site for investigating how we understand

natural/unnatural• As a site for understanding our changing practices and

views over time (e.g. fire as desirable or not)• As produced (dynamically) over time, in specific ways

and places, with associated cultures and power dynamics• As hiding struggles over land, (water), and resources

– Invisible histories?– Invisible people? Invisible politics?– Invisible uses (Canadian examples?) and management

Power and struggles in YNPZAM: Social science as ‘mythbusting’ national parks as idyllic places

Two quotes at the top of p. xvi (2004 ed.)

www.nps.gov

Cape Lookout National Seashore, Shackleford Banks, and the Promise Land (North Carolina)

http://www.shacklefordhorses.org/stories/water.htm www.travsphotos.com

A peaceful place? Wild horses?

Tortuguero National Park, Costa Rica

http://costa-rica-guide.com/Natural/Tortuguero.html

Animals and their rights promoted over people,their rights and cultures

A conservation success story

AND/OR…

Examples of your own?Dominant narratives or

understandings vs. ‘alternative stories or narratives’ (politics)

BCCanada

International

Political Ecology

• Your understandings???

• Robbins (Introduction, p. xvi and xvii, older ed.):– Political ecology: “a field that seeks to unravel the

political forces at work in environmental access, management, and transformation”

– Political actors create the ecology of Yellowstone– “Politics are inevitably ecological and that ecology is

inherently political”; “research… can shed light on environmental surprise and dynamism… the practical problems of equity and sustainability…(and) basic questions in environmental science”

Robbins’ understandings• Politics of environment & nature exist everywhere;

they change• Human and non-human realms are intimately

connected BUT we work hard to imagine it otherwise (separating the two)

• Reacting to and rejecting ‘bourgeois environmentalism’ is not enough. We must recognize its contributions to challenging the status quo, and POPULARIZE POLITICAL ECOLOGY as a way of understanding the world, the environment, and our ways of creating and seeing it.

Robbins’ understandings• Politics of environment & nature exist everywhere;

they change• Human and non-human realms are intimately

connected BUT we work hard to imagine it otherwise (separating the two)

• Reacting to and rejecting ‘bourgeois environmentalism’ is not enough. We must recognize its contributions to challenging the status quo, and POPULARIZE POLITICAL ECOLOGY as a way of understanding the world, the environment, and our ways of creating and seeing it.

Blaikie & Brookfield 1987: 17• “The phrase ‘political ecology’ combines the

concerns of ecology and a broadly defined political economy. Together, this encompasses the constantly shifting dialectic between society and land-based resources, and also within classes and groups within society itself”

• Neumann 2005, citing various scholars:PE as research agenda, approach, perspective.PE as combined and recombined with:

poststructuralist, feminist, Third World, First World, geographical, urban…

Why popularize political ecology?Quote on p. xvii

How? What kinds of research and writings?

• http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/director.php

Book: political ecology as ‘something people do’

“I am not a political ecologist, although I’ve often tried to be one” (xx).

Robbins’ (prescriptive) book: what should we do?

• Shift away from humans destroying nature

• Shift away from nature ONLY as a social construction

• 1) Shift towards a “production of nature by human and non-human actors, with varying (often serious) normative implications”;

• 2) Examine ALL producers of nature;

• 3) Move away from “linear ‘chains’ of explanation towards ‘networks’” that are complex, shifting, and have implications; and

• Include more explorations of PE of the ‘first World’(Page xviii)

Robbins declares his biasesHe is explicit about his biases

• American geographer• Mostly draws up on

geography, development studies, anthropology

• Leaves out some geographical regions (e.g. Australia); focuses on North American work

• Leaves out theoretical contributions (e.g. Francophone PE)

• Discusses his own work and the ‘problems’ he’s encountered (personal examples; admissions of mistakes; reflexivity)

• Writes about his own opinions and preferences regarding PE research and approaches

• Suggests gaps in PE (2004)

QUESTIONS WE SHOULD KEEP ASKING (DYNAMISM; CONSTANT NEED FOR REFLECTION)

www.mylot.com

• How do we come to know Others? How fair, accurate, and in-depth are our ideas?– Western children and Africa

• Wildness (we remove people; we separate urban and rural; we imagine landscapes; we imagine poverty and destruction; we feel hopeless)

• How do we understand crises?PEs: wildlife crisis in E. Africa is more political and

economic than demographic;Our assumptions are flawed; our imaginaries are

inaccurateWe isolate problems and peoples (we should NOT!);

we ignore people in/on the lands (past and present); we fail to consider implications of actions. We must consider CONTEXT AND POLITICS.

The (proposed) pipeline in the news (2012)

• Actors (and their motivations/agendas)– International influences?– Local powers

• Resources• Costs and benefits• Risks• Discourse and narratives

– False dichotomies?

• Imaginaries• Flawed assumptions• Neutral or normative?

– Think like a political ecologist

www.corpwatch.com

Mt. Polley mine (Imperial Metals, BC, & UNBC)

• http://filter--blog.blogspot.ca/2014/08/mount-polley-gold-and-copper-mine.html

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhDehsYqoVo

Political ecology: independent trains of thought coming together in late 1980s

Many definitions; many fociContextual approachesConsideration of politicsChallenging apolitical ecologies:(ecoscarcity and limits to growth; diffusion;

valuation; modernization)

WHY challenge these? HOW?

Themes in definitions & goals (6;7)• Political economy & ecology• Actors and relationships• ‘Shifting dialectic’ between humans,

environment, and resources• Power and forces at work• Bio-cultural/humans and nature• Tensions, crises, contradictions and how we

create/produce/frame/discuss these• From local to global (various scales)• Political circumstances create degradation

PE as mainstream?

• Savvy UNBC students seem to think that government decisions are NOT based on the best available neutral science…

• Where did you get the idea that this was the case? When did you decide this?

• Can you think of examples where the science seemed ‘more neutral’ or ‘less political’? Why was this the case?

PEs challenge apolitical ecologies

Ecoscarcity and limits to growth• PEs argue:– Population growth does not explain scarcity

• What does?

– Resources are constructed rather than given• How?

– Famine and starvation are not natural– Limits portrayed as apolitical are NOT apolitical– Crude Malthusianism remains popular and thurs

remains a PE target

PEs challenge apolitical ecologies• Modernization theory• PEs argue:

• Adopting ‘modern’ techniques of management, exploitation, and conservation is NOT what’s missing in many places, NOR is it the solution• Western (cookie-cutter) solutions will NOT work

everywhere and are NOT appropriate everywhere• Global North does NOT always know best; it has

a track record of mixed success• Market-based approaches are NOT apolitical (p.

11)

How is PE different?

“It is not so much that political ecology is ‘more political’ than those other approaches to the environment. Rather it is simply more explicit in its normative goals and more outspoken about the assumptions from which its research is conducted” (Robbins 2004: 11)

What are the politics and goals of

Eco-scarcity and limits to growth?

Modernization theory?

www.honeymoonslblog.com

In the next few weeks….Dominant narratives, & critical tools

(incl. COMMON PROPERTY)

• The degradation and marginalization thesis• The environmental conflict thesis• The conservation and control thesis• The environmental identity & social movement

thesis• Smaller arguments about:

community collective action; roles of human labour; risk; environmental perceptions; corruption; knowledge and power