POLITICAL ECOLOGY3 lectures by Bill Derman

Noragric – Department of International Environment and Development StudiesUMB – Norwegian University of the Life

Sciences

Political Ecology An interdisciplinary perspective or framework It has been used by anthropologists,

geographers, historians, political scientists It is an emerging framework with different groups

of researchers having somewhat different emphases which we will discuss later

Political ecology is a field that seeks to unravel the political forces at work in environmental access, management and transformation. In the classic text book Paul Robbins shows that ecology is inherently political and that politics is inherently ecological.

Scales of analysis There are different ways of doing political ecology. These are

not unique to political ecology but rather are broader social science issues: spatial or temporal.

a. Spatial. If we are examining spatial scale what is our unit of analysis. The most common unit now is the nation-state but nation-states are relatively recent. In addition, nation-states don’t capture global patterns of accumulation or resource use. The Spaniards were capturing the labor of former members of the Inca to mine silver in Potosi Bolivia to purchase lumber from other parts of Europe to build ships. The Bolivian silver was also used to make luxury objects for consumption in the court of Spain. One unit of analysis then could be the Spanish empire which dramatically altered how land and natural resources were utilized throughout Central and South America – from Mexico to Chile.

Temporal Scales b. Temporal – what time period do we want to

use – one year, one decade, one century, longer? If we want to examine the political and environmental consequences of one commodity, say coffee or gold or coal, we need a time period for consideration. Of course the longer the time period the more difficult it is to research and show its consequences. However, by focusing only on a short time we miss a lot. For example, coffee now a necessity not a luxury but it used to be a luxury crop.

What makes up a political ecology approach?

1. The study of how decisions are made about the environment? Who has the power to make decisions about the environment?

2. The study of who benefits, who loses, who are the winners and who are the losers in environmental decision making

3. A focus on the scales involved – it’s usually phrased as global, national, local but this is too simplistic because global markets, for example, can interact directly with the local. Global mining companies extract copper in a particular place at a particular time

4. Takes history seriously in how the environment has been changed over sometimes long period of time, or how cropping patterns change

PE Approach 2

5. Struggles over meaning as well as over the resource itself. For example, over animals lions, elephants, cattle. Humans place different values on the lifes of other living beings.

6. Focus on how knowledge about society and the environment is produced. Whose knowledge is seen as definitive.

7. How is science used in the making of environmental and resource policies

8. Very often a normative approach – what the political ecologist thinks is best in light of concerns of poor, marginalized, and the local.

Political Ecology Not all political ecologists include all the

points just described. If there is a political ecology then what

constitutes an apolitical ecology There are two alternative frameworks:

1. Malthusianism 2. Tragedy of the Commons and notions of

private property

Malthus and Malthusianism

Malthusianism: This is the conclusion that there is a single driver or a single cause to the current set of linked environmental crises which is human population growth.

The assumption is that if human population growth is controlled and the earth’s population is

reduced then a proper can be achieved between humans and their environment

Tragedy of the Commons and the need for private property

Based on a short piece by Garrett Hardin entitled Tragedy of the Commons.

Metaphor of the ocean and fishing. No advantage not to take as much as you

wnat since someone else will Only solution is private ownership Private ownership is the only system that

guarantees the care of resources Linked to the field of economics which begins

with the individual and their interests

Roots of Political Ecology Evolutionary theory – importance of

environment in determining which inherited characteristics provide a reproductive advantage

If this was true for all living forms it would be true for human societies as well.

Human progress said to depend on technological progress and freeing of humans from environmental constraints

Progress Industrial and technological progress have a set

of complex environmental consequences These consequences take time to be known Deforestation, pollution of rivers, decline of many

species, air pollution, acid rain, heavy metal poisoning – mercury. Minimata disease in Japan

Can negative consequences be controlled or are they part of either capitalism or industrialism?

Ironically marxism which was to be the critique of capitalism concluded that humans could control and master nature

Schools of thoughtToo much to cover – how environment and nature are treated in the different fields or disciplines including sociology, geography, anthropology, history, political science

There is the academic treatment of the place of environment in society or how different societies view the environment. There are discussion of what is nature and how do we understand humans in nature. But the focus on environmental problems as we now do is relatively recent.

Environmental Issues Academic disciplines respond to changes

in the world, in this instance to environmental changes

Political ecology emerges gradually as a critique of explanations for environmental change

One of earliest examples comes from the work of Piers Blaikie on the political economy of soil erosion in Nepal

Piers Blaikie

Classic book: The Political Economy of Soil Erosion Soil Erosion in Developing Countries published in 1985 marks the beginning of PE.

Blaikie raised questions about the scientific study of soil erosion – for example how do we know the difference between human produced soil erosion and natural erosion

And if there is human produced soil erosion what are the causes or the explanation for it. He then came up with a phrase - chains of explanation .

He argued for the importance of complexity and context

Chains of explanation According to Blaikie and Brookfield, chains of explanation

start with the land managers and their direct relations with the land(crop rotations, fuel use, stocking densities, capital investment etc).

The next link concerns their relations with each, other, other land users, and groups in wider society who affect them in any way, which can in turn determine land management.

  Then the world economy constitutes the last links in the chain.  Clearly then, the chains will be highly conjectural, although

relying on theoretical bases drawn from natural and social science`` (Blaike and Brookfield 1987:27).

Complexity

Land degradation is a perceptual term. Puts the land manager and the rationality of the

land manager in focus. For example local actors, farmers, peasants.

We should avoid single factor explanation of land degradation For example, Marxist explanation that land degradation is caused by exploitation.

Causes of degradation are site specific; geographical and historical approach. Introduced regional political ecology which is a combination of ecology and political economy. 

1970s Drought and Famine in the Sahel

Decline in rainfall over several countries in West Africa Farmers had moved further north closer to the

Saharan desert Their crops failed, Increased herder\farmer conflicts Many voices of blame were herd – too many people,

too many animals – degrading pasture, poor farming Links to commodity crops for the market, reducing

good lands, force farmers to move into marginal areas Blame capitalism Insufficient explanation in terms of the agency of

farmers and herders

Rainfall increased from 1983-1999

The metabolic rift

Marxism and the analysis of capitalism. For Marx importance of human labor, the way in which the environment and nature are molded for human purposes. We can go into his theory of labor and the labor theory of value, if necessary, but he also used the term metabolism. There is a metabolic interaction between humans and the earth, and the earth is what supports life. Labor according to Marx is an eternal natural necessity which mediates the metabolism between man and nature, and therefore human life itself. In a broad sense the metabolic processes are eating, drinking, breathing, and the bases of exchanges with the environment which permits organisms to stay alive.

Capitalism and nature Can we sustain human life as we engage in capital accumulation

appropriating and diminishing the stock upon which human life depends? This is the global political ecological question. One way of putting it for Marxists is the following:

“Capital’s insatiable appetite for ever-higher levels of profit and accumulation is reinforced by the domination of exchange value over use value, competition and the concentration and centralization of capital. The incessant accumulation amplifies the social metabolism of society, increasing the demands placed on nature. New technologies are used above all to expand production and to lower labor costs. Capital’s social metabolism is increasingly in contradiction with the natural metabolism, producing various metabolic rifts and forms of ecological degradation that threaten to undermine ecosystems.

The most extreme example of global ecological change is climate. The mismatch between the nature and scale of ecological problems which do not respect national boundaries and the division of the world into nation-states desperately striving to keep national sovereignty pinpoints many dilemmas.