NIFK15004U Political Ecology

Environmental problems such as land degradation and deforestation are complex processes and often cannot be understood in isolation from broader processes of economic and social development, struggles over access and rights to resources, or conflicts originating from historical grievances. Yet, their complexity is not always acknowledged by researchers, governments, and development interventions seeking to identify, measure, and correct or alleviate them. Scientific measurements of the extent of environmental degradation are often inaccurate and/or highly uncertain, and knowledge of the underlying drivers is framed in ways that direct blame on some actors, for instance farmers practicing shifting cultivation in Thailand, while leaving others out, such as large-scale investments in mining.

Political Ecology asserts that the way we know environmental problems affects the solutions we identify, which implies that science and knowledge of environmental problems are inherently political and intrinsically linked to the political, economic and social context. Further, Political Ecology is keenly invested in understanding how local processes of environmental degradation are linked to past and present wider regulatory frameworks and market processes, such as deforestation in West Africa being driven by global market demand for cocoa in combination with a lack of enforcement of existing land and environmental legislation.

Political Ecology draws on various disciplines to frame studies on resource and management challenges in fields such as environment and development, climate change, land-use, and conservation. This course illustrates how Political Ecology is useful to understand processes of natural resource management, use, and contestation around these.

The course is primarily concerned with and draws its examples and cases from environmental problems in developing countries including those concerned with forests, agricultural lands, water, wildlife and nature conservation. Yet, links are also drawn to similar processes across time and space, including in Europe.

The course is structured in 8 themes (each week has a theme). There may be smaller amendmends to the titles and specific contents of the themes, and their order may not be as stipulated here.

1. Introduction to course and political ecology

The course starts with an overview of the course and the teaching and learning activities. We look into how political ecology has emerged as an approach to, but far from a coherent theory of, the complex relationships between the environment and society. Subsequently, we start the political economy theme (see below).

2. The political economy of natural resource exploitation and use

Political ecology may be defined as “the concerns of ecology and a broadly defined political economy” (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987, p. 17). This theme digs into the “broader political economy”. Political economy harbors two theoretical emphases: the production and accumulation of wealth and the distribution of the surplus so produced. It is concerned with essentially political questions of who gains, who loses, how and why. In the theme we will touch upon different perspectives of political economy, including (neo)-marxist political economy, dependency theory, core-periphery theory, new political economy (public choice theory) and concepts such as rent seeking, patronage and corruption.

3. Revisiting participatory policies

Policies and interventions that purport to be participatory and inclusive are the order of the day in the development and environmental sectors. Yet, one thing is the ‘label’ on the policy, another is how to gauge what spaces of participation are created by a policy and how it unfolds in practice. This week we will familiarize ourselves with conceptual tools that may enable us to examine participation from an analytical point of view and use these to characterize elements of participation in settings described in journal articles. We will work with tools that focus on institutional and material aspects of participation, such as powers over resources and relations of accountability, as well as on participation as process.

4. The ecology in Political Ecology: Degradation and environmental history

This week we discuss the challenges related to defining and measuring environmental degradation (e.g. soil erosion, deforestation, desertication, biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, how scholars of political ecology have challenged conventional framings of degradation, e.g. the existence of stable ecological equilibriums and that environmental change is unidirectional – landscapes over time often show ongoing change, fluctuations and recoveries. These studies have also illustrated how the environment is influenced by national and international economic and political developments thereby challenging dominant narratives that local people destroy ecosystems out of ignorance, selfishness and overpopulation.

5. Science studies

Science is often seen as separate from the rest of society. In this view, science produces new knowledge that is transferred into society where it can be used. Yet, science studies have illustrated that the relation between science and society is not that simple. Science also identifies and prioritizes problems and solutions and lends legitimacy to political decisions and, thus, plays an inherently political role. Further, science is a product of society in the sense that all scientists are people with values that affect their choices, also as scientists, and society often direct what science does (i.e. not all science gets financed by society). During this week, we will engage with science studies to understand what this way of viewing tells us about the environmental and developmental challenges in the world and about science itself.

6. Markets and states

Throughout history, access to and control over resources have formed central issues of social organization, state making, economic growth, and political and legal control. This is not less true today. Questions about access and property are therefore central to societal development and emerge in wide variety of contexts, both as objects of direct policymaking and legal regulation, and as issues of power and politics in situations not controlled by any government. This theme is concerned with how property emerges and how property is important for social organization and state building. The theme is closely related to the subsequent theme on “rights and resistance”.

7. Rights and resistance

In developing countries many people are directly dependent on access to resources for farming and other uses, and they are therefore directly affected – in positive and negative ways – when larger political and economic forces change the conditions on which resources are accessed. Moreover, developing societies are generally characterized by normative and legal pluralism. The stakes are therefore often high. Struggles over property are as much about the scope and constitution of authority as about access to resources. Claims, entitlements, and rights to resources are often contested and rife with conflict, just as authority and ability to define and enforce rules and rights regimes is struggled over by different institutions. In this theme, we look into issues related to land titling and struggles and resistance over property.

8. The role of the expert

During this course we have been presented with ways of viewing that appear critical towards much of mainstream practice in development and environmental policy. This last week of the course we will focus on the dilemma of having to navigate as an expert in a professional context of institutions with aims, logics, and narratives that may be different from one’s own beliefs and ideas. We will spend one day discussing different views on this dilemma and interviewing a person who is working in a development/environmental agency on his/her personal experience of this dilemma.