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, 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 economic and social context. Further, Political Ecology is keenly invested in understanding how local processes of environmental change are linked to past and present wider regulatory frameworks and market processes.

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 contestations around these. Participants in this course will be challenged to re-think and reconsider mainstream understandings of environmental problems and how they are produced.

The course is primarily (but not exclusively) 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.

The course is structured in 8 themes. 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. We also do group formation and talk about how to read texts, do presentations, student peer-to-peer reviews and written reviews of articles.

2. Environmental degradation: myth or fact? Evidence of environmental degradation and environmental crises narratives

This module concerns environmental change (degradation). We will look into questions such as: By whom and how is environmental degradation defined? How can we know/ascertain/measure environmental change? Who drives degradation? How and why have environmental crisis narratives emerged and persisted? What functions have they served? And what are the consequences on the environment and socio-economic conditions?

3. Science studies – new tools for political ecology concerns

Science is often seen as separate from the rest of society and in pursuit of the truth. Yet, science studies, inspired by philosophy of science and the sociology of science, view science as producing only partial perspectives on reality and, therefore, not as one truth. Science studies have also illustrated that the relation between science and society is one of co-production; science identifies and prioritizes problems and lends legitimacy to some solutions 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 directs what science does.

4. 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). In this theme we look into various orientations within the broad field of political economy; in particular Marxist political economy, neo-classical political economy and new political economy (public choice theory). Focus is on how these orientations have been used in analyzing cases and situations in relation to conservation and use of nature and natural resources, in particular in answering questions as “who gains?”, “who loses?”, “how?” and “why?”.

5. Feminist political ecology

This module concerns women’s access to and control over resources. We will look into questions such as: How are gender roles in natural resource governance and management framed, by whom and with what consequences? In what ways are women’s links with the environment conceptualized and how does this affect their access to natural resources? Feminist political ecology brings together ideas from feminist cultural ecology, political ecology, feminist geography and feminist political economy and considers gender a critical variable in shaping resource access and control, together with processes of class, caste, race, culture and ethnicity. In this module the focus is on exploring the construction and importance of gender in relation with natural resource management.

6. 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, participation has been around for long and has been used to legitimate many political decisions. Thus, 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.

7. Conflict 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. Here at the end 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 discuss different views on this dilemma and interact with one or more professionals working in a development/environmental agency on their personal experiences of this dilemma.