ESD Social Justice

Despite the centrality of moral assumptions to defining environmental crises and solutions, research in discursive
political ecology has paid inadequate attention to conservation’s moral dimensions. Conservation-related
resettlement is a problem for people working and living in protected areas across the globe, around which diverse
ideas, meanings, and narratives emerge and circulate. Drawing from participant observation and interview data,
I assess the interactions between two ‘moral narratives’ that emerged in Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park
(LNP) where international wildlife translocations were ongoing and resettlement is underway. LNP residents
employed a ‘moral narrative of protection’ to achieve their objective of living free from conflict with wildlife.
Conservation managers employed a ‘moral narrative of choice’ to advance their goal of achieving a voluntary
resettlement programme. These divergent narratives reflect these actors’ morally defined standards and expectations
regarding people’s responsibilities towards the environment, other species, and/or other people. Taken together
they reveal important contradictions to the state’s claim that the resettlement programme is voluntary. Instead, they
indicate that resettlement processes are taking place in a displacement context wrought by conflict with wildlife,
elephants in particular. My findings advance understandings of the moral dimensions of conservation discourse
and the complex relationship between displacement and volition.

Amidst increasing concerns about climate change, food shortages, and widespread environmental degradation, a demand is emerging for ways to resolve longstanding social and ecological contradictions present in contemporary capitalist models of production and social organisation. This paper first discusses how agriculture, as the most intensive historical nexus between society and nature, has played a pivotal role in social and ecological change. I explore how agriculture has been integrally associated with successive metabolic ruptures between society and nature, and then argue that these ruptures have not only led to widespread rural dislocation and environmental degradation, but have also disrupted the practice of agrarian citizenship through a series of interlinked and evolving philosophical, ideological, and material conditions. The first section of the paper thus examines the de-linking of agriculture, citizenship, and nature as a result of ongoing cycles of a metabolic rift, as a ‘crucial law of motion’ and central contradiction of changing socio-ecological relations in the countryside. I then argue that new forms of agrarian resistance, exemplified by the contemporary international peasant movement La Vía Campesina's call for food sovereignty, create a potential to reframe and reconstitute an agrarian citizenship that reworks the metabolic rift between society and nature. A food sovereignty model founded on practices of agrarian citizenship and ecologically sustainable local food production is then analysed for its potential to challenge the dominant model of large-scale, capitalist, and export-based agriculture.

How does environmental protection intersect with processes of democratization in Latin America? This paper examines this question with a case study in Guatemala centered on the Maya Biosphere Reserve. In particular, I explore how individuals and collectives—who are differently situated socially, politically, and geographically—conceptualize and negotiate the linkages between conservation and democratization in Guatemala. Drawing upon interviews with key players as well as my ethnographic research on the daily practices of conservation in the reserve, I suggest that democratization and environmental protection in Guatemala intersect in uneasy and paradoxical ways. At the heart of these contradictions lay historical patterns of exclusion that restrict who counts as a political actor, (environmental) decision-maker, and therefore citizen.The recent emergence of environmental movements and new conservation policies in Latin American countries is frequently tied to the restoration of democratic regimes in the 1980s. As Stephen Mumme and Edward Korzetz (1997: 46) contend, “liberalization and democratization create a host of new opportunities for environmental mobilization and policy development in the region”. Latin American leaders support the presumed congruence between environmental protection and democracies, as outlined in Our Own Agenda, the Latin American response to the Brundtland Report (UNDP, 1990; Gabaldón, 1992). ‘Green’ activists working in North American or European contexts also promote the notion that environmentalism is essentially a democratic ideology (Eckersley, 1992; see also Payne, 1995).Such claims are hotly contested at theoretical or philosophical levels (,  and ), while empirical researchers find little evidence of natural congruence (, ,  and ). Instead, ample data demonstrate that conservationist objectives can be and are met without consideration for democratic procedures (,  and ). In short, although we may wish that environmental protection be accomplished through democratic means, there are no essential linkages between these two social imperatives. Consequently, understanding if and how environmental protection projects support or foster democracy requires geographically situated empirical analysis that is attentive to social relations and every day practices.This paper contributes to the on-going debate about the linkages between environmental protection and democracy with a case study in Guatemala centered on the Maya Biosphere Reserve, created in 1990 to protect 1.6 million hectares of tropical lowland flora and fauna. Specifically, I explore how individuals and collectives—who are differently situated socially, politically, and geographically—conceptualize and negotiate the linkages between conservation and democratization in Guatemala. My interviews with key players as well as my ethnographic research on the daily practices of conservation in the reserve lead me to suggest that democratization and environmental protection in Guatemala intersect in uneasy and paradoxical ways. At the heart of these contradictions lay historical patterns of exclusion that restrict who counts as a political actor, (environmental) decision-maker, and therefore citizen.Citizenship, then, is central to my analysis and I begin this paper outlining how and why this concept is particularly relevant in the Latin American context. I then turn to a more fine-grained analysis of citizenship formation in Guatemala, with a focus on the transition to democracy and emerging environmental movements. Drawing upon interviews with key players in the environmental movement, I consider how the social and political exclusions organizing Guatemalan society shaped the implementation of protected area legislation and the Maya Biosphere Reserve in particular. I next examine how the reserve’s inhabitants experienced the imposition of new environmental governance strategies. In two ethnographic vignettes, I analyze how two social groups, whose class position, gender, and race have historically limited their access to citizenship, negotiated the daily practices of conservation projects. In each case, the outcomes are at once uneven, contradictory, and promising.My analysis draws upon qualitative research between 1996 and 1997 on the politics of conservation in Guatemala and the Maya Biosphere Reserve. I conducted additional fieldwork in August 2000, focusing specifically on the relationship between environmental protection and processes of democratization.1 Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are taken from my taped interviews and field-notes, which I have translated from Spanish. With the exception of some public officials, all names have been omitted/changed to protect the identity of the men and women working both to protect Guatemala’s bio-physical landscapes and to create a more just society. I also wish to note that the analysis presented here is necessarily selective and partial (after Haraway, 1991). I did not speak to everyone, nor am I speaking for anyone. Rather, I have constructed this narrative to make a particular argument about conservation, democratization, and social inequality in the hopes that future generations will consider the broader political implications of environmental protection in specific geographical contexts.

The demand for better representation of cultural considerations in environmental management is increasingly evident. As two cases in point, ecosystem service approaches increasingly include cultural services, and resource planners recognize indigenous constituents and the cultural knowledge they hold as key to good environmental management. Accordingly, collaborations between anthropologists, planners, decision makers and biodiversity experts about the subject of culture are increasingly common—but also commonly fraught. Those whose expertise is culture often engage in such collaborations because they worry a practitioner from ‘elsewhere’ will employ a ‘measure of culture’ that is poorly or naively conceived. Those from an economic or biophysical training must grapple with the intangible properties of culture as they intersect with economic, biological or other material measures. This paper seeks to assist those who engage in collaborations to characterize cultural benefits or impacts relevant to decision-making in three ways; by: (i) considering the likely mindset of would-be collaborators; (ii) providing examples of tested approaches that might enable innovation; and (iii) characterizing the kinds of obstacles that are in principle solvable through methodological alternatives. We accomplish these tasks in part by examining three cases wherein culture was a critical variable in environmental decision making: risk management in New Zealand associated with Māori concerns about genetically modified organisms; cultural services to assist marine planning in coastal British Columbia; and a decision-making process involving a local First Nation about water flows in a regulated river in western Canada. We examine how ‘culture’ came to be manifest in each case, drawing from ethnographic and cultural-models interviews and using subjective metrics (recommended by theories of judgment and decision making) to express cultural concerns. We conclude that the characterization of cultural benefits and impacts is least amenable to methodological solution when prevailing cultural worldviews contain elements fundamentally at odds with efforts to quantify benefits/impacts, but that even in such cases some improvements are achievable if decision-makers are flexible regarding processes for consultation with community members and how quantification is structured.► We address debates about "measuring culture" in environmental management. ► We develop and trial metrics for characterizing intangible and/or cultural concerns. ► Three cases are used, two from indigenous populations in New Zealand and Canada.

ABSTRACT  There has been a growing interest in anthropology regarding how certain political conditions set the stage for “articulations” between indigenous movements and environmental actors and discourses. However, relatively little attention has been paid to how these same conditions can suppress demands for indigenous rights. In this article, I argue that the pairing of neoliberalism and multiculturalism in contemporary Mexico has created political fields in which ethnic difference has been foregrounded as a way of denying certain rights to marginalized groups. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in northern Mexico, I analyze how the arguments of a group of Cucapá for fishing rights in the Colorado Delta have been constrained within these political circumstances. I argue that cultural difference has been leveraged by the Mexican federal government and local NGOs to prevent the redistribution of environmental resources among vulnerable groups such as the Cucapá.

In this article, I trace the tangled relationships between law, nature, and empire as they figure in Canadian national geographies, imagined and real. While the nature-culture dichotomy has long been contested by cultural geographers, anthropologists, and historians, to date, socio-legal scholars and legal theorists have spent less time problematizing the law-nature distinction. With the exception of natural law, law and nature are commonly perceived to be opposing and ontologically distinct. In this article, I argue that law, nature, and empire have overlapping genealogies that demand critical attention. Law and nature, I contend, are ontologically related categories that shape the Canadian nation by working in and through each other. While both are prominent symbols in the national imaginary, real spaces of nature—wilderness landscapes, including parks—are also legal constructs that normalize nature as law's constitutive exterior and as the nation's myth of (empty) origins.

AbstractThis article seeks to extend recent debates on urban infrastructure access by exploring the interrelationship between subjectivity, urban space and infrastructure. Specifically, it presents a case study of the development and differentiation of the urban water supply in Jakarta, Indonesia. Drawing on concepts of governmentality and materiality, it argues that the construction of difference through processes of segregation and exclusion enacted via colonial and contemporary ‘technologies of government’ has spatial, discursive and material dimensions. In particular, it seeks to ‘rematerialize’ discussions of (post-)colonial urban governmentality through insisting upon the importance of the contested and iterative interrelationship between discursive strategies, socio-economic agendas, identity formation and infrastructure creation. In exploring these claims with respect to Jakarta, the article draws on data derived from archival, interview and participant observation research to present a genealogy of the city's urban water supply system from its colonial origins to the present. We illustrate how discourses of modernity, hygiene and development are enrolled in the construction of urban subjects and the disposition of water supply infrastructure (and are also resisted), and document the relationship between the classification of urban residents, the differentiation of urban spaces and lack of access to services. The article closes with a discussion of the implications for analyses of the differentiation of urban services and urban space in cities in the global South.This article seeks to extend recent debates on urban infrastructure access by exploring the interrelationship between subjectivity, urban space and infrastructure. Specifically, it presents a case study of the development and differentiation of the urban water supply in Jakarta, Indonesia. Drawing on concepts of governmentality and materiality, it argues that the construction of difference through processes of segregation and exclusion enacted via colonial and contemporary ‘technologies of government’ has spatial, discursive and material dimensions. In particular, it seeks to ‘rematerialize’ discussions of (post-)colonial urban governmentality through insisting upon the importance of the contested and iterative interrelationship between discursive strategies, socio-economic agendas, identity formation and infrastructure creation. In exploring these claims with respect to Jakarta, the article draws on data derived from archival, interview and participant observation research to present a genealogy of the city's urban water supply system from its colonial origins to the present. We illustrate how discourses of modernity, hygiene and development are enrolled in the construction of urban subjects and the disposition of water supply infrastructure (and are also resisted), and document the relationship between the classification of urban residents, the differentiation of urban spaces and lack of access to services. The article closes with a discussion of the implications for analyses of the differentiation of urban services and urban space in cities in the global South.RésuméCet article tente d’élargir les récents débats sur l’accès aux infrastructures urbaines en explorant l’interrelation entre subjectivité, espace urbain et infrastructure. Plus précisément, il présente une étude de cas sur l’aménagement et la différenciation de l’approvisionnement en eau de Jakarta, en Indonésie. À partir des concepts de gouvernementalité et de matérialité, il fait valoir que la construction d’une différence par des processus de ségrégation et d’exclusion, mis en œuvre par des « technologies de gouvernement » coloniales et contemporaines, a des dimensions spatiales, discursives et physiques. Ce travail vise notamment à« rematérialiser » les discussions sur la gouvernementalité urbaine (post-)coloniale en insistant sur l’importance de l’interrelation contestée et itérative entre stratégies discursives, programmes socio-économiques, formation d’identité et création d’infrastructures. Tout en explorant ces idées dans le cadre de Jakarta, l’article exploite des données issues d’archives, d’entretiens et d’observations participantes afin de présenter une généalogie du réseau urbain de distribution d’eau, de ses origines coloniales jusqu’à nos jours. Il montre comment les discours sur la modernité, l’hygiène et l’aménagement s’inscrivent dans la représentation des sujets urbains et dans la disposition de l’infrastructure d’approvisionnement en eau (et comment s’exprime la résistance) ; de plus, il expose la relation entre la classification des résidents, la différenciation des espaces urbains et le manque d’accès aux services de la ville. La conclusion termine par les conséquences pour les analyses sur la différenciation des services urbains et de l’espace urbain dans les grandes villes des pays du Sud.Cet article tente d’élargir les récents débats sur l’accès aux infrastructures urbaines en explorant l’interrelation entre subjectivité, espace urbain et infrastructure. Plus précisément, il présente une étude de cas sur l’aménagement et la différenciation de l’approvisionnement en eau de Jakarta, en Indonésie. À partir des concepts de gouvernementalité et de matérialité, il fait valoir que la construction d’une différence par des processus de ségrégation et d’exclusion, mis en œuvre par des « technologies de gouvernement » coloniales et contemporaines, a des dimensions spatiales, discursives et physiques. Ce travail vise notamment à« rematérialiser » les discussions sur la gouvernementalité urbaine (post-)coloniale en insistant sur l’importance de l’interrelation contestée et itérative entre stratégies discursives, programmes socio-économiques, formation d’identité et création d’infrastructures. Tout en explorant ces idées dans le cadre de Jakarta, l’article exploite des données issues d’archives, d’entretiens et d’observations participantes afin de présenter une généalogie du réseau urbain de distribution d’eau, de ses origines coloniales jusqu’à nos jours. Il montre comment les discours sur la modernité, l’hygiène et l’aménagement s’inscrivent dans la représentation des sujets urbains et dans la disposition de l’infrastructure d’approvisionnement en eau (et comment s’exprime la résistance) ; de plus, il expose la relation entre la classification des résidents, la différenciation des espaces urbains et le manque d’accès aux services de la ville. La conclusion termine par les conséquences pour les analyses sur la différenciation des services urbains et de l’espace urbain dans les grandes villes des pays du Sud.

This paper advances recent conversations related to the need to better engage postcolonial scholarship in development geography. To do so, I bring together analytics offered by postdevelopmental, feminist geographic, and postcolonial scholarship to analyze contemporary development efforts in southeastern Turkey. To provide necessary background for the case study context, the paper considers three key moments foundational for Turkish modernist development aspirations: the foundations of the Republic through Kemalism, the emergence of Kurdish separatism and PKK resistance, and Turkish efforts to gain entry to the EU. Reading these moments, and their culmination in contemporary development efforts focused on the southeastern Anatolia region, through postdevelopmental and feminist geographic literatures invites a reading that highlights socio-spatial difference as underwriting modernist development interventions in this region. Drawing on postcolonial scholarship, particularly Bhabha’s notion of ambivalence, further enables a reading of socio-spatial difference as also undermining Turkish modernist development, signaling precisely the points where the project comes undone. The example thus lends endorsement to the need for enriched engagement between postcolonial theory, feminist and development discussions in geography, suggesting that postcolonial concepts might enable clearer focus on the ambiguities, tensions, and contradictions inherent to development geographies.

This article explores how food system localisation efforts in Metro Vancouver, Canada, intersect with tensions in the global agri-food system, including racial inequalities. Drawing on archival research, participant observation of local food marketing and policy-making, and interviews with local food movement participants, policy-makers, and Chinese-Canadian farmers, we explore factors that have influenced the emergence of a food system comprised of at least two parallel food networks, both of which challenge dominant modes of food production and distribution. An older network consists of roadside stores and greengrocers supplied by Chinese-Canadian farmers. A newer, rapidly expanding network includes farmers' markets and other institutions publicly supported by the local food movement. Both networks are “local” in that they link producers, consumers, and places; however, these networks have few points of intentional connection and collaboration. We conclude by considering some of the subtle and surprising ways food justice is, and is not, being realised in the Metro Vancouver local food system.

As an emerging domain of risk research, nanotechnologies engender novel research questions, including how new technologies are encountered given different framing and contextual detail. Using data from a recent U.S. national survey of perceived risks (N= 1,100), risk versus benefit framings and the specific social positions from which people encounter or perceive new technologies are explored. Results indicate that vulnerability and attitudes toward environmental justice significantly influenced risk perceptions of nanotechnology as a broad class, while controlling for demographic and affective factors. Comparative analyses of different examples of nanotechnology applications demonstrated heightened ambivalence across acceptability when risk versus benefit information was provided with application descriptions (described in short vignettes as compared to the general category “nanotechnology,” absent of risk or benefit information). The acceptability of these nano-specific vignettes varied significantly in only some cases given indexes of vulnerability and attitudes toward environmental justice. However, experimental narrative analyses, using longer, more comprehensive descriptive passages, show how assessments of risks and benefits are tied to the systematically manipulated psychometric qualities of the application (its invasiveness and controllability), risk messaging from scientists, and the social implications of the technology with regard to justice. The article concludes with discussion of these findings for risk perception research and public policy related to nanotechnology and possibly other emerging technologies.

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the concept of water security, including both academic and policy literatures. The analysis indicates that the use of the term water security has increased significantly in the past decade, across multiple disciplines. The paper presents a comparison of definitions of, and analytical approaches to, water security across the natural and social sciences, which indicates that distinct, and at times incommensurable, methods and scales of analysis are being used. We consider the advantages and disadvantages of narrow versus broad and integrative framings of water security, and explore their utility with reference to integrated water resources management. In conclusion, we argue that an integrative approach to water security brings issues of good governance to the fore, and thus holds promise as a new approach to water management.► Use of the term water security is increasing in the physical and social sciences. ► Framings of water security vary considerably across a wide range of disciplines. ► Studies of water security vary in their methods and scale of application. ► We consider the consequences of framings water security conceptually and operationally.

Corruption appears to be the major factor which prevents proper control of long-term forest harvesting concessions by government agencies in Guyana, South America. Corruption is easily affordable because of very low forest taxes and high profits on under-declared log exports. Three “rings of power” or social compacts mutually foster the prevalent illegalities.In the highest level social compact, the State itself behaves as a criminal enterprise', allowing the available technical regulations for improving forest management to be ignored, or used selectively against those loggers who lack political influence.Senior and junior forest officers keep out of each other's relations with loggers.Small-scale loggers allocated non-commercial forest restore their income by over-quota and out-of-coupe felling, for which they pay off the junior government staff to forestall field inspections.Steps towards solutions include:• the links between loggers and government staff could be broken by implementing the 1997 national forest policy and 2001 national forest plan (GFC2, 1997, 2001) for strategic allocation of concessions, and matching the capacity of the loggers to concession stee, location, duration and quality of forest;• inter-sectoral action by many actors. The establishment of open forums for spreading information and debating contentious issues in a non-confrontational setting, under the auspices of civil society organisations which have demonstrated durability and effectiveness in securing positive responses from the Executive branch of government;• an increase in the motivation for civil society to participate in such forums;• the provision of openings for international NGOs to aid local NGOs, including harassment-free registration of civil associations;• the strengthening of parliamentary democracy with the motivation and means to call the Executive to account.All these suggestions run counter to the nexus between the three social compacts, which make it difficult for any one actor to break free of the consequences of regulatory capture3.

Private sector partnerships (PSPs) have been increasingly advocated as an instrument of ‘pro-poor’ water supply policies. This article examines the performance of the private sector with respect to network connections for poor households in Jakarta, Indonesia, drawing on three sources: data collected through a household survey of poor households in six Jakarta neighbourhoods in 2005; data provided by the two private concessionaires and the Jakarta municipal government; and interviews with water supply managers, government officials, and NGO representatives in 2001 and 2005. The analysis concludes that the Jakarta PSP contract has not been pro-poor: new connections were preferentially targeted at middle and upper-income households over the period 1998–2005, and the numbers of new connections have been lower than the original targets. The paper argues that the failure to connect the poor is not solely attributable to the private operators, and identifies disincentives to provide individual network connections to poor households on the part of the municipality, the private concessionaires and poor households. The paper concludes by questioning the long-term ability of private sector operators to supply water to the poor.