Political Ecology

Political ecology is the field where power strategies are deployed to deconstruct the unsustainable modern rationality and to mobilize social actions in the globalised world for the construction of a sustainable future founded on the potentialities of nature and cultural creativity; in emancipatory thinking and political ethics to renew the meaning and sustainability of life. Political ecology roots theoretical deconstruction in the political arena; beyond recognizing cultural diversity, traditional knowledge and indigenous peoples' rights, radical environmentalism contests the hegemonic unification power of the market as the ineluctable fate of humanity. Political ecology in Latin America is operating a similar procedure as the one achieved by Marx with Hegelian idealism, turning the philosophy of post-modernity (Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida) on the grounds of a political ontology: territorializing thinking on being, difference and otherness in an environmental rationality, rooted in an ontology of cultural diversity, a politics of difference and an ethics of otherness. Decolonizing knowledge and legitimizing other knowledges-savoirs-wisdoms liberate alternative ways of understanding reality, nature, human life and social relations opening up different paths to reconstruct human life in the planet.

La naturaleza en contexto. Hacia una ecología política mexicana es una obra que ubica el quehacer de la ecología política en México y la descubre como una disciplina de gran vitalidad y enorme potencial para comprender la realidad ambiental mexicana; desvela los orígenes de la disciplina en el nivel internacional e identifica sus etapas y temas centrales para posteriormente evaluar su desarrollo en México. Los nueve estudios de caso que conforman la publicación fueron elaborados por reconocidos especialistas de instituciones nacionales, quienes partiendo claramente de la ecología política como eje de reflexión o, en ciertos casos, refiriéndose a sus temas de interés, aportan elementos para la comprensión detallada de asuntos como los conflictos ambientales, los efectos de la agrotecnología, la conservación en áreas protegidas, los movimientos sociales y la restauración de ecosistemas, y muestran también que las dinámicas sociopolíticas se entretejen con los procesos de degradación ambiental, determinando tanto los resultados de las políticas públicas como los esfuerzos de conservación.

With the recent development of the Occupy Movement, public criticism of neoliberalism has climaxed since the onset of a global financial crisis in late 2008. The mobilization of protesters in cities throughout the world was preceded by much speculation in the media and blogosphere over the past few years, where commentators have been quick to suggest that the end of neoliberalism is upon us. The validity of postneoliberalism, however, remains tenuous, as its advocates continue to treat neoliberalism as a monolithic, static, and undifferentiated end-state. Despite the desire to move beyond neoliberal strictures, there is an undeniable continuity to neoliberalism that must be appreciated if we ever hope to leave this unforgiving version of capitalism truly in the past.

« Décarboner le climat pour répondre au défi économique », Kairos 18 janvier 2019

Le 19 09 18, à Louvain-la-Neuve, a eu lieu une table ronde réunissant, dans le cadre du festival « Maintenant ! », Annabelle Jacquet (Lampiris / Total), Vincent van Steenberghe (SPF, DG Environnement), Alain Dangoisse (Maison du Développement durable), Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (UCLouvain), Thierry Boereboom (Plateforme 'écoles OLLN transition énergétique'), Tanguy Boucquey (Ville OLLN), Hugue Ronsse (IBA / Alliance-BW) et Béatrice Delvaux (Le Soir). Elle s'intitulait « Décarboner l'économie pour répondre au défi climatique », et son pré-texte était prometteur : « Les indicateurs du climat s'affolent et, face à eux, de multiples actions s'organisent pour répondre aux Accords de Paris : rester sous les 1,5 / 2°C d'élévation de la température du globe terrestre. Les réponses ne sont pas rapides, car les obstacles sont davantage institutionnels et culturels qu'économiques ou technologiques ! Et pourtant, les sphères économiques ont un rôle capital pour réussir le défi climatique. Dans cette course contre-la-montre, quel pourrait être l'impact de la tarification carbone, des énergies renouvelables et de la collaboration citoyenne ? Au niveau local, une initiative comme 'OLLN énergie climat' contribue à la stratégie de sensibilisation de la ville, par l'information, le partage d'expérience ou des projets collaboratifs, en vue d'une réduction significative des émissions. » Il pourra suffire de passer rapidement en revue ces différentes sentences, qui annonçaient très précisément le ton et la teneur des interventions. 1. « Les indicateurs du climat s'affolent et, face à eux, de multiples actions s'organisent pour répondre aux Accords de Paris. » On présuppose donc explicitement que les indicateurs en question sont univoques, que les théories qui les systématisent sont cohérentes et applicables, et on conclut implicitement que c'est à bon droit que nous devrions tous nous affoler. Fort bien, mais quel est au juste le problème ? On ne l'apprendra pas. L'énonciation la plus proche du coeur problématique a été la suivante : « il y a érosion de la biodiversité », et elle est passée totalement inaperçue. En clair : la nature se meurt ; nous sommes en train de vivre la sixième extinction massive 1 Philosophe. Dernier ouvrage paru : Contre le totalitarisme transhumaniste : les enseignements philosophiques du sens commun, Limoges, FYP éditions, oct. 2018.

Second only to the Himalayas in size, the Andes represent a fascinating region of our world. Written by regional experts and drawing on field-based endeavors of several researchers, each chapter encompasses a timely topic, from climate-related studies and historical occupations to indigenous manufacturing and recent archaeological evidence. If you want to know what types of research are currently being conducted in the Andes, this book will surely satisfy.

Chapter Proof from the Handbook of Environmental Justice (in press), edited by Ryan Holifield, Jayajit Chakraborty and Gordon Walker (Eds). Handbook on Environmental Justice. (Routledge).

This chapter contributes to clarifying the nature and shape of the global environmental movement, drawing on literature on the history of environmental protest as well as on the empirical evidence from the Global Environmental Justice Atlas. Through these narratives, as well as literatures from political ecology, environmental philosophy, eco-feminism, ecological economics, history, anthropology and sociology, this chapter aims to distill some of the core characteristics, unresolved tensions and relevant future lines of enquiry of an emerging radical and transformative global EJ movement. These include a focus on ecological  justice that takes into account relations with nonhuman nature and navigates the tension between conservation and livelihoods, considered in the  first section; a global materialist perspective that questions the structural basis of the economy, taken up in the second; and the increasing globalization and interconnectedness between struggles and their simultaneously oppositional and constructive politics, illustrated in the third. The article concludes with avenues for future research.

By drawing on historical as well as current examples, I hope to demonstrate that EJ, while only recently defined as such, has a long and rich history around the world that far predates Western environmentalism as we know it. This brings attention to the need for diverse and situated understandings of environmentalism, and for going beyond northern theoretical understandings of environmental justice to one informed by non-Eurocentric epistemologies and ontologies.

This essay uses ongoing ethnographic research with olive and olive oil producers in Sicily, Italy, as a springboard to reflect on collaboration in anthropology. I provide a brief review of various approaches to collaboration in anthropology and discuss the potential of practice theory and correspondence (Gatt and Ingold 2013, Ingold 2017b) to collaborative anthropology. I offer this reflection through the lens of my ongoing fieldwork as one example of how power dynamics and posi-tionality in and out of the field shape what types of collaborations are possible and may be potentially fruitful.

Environmental ethics and political ecology are two movements of ecological thinking which both have the aim to preserve the environment against global threats. The way to look at the two fields of research though are very different because of its presuppositions, questions and respective consequences. This paper wants to put in perspective some of the differences from the constructivist and pragmatic turn of political ecology and shows which are the conditions to make environmental ethics and political ecology complementary. Taking into consideration of such complementarity demands to conceive the political community elsewise – like an " ecumenal " community " – with the complexity and challenge to integrate at once ethics, politics and lived experience.

L'éthique environnementale et l'écologie politique sont deux courants de la pensée écologique qui visent un même but : une préservation de l'environnement à la mesure des menaces globales qui l'assaillent. Les moyens envisagés par ces deux champs d'étude sont pourtant très différents, en raison de leurs présupposés, de leur questionnement ou de leurs enjeux respectifs. L'objet de cet article consiste à mettre en perspective quelques-unes de ces différences à partir du tournant constructiviste et pragmatiste de l'écologie politique et à montrer à quelles conditions une complémentarité entre l'éthique environnementale et l'écologie politique est possible. Envisager une telle complémentarité débouche finalement sur la nécessité de penser la communauté politique autrement – comme une « communauté écouménique » – avec le souci d'y intégrer à la fois l'éthique, le politique et l'expérience vécue.

Environmental impacts of economic processes have become an increasingly national concern across the globe ever since the UNCED in 1992. A fundamental factor that leads to the persistence of environmental problems has been the lack of awareness and knowledge on the part of decision makers, economic agents and relevant stakeholders on the importance of ecological integrity for sustainable development. This is partly attributed to the lack of integration of the various domains of sustainable development in the higher educational curricula of most existing higher learning institutions in South East Asia. This paper discusses the relationship between the knowledge domain and the promotion of sustainable development ideals in national policies. The paper focuses on presenting critical issues affecting higher education curriculum reforms as well as related cases in Indonesia in the light of capacity development for sustainable development.  This paper will contribute to improve understanding and enhance awareness in curriculum development as far as the incorporation of sustainable development principles is concerned.

Key words: environmentally-based education, curriculum reforms, environmentally minded decision makers, sustainable development.
(Unpublished paper), published here for the first time

While there is a growing body of knowledge on the effects of climatic and other forms of change on pastoralism in Africa, less is known about how recent policy responses and development interventions in the name of climate change and pastoral area development are shaped by certain discourses and narratives and by political interests. This is important because the simplifications that are often a characteristic of environmental policy narratives can fail to acknowledge the politicised nature of many environmental problems in local contexts. The pastoral drylands are no exception as claims to land and other resources remain contested by different actors.
Through content and discourse analyses of national policies, supplemented by interviews with key informants, this research examines the discourses and narratives around pastoralism found within contemporary policy in Ethiopia and Kenya, the interests of actors and actor-networks shaping those narratives, and their consequences for pastoralism.
The findings reveal that while concerns around climate change and calls for strengthening resilience of dryland communities have given a new impetus to pastoral development, old narratives that depict pastoral areas as unproductive and in need of modernisation remain deeply embedded in policy making. These open up spaces for the state, investors, and local elites to extend control over natural resources previously managed under customary institutions. The resultant climate policy solutions and dryland investments are, in turn, leading to new patterns of social differentiation and vulnerability among pastoralists.  While providing some level of climate-risk preparedness, climate adaptation and resilience-building interventions on their own are insufficient to meet the needs of pastoralist communities. I argue that the extent and nature of dynamic change in the drylands of the HoA calls for political responses that address social inequities and power imbalances, that safeguard pastoralist’s resource rights, and that allow for more inclusive forms of governance.

The rise of the Anthropocene has created confusion in environmental politics, a field traditionally hopeful that a return to some socionatural stability was both possible and desirable. Paradoxically, while life in a warmer planet promises to be as dynamic as it is unstable, ecopolitical discussions of our post-Holocene future has become stuck. This chapter will explore this paradox, arguing for a political imaginary that goes beyond the simple dichotomy between a technocratic " good Anthropocene " and an " apocalyptic Anthropocene ". Political space should be opened up to other kinds of imaginaries. To such end, this chapter will pose three main arguments. First, the need to provincialize and pluralize the field of possible post-Holocene scenarios in order to avoid both conformity and despair. I will argue ecological modernities are plural. Second, that spaces emerging between critical design and the critical social sciences are, despite their limitations, an interesting place to look at in search for new ideas and scenarios. Finally, it will be argued that modes of critical design futuring need to more carefully attend to the labor point of view, so that a just transition to a post-Holocene future expands its range and appeal. This conversation will also show the ineradicable hybridity of the worlds we are going to make and the complexity of the transition. After all, a just transition is not simply about energy transition: it has to address much broader political matters and will require the deployment of new sources of political energy.

In times of austerity and global environmental change, recent crises related to food (in)securities and (un)sustainabilities urge us to reposition agri-food research. We argue that there is an opportunity to develop a more critical food scholarship by explicitly integrating political ecology approaches. For this purpose, the paper outlines major elements in the extensive political ecology scholarship to guide a critical review of some central trends in food research, as well as considering the contribution to date of food studies to political ecology perspectives. This exercise allows us to identify key avenues of convergence between food studies and political ecology frameworks that constitute three conceptual building blocks of a revised critical food scholarship: understanding place-based socio-natures; addressing the politics of scale and inequality; and co-producing knowledge and change. These coordinates are used to analyse two emergent potential spaces of possibility, embodied in the emergence of cities as food policy actors and the rise of the Food Sovereignty movement. We conclude by exploring how a critical food scholarship could inform an inclusive reframing to produce the grounds of possibility for a more socially and ecologically diverse food system.

John Bellamy Foster and his colleagues have recently argued that the project of ecosocialism should be understood in terms of a “prefigurative” and “first stage” of red-green thinkers whose insights have largely been transcended by their own work on the metabolic rift. Rift scholars have further argued that “second-stage” ecosocialists should push back against “idealist” deviations occurring amongst historical materialists concerned with the production of nature, socionatures and “hybridity,” as well as more or less all engagements with literatures on eco-technological transitions, industrial ecology and the like, which are implicated in supporting “green capitalism.” This paper critically evaluates these claims. In each case, it is argued, rift scholarship is narrowing the possibilities for interdisciplinary engagement and for thinking in dynamic and reconstructive terms about red-green futures. It is our sense that an ecosocialist vision of just transitions has to be conceptualized as a diverse, dynamic, iterative and always incomplete affair. Anthropocene ecosocialisms are inevitably going to involve co-producing, making and remaking hybrid social ecologies on an irreducibly restless, turbulent and warming planet. We argue that what follows from this is the necessity to both critique and recuperate the better insights of hybrid political ecology and ecological modernities.

*Published in the 2016 special edition of Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art on ‘Political Ecology in East Asia’.
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What does it mean to discuss ‘political ecology’ in art and architecture now in the East Asian context? I investigate this through the historiography of Japan, re-examined in the light of present-day practices of art and architecture. I will consider how alternate notions of ecology, art and architecture there, became neglected 100 years ago in the shadow of the society’s hurried Western modernisation, and how their resurgence now may cast a new light on our contemporary crisis.

The contemporary practitioners I discuss are the artist duo Komori Haruka + Seo Natsumi (b.1989/1988) and artist-architect Sakaguchi Kyōhei (b.1978). They are all based in regional Japan. Although they have had a handful overseas presentations, perhaps given their work concerns immediate issues that are specific to the country, they have not yet been so visible in Euro-American debates. Komori + Seo have worked consistently in the city of Rikuzentakata to record, document and narrate the personal memories of locals since the community was heavily destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami of 3.11.2011. Meanwhile, Sakaguchi Kyōhei, known as an architect who does not build, has proposed alternative methods of reinstituting a society that has exhausted itself from notion of progress based on financial growth. These include his survey of what he calls ‘0 Yen House’, a housing system constructed by so-called homeless people living by the Sumida River in Tokyo; the ‘Zero Public’, an independent nation he created himself, whose headquarter ‘Zero Center’ is in Kumamoto Prefecture; and various philosophical terms he has invented to articulate the thoughts behind these practices.

Their works can certainly be considered to be what is known as ‘socially engaged practice’ – the kind of art practice that revolves around the artists’ direct engagement with society beyond the art world (Thompson 2012). In fact, given the massively increased interest to this type of art practice since the 3.11 in Japanese art scene, recent works of Euro-American critics and theorists such as Claire Bishop and Nicolas Bourriaud have been heavily referenced in the domestic debate (Hoshino 2014; Ozaki 2014). However, their work need not only be read in terms of only of currently fashionable ‘imported’ ideas from global art theory discourse. What I propose here is, rather, an analysis of these artists’ practice as a resurgence of native ideas that first had their critical relevance approximately 100 years ago during the Meiji era. These are alternate notions of ecology, art and architecture that signal a different kind of modernity and human progress to the ideologies of Western modernity imported by the government during that era.

In order to do so, I will initially discuss the historical and theoretical backdrop within which these notions were contested. Two comparable ideas of ecologies that were proposed in the Meiji period as a Japanese translation of the English term will be examined through their semantic features as kanji in terms of usage and their implied sense. This will effectively lead to a transformation of ideas of architecture and art during the period after the Russo-Japanese War of the same period. The respective practice of Komori + Seo and Sakaguchi will be discussed essentially as a resurgence of these forgotten ideas. Conclusions will be drawn as to why and how these discourses may be relevant now.
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*Please note that there is one misinformation on the paper; the naturalist Minakata Kumagusu is noted as born in Tanabe, Wakayama Prefecture but he was in fact born in Wakayama city of the same prefecture.

In this paper I argue that we need not only to ‘decolonise’ the Anthropocene but also to ‘desecularise’ it – to be aware that in the new age of the Earth we may be coeval with gods and spirits.  Drawing particularly on the work of Giles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Georges Bataille, and using concepts from both thermodynamics and fluid dynamics, I start to develop an interdisciplinary theory of planetary spirit, and use this to speak of both the ‘laminar’ high gods of time that are being invoked to summon the story of Earth’s ongoing transformation into a canonical mythos, and the turbulent lower spirits of place which manifest particular, situated dynamics on an Earth crossed by interlocking gradients and flows of energy, value, power and entropy. I suggest that what might once have been distinct territorialised ‘cultures’ or ‘natures’ in which humans engaged in particular situated patterns of interaction with animals, spirits and other beings are increasingly being convened into a global multinatural system, what we might call a ‘combined and uneven geo-spiritual formation’.

This edited collection contributes to the theoretical literature on social reproduction—defined by Marx as the necessary labor to arrive the next day at the factory gate—and extended by feminist geographers and others into complex understandings of the relationship between paid labor and the unpaid work of daily life. The volume explores new terrain in social reproduction with a focus on the challenges posed by evolving theories of embodiment and identity, nonhuman materialities, and diverse economies.

Reflecting and expanding on ongoing debates within feminist geography, with additional cross-disciplinary contributions from sociologists and political scientists, Precarious Worlds explores the productive possibilities of social reproduction as an ontology, a theoretical lens, and an analytical framework for what Geraldine Pratt has called "a vigorous, materialist transnational feminism."

Just over a decade after the landmark publication of Life's Work (Mitchell, Marston, and Katz, 2004), in this chapter we take stock of current debates and new developments in social reproduction, including theoretical and pragmatic challenges to building a politics of life's work.

Nicaraguan smallholder cooperative leaders working in partnership with a California-based small-scale roasting company pioneered an alternative approach to confronting the post-1999 coffee crisis. They built coffee tasting laboratories and integrated grassroots organizing efforts to create a national smallholder cooperative association that dramatically improved the quality, consistency, and prices from of the coffee they exported. Cooperative leaders used this development project to gain a more significant share of political economic power in a domestic coffee industry historically dominated by colonial powers, and corporate and domestic elites. This alli.ance between the artisanal small-scale roasting companies and cooperative leaders also proved that smallholders selling into fair trade markets could consistently produce and export high quality coffee. This case study unfolds into Nicaragua's northern mountains, northern California's coastal cities and the commodity trade and solidarity networks that connect them. Beyond following the coffee bean from mountainside farmers, through artisan specialty coffee roasters, and into the hands of Bay Area coffee drinkers, the article recovers the history of political and technological revolutions and the transnational solidarity networks that contributed to sustainability innovations within the coffee value chain. Although the tangible benefits of fair trade coffee to farmers and landscapes have not lived up to the lofty proclamations of its advocates, farmers generally receive higher prices for their coffee and are frequently more secure in their land titles. This political ecology of coffee and solidarity suggests theoretical questions about the role of classic revolutions, and Polanyian double movements in the efforts to practice the alternative values and principles that motivate many of today's sustainability innovations.

Les dirigeants des coopératives de café au Nicaragua, a travaillé en partenariat avec une entreprise de torréfaction en Californie. Ensemble, ils ont lancé une autre approche pour faire face à la crise post-1999 de café. Ils ont construit des laboratoires de dégustation de café et de coopération intégrée à la base. Ils ont créé une association paysanne coopérative qui a considérablement amélioré la qualité, la cohérence et les prix du café qu'ils exportés. Les dirigeants des coopératives utilise ce projet de développement d'acquérir une part importante du pouvoir politico-économique dans un secteur du café historiquement dominé par les puissances coloniales, les entreprises, et les élites nationales. Cette alliance entre les artisans des petits entreprises de torréfaction et de dirigeants de coopératives ont également prouvé que les petits exploitants vendent leurs produits sur les marchés du commerce équitable pourrait toujours produire et exporter du café de haute qualité. Cette étude de cas se déroule dans les montagnes du nord du Nicaragua, les villes côtières du nord de la Californie et les réseaux commerciaux des produits de base et de la solidarité qui les relient. Il suit le grain de café auprès des agriculteurs à flanc de montagne, à travers les torréfacteurs de café de spécialité, et dans les mains de buveurs de café en Californie. Il récupère l'histoire des révolutions politiques et technologiques et les réseaux de solidarité transnationaux qui ont contribué à des innovations de développement durable au sein de la chaîne de valeur du café. Bien que les avantages tangibles de café issu du commerce équitable pour les agriculteurs et les paysages ne sont pas à la hauteur des aspirations élevées de ses partisans, les agriculteurs reçoivent des prix plus élevés pour leur café et sont souvent plus en sécurité dans leurs titres fonciers. Cette écologie politique du café et de la solidarité suggère des questions théoriques sur le rôle des révolutions classiques, et 'mouvements doubles' Polanyienne dans les efforts pour pratiquer les valeurs alternatives et des principes qui motivent un grand nombre d'innovations de développement durable d'aujourd'hui.

Los líderes de cooperativas de pequeños propietarios nicaragüenses, trabajando conjuntamente con una pequeña compañía de torrefacción basada en California, fueron los primeros en aplicar una nueva forma de enfrentarse a la crisis del café posterior a 1999: construyeron laboratorios de cata de café e integraron los esfuerzos organizativos de comunidades de base para crear una asociación cooperativa nacional de pequeños propietarios que mejoró dramáticamente la calidad, la consistencia y los precios del café que exportaron. Los líderes de las cooperativas pusieron en marcha este proyecto para ganar una porción más significativa de poder político-económico en una industria cafetera históricamente dominada por los poderes coloniales, grandes empresas multinacionales y élites nacionales. Esta alianza entre pequeñas compañías artesanales de torrefacción y líderes de cooperativas también demostró que pequeños propietarios que venden en mercados de comercio justo pueden producir y exportar de manera consistente café de alta calidad. Este estudio de caso se desarrolla en las montañas del norte de Nicaragua, en ciudades costeras del norte de California y en las redes de comercio de mercancía y de solidaridad que las conectan. Más allá de seguir el grano de café desde los granjeros en las montañas, pasando por los artesanos especializados en la torrefacción, hasta llegar a los consumidores de café de Bay Area, el artículo recupera la historia de las revoluciones, tanto la política como la tecnológica, y las redes de solidaridad internacional que contribuyeron a las innovaciones en la sostenibilidad dentro de la cadena de valor del café. Esta política ecológica del café y la solidaridad provoca cuestionamientos teóricos sobre el papel de las revoluciones clásicas, dobles movimientos polanyanos en un esfuerzo por llevar a la práctica los valores alternativos y los principios que motivan numerosas innovaciones de sostenibilidad actuales.

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

Transboundary Conservation Areas (TBCAs), such as ‘Parks for Peace’ which have an explicit peace objective, have been heralded for their potential to simultaneously contribute towards biodiversity conservation and peace. In a world affected by frequent armed conflicts and widespread environmental degradation, the ecological peacebuilding potential of TBCAs should inspire hope.

However, TBCA literature is unclear as to whether TBCAs with or without an explicit peace objective contribute positively to peace. Political ecologists describe them as externally-imposed, heavy-handed or even coercive, neoliberal constructs, and even long-time proponents caution that they can contribute to conflicts if not undertaken appropriately. This dissertation proposes that TBCAs and Parks for Peace have not generated the peace dividends envisioned because they are not appropriately designed for peace, conflict-sensitivity, or conflict resilience.

The dissertation’s analytical framework combines a political ecology approach with socio-legal analysis and peace studies perspectives. Empirically, the dissertation examines 56 transboundary agreements representing 32 TBCAs, responses to a survey of 88 TBCA practitioners, and field research conducted in two case studies from the Great Rift Valley in East Africa – (1) the Greater Virunga Landscape (GVL), and (2) the Kidepo Landscape. Findings indicate that TBCAs can contribute to peace if they are properly designed and negotiated at the appropriate level for desired functionality (i.e., operational integration on the ground may be better achieved through localized agreements, whereas regional political integration requires higher-level agreement), that sustained support to activities on the ground is essential in conflict or post-conflict settings, and that bottom-up agreements can provide greater conflict resilience. TBCA agreements must provide clear mandates supporting peace and conflict resolution through cross-border institutional frameworks and on-going activities. Most importantly, they must be conflict-sensitive for TBCAs seeking to transform violence and conflict, and conflict-sensitivity must refer to all three categories of international, social and ecological peace.

This book brings together environmental cultural studies and postgrowth economics to examine counterhegemonic narratives and radical cultural shifts sparked by the global financial crisis of 2008. Furthermore, it presents a new cross-disciplinary framework for illuminating the rise of this counterhegemonic culture in Spain as well as its ecological, social, and political implications. The explanations of the crisis offered by mainstream media identify economic meltdown and lack of growth as the main causes and point to the recovery of growth as the desirable solution. Yet a number of critical voices worldwide have emphasized that in the context of a finite biosphere, constant economic growth is a biophysical impossibility and systemic social and ecological limits to growth can no longer be ignored. The problem is not a lack of growth but rather the globalization of an economic system addicted to constant growth, which destroys the ecological planetary systems that support life on Earth while failing to fulfill its social promises. According to these alternative accounts of the financial crisis, what we are really facing is a crisis of the legitimacy of the growth paradigm in general and its current neoliberal articulations in particular. The global economic crisis is thus better defined as an ongoing crisis of the growth imaginary. Post-2008 Spain, where the crisis of growth seems to be the new normal, offers an ideal context to investigate these cultural processes, and this book demonstrates that a transition towards what I call 'postgrowth imaginaries'—the counterhegemonic cultural sensibilities that are challenging the growth paradigm in manifold ways—is well underway in the Iberian Peninsula today. Specifically, this book explores how emerging cultural sensibilities in Spain—reflected in fiction and nonfiction writing and film, television programs, photographs and graphic novels, op-eds, web pages, political manifestos, and socioecological movements—are actively detaching themselves from the dominant imaginary of economic growth.

Hanaček K., Rodríguez-Labajos B (2018). Impacts of land-use and management changes on cultural agroecosystem services and environmental conflicts—A global review,Global Environmental Change,
Volume 50: 41-59.
As an outcome of interactions and interdependencies with people, agroecosystems provide cultural ecosystem services (CES), such as traditional knowledge, recreation, and places for social gatherings. Today however, agroecosystems undergo biophysical changes because of land-use and management changes (LUMC), such as intensive agriculture, urbanisation, and land abandonment. Typically, environmental conflicts emerge between stakeholders with differing interests in land areas around the LUMC. Cumulatively, these changes and conflicts have substantial influence on the CES appreciation of the farmland, triggering different types of responses, including social mobilisation and resistance. A comprehensive analysis of these processes was missing in the literature. Here we present a systematic review of CES provided by agroecosystems at the global level, we explore their interconnections through network analysis, and analyse the interrelation between LUMC, CES and environmental conflicts. The review includes 155 peer-reviewed articles, representing empirical data from 81 countries. Twenty main categories of CES and their subcategories delivered by agroecosystems are identified. Through the network analysis we demonstrate how CES are interrelated, with agricultural heritage as a connecting core. In a comprehensive map, we further identify which LUMC types have influence upon specific CES categories, and what are the causes, outcomes of, and responses to environmental conflicts that emerge from these processes. CES and agroecosystems cannot be seen separately from one another, as a reflection of secular or recently-created relationships people have with their environments. While these relationships are dynamic, LUMC may lead to their impairment or even loss, with ensuing impacts on biocultural diversity. The resulting environmental conflicts push most frequently for greater participation of actors involved in farming, socio-cultural revalorisation of farmland activities and the promotion of multi-functionality.

Until his early death in 1985, at age 51, the Tunisian agronomist
Slaheddine el-Amami carried out a path-breaking research program
at what was then the Centre de Recherche et de Génie Rural. He
wrote technical studies ranging from the agricultural capacities of the
unjustly-marked-as-barren Kerkennah Islands, to possibilities for drip
irrigation, to attempts to quantify the energy use of Tunisian
agriculture, to a wide-ranging investigation of indigenous hydraulic
systems. There is little explicit mention in this work of a then-dominant strand of heterodox Arab and Third Worldist social science–the emphasis on delinking, or removal from Western commodity,
technical and financial flows. Yet through an examination of his work
in the context of the delinking paradigm, as put forth by scholars like
Samir Amin, Fawzy Mansour and Mohamed Dowidar, I show the use
and need for independent agronomic expertise to be deployed
within analytical paradigms such as delinking, forged by heterodox
political economists. Through delinking, countries could proceed on a
path of auto-centered development. The possibility and time frame
of delinking is necessarily a socio-technical question linked to
indigenous capacities, technical and natural, and the social relations
with which they are woven. It is also a question of creating and
mobilizing a surplus in the agricultural sector. Through examining
Amami’s life’s work, I show the use and need for interdisciplinary
methods and research programs, which must braid the social and
natural sciences–if not simply take threads from each to create a
holistic knowledge–in order to arrive at appropriate developmental
programs. Such knowledge and programs were appropriate in that
they offered ways of working agriculture without capital-intense
inputs–thus resolving rather than aggravating current account
imbalances and labor surpluses. They also relied on a decentralization
of planning, based on the skills and knowledges of the direct
producers. In analyzing such knowledge, systematized in the work of
Amami, I will also show how moving from underdevelopment to
development requires a mélange of knowledges. Crucial and
neglected are those knowledges which have been developed to
inform sustainable ways of living on land-bases, in order to produce
the rural surplus which is the sine qua non of a successful move
beyond developmental malaise in the Global South. I will then link
this to the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge,
Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) Synthesis Report,
showing this paradigm’s continuing relevance.

Tinta Verde es un colectivo de comunicación socioambiental, surgido en 2008 en la ciudad de La Plata, integrado por estudiantes y graduados de periodismo, abogacía y ciencias naturales; además de colaboradores de distintas ciudades del país, cuyo objetivo es generar y difundir material sobre las problemáticas socioambientales, que no suelen circular en los grandes medios comerciales, y que son de vital importancia para identificar las causas de la crisis socioeconómica y ambiental que atraviesa el mundo, en particular América Latina. Tinta Verde parte de una visión eco-centrista y anti-productivista; centrado no sólo en abrir el debate y generar conciencia ambiental, sino también ayudar a gestar cambios que sirvan para modificar el modelo de producción actual, basado en la acumulación y en el consumo indiscriminado e irreflexivo. Tinta Verde entiende al ambiente como un conjunto de sistemas sociales y naturales, del cual somos parte junto a los demás seres del planeta. Cuando decimos que somos parte de la Naturaleza, estamos rompiendo con la racionalidad mercantilista que separa a la humanidad, para explotar los bienes comunes de forma abusiva. En un mundo globalizado, en el que el mercado regula las economías regionales, estilos de vida y patrones de consumo, es necesario recuperar el sentido integral que nos liga a ella desde los orígenes.Este libro recoge artículos, crónicas y ensayos -que el Colectivo fue publicando en sus ocho años de existencia- sobre diferentes problemáticas socioambientales y sobre las resistencias que se libran en los territorios.

At a time when neoliberalism has become an accepted term in public debate to refer to the current state of modern societies and their political economies, Kean Birch critically analyses the conflicting theories that shape our understanding of ‘neoliberalism’.

With an ever-expanding variety of perspectives on the concept of neoliberalism, it is increasingly difficult to identify any commonalities. This book explores how different people understand neoliberalism, and the contradictions in thinking of neoliberalism as a market-based ethic, project, or order. Detailing the intellectual history of ‘neoliberal’ thought, the variety of critical approaches and the many analytical ambiguities, Kean Birch presents a new way to conceptualize contemporary political economy and offers potential avenues for future research through a judicious exploration of ‘neoliberal’ practices, processes, and institutions.

This work will be an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, scholars, and researchers to critically assess the concept of neoliberalism across many disciplines. The book will also serve as a general introduction to a wider audience interested in the term ‘neoliberalism’, its potential pitfalls, and its contested future.

The subject of our paper is the analysis of narratives and statements about an animal, the Zanzibar leopard (Panthera pardus adersi), which might be classified as a particular kind of cryptid, given that it has been declared by some authorities to be extinct, though many Zanzibaris remain convinced of its continued existence. The classic example of a carnivore in this category of alleged survivals of recently extinct species is the Thylacine or Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus), and in a later section of this chapter we will explore some of the differences and significant parallels between the two cases. Unlike its marsupial analogue, the demise of the Zanzibar leopard has been so recent that zoologists cannot be sure that no individuals survive. In this respect its cryptozoological (and ontological) status remains uncertain.

However, as an anthropological analysis of indigenous and other narratives about the leopard shows, it can be described under as more than one kind of cryptid: as the undescribed (and unusual) variation of a known species, as a mythical animal with a zoological basis, and perhaps even as a supernatural entity with animal-like characteristics. Whereas popular cryptozoology typically reduces the investigation of imaginary beings to a single dimension (‘do they exist or not?’), we argue that only careful anthropological and ethnozoological research can unravel the complexity of cases like that of the Zanzibar leopard and other so-called cryptids. And, as this introduction has implied, cryptozoology itself can also be analysed anthropologically, a subject we will return to briefly in our conclusion.

Using previously unpublished material from the LUCE archive and the State Archives in Rome, this
article examines how film-making became part and parcel of the process of ‘taming’ nature in the Pontine
Marshes under Mussolini’s regime. Fascist authorities perceived the undisciplined and unproductive
nature of the ‘death inducing swamps’ as something that had to be extinguished from the face of Italy, to
make way for an ideal fascist nature that would nurture ideal fascist subjects. We argue that the success
of transforming the swamps owed as much to the extensive investment of labour power, capital, and
technology, as it did to the careful staging of every step of the project through cinematographic
representations. Although planning and land reclamation institutions were responsible for the material
production of the reclaimed land, the LUCE institute was instrumental in actively turning this new land
into the ideal fascist landscape. In so doing, the paper offers a new reading on landscape and nationalism
explored through an analysis of the production of landscape in Italy under Mussolini.

This article is a manifesto for anarchist geographies, which are understood as kaleidoscopic spatialities that allow for multiple, non-hierarchical, and protean connections between autonomous entities, wherein solidarities, bonds, and affinities are voluntarily assembled in opposition to and free from the presence of sovereign violence, predetermined norms, and assigned categories of belonging. In its rejection of such multivariate apparatuses of domination, this article is a proverbial call to nonviolent arms for those geographers and non-geographers alike who seek to put an end to the seemingly endless series of tragedies, misfortunes, and catastrophes that characterize the miasma and malevolence of the current neoliberal moment. But this is not simply a demand for the end of neoliberalism and its replacement with a more moderate and humane version of capitalism, nor does it merely insist upon a more egalitarian version of the state. It is instead the resurrection of a prosecution within geography that dates back to the discipline’s earliest days: anarchism!

Abstract

In this dissertation, I explore world-hegemonic competitions in the ‘Greater Mediterranean Region’ over the Long Durée. Previous studies on world-hegemonies have examined neither their ecological dimensions nor their relation to transition to capitalism. By employing a comparative historical methodology and studying primary and secondary sources, I examine the contrasting tendencies that the pre-capitalist and the capitalist world-hegemonies exhibited in relation to climate change. Pre-capitalist world-economies and world-hegemonies demonstrated a positive correlation with climatic cycles. In other words, agricultural production, rural and urban populations, commercial exchanges, and artisanal production increased concurrently with rising regional temperatures, and vice versa. In contrast, the capitalist world-economy, at least in the early modern period, showed a negative correlation. It emerged and expanded during the ‘Little Ice Age.’ Furthermore, its world-hegemonic cycles, too, demonstrated a negative correlation: The material expansion phases of the Venetian and Dutch World-Hegemonies, more or less, overlapped with the coldest periods of the Little Ice Age i.e. the Spörer Minimum (circa 1400-1550) and the Maunder Minimum (circa 1650-1725), respectively. I argue that the capitalist world-economy and its world-hegemonies escaped the pre-capitalist pattern of development due to the rise of industrial capital, and, territorial expansion of the capitalist world into the temperate and tropical zones of the globe through politico-military means. I also scrutinize the emergence of capitalist world-hegemonies with respect to debates on transition to capitalism in order to account for the consolidation of capitalism as a 
socio-ecological system.  I argue that the rapid capitalist industrial development of ‘insular states’ such as Venice and the United Provinces not only allowed them to economically and militarily outcompete ‘territorial states’ such as the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, but also prevented the capitalist world to transform into an empire. I conclude that although globalization of production liberated capitalism from the whims of regional climate and led to long-term economic growth; it simultaneously devastated local ecologies, and, progressively subjugated capitalist production to global climatic patterns over the centuries.