Political Ecology

Tor A Benjaminsen, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway

Hanne Svarstad, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway
© 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Emergence of Political Ecology 1

A Critical Approach 2
Some Key Theoretical Influences 3
Where Is the “Ecology” in Political Ecology? 4
Feminist Political Ecology 5
Conclusions 5
References 6

The Emergence of Political Ecology

Political ecology is a field within socio–environmental studies with a core focus on power relations in environmental governance as
well as the coproduction of nature and society within a wider political economy (Robbins, 2012). The field has gained momentum
during the last couple of decades especially within Anglo-American geography, but also in anthropology, development studies, and
environmental history. This momentum is witnessed through a rapid increase in university courses as well as in academic
publications internationally. Power is studied as contestations over material assets (land, natural resources) as well as over meaning.
The latter leads to studies of how various actor groups produce social constructions such as discourses and narratives, which again
have implications for the distribution and control over resources.
Building on critical theory, scholars in political ecology try to combine a focus on values with empirical transparency and
theoretical development. In this way, research in political ecology has contributed to new perspectives on both people-nature and
science-policy linkages.
Political ecology emerged from the 1970s as a result of two confluent trends. First, the field developed as a Marxist critique of
Malthusian ideas in environmental thinking. The argument was that the population centered scholarship by ecologists, such as
Ehrlich (1968) and Hardin (1968), were inherently political, and that studies of human ecology are never neutral or apolitical, but
involve interests, norms, and power. While Marxist critics tended to accept the environmental impacts of human production
described by Neo-Malthusians, they pointed to the inherent lack of social and political analysis in such studies, arguing that
Malthusian thinking invariably leads to policies of “blaming the victims.”
For example, Enzensberger (1974) pointed out that ecologists and other natural scientists may claim to be “objective” and
“apolitical,” but they become political actors when engaging in environmental debates, because they inform political choices
creating winners and losers, and because their analyses, questions, and categories are inevitably informed by normative assump-
tions. Hence, there is an issue of environmental justice that often escapes ecologists whose normativity, generally associated with
biocentrism, may impact on marginalized people’s lives.
The presumed neutrality of ecology as a science when entering environmental debates is therefore illusory. While Enzensberger
referred to natural science with apolitical pretensions (but with political implications) as “political ecology,” political ecologists
have later labeled such practices “apolitical ecology” (Robbins, 2012). This distinction refers to the difference between fields that
admit and openly engage with their inevitable, normative assumptions (political ecologies) and those that do not (apolitical
ecologies) (Robbins, 2012).
The second trend that contributed to the emergence of political ecology was the evolution of human ecology and cultural
ecology. Anthropologists in these fields, such as Nietschmann (1973) and Rappaport (1968), had long employed ecological
methods to explain human behavior. However, as the communities they studied were impacted by national governments as well
as global and national markets, it became increasingly clear that the explanatory power of their ecological methods was limited by
not being able to include the state or markets in the analysis. Researchers in this field had hit a “conceptual wall,” which led some
cultural ecologists to seek more powerful conceptual and theoretical tools, especially tools from political economy (Robbins, 2012).
From the late 1980s, a second phase in the short history of political ecology started, drawing on a wide range of theoretical and
methodological resources. Piers Blaikie’s book, The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries (Blaikie, 1985) paved the
way for an approach to political ecology that employs the lens of political economy, while explicitly engaging with rigorous natural
science. The book provides a critique of environmental conservation policies in the Global South and presents three central
arguments (Neumann, 2008).
First, there is often lack of sound scientific data on soil erosion and other environmental processes, which leads to a high level of
uncertainty. Second, actors have varying perceptions of environmental change depending on their “ideology.” Blaikie (1985, 149)
argues “that all approaches to soil erosion and conservation are ideological—they are underpinned by a definite set of assumptions,
both normative and empirical, about social change.” Third, environmental policies always hold implications for control over
resources and rights to land. A critical question to asks would therefore be: Who wins and who loses from resource and conservation

Encyclopedia of Ecology, 2nd Edition https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.10608-6 1

2 Political Ecology

policies? This leads to the study of “where power lies and how it is used” (Blaikie, 1985, 6). Blaikie proposed an approach to
understanding environmental problems by, on the one hand, problematizing the quality and uncertainty of scientific data and, on
the other hand, insisting that the production, interpretation and use of environmental data are inherently political. A process such as
soil erosion could therefore only be fully understood with the help of the tools of political economy (Rigg, 2006).
These ideas are further discussed in Blaikie’s next book, coauthored with Harold Brookfield, Land Degradation and Society (Blaikie
and Brookfield, 1987), in which “land degradation” is presented as a perceptual term, stressing that environmental changes are
perceived in differing ways by the various actors involved. Hence, “degradation” is not simply a process that can be measured with
natural science methods, but instead one in which environmental processes interact with human perception, biases, and interests.
Whether processes such as deforestation or soil erosion are perceived as “degradation” depends on the position of observers
engaged in inevitably political contests over what should be done with land and over the authority to control land change
outcomes.
Our understanding and interpretation of environmental change was thus seen as guided by our norms, interests, and values.
However, while environmental data are constructed and subject to ideological interpretations, Blaikie and Brookfield (1987, 16)
still insisted on the necessity of improving scientific techniques of measurement in order to obtain “those data which are beset with
least uncertainty”.
From the mid-1990s, political ecology evolved further to reflect poststructural influences (e.g., Peet and Watts, 1996), in which
the norms, interests, and values governing human understanding of environments and environmental change are themselves the
product of political processes that determine control over what ideas are taken-for-granted or seen as “true.” This perspective was
notably brought to bear on a range of critical environmental issues in the Global South, including natural resource scarcity,
overpopulation, soil degradation, and the notion of carrying capacity. Research in political ecology sought not only to show that
such concepts were problematic and inapplicable, but also sought to explain how, despite their imprecision, they became assumed
to be true. Political ecology in this vein is typically critical of received wisdom, especially as dominant and powerful views, narratives
and ideas often support dominant and powerful interests.
While political ecology in its inception focused predominantly on the governance of renewable natural resources in the rural
Global South, political ecology has later expanded to industrialized nations in the Global North, to urban areas, and to include
nonrenewable resources.
However, while the above history may relate to developments within Anglo-American political ecology, it is important not to
overlook the southern European tradition of political ecology (écologie politique, ecologí a polí tica) that has developed closer
connections with fields such as green politics, environmental justice and the emerging agenda of “degrowth” (e.g., D’Alisa
et al., 2014).

A Critical Approach

Political ecology is said to be a “critical approach,” which usually refers to its questioning of the role and status of powerful actors as
well as of what is taken for granted in leading discourses on environment and development. But political ecologists are also engaged
academics committed to improvements to more just and sustainable societies. In this way, political ecology can be said to trace its
roots back to the critical theory of the Frankfurt school. Max Horkheimer, one of its founders, argued that traditional theory only
attempts to understand and explain certain aspects of society, while critical theory also has a liberating aspect as it indicates the
components of society that should be changed, making a broadly multidisciplinary approach necessary (Horkheimer, 1970). In the
1960s, Jürgen Habermas, another representative of this school, put forward a critique of positivism in which he suggested that
traditional science claims objectivity on a false basis. The alternative proposed by Habermas is a critical theory of science in which
natural, human and social sciences are related to specific epistemological interests that are respectively technical, practical and
liberating (Habermas, 1968).
Although political ecology has to date made an effective contribution to showing what people should be freed from (see
Liberation Ecologies by Peet and Watts, 1996), it is nonetheless limited in regard to determining what this liberation should lead to.
Following up on this insight, Robbins (2012) argues that political ecology has two faces, and two missions—“the hatchet” and “the
seed.” The hatchet side is dominant and represents political ecology’s critical approach, whereas the seed aspect forms the
contribution of political ecology to a world in which development is fairer and more sustainable. Walker (2006), however, criticizes
political ecologists for largely neglecting the seed function. He argues that most of the writings produced in political ecology are
internal and aimed at academics working in the same field. The relations between political ecology and politics feature not only
apathy, he continues, but also antipathy; this is in fact mutual antipathy between those who have power and those who practise
political ecology.
The southern European tradition of political ecology has, however, a longer history of engaging with the seed function with its
links to environmental justice movements as well as to activists for alternative sustainabilities such as “degrowth.” The Anglo-
American tradition, however, remains to some extent torn between on the one hand deconstructions of environmental narratives
and claims presented by conservationists and how these narratives may lead to injustice and marginalization, and on the other hand
contributing to alternative sustainabilities (Cavanagh and Benjaminsen, 2017). This is, however, an on-going debate within the
field. There is also recently increased communication and interaction between these two main branches of political ecology.
 Political Ecology 3

Some Key Theoretical Influences

Political ecology can be said to be an eclectic approach taking inspiration from a wide variety of sources. There are, however, some
key theoretical influences in the field. We will here only mention three of these; political economy following Karl Marx,
poststructuralism inspired by Michel Foucault, and peasant studies with James Scott as one of the key contributors.
Marx has already been mentioned as an essential source of inspiration in the early days of political ecology, and more recently
there seems to be a revival of Marxist thinking in this field. A large number of political ecology studies have documented how
degradation narratives serve to justify elite capture and the dispossession of marginalized people from land and natural resources.
The result may be seen as another example of “primitive accumulation,” which Marx saw as a historical process of divorcing the
producer from the means of production.
According to Harvey (2003: 149), “primitive accumulation as Marx described it . . . entailed taking land, say, enclosing it, and
expelling a resident population to create a landless proletariat, and then releasing the land into the privatized mainstream of capital
accumulation.” Since accumulation is an on-going process, Harvey (2003) proposes the term “accumulation by dispossession” to
describe current processes. The introduction of this term has sparked a renewed interest in the combination of dispossession and
capital accumulation in development studies and in political ecology in particular.
For instance, Benjaminsen and Bryceson (2012) use the lens of accumulation by dispossession to analyze enclosures in wildlife
and coastal conservation in Tanzania. They show how recently established conservation initiatives steadily lead to local people’s loss
of access to land and natural resources. Dispossession has been gradual and piece-meal in some cases, while it involved violence in
other cases, but does not primarily take the usual form of privatization of land. The spaces involved are still formally state or village
land. It is rather the benefits from the land and natural resources that contribute to capital accumulation by more powerful actors
(rent-seeking state officials, transnational conservation organizations, tourism companies, and the state Treasury). In both wildlife
and coastal management, restrictions on local resource use are justified by degradation narratives, while financial benefits from
tourism are drained from local communities within a system lacking in transparent information sharing.
Michel Foucault has demonstrated the importance of analysing how dominant discourses establish what is generally accepted as
“truths” in a society. In political ecology, a number of scholars inspired by Foucault have questioned what is taken for granted or
seen as true on issues of environment and development (e.g., Adger et al., 2001).
The Foucauldian conception of “governmentality” is also applied within political ecology. This concept denotes the techniques
and tactics of government, which again implies that the governing of citizens involves the use of certain techniques to implement
certain ways of thinking. The “governmentality” concept that appeared in Foucault’s last works is a logical follow-up to his thinking
on the relations between power and knowledge. For Foucault, power and knowledge are closely inter-connected.
As an example of a political ecology application of governmentality, Fletcher (2010) outlines four distinct environmental
governmentalities (“environmentalities”) that are played out in current environmental governance: Neoliberal governmentality
(commodification and increased use of the market in environmental governance); Disciplinary governmentality (efforts to influence
individuals—create environmental subjects—through diffusion of ethical norms); Sovereign governmentality (the use of force and
threats of using force); and Truth governmentality (the art of government according to truth). It should be noted, however, that these
four forms of governmentality are not mutually exclusive. They may coexist and work together or in opposition to each other.
James Scott is a key representative of what is called “peasant studies” in which the rationality of small-scale farmers, pastoralists
or other marginalized groups is analyzed, for example the reasons why they often resist modernization. This type of peasant studies
often leads to a critique of the commonly held idea that small-scale farmers or pastoralists are irrational actors. Scott (1976)
observes that peasants tend to try to prevent risks by developing social redistribution systems for surpluses in good years in order to
protect themselves against the effects of bad years. This can be in the form of the sharing of land and labor with others. Scott (1985)
describes everyday forms of peasant resistance to modernization and exploitation holding that this opposition to interventions
from the outside world is much more global and has greater scope than armed revolt, even if the latter is more discussed.
Hence, those who are to be governed are variously able to ignore, avoid, fight, transform or reclaim the intervention in question
through tactics of noncompliance and everyday acts of resistance, which require little or no coordination or planning and may
include “foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so forth” (Scott,
1985: 29). These are the “weapons of the weak”; the “weak” being subjects who use a variety of “weapons” to defend their interests
against superordinate groups. Such everyday resistance typically avoids direct confrontation with the authorities and does not make
headlines; it is an informal form of resistance, often covert and concerned with immediate gains. Scott explains that in some cases
resistance can be more effective when hidden than when open, because cognizance of such activities may entail a rapid and
ferocious response from the superordinate group. Though the acts of hidden resistance do not openly “contest the formal
definitions of hierarchy and power” (Scott, 1985: 33), it is possible to determine to what degree, and in what ways, subordinate
groups accept the social order (and structure of domination) propagated by elites by studying the subordinates“behaviour and
“offstage” comments and conversations (Scott, 1985: 41).
These “offstage” presentations, or “hidden transcripts” as Scott (1990) calls them, are accounts that the subjects communicate in
the absence of the powerful. The hidden transcripts include both the subjects’ critique of power and practices and claims that the
dominating actor would not acknowledge openly. The concept of hidden transcripts also includes accounts that are expressed
openly, but disguised in the form of rumors, proverbs, jokes, parodies, gossip, gestures, folktales, and so on. “Public transcripts,” on
the other hand, are comments and conversations that the actors (the dominant and the subjects) present in each other’s presence.
4 Political Ecology

While public transcripts can inform us about power, they are “unlikely to tell the whole story about power relations” (Scott, 1990:
2).
While local and indigenous practices may represent complex and “messy” realities, implementations of governmentality can be
seen as attempts to simplify and standardize landscapes and practices and to make both society and territory “legible” (Scott, 1998).
For example, in the art of governing smallholder land-use, the state first needs to establish a serious problem that its policy will
solve. This will often take the form of claims of environmental degradation or economic inefficiency. Such techniques of
governmentality and their continuing power and traction in contemporary policy making are widely highlighted in contemporary
political ecology. Second, the state may need to claim that this problem can only be solved through scientific and technical means.
These techniques were described by Foucault and further developed by Li (2007) who calls these two steps “problematization” and
“rendering technical,” wherein the deployment of “scientific” or “expert” reasoning plays a key role. Scientists and scholars may,
however, also assist in questioning such processes, not least through the application of the tools and insights of critical political
ecology.

Where Is the “Ecology” in Political Ecology?

Political ecology has been criticized from the outside for being founded on a priori judgments by giving priority at the outset to
political explanations (Vayda and Walters, 1999) and for overlooking ecological dynamics (Peterson, 2000). But also within
political ecology itself, there has been a debate about the place and role of ecology. In a key contribution to this debate, Walker
(2005) asks where the ecology is in political ecology and whether the field has become “politics without ecology.”
This critique may for instance be seen as relevant for some of the Marxist inspired contributions to political ecology. This
literature reflects in some way Marx’s idea that “. . . all progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the
worker, but of robbing the soil” (Marx, 1990: 638). Hence, market integration and the expansion of capitalism would tend also to
lead to environmental degradation, according to this thinking.
In a seminal contribution to this literature, Watts (1983) studying small-scale farming in northern Nigeria found that
commodification caused starvation and economic marginalization among peasants. Increasingly dependent on an unstable market,
they became more vulnerable, and had to take up loans and generally take more risks. Previously self-sufficient, peasants gradually
became underpaid farm workers. This in turn led to decreasing investments of labor on their own land, resulting in the degradation
of soils on land where food crops were grown.
However, from the late 1980s, a number of students and scholars who were inspired by the research agenda proposed by Blaikie
(1985) and Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) carried out empirical studies in the global South unpacking the “ecology” in the political
ecology equation. This implied extending the focus on peasant rationality and agency within peasant studies and cultural ecology to
environmental dynamics. Many of these studies focused on Africa and generated new knowledge and critiques of environmental
orthodoxies in several fields.
An example of this was the edited book entitled The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received Wisdom on the African Environment by
Leach and Mearns (1996). This was a collection of key critical contributions on various environmental issues in Africa (e.g., range
ecology, desertification, deforestation, biodiversity conservation, and soil erosion). A series of chapters challenged received wisdom
on these issues and reflected a broader literature that had emerged during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Henceforth, a large
number of case studies from different parts of the African continent and on various environmental issues have continued to
question dominant (often Neo-Malthusian) narratives on environmental degradation through carefully collected
environmental data.
Blaikie (1999), however, pointed out that political ecological critiques of claims of “degradation” in fact owe more to realist
science than to postmodern deconstruction. Hence, critical political ecology has to a large extent been based on realist investigations
of environmental change to construct counter-narratives or alternative narratives to those dominating policies or academic debates.
A “critical political ecology” would critically and empirically examine all environmental representations whether based on
Malthusianism or a critique of capitalism. This also implies investigating rather than assuming “the essentialist link between
capitalism and environmental degradation” that one often finds in the development literature (Forsyth, 2003).
Critical political ecologies would combine deconstructions of narratives with a realist belief in science as a means to achieve
more accurate descriptions and understandings of environmental realities. Such combinations of realist and constructivist positions
are referred to in political ecology as a critical realist position. According to Forsyth (2001), critical realism seeks to understand
ecological change through a combination of epistemological skepticism and ontological realism.
Michael Watts has, however, also criticized some political ecology for paying too close attention to natural aspects (“ecology”)
and too little attention to “political” aspects (Peet and Watts, 1996; Watts, 1997). Watts holds that this leads to an atheoretical
approach, which lacks a general theory of social change that would explain environmental degradation. This debate reflects a
tension within political ecology between an approach engaging actively with natural science and ecology and one focusing on social
theory and “politics.”
 Political Ecology 5

Feminist Political Ecology

Within political ecology and particularly the subfield of feminist political ecology (FPE), gender is emphasized as one of the central
factors in questions of power, access and benefits associated with natural resources. In specific contexts, scholars examine gender
together with other factors such as class, race, ethnicity, and age. So far, two seminal volumes have been published in FPE. In 1996,
Dianne Rocheleau, Barbara Thomas-Slayter and Esther Wangari edited Feminist Political Ecology: Global Issues and Local Experiences,
and in 2015, the book Practising Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the “Green Economy” was edited by Wendy Harcourt and
Ingrid L. Nelson (2015). As in political ecology as such, FPE is characterized by a plurality of approaches and openness to
incorporation of new thoughts. Rocheleau (2015) states: “FPE is more about a feminist perspective and an ongoing exploration
and construction of a network of learners than a fixed approach to a single focus on women and/or gender.” Elmhirst (2015) argues
that FPE has gained from a long string of feminist traditions, starting with gender and development studies, and then encompassing
feminist science studies as well as recent poststructuralist, posthumanist and postcapitalist feminist theory.
The ecofeminism of Shiva (1988) and others is a field that has contributed to bringing gender into thinking about environment
and development, and it can be seen as an important source of inspiration and predecessor of FPE. Many contributors to FPE,
however, follow the criticism that Jackson (1993) and Braidotti et al. (1994) and others have posed at ecofeminism as entailing
biological essentialism instead of an empirical openness and examination of ways that gender might play out in specific contexts.
This criticism also highlights gender stereotyping where women due to biology are seen as more environmental friendly than men.
Through several decades, Rocheleau (2015) has conducted seminal FPE work based on case studies from different parts of the
world and especially in Kenya. She has shown how landscapes and livelihoods are gendered with mosaics of various responsibil-
ities, labor and control of resource, processes and/or products. Among other contributions are Leach (1994) on Sierra Leone,
Schroeder (1999) on the Gambia, Paulson (2005) on Bolivia and Nightingale (2011) on Nepal.
In the 2015 volume on FPE, several contributors address the current hegemonies of marketizations and neoliberalization of
nature. Drawing on a combination of FPE and feminist political economy, Wichterich (2015) criticizes initiatives for gender
equality in neoliberal climate policies such as carbon trading and the clean development mechanism (e.g., “women’s carbon
standard”—www.womenscarbonstandard.org). She warns about neoliberal empowerment of women that provides uncertain and
limited influence or economic returns, and at the same time legitimizes the use of the global South as carbon sink and the continued
consumerism of the global North and global middle classes.
As in political ecology in general, most contributions to FPE so far tend to come from case studies in the global South.
Nevertheless, the approaches and issues are also relevant in the North, as some studies from Norway demonstrate. Although this
country usually has high scores on gender equality indicators, gender equality has recently been left out in important issues of
conservation and environmental management. This is not because women have chosen themselves not to get involved in these
policy issues. Instead, a broad range of actors at various scales have been involved in setting aside laws that otherwise apply on
gender equality in politics, and this again is due to power struggles and alliance building in a field that traditionally is controlled by
men (Svarstad et al., 2006, 2009; Benjaminsen and Svarstad, 2017). In an examination of gender aspects in a new governance
system for protected areas in Norway, Lundberg (2017) shows that legal requirements for gender equality in Norway have finally
been implemented, but in a way that still hides that few local women take part in conservation boards.

Conclusions

Political ecology is a field in environmental studies focusing on power relations that has gained momentum during the last couple
of decades. Power is studied as contestations over material assets (land, natural resources) as well as over meaning. The latter leads
to studies of social constructions, which again have implications for the distribution and control over resources.
From the 1970s, political ecology emerged as a Marxist critique of Malthusianism and as a further development of a human and
cultural ecology approach including also the impact of states and markets in the analysis of human-environment interactions. From
the 1980s, this approach further focused on how norms, interests and values form our interpretation of environmental change.
These norms, interests and values are again the product of political processes that determine control over what ideas are taken-for-
granted or seen as “true.”
Political ecology is an eclectic approach that has been taking inspiration from a wide variety of sources. Key theoretical influences
discussed here are political economy following Karl Marx, poststructuralism inspired by Michel Foucault, and peasant studies with
James Scott as one of the key contributors. An on-going discussion in the field is also the place and role of “ecology” within the
political ecology equation. Some contributions within the field engage actively with natural science, while other parts of this
literature remain within more social science-based theoretical debates where “ecology” refers to the environment more broadly.
Finally, this article discusses feminist political ecology as a subfield reflecting political ecology’s eclecticism where the role of gender
and power in relation to access to and benefits from natural resource governance is discussed, again taking inspiration from a variety
of scholarly directions and theories.
In the wake of recent debates about “posttruth” and increasing political pressure on science, especially related to global climate
change, a future key tension and point of discussion within political ecology will be how to balance a continued critique of the
production of environmental science promoting certain biocentric values with a belief in science as the best bulwark against
6 Political Ecology

political gerrymandering. This conundrum may best be solved through adhering to a critical realist approach combining decon-
structions with a realist reliance on science as a means to achieve the most accurate descriptions and understandings of environ-
mental realities. Such a critical realism combines a critical scrutiny of available “truths” with continuously seeking to identify the
best available science, which is quite similar to how science should work under normal circumstances, if left without political
interference.

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