Advancing a Political Ecology of Global Environment Discourses (original) (raw)

2012: ‘The Global Political Ecology of the CDM’, Global Environmental Politics, Vol. 12 No.4 , pp.49-68 (with Adam Bumpus).

This article seeks to explain the ways in which the "global" environmental governance of clean development intersects with the "local" politics of resource regimes that are enrolled in carbon markets through the production and trade in Certiªed Emissions Reductions (CERs). It shows how political structures and decision-making procedures, which were set up at the international level to govern the acquisition of CERs through the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), interact with and transform national and local level political ecologies in host countries where very different governance structures, political networks, and state-market relations operate. It draws on literature within political ecology to understand how the creation of global carbon markets potentially disrupts and changes local social and ecological relations through impacts on property rights, access to resources, and notions of value and justice that exist in a diversity of sectors and settings that the CDM touches through its global reach. Drawing on ªeld work in Argentina and Honduras, we illustrate the politics of translation 1 that occur when the social and environmental consequences of decisions made within global governance mechanisms such as the CDM are followed through to particular sites in the global political economy and, at the same time, how social relations and environmental conditions in those sites affect the global politics of the CDM.

Birgit Müller (editor) 2022 Political Ecology and Environmental Governance

LASA Forum 53:1, 2022

Political ecology, the encounter between the tradition of Latin American critical thought and the vast experiences and strategies of grassroots communities and Indigenous peoples in the face of plunder and despoliation, questions the established order and the institutions of this order. The study of power relations, crossing the socio-environmental field, has emerged in Latin America as a central interdisciplinary field for thinking about society/environment relations. Latin American critical thinking, which had as a reference a productivist vision of development and modernity, has opened up to the vast plurality of popular movements in search for autonomy and enhancement of rights, and to the unique and constitutive relationship that communities have with their local natures and territories. It implies a critical look at the rationality of state forms and their forms of internal colonialism; primitive accumulation; forms of subordination of the working class around the mining, extraction, and plantation economy; and at the appropriation of agro-biodiversity and ancestral knowledge by the “knowledge society.” How do contestations between knowledge systems and ways of being in the world come together with questions of environmental justice and injustice, class, race, and social costs to future generations when industrial production, infrastructure, and consumption destroy the very basis of urban and rural livelihoods: water, forests, and biodiversity? How does political ecology integrate the challenges posed by the new rivalry in the global economy?

POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT; A CRITICAL REVIEW OF SOME RELEVANT ASPECTS

POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT; A CRITICAL REVIEW OF SOME RELEVANT ASPECTS The tremendous increase in the scale of human impact on earth together with our increased although imperfect understanding of ecological processes means that the environment can no longer viewed as a relatively stable background factor. Rather the interaction between economic development and complex and often fragile ecosystems on which that development depends has become a major political issue both locally and globally (Maigua & Musyimi, n.d.). It is no longer possible to treat ecology and politics as separate spheres. The institutions that matter most are no longer specifically environmental but rather are the core institutions that govern or at least seek to govern the workings of the world politics and economy. A major focus is actually the integration of environmental concerns into the sphere of economic planning and policy making rather than the development of an entirely separate thus peripheral sphere (Maigua & Musyimi, n.d.). This study therefore aims to make a critical analysis of some important aspects regarding the political ecology of environmental management. Political ecology informs political makers and organizations about the complexities surrounding environment and development thereby contributing to better environmental governance. It helps understand the decisions that communities make about the natural environment in the context of their political environment, economic pressures and societal regulations. Political ecology also looks at how unequal relations in and among societies affects the environment especially in the context of government policy (Grieber, 2009). The study therefore at various political aspects and their influence on environmental management. Firstly it looks at the issue of environmental democracy and how it influences environmental management. This includes the aspects of participation, environmental justice and information access. It then elaborates environmental governance including global environmental governance and implications on environmental management. The study then looks at other political aspects of relevance to environmental management including: the global commons, geopolitics, environmental movements and the conduct of politicians. It then looks at trends in the political ecology of Africa and then Kenya specifically. Policy making and how it influences environmental management is then explained. The study then winds up with a review of. The legal and policy frameworks for environmental management in Kenya.

ENVIRONMENTAL ECOLOGY: PARALYZED THROUGH POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC RE-MODIFICATIONS AND FIEFDOM

The modern material mechanized world's political and economic ideology as far as environmental concerns is based on the policy of self-determination and exploration which relies blindly on biodiversity utilization, desertification, deforestation, industrial growth, chemical wastage, poisonous emissions. Moreover the environmental issues function on local and global phenomenon controlled through decision making of hierarchies of power. Hence modernization and development works at multiple levels including the roles, actions and practices of government agents, civil society and individuals. It connects local, national, international and global environmental domain and discourse, which attempts to bring forth the social impacts and climate change due to environmental problems arising out of scientific advancements.This paper attempts to bring together Ecology and Economics-the disparate disciplines of different nature by probing into the sole objectives of both respectively. It aims to investigate how the local sources become the source of subsistence for inhabitants. Thirdly the paper will take up the role and responsibilities of the stakeholders to reconstruct the dysfunctional ecological balance and to recompense the loss that has occurred due to blindness towards global environmental health and harmony.