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#politicalecology

7 posts1 participant7 posts today
Journal of Political Ecology

Chapman, K. & Tait, M., (2025) “Commodification, labor, abstraction: Three key concepts to understand the many-headed hydra of biodiversity offsetting”, Journal of Political Ecology 32(1): 6186. doi: doi.org/10.2458/jpe.6186

Journal of Political EcologyCommodification, labor, abstraction: Three key concepts to understand the many-headed hydra of biodiversity offsettingNatural capital approaches to mitigating the impacts of construction projects, in which environmental harms and mitigations are calculated and then traded, have become dominant features of contemporary conservation. They are subject to considerable critique within the political ecology and radical conservation literatures on the grounds that they involve the commodification of nature. In the case of biodiversity offsetting, the commodification process in question is often described as involving forms of abstraction, pictured as a subtractive, reductive, 'lossy' process that reduces messy ecologies to quantitative and exchangeable credits. This article seeks to develop a different understanding of abstraction, pointing towards a more generative and creative account in which it creates a range of niches for different types of value extraction, including rent, labor exploitation and knowledge commodity creation. The aim is to provide a more precise account of when and where knowledge commodities are produced in credit creation, and to understand their relationship to a wider 'many-headed hydra' of value extraction from nature.
#biodiversity#politicalecology
Journal of Political Ecology

Duffy, R., Hutchinson, A., Iordachescu, G. & Lappe-Osthege, T., (2025) “A harms-based political ecology: Understanding harms through the wildlife trade”, Journal of Political Ecology 32(1): 6226. doi: doi.org/10.2458/jpe.6226

Journal of Political EcologyA harms-based political ecology: Understanding harms through the wildlife tradeIn this article, we examine how political ecology can benefit from greater engagement with green criminology's focus on harms. We do so by developing a harms-based political ecology, which is a useful lens through which to analyze global environmental change. It is essential to understand how harms are produced and sustained, and what impacts they have on people and wildlife. This article examines the wildlife trade in Europe focusing on brown bears, European eels and songbirds. In particular, the article analyzes how harms are produced in the context of global capitalism, unequal power relations and interconnected global crises. Through this analysis the article develops the field of political ecology by encouraging approaches that fully address harms to non-human animals. This harms-based approach builds on current justice perspectives within green criminology that emphasize anthropocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric concepts of justice to expand concepts of victimhood and harm.
#politicalecology
Journal of Political Ecology

Lambert, L. A., Tayah, J., Adam, H. & Esmail, S., (2025) “From rebel governance to energy and environmental policies in a post-war setting: The case of the Taliban in Afghanistan”, Journal of Political Ecology 32(1): 6985. doi: doi.org/10.2458/jpe.6985

Journal of Political EcologyFrom rebel governance to energy and environmental policies in a post-war setting: The case of the Taliban in AfghanistanA vast body of literature has established how armed conflicts and wars are harmful to the environment, and it is generally assumed that peace should be beneficial to it. This article investigates the understudied environmental and energy discourse and policies of an armed insurgency turned national government after a protracted war, with the case of the Taliban regime following their August 2021 complete takeover of Afghanistan. This article reviews the official discourse of the former rebel group on these matters, uses stakeholders interviews (from the Taliban government, independent experts, and the opposition), and deploys remote sensing techniques to assess and understand the gap between the regime's declared intentions to fight climate change, and the reality of deforestation across the country on the one hand (for firewood, timber exports, and opium poppy cultivation), as well as the strong development of poorly regulated coal production and exports. These elements, as well as the lack of investments in the renewable energy sector, constitute a historical continuation of the neglect of the environment and a contradiction to the official discourse of grave concern over climate change and the environment.
#afghanistan#politicalecology
Journal of Political Ecology

Pathak, S., Mukherjee, J., Sen, A. & Choudry, A., (2025) “Whose habitat? Exploring human-tiger conflict in the riskscapes of the Indian Sundarbans”, Journal of Political Ecology 32(1): 5111. doi: doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5111

Journal of Political EcologyWhose habitat? Exploring human-tiger conflict in the riskscapes of the Indian SundarbansThe Indian Sundarbans, the world's largest littoral mangrove stretch, draws attention in scientific discourses, being an ecosystem vulnerable to global climate change and a biodiversity hotspot governed under institutionalized protected area management. The Sundarbans are well-known as the world's only coastal mangrove habitat of the man-eating Royal Bengal Tigers. This UNESCO World Heritage Site often features in media coverage and popular discourse due to a surging number of human-tiger conflicts. Whenever such incidents happen, the popular narratives project them as an outcome of community intrusion and illegality, violating the norms of reserved and protected areas. Remedial measures often call for a stricter imposition of conservation rules. This article exposes the limits of such portrayals. Introducing the conceptual framework of riskscapes, it argues that to understand the human-tiger conflict, it is necessary to explore the comprehensive risk situation and the multiple risk entanglements in the Indian Sundarbans. Through ethnographic explorations on the Gosaba block, we present the human-tiger conflict as a node to assess multiple risk imaginaries and their production, development, and mutual entanglements. Further, we demonstrate the gradual marginalization of the community in the composite impact of these plural risk imaginaries. We suggest the necessity of localized livelihood generation informed by the existing risk ensemble and anchored to local community aspirations.
#politicalecology
Miguel Afonso Caetano

"In the age of ecological breakdown, there is a growing need for ‘green’ industrial policy. However, existing frameworks for green industrial policy fail to address unsustainable growth in energy and resource use in high-income economies. In this sense, they are not adequate to achieve core ecological objectives. This paper fills a gap in the literature by offering a progressive framework for green industrial policy that combines traditional green industrial policy perspectives with insights from ecological economics and literature on post-growth and degrowth. The framework has three key pillars: (1) scale down ecologically harmful industries and sectors to directly reduce energy and resource use; (2) organise production more around public benefit, with greater democratic control and guidance over investment and production; and (3) work towards global ecological justice and enable greater ‘ecological policy space’ for the global South to pursue industrial development. The paper argues that this progressive approach to green industrial policy is necessary due to the scale and urgency of the ecological crisis. The framework shows how productive capacity can be liberated and redirected towards more socially and environmentally beneficial ends, while also democratising control over the economy."

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10

#IndustrialPolicy#PoliticalEcology#PoliticalEconomy
Miguel Afonso Caetano

The Physics of Capitalism: How a New Political Ecology Can Change the World - Erald Kolasi (NYU Press, Feb 13, 2025)

"A comprehensive blueprint for a new post-capitalist order—which values our collective future over immediate economic gains

The fate of all economic systems is written in the energy flows they obtain from the natural world. Our collective humanity very much depends on nature—for joy, for comfort, and for sheer survival. In his prescient new book, The Physics of Capitalism, Erald Kolasi explores the deep ecological physics of human existence by developing a new theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between economic systems and the wider natural world.

Nature is full of complex and dynamic systems that are constantly interacting with our societies. The collective physical interactions of the natural world guide and forge many fundamental features of human societies and civilizations. Humanity does not exist on a magical pedestal above the rest of reality; we are just one slice in a grand continuum of physical systems that interact, combine, and transform over time. We too belong to the natural world. And it’s this critical fact that controls the long-term fate of our economies and civilizations. Among all the living organisms that have called this blue marble home, humans are a very recent species. In that short period of time, we have managed to become one of the most dominant life forms in the history of the planet, creating powerful civilizations with elaborate cultures, large populations, and extensive trade networks. We have been nomads and farmers, scientists and lawyers, nurses and doctors, welders and blacksmiths. Our achievements are both astonishing and unprecedented, but they also carry great risks.
(...)
This book offers a comprehensive blueprint for our collective future, pointing the way to a new post-capitalism order..."

books.google.com/books?id=dov_

Google BooksThe Physics of CapitalismA comprehensive blueprint for a new post-capitalist order—which values our collective future over immediate economic gainsThe fate of all economic systems is written in the energy flows they obtain from the natural world. Our collective humanity very much depends on nature—for joy, for comfort, and for sheer survival. In his prescient new book, The Physics of Capitalism, Erald Kolasi explores the deep ecological physics of human existence by developing a new theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between economic systems and the wider natural world. Nature is full of complex and dynamic systems that are constantly interacting with our societies. The collective physical interactions of the natural world guide and forge many fundamental features of human societies and civilizations. Humanity does not exist on a magical pedestal above the rest of reality; we are just one slice in a grand continuum of physical systems that interact, combine, and transform over time. We too belong to the natural world. And it’s this critical fact that controls the long-term fate of our economies and civilizations. Among all the living organisms that have called this blue marble home, humans are a very recent species. In that short period of time, we have managed to become one of the most dominant life forms in the history of the planet, creating powerful civilizations with elaborate cultures, large populations, and extensive trade networks. We have been nomads and farmers, scientists and lawyers, nurses and doctors, welders and blacksmiths. Our achievements are both astonishing and unprecedented, but they also carry great risks. Throughout history, economic growth has depended heavily on people converting more energy from their natural environments and concentrating the resulting energy flows towards the application of specific tasks. The economic and demographic growth of human civilization over the last ten thousand years has profoundly impacted natural ecosystems throughout the planet, triggering major instabilities across the biosphere that threaten to reverberate on civilization and to destabilize its long-term trajectory. Swamped with multiple ecological challenges of historic proportions, global civilization now stands at a critical tipping point that deserves closer scrutiny. If we are to have any hope of addressing the difficult challenges we face, then we must begin by understanding them and appreciating their complexity. And then, we must act. This book offers a comprehensive blueprint for our collective future, pointing the way to a new post-capitalist order that can provide long-term viability and stability for human civilization on a global scale.
#Capitalism#Ecology#PoliticalEcology
Journal of Political Ecology

[in english & en francais] Ronoh, S. & Randriamanantena, A., (2025) “Book Review of Benjamin Neimark. 2023. Hottest of the Hotspots: The rise of eco-precarious conservation labor in Madagascar”, Journal of Political Ecology 32(1).

journals.librarypublishing.ari
#politicalecology #madagascar

Journal of Political EcologyBook Review of Benjamin Neimark. 2023. Hottest of the Hotspots: The rise of eco-precarious conservation labor in Madagascar.
cəci

Yesterday I participated to #TransizioniFest in Airuno (LC, Italy), representing the rather new Italian Post-Growth Platform. We brought an interactive game by DISNOVATION.ORG, fittingly called the Post-Growth Toolkit:

Platform decrescitafelice.it/2024/09/po

Game postgrowth.art/pages/the-game.

And it was cool!!! The toolkit was originally not available in Italian, but it's covered by CC licence so we could translate and adapt it. We also added a more interactive part at the end, where participants could have drawn, played or illustrated their conclusions with movement. In the end, no one chose the creative options :D they were too caught up in discussions, but I guess that's a win too.

You should check it out if you're looking for interactive but content-packed stuff on #degrowth #postgrowth or #politicalecology

Journal of Political Ecology

Koch, Y. E. & Lawhon, M., (2025) “"That's how we live sustainably"! Conflicting environmentalisms in Franconian Switzerland ”, Journal of Political Ecology 32(1). doi: doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5722

Journal of Political Ecology"That's how we live sustainably"! Conflicting environmentalisms in Franconian Switzerland What is sustainable – and who gets to decide what sustainability is – remains a central question for political ecologists. Scholars have explained and critiqued specific iterations, as well as proposed versions of what they believe sustainability ought to be. In practice, environmentalism is made up of a panoply of emerging, concurrent and conflicting views that continue to change over time and are emplaced and enacted differently. This article contributes to making sense of not only of how environmentalisms are constructed, but how they interact with each other, perhaps complementing, perhaps displacing each other. This article draws on data from a four-month immersion into rural Franconian Switzerland (FS) in Germany alongside twelve semi-structured interviews to gain insight into a grounded example of the interplay of perspectives, practices and sustainability. Using food as an example to anchor our discussion, we found that participants' explanations of sustainability were entangled with rooted knowledge and an emphasis on locality. They highlighted that frugality and self-sufficiency underpin sustainability and exemplify interconnectedness, enabling ecological balance and sustainable livelihoods. Participants were also asked their opinions on the sustainability of two practices present in hegemonic European notions of environmentalism: bio/organic production and vegetarianism. These practices were largely rejected for a range of reasons, raising important questions about the interaction between different sets of environmental beliefs. Here, our intention is not to reconcile this conflict, nor to define what is really sustainable, but instead to highlight how the environmentalism of the participants is both challenged and expanded through the contestation of its ideological boundaries.
#politicalecology
Journal of Political Ecology

Hunter, R. A., (2025) “Land access, land use, and agricultural practice: Political ecologies of servitude at colonial Ollantaytambo (1550–1770)”, Journal of Political Ecology 32(1): 5868. doi: doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5868

Journal of Political EcologyLand access, land use, and agricultural practice: Political ecologies of servitude at colonial Ollantaytambo (1550–1770)Researchers have long noted connections between the creation of property in colonial contexts and environmental and ecological transformations. These links are most clear in settler colonial contexts, especially where property formation operated according to logics of 'improvement' that alienated Indigenous peoples from their lands and devalued traditional land use. In this article I present a case study from the Ollantaytambo region of Cusco, Peru to argue that property formation was also an ecological force in Spanish colonial contexts. I draw on political ecology theories of land access to suggest that the creation of the hacienda system of landholding instantiated an ecology of servitude predicated on unequal access to land and the organization of unfree labor. This colonial ecology structured land use and reshaped the local environment in enduring ways.
#politicalecology
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