INTRODUCTION

• Various disciplines like sociology, anthropology, political science, biology, geography, and history have adopted the political ecological approach to understand environment and human interactions.

• Political Ecology is a distinct field of social research aimed at understanding the complex relationships between environment and social institutions through critical analysis of access and control over environmental resources.

• It emerged in response to various environmental movements that sparked public debate on environmental issues, emerging problems, and conflicts over the abundance and scarcity of resources.

• Political ecology seeks to understand political contestations over nature-society relationships, their implications for environmental health and sustainable livelihoods.

• Key questions in political ecological research include:

  • What are the causes of regional environmental degradation?

  • Who benefits from wildlife conservation efforts and who loses?

  • What social, cultural, and political movements have emerged to address social inequalities related to environment and its accessibility?

WHAT IS POLITICAL ECOLOGY?

• When we think of nature, we often imagine it as pristine and untouched, separate from human communities. However, humans are deeply embedded in nature, and interactions between humans and the natural environment shape all aspects of human life.

• All human communities, whether in cities or at the foothills of mountains, interact with nature and its resources to build their lives. The core question of political ecology is whether these interactions are free of politics.

• Political ecology examines the politics of the environment, rejecting the view that environmental degradation is a simple, objective problem solvable by scientific or technical fixes, such as reducing population or improving technologies.

• Political Ecologists emphasize the ecology of politics and the politics of ecology:

  • The ecology of politics refers to how the distribution, allocation, and extraction of natural resources shape political and social institutions within a society.

  • Ecological conditions influence social structures and institutions, presenting challenges and opportunities for meeting basic needs.

  • Politics of ecology involves decision-making over resource allocation and determining who benefits or suffers from environmental degradation.

  • Hierarchies, privilege, and power affect the use of natural resources and influence definitions of environmental problems and potential solutions.

• Political ecology studies the relationship between environmental concerns, interests, movements, and the unequal access to the environment by different social groups.

• The intellectual origin of political ecology dates back to the 1970s when anthropologists began exploring the relationship between ecology and political economy to understand environmental agitations.

• Scholars like Dianne Rocheleau, Arturo Escobar, Richard Peet, Piers Blaikie, Bunyan Bryant, Eric Wolf, and Johnston Barbara contributed to the intellectual foundations of political ecology.

• The field examines the relationship between social power and ecologies, analyzing access and control over environmental resources, environmental degradation, and rehabilitation.

• The growth of peasant studies and critiques of colonialism in the 1960s and 1970s spurred interest in how environmental landscapes and community relations were changing, especially in the context of the developmental state.

• Scholars influenced by Marxian political economy raised questions about class differentiation in rural societies, peasant mobilization against colonial rule, and the impact of international markets on the rural poor in developing countries.

• Scholars in this field focus on the construction of environmental knowledge, environmental practices of different ethnic groups, classes, races, and genders, and the empirical engagement with various social groups and their solutions to social-environmental problems.

• Political ecology highlights the importance of economic and political structures as well as cultural discourses in shaping how people relate to environmental conditions.