Pub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1177/27539687231201667
Yu-Kai Liao, Jeremy J Schmidt
Over recent decades, hydrosocial scholarship focusing on the plural, often contested relations of waters and societies has advanced significantly. This article reviews hydrosocial scholarship in three steps that are contextualized by geography's long-standing efforts to use water to ‘think geography’. The article begins by revisiting critiques of the hydrological cycle as circulating free of anthropogenic forces and wholly on the ‘nature’ side of the society/nature dualism. We consider how this critique shapes engagement with other fields where human–water relations are crucial, such as socio-hydrology and those focused on climate change. The article then examines the extension of hydrosocial scholarship from critiques of the hydrological cycle to its use in explaining social spaces, such as territory, urban processes and citizenship. Finally, we consider how hydrosocial scholarship from Black, Indigenous and anti-colonial praxis challenges epistemologies and ontologies that, even in their critiques, recentre Eurocentric notions of water.
{"title":"Hydrosocial geographies: Cycles, spaces and spheres of concern","authors":"Yu-Kai Liao, Jeremy J Schmidt","doi":"10.1177/27539687231201667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/27539687231201667","url":null,"abstract":"Over recent decades, hydrosocial scholarship focusing on the plural, often contested relations of waters and societies has advanced significantly. This article reviews hydrosocial scholarship in three steps that are contextualized by geography's long-standing efforts to use water to ‘think geography’. The article begins by revisiting critiques of the hydrological cycle as circulating free of anthropogenic forces and wholly on the ‘nature’ side of the society/nature dualism. We consider how this critique shapes engagement with other fields where human–water relations are crucial, such as socio-hydrology and those focused on climate change. The article then examines the extension of hydrosocial scholarship from critiques of the hydrological cycle to its use in explaining social spaces, such as territory, urban processes and citizenship. Finally, we consider how hydrosocial scholarship from Black, Indigenous and anti-colonial praxis challenges epistemologies and ontologies that, even in their critiques, recentre Eurocentric notions of water.","PeriodicalId":196693,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Environmental Geography","volume":"157 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136309252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1177/27539687231183448
Amy Donovan, Julie Morin, Rory A. Walshe
This Progress Report reviews the geographical literature concerning environmental hazards and risk focussing particularly on areas that require and enhance interdisciplinary working between human and physical geographers. Although there are still substantial gaps between disciplinary siloes, there is a growing recognition that critical interdisciplinary work is vital. Key areas include early warning, urban planning, hazard and risk mapping, scientific advisory processes, risk communication and institutional geographies. We review some of this work, examine emerging theory and consider the opportunities for greater knowledge exchange between disciplines using critical physical geography and cognate approaches.
{"title":"Interdisciplinary research in hazards and disaster risk","authors":"Amy Donovan, Julie Morin, Rory A. Walshe","doi":"10.1177/27539687231183448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/27539687231183448","url":null,"abstract":"This Progress Report reviews the geographical literature concerning environmental hazards and risk focussing particularly on areas that require and enhance interdisciplinary working between human and physical geographers. Although there are still substantial gaps between disciplinary siloes, there is a growing recognition that critical interdisciplinary work is vital. Key areas include early warning, urban planning, hazard and risk mapping, scientific advisory processes, risk communication and institutional geographies. We review some of this work, examine emerging theory and consider the opportunities for greater knowledge exchange between disciplines using critical physical geography and cognate approaches.","PeriodicalId":196693,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Environmental Geography","volume":"110 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127989417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-31DOI: 10.1177/27539687231190656
Siddharth Sareen, Alevgul H. Sorman, R. Stock, Katherine M Mahoney, Bérénice Girard
Solar energy has become the world's cheapest and fastest scaling electricity source. Multiple societal sectors are electrifying, and the scale and pace of change give some hope of near-future rapid climate mitigation through solar rollouts despite the bleak record to date. Critiques of utility-scale solar development foreground injustices like displacing marginalised groups and perpetuating resource inequity. Governance scholars argue for stringent regulations towards just transitions, and community energy research shows that smaller-scale solar solutions hold promise in being more equitable. Our contribution argues for the possibility of redistributive and emancipatory solar development, drawing from scholarship on governance (institutional configurations, policy mixes and cross-sectoral regulation) and scale (comparative energy geographies with attention to context-specificity and trans-local connection). We conceptualise and operationalise the term ‘solidaric solarities’ as modalities of harnessing solar energy to advance empowerment, interconnectedness and community wealth for victims of energy injustices. This focuses on political economy issues, where solar development can advance solidarity with historically marginalised groups, to create affordable distributed future renewable energy systems. The analysis underpinning this normative orientation leverages secondary research and scholarly expertise on solar rollouts. We offer pragmatic governance principles informed by values that engender solidarity, illuminating potential pathways to enable solidaric solar transitions.
{"title":"Solidaric solarities: Governance principles for transforming solar power relations","authors":"Siddharth Sareen, Alevgul H. Sorman, R. Stock, Katherine M Mahoney, Bérénice Girard","doi":"10.1177/27539687231190656","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/27539687231190656","url":null,"abstract":"Solar energy has become the world's cheapest and fastest scaling electricity source. Multiple societal sectors are electrifying, and the scale and pace of change give some hope of near-future rapid climate mitigation through solar rollouts despite the bleak record to date. Critiques of utility-scale solar development foreground injustices like displacing marginalised groups and perpetuating resource inequity. Governance scholars argue for stringent regulations towards just transitions, and community energy research shows that smaller-scale solar solutions hold promise in being more equitable. Our contribution argues for the possibility of redistributive and emancipatory solar development, drawing from scholarship on governance (institutional configurations, policy mixes and cross-sectoral regulation) and scale (comparative energy geographies with attention to context-specificity and trans-local connection). We conceptualise and operationalise the term ‘solidaric solarities’ as modalities of harnessing solar energy to advance empowerment, interconnectedness and community wealth for victims of energy injustices. This focuses on political economy issues, where solar development can advance solidarity with historically marginalised groups, to create affordable distributed future renewable energy systems. The analysis underpinning this normative orientation leverages secondary research and scholarly expertise on solar rollouts. We offer pragmatic governance principles informed by values that engender solidarity, illuminating potential pathways to enable solidaric solar transitions.","PeriodicalId":196693,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Environmental Geography","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123858250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1177/27539687231190658
Michelle Bishop
This article looks beneath Indigenous (environmental) education sovereignty to uncover the underpinning values of Humility; Listen; and Respect. These values are invoked by education practices that have existed in the so-called Australia forever and have the potential to change the way we live and interact; restoring health and relationships with Country, each other and more-than-human kin. These are not pretty concepts to “do,” they comprise of deeper axiological ways to “be.” It is imperative Indigenous knowledges are centered when talking about “the environment,” as colonialism continues to cause severe and irreversible damage across the globe. These values encompass a shift toward Indigenous Education Sovereignty, that is, education grounded in Indigenous knowledge, for our grandchildren's grandchildren.
{"title":"Humility. Listen. Respect: Three values underpinning Indigenous (environmental) education sovereignty","authors":"Michelle Bishop","doi":"10.1177/27539687231190658","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/27539687231190658","url":null,"abstract":"This article looks beneath Indigenous (environmental) education sovereignty to uncover the underpinning values of Humility; Listen; and Respect. These values are invoked by education practices that have existed in the so-called Australia forever and have the potential to change the way we live and interact; restoring health and relationships with Country, each other and more-than-human kin. These are not pretty concepts to “do,” they comprise of deeper axiological ways to “be.” It is imperative Indigenous knowledges are centered when talking about “the environment,” as colonialism continues to cause severe and irreversible damage across the globe. These values encompass a shift toward Indigenous Education Sovereignty, that is, education grounded in Indigenous knowledge, for our grandchildren's grandchildren.","PeriodicalId":196693,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Environmental Geography","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121672870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-06DOI: 10.1177/27539687231184901
Manuel Prieto, Gabriela Valdivia, Tom Perreault
In this intervention, we explore the impacts of geopolitical bifurcation on the field of political ecology, specifically the divide between political ecology from the Global North and political ecology from the Global South. We argue that this divide perpetuates categorical essentialisms, flattens authors’ standpoints, and reproduces inequities in how scholarship is valued and circulated based on where it is written from. These issues are not limited to political ecology alone but can be relevant to environmental geography as well. Through our analysis of the perpetuation of aporia in political ecology, we challenge the normalcy of this North/South differentiation and advocate for recognizing the agency and capacity of political ecology practitioners, regardless of their geographic location, language, or nationality, to shape the field. Drawing from our experiences as Latin Americanist political ecologists, we argue that transhemispheric and polylingual projects that challenge power dynamics, create inclusive research processes, and recognize colonial legacies are crucial for more equitable and just approaches to addressing environmental and social justice issues. Furthermore, we examine the coloniality of institutions and technologies that move environmental knowledge as a commodity, such as universities, indexed journals, publishing houses, and research funding criteria.
{"title":"Aporias of North/South political ecologies","authors":"Manuel Prieto, Gabriela Valdivia, Tom Perreault","doi":"10.1177/27539687231184901","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/27539687231184901","url":null,"abstract":"In this intervention, we explore the impacts of geopolitical bifurcation on the field of political ecology, specifically the divide between political ecology from the Global North and political ecology from the Global South. We argue that this divide perpetuates categorical essentialisms, flattens authors’ standpoints, and reproduces inequities in how scholarship is valued and circulated based on where it is written from. These issues are not limited to political ecology alone but can be relevant to environmental geography as well. Through our analysis of the perpetuation of aporia in political ecology, we challenge the normalcy of this North/South differentiation and advocate for recognizing the agency and capacity of political ecology practitioners, regardless of their geographic location, language, or nationality, to shape the field. Drawing from our experiences as Latin Americanist political ecologists, we argue that transhemispheric and polylingual projects that challenge power dynamics, create inclusive research processes, and recognize colonial legacies are crucial for more equitable and just approaches to addressing environmental and social justice issues. Furthermore, we examine the coloniality of institutions and technologies that move environmental knowledge as a commodity, such as universities, indexed journals, publishing houses, and research funding criteria.","PeriodicalId":196693,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Environmental Geography","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129462183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-20DOI: 10.1177/27539687231183449
Y. Narayanan
This review draws on the work of critical animal geographers to elicit the notion of environmental anthropocentrism through critiques of progress as human development that adversely incorporates or displaces animal bodies in the service of (green) capitalism and sustainability. It reflects on how ideas of “progress” in environmental geography become reshaped through a critical animal geographic approach that politicizes animal–nature relations in all their diversity, and centers the experiences of animals as individuals and species in development-induced ecological crises. To this end, it advances three principles for an anti-anthropocentric analytic of progress as multispecies liberatory futures: animating humans toward a shared (but not universal) animality; differentiating species for nonhierarchy beyond capitalism; and instituting anti-anthropocentrism in addressing difficult ethics and incommensurability in liberatory futures.
{"title":"For multispecies liberatory futures: Three principles toward “progress” in anti-anthropocentric environmental geography","authors":"Y. Narayanan","doi":"10.1177/27539687231183449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/27539687231183449","url":null,"abstract":"This review draws on the work of critical animal geographers to elicit the notion of environmental anthropocentrism through critiques of progress as human development that adversely incorporates or displaces animal bodies in the service of (green) capitalism and sustainability. It reflects on how ideas of “progress” in environmental geography become reshaped through a critical animal geographic approach that politicizes animal–nature relations in all their diversity, and centers the experiences of animals as individuals and species in development-induced ecological crises. To this end, it advances three principles for an anti-anthropocentric analytic of progress as multispecies liberatory futures: animating humans toward a shared (but not universal) animality; differentiating species for nonhierarchy beyond capitalism; and instituting anti-anthropocentrism in addressing difficult ethics and incommensurability in liberatory futures.","PeriodicalId":196693,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Environmental Geography","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121692033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1177/27539687231179231
M. Lobo, Meg Parsons
Oceans in the colonial Anthropocene are haunted by the brutal racial logics of slavery, indenture, plunder, violence, death, and multispecies extinction. This brutality manifested through uneven burdens of climate extremes, global warming, ocean acidification, sea level rise, pollution, and threats from offshore energy extraction, chokes the “life force” of oceans that sustain planetary belongings and futures. Global agreements on climate change, biodiversity conventions, sustainable goals, and laws of the sea increasingly attempt to transform dystopic planetary futures through openness to Indigenous and local knowledges. But these overlooked Indigenous, Black, Brown, and southern intellectual traditions of belonging and responsibility in settler colonial, postcolonial, and post-apartheid societies have always existed alongside white, western Euro-American ontologies of the ocean. As subaltern southern and Indigenous scholars, our privileging of ontologies of the ocean amid the racial, colonial, and capitalist logics that continues to suffocate people and the planet, seeks to do more than enrich white, western, English-speaking Euro-American institutions. We, therefore, face ethical dilemmas as we assemble and prioritize strands of literature in our decolonial, polyphonic place-based ocean storytelling that seeks to advance new directions in Environmental Geography.
{"title":"Decolonizing ocean spaces: Saltwater co-belonging and responsibilities","authors":"M. Lobo, Meg Parsons","doi":"10.1177/27539687231179231","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/27539687231179231","url":null,"abstract":"Oceans in the colonial Anthropocene are haunted by the brutal racial logics of slavery, indenture, plunder, violence, death, and multispecies extinction. This brutality manifested through uneven burdens of climate extremes, global warming, ocean acidification, sea level rise, pollution, and threats from offshore energy extraction, chokes the “life force” of oceans that sustain planetary belongings and futures. Global agreements on climate change, biodiversity conventions, sustainable goals, and laws of the sea increasingly attempt to transform dystopic planetary futures through openness to Indigenous and local knowledges. But these overlooked Indigenous, Black, Brown, and southern intellectual traditions of belonging and responsibility in settler colonial, postcolonial, and post-apartheid societies have always existed alongside white, western Euro-American ontologies of the ocean. As subaltern southern and Indigenous scholars, our privileging of ontologies of the ocean amid the racial, colonial, and capitalist logics that continues to suffocate people and the planet, seeks to do more than enrich white, western, English-speaking Euro-American institutions. We, therefore, face ethical dilemmas as we assemble and prioritize strands of literature in our decolonial, polyphonic place-based ocean storytelling that seeks to advance new directions in Environmental Geography.","PeriodicalId":196693,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Environmental Geography","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132438314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-17DOI: 10.1177/27539687231176076
Julie Arbit, B. Bottoms, E. Lewis, Alford A. Young
Progress in Environmental Geography advances equity and justice at the intersections of people and place. Natural disasters represent a granular lens into this space and highlight opportunities to incorporate social landscapes with their physical geographies toward sustained systemic progress. More specifically, disproportionate geographies of flood risk and resilience exemplify cyclical power dynamics, exploitation, and oppression that have shaped places globally. The U.S. provides a particular focus into the evolution of access to space and place; racialized geographies often exclude Black Americans from land, resources, mobility, and representation. Following Emancipation, limited physical and economic opportunity codified formal and informal discrimination that led to heightened flood risk that persists today via housing markets, building conditions, infrastructure, and more. These inequities leave many communities disproportionately more impacted by economic, health, and well-being losses from flooding, which exacerbates cyclical disinvestment. Urban geographies around the world exhibit racially and ethnically charged patterns of heightened risk and weakened resilience, yet many efforts toward equity treat the issues of race and place as separate, novel challenges. Progress, equity, and justice at the intersection of people (and resilience) with place (and risk) are rooted in reparation along ethnographic and sociological chasms that have shaped geographies globally for centuries.
{"title":"The evolution of race and place in geographies of risk and resilience","authors":"Julie Arbit, B. Bottoms, E. Lewis, Alford A. Young","doi":"10.1177/27539687231176076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/27539687231176076","url":null,"abstract":"Progress in Environmental Geography advances equity and justice at the intersections of people and place. Natural disasters represent a granular lens into this space and highlight opportunities to incorporate social landscapes with their physical geographies toward sustained systemic progress. More specifically, disproportionate geographies of flood risk and resilience exemplify cyclical power dynamics, exploitation, and oppression that have shaped places globally. The U.S. provides a particular focus into the evolution of access to space and place; racialized geographies often exclude Black Americans from land, resources, mobility, and representation. Following Emancipation, limited physical and economic opportunity codified formal and informal discrimination that led to heightened flood risk that persists today via housing markets, building conditions, infrastructure, and more. These inequities leave many communities disproportionately more impacted by economic, health, and well-being losses from flooding, which exacerbates cyclical disinvestment. Urban geographies around the world exhibit racially and ethnically charged patterns of heightened risk and weakened resilience, yet many efforts toward equity treat the issues of race and place as separate, novel challenges. Progress, equity, and justice at the intersection of people (and resilience) with place (and risk) are rooted in reparation along ethnographic and sociological chasms that have shaped geographies globally for centuries.","PeriodicalId":196693,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Environmental Geography","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123430779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-17DOI: 10.1177/27539687231174242
Thomas P. Keating, A. Storm
This article assays geographical research into nuclear cultures, and cognate conversations in atomic heritage, toxic waste studies, and memory and landscape studies, as one way to develop the notion of nuclear memory. In doing so, we survey how geographers and social scientists have sought to think and communicate memory of nuclear things through three specific modes: the archival, the aesthetic, and the speculative. Our central argument is that nuclear memory provides a theoretical orientation for geographers to engage with alternative possibilities for thinking nuclear waste futures besides anthropocentric notions of common sense.
{"title":"Nuclear memory: Archival, aesthetic, speculative","authors":"Thomas P. Keating, A. Storm","doi":"10.1177/27539687231174242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/27539687231174242","url":null,"abstract":"This article assays geographical research into nuclear cultures, and cognate conversations in atomic heritage, toxic waste studies, and memory and landscape studies, as one way to develop the notion of nuclear memory. In doing so, we survey how geographers and social scientists have sought to think and communicate memory of nuclear things through three specific modes: the archival, the aesthetic, and the speculative. Our central argument is that nuclear memory provides a theoretical orientation for geographers to engage with alternative possibilities for thinking nuclear waste futures besides anthropocentric notions of common sense.","PeriodicalId":196693,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Environmental Geography","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125176751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-20DOI: 10.1177/27539687231165798
Adam Branch, Jon Phillips, F. Agyei
Charcoal is a primary urban energy source throughout Africa; it is also blamed for massive environmental harm, in particular deforestation and forest degradation. Despite its centrality to urbanization, rural economies, and contemporary environmental transformations, however, charcoal's politics have been relatively underexplored. This article develops three approaches to the study of charcoal politics in Africa by critically assessing the existing literature on charcoal and drawing on studies of the politics of other forms of energy. First, charcoal can be understood as a commodity within value chains, generative of profits and rents. Formal and informal institutions govern charcoal's distribution, and the relative power of actors determines access, control, and proceeds. Second, charcoal is a material object manufactured from trees and distributed through socio-technical infrastructures. It is embedded within “resource complexes” involving political contestation around land, trees, labor, transport, and legitimacy, determining where, how, and by whom charcoal is produced and traded. Third, charcoal is a source of energy within specific energy regimes that underlie political-ecological systems, a form of “energopolitics.” Uganda provides a case study illustrating the energopolitics of charcoal as it shapes the state, state–society relations, and visions of development and modernization.
{"title":"Charcoal politics in Africa: Value chains, resource complexes, and energopolitics","authors":"Adam Branch, Jon Phillips, F. Agyei","doi":"10.1177/27539687231165798","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/27539687231165798","url":null,"abstract":"Charcoal is a primary urban energy source throughout Africa; it is also blamed for massive environmental harm, in particular deforestation and forest degradation. Despite its centrality to urbanization, rural economies, and contemporary environmental transformations, however, charcoal's politics have been relatively underexplored. This article develops three approaches to the study of charcoal politics in Africa by critically assessing the existing literature on charcoal and drawing on studies of the politics of other forms of energy. First, charcoal can be understood as a commodity within value chains, generative of profits and rents. Formal and informal institutions govern charcoal's distribution, and the relative power of actors determines access, control, and proceeds. Second, charcoal is a material object manufactured from trees and distributed through socio-technical infrastructures. It is embedded within “resource complexes” involving political contestation around land, trees, labor, transport, and legitimacy, determining where, how, and by whom charcoal is produced and traded. Third, charcoal is a source of energy within specific energy regimes that underlie political-ecological systems, a form of “energopolitics.” Uganda provides a case study illustrating the energopolitics of charcoal as it shapes the state, state–society relations, and visions of development and modernization.","PeriodicalId":196693,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Environmental Geography","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134112071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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