Why do conservation policies fail to prevent species extinctions and die-offs in contravention of stated intentions and goals? Bringing together a range of literature, including political ecology, political theory, conservation science, communication theory, environmental communication, with original data, this article explores this question, then addresses these failures within Aotearoa New Zealand's context. Using the New Zealand case, it offers a systems-level view of these failures, focusing on the influences and limitations that arise from the political-economic structures, fractured governance, interest group influence, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in representative democracies. Secondly, in these settings, we argue that communication and framing by the interested parties—politicians, government officials, interest groups and NGOs—buttress this system, partly by normalizing it, obscuring scientific realities, shifting focus away from deeper issues, and thus limiting the possibility of substantive solutions in what might be called a colonization of consciousness. Together, this economic-political-communication complex has failed to prevent—and in some ways aided—mass die-offs of native animal species. The article then suggests exploring alternative models, such as deliberative democracy, to this seemingly intractable problem, to strengthen the influence of scientific expertise, better inform decision-makers, advance public understandings of science, and improve democracy by engaging members of the public in decision-making processes. While this study focuses on New Zealand, the issues related to political ecology, the political-economic systems, and the framing of issues, apply to many democratic countries.
{"title":"The politics of animal extinction and conservation: Interests, framing, and policy","authors":"M. Armoudian, Walter Poulsen","doi":"10.2458/jpe.2961","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2961","url":null,"abstract":"Why do conservation policies fail to prevent species extinctions and die-offs in contravention of stated intentions and goals? Bringing together a range of literature, including political ecology, political theory, conservation science, communication theory, environmental communication, with original data, this article explores this question, then addresses these failures within Aotearoa New Zealand's context. Using the New Zealand case, it offers a systems-level view of these failures, focusing on the influences and limitations that arise from the political-economic structures, fractured governance, interest group influence, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in representative democracies. Secondly, in these settings, we argue that communication and framing by the interested parties—politicians, government officials, interest groups and NGOs—buttress this system, partly by normalizing it, obscuring scientific realities, shifting focus away from deeper issues, and thus limiting the possibility of substantive solutions in what might be called a colonization of consciousness. Together, this economic-political-communication complex has failed to prevent—and in some ways aided—mass die-offs of native animal species. The article then suggests exploring alternative models, such as deliberative democracy, to this seemingly intractable problem, to strengthen the influence of scientific expertise, better inform decision-makers, advance public understandings of science, and improve democracy by engaging members of the public in decision-making processes. While this study focuses on New Zealand, the issues related to political ecology, the political-economic systems, and the framing of issues, apply to many democratic countries.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47766043","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}
Pilar Morales-Giner, Martina Laura Speranza, Marliz Arteaga, Andrea Baudoin Farah, Sinomar Ferreira da Fonseca Junior, Angélica García Villacorta, Pamela Montero Álvarez, Martha Rosero Peña, Stephen G. Perz
There is an extensive literature on environmental governance, which refers to multi-stakeholder processes to arrive at collective decisions about how natural resources will be managed. Recent work on environmental governance has focused on outcomes in terms of social-environmental sustainability. However, questions remain about the effectiveness of environmental governance in practice for yielding sustainable social or environmental outcomes. In cases where environmental governance processes prove ineffective, political ecology offers analytical approaches involving explanations that can account for unsustainable outcomes. In addition, an emergent literature on environmental governance provides frameworks to evaluate its effectiveness by unpacking it with regard to diverse criteria. These two literatures together permit analysis of how political ecology and other potential explanations can account for ineffective environmental governance in terms of specific unmet criteria. Analysis of ineffective environmental governance is likely to be especially valuable in a comparative perspective, in which multi-case studies can reveal the extent to which political ecology explanations predominate across cases. We focus on the Amazon, a large region with high social and biological diversity and where competing stakeholders engage in conflict over governance of natural resources. We pursue a comparative analysis of five cases where environmental governance has been ineffective in terms of sustainable outcomes. In each case, we identified five key explanations for ineffective environmental governance. We then coded those explanations with regard to whether they invoke issues highlighted by political ecology. We also coded them considering environmental governance evaluation frameworks to identify the unmet criteria for environmental governance to be effective. We then pursued a comparative analysis of similarities and differences across the cases. The findings indicate that political ecology issues are predominant among explanations for ineffective environmental governance across all five cases. The results also reveal which environmental governance evaluation criteria are most often unmet among the cases. The findings highlight the importance of political ecology for understanding ineffective environmental governance, and permit delineation of specific criteria for effective environmental governance that can be the focus of strategies to improve environmental governance for sustainability.
{"title":"Political ecology explanations for ineffective environmental governance for sustainability in the Amazon: A comparative analysis of cases from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru","authors":"Pilar Morales-Giner, Martina Laura Speranza, Marliz Arteaga, Andrea Baudoin Farah, Sinomar Ferreira da Fonseca Junior, Angélica García Villacorta, Pamela Montero Álvarez, Martha Rosero Peña, Stephen G. Perz","doi":"10.2458/jpe.2924","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2924","url":null,"abstract":"There is an extensive literature on environmental governance, which refers to multi-stakeholder processes to arrive at collective decisions about how natural resources will be managed. Recent work on environmental governance has focused on outcomes in terms of social-environmental sustainability. However, questions remain about the effectiveness of environmental governance in practice for yielding sustainable social or environmental outcomes. In cases where environmental governance processes prove ineffective, political ecology offers analytical approaches involving explanations that can account for unsustainable outcomes. In addition, an emergent literature on environmental governance provides frameworks to evaluate its effectiveness by unpacking it with regard to diverse criteria. These two literatures together permit analysis of how political ecology and other potential explanations can account for ineffective environmental governance in terms of specific unmet criteria. Analysis of ineffective environmental governance is likely to be especially valuable in a comparative perspective, in which multi-case studies can reveal the extent to which political ecology explanations predominate across cases. We focus on the Amazon, a large region with high social and biological diversity and where competing stakeholders engage in conflict over governance of natural resources. We pursue a comparative analysis of five cases where environmental governance has been ineffective in terms of sustainable outcomes. In each case, we identified five key explanations for ineffective environmental governance. We then coded those explanations with regard to whether they invoke issues highlighted by political ecology. We also coded them considering environmental governance evaluation frameworks to identify the unmet criteria for environmental governance to be effective. We then pursued a comparative analysis of similarities and differences across the cases. The findings indicate that political ecology issues are predominant among explanations for ineffective environmental governance across all five cases. The results also reveal which environmental governance evaluation criteria are most often unmet among the cases. The findings highlight the importance of political ecology for understanding ineffective environmental governance, and permit delineation of specific criteria for effective environmental governance that can be the focus of strategies to improve environmental governance for sustainability.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41243593","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}
This theoretical article takes issue with how 'new materialisms' have been employed in political ecology, and it explores the 'depth ontology' of critical realism developed by Roy Bhaskar as an alternative to the 'flat ontologies' of new materialism. While political ecology was initially informed by political economy, the field has become much more heterogeneous and includes various post-structuralist, socio-constructivist, and new materialist approaches. Most, though not all, of these approaches typically destabilize science, try to break with problematic dichotomies (especially nature-society), distribute agency, and sometimes entertain the idea that multiple realities may exist. This contribution argues that new materialism, in Bhaskar's language, may be characterized as 'actualism' and identifies its associated problematic implications. While critical realism has occasionally been invoked in political ecology to give credibility to the external reality of nature, I argue that the full potential of critical realism for political ecology has yet to be explored. Holding that the world is stratified, with the 'real' not limited to events and interactions, creates the possibility of exploring 'unseen' mechanisms and trends.
{"title":"Critical realism in political ecology: An argument against flat ontology","authors":"Ståle Knudsen","doi":"10.2458/jpe.5127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5127","url":null,"abstract":"This theoretical article takes issue with how 'new materialisms' have been employed in political ecology, and it explores the 'depth ontology' of critical realism developed by Roy Bhaskar as an alternative to the 'flat ontologies' of new materialism. While political ecology was initially informed by political economy, the field has become much more heterogeneous and includes various post-structuralist, socio-constructivist, and new materialist approaches. Most, though not all, of these approaches typically destabilize science, try to break with problematic dichotomies (especially nature-society), distribute agency, and sometimes entertain the idea that multiple realities may exist. This contribution argues that new materialism, in Bhaskar's language, may be characterized as 'actualism' and identifies its associated problematic implications. While critical realism has occasionally been invoked in political ecology to give credibility to the external reality of nature, I argue that the full potential of critical realism for political ecology has yet to be explored. Holding that the world is stratified, with the 'real' not limited to events and interactions, creates the possibility of exploring 'unseen' mechanisms and trends.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46768573","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}
This study examines the multi-tiered manifestation of the natural environment and social-ecological milieu of people living in a tiger reserve, located in the Uttara Kannada district in the Indian state of Karnataka. The Kali Tiger Reserve is in the northwestern part of the Western Ghats, which is a designated biodiversity hotspot and home to wildlife such as the Bengal tiger and the Indian elephant. After the forest was designated as a tiger reserve, the Kunbi people living in this area were excluded from the laws and policies designed to promote nature conservation. Their traditional hunter-gatherer activities and agricultural practices became severely restricted and were subjected to management and surveillance by the Forest Department. This demonstrates the operation of biopower acting in line with the distinction between rare animal species deemed worthy of being kept alive and human beings who are not, and are thus left destitute. In this situation, the Kunbi attempt to recover their legal rights to land and forest resources by invoking the Forest Rights Act and petitioning the state government to designate them as a scheduled tribe. Moreover, they struggle to maintain their emotional ties to the forest by creatively modifying their ritualistic hunting groups. The Kunbi's attempt to deal with their plight by participating in the modern political arena, while placing themselves within the realm of nature, shows that modernity and indigeneity exist in an inseparable duality. This study examines the experiences of people living in this duality by focusing on their emotions regarding the forest and efforts to deal with conflicts over the tiger reserve, which is simultaneously considered to be the natural environment as well as their intimate Umwelt.
{"title":"Living in the forest as a pluriverse: nature conservation and indigeneity in India’s Western Ghats","authors":"M. Ishii","doi":"10.2458/jpe.2378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2378","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the multi-tiered manifestation of the natural environment and social-ecological milieu of people living in a tiger reserve, located in the Uttara Kannada district in the Indian state of Karnataka. The Kali Tiger Reserve is in the northwestern part of the Western Ghats, which is a designated biodiversity hotspot and home to wildlife such as the Bengal tiger and the Indian elephant. After the forest was designated as a tiger reserve, the Kunbi people living in this area were excluded from the laws and policies designed to promote nature conservation. Their traditional hunter-gatherer activities and agricultural practices became severely restricted and were subjected to management and surveillance by the Forest Department. This demonstrates the operation of biopower acting in line with the distinction between rare animal species deemed worthy of being kept alive and human beings who are not, and are thus left destitute. In this situation, the Kunbi attempt to recover their legal rights to land and forest resources by invoking the Forest Rights Act and petitioning the state government to designate them as a scheduled tribe. Moreover, they struggle to maintain their emotional ties to the forest by creatively modifying their ritualistic hunting groups. The Kunbi's attempt to deal with their plight by participating in the modern political arena, while placing themselves within the realm of nature, shows that modernity and indigeneity exist in an inseparable duality. This study examines the experiences of people living in this duality by focusing on their emotions regarding the forest and efforts to deal with conflicts over the tiger reserve, which is simultaneously considered to be the natural environment as well as their intimate Umwelt.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45383596","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}
This article presents a study of coastal erosion narratives by the Mexican government, scientists, and local fishers in coastal communities in the Gulf of Mexico. It shows how plans to enroll fishing communities into programs to adapt to or to slow coastal erosion are based on simplified environmental narratives that rely on global climate change as the main cause of coastal erosion. They discount local processes and local explanations, as well as scientific studies that outline complex multi-scalar explanations for coastal erosion. Government narratives frame global climate change, as manifested in increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes and other hydrometereological extreme events and sea level rise, as the main causes of changes in coastal environments, including coastal erosion They fail to acknowledge other causes including the environmental degradation caused by the influential oil industry. In contrast, fishers' more complex and locally-embedded narratives are shaped by their long-term struggles against the state-owned oil company, whom they hold primarily responsible for coastal erosion in their communities. Scientists similarly emphasize the importance of local and regional processes, with climate change understood primarily as having significant impacts in the future, but less so in the recent past. Differences in temporal and geographical scaling among these narratives highlight the importance of considering how the translation of climate change adaptation programming from the global to diverse local situations would ideally consider site-specific power relations as well as community-based perspectives.
{"title":"Coastal erosion narratives in the Gulf of Mexico: implications for climate change governance","authors":"Luz María Vázquez, Peter Vandergeest","doi":"10.2458/jpe.5375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5375","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a study of coastal erosion narratives by the Mexican government, scientists, and local fishers in coastal communities in the Gulf of Mexico. It shows how plans to enroll fishing communities into programs to adapt to or to slow coastal erosion are based on simplified environmental narratives that rely on global climate change as the main cause of coastal erosion. They discount local processes and local explanations, as well as scientific studies that outline complex multi-scalar explanations for coastal erosion. Government narratives frame global climate change, as manifested in increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes and other hydrometereological extreme events and sea level rise, as the main causes of changes in coastal environments, including coastal erosion They fail to acknowledge other causes including the environmental degradation caused by the influential oil industry. In contrast, fishers' more complex and locally-embedded narratives are shaped by their long-term struggles against the state-owned oil company, whom they hold primarily responsible for coastal erosion in their communities. Scientists similarly emphasize the importance of local and regional processes, with climate change understood primarily as having significant impacts in the future, but less so in the recent past. Differences in temporal and geographical scaling among these narratives highlight the importance of considering how the translation of climate change adaptation programming from the global to diverse local situations would ideally consider site-specific power relations as well as community-based perspectives.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49421876","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}
Many political ecologists and geographers study ethical diets but most are curiously silent on the topic of death in the food system, specifically what or who is allowed to live and what is let die in the "doing of good." This article aims to show how the practice of eating produces the socio-ecological harm most ethical consumers set out to avoid with their dietary choices. I examine the food systems that produce ethical products for 1) the hierarchical ordering of consumer health in the Global North over the health and well-being of workers in the Global South and 2) how vegetarianism involves the implicit privileging of some animals over others. The article takes take a genealogical approach to the political ecology of food ethics using Black and Indigenous studies in conversation with animal geographies. I draw on Mbembe's (2016) necropolitics, Weheliye's (2014) "not quite human" and Lowe's (2015) critique of humanism to develop a conceptual framework for what lives or dies as a result of ethical dietary choices. I use this framework to examine commodities for the socio-ecological harm that their production extends into the world under the guise of "doing good" or "being ethical." Taking a harm reduction and food sovereignty approach, I advocate for a new ethical framework that includes a limited case for consuming animals.
{"title":"The vegan industrial complex: the political ecology of not eating animals","authors":"A. Trauger","doi":"10.2458/jpe.3052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.3052","url":null,"abstract":"Many political ecologists and geographers study ethical diets but most are curiously silent on the topic of death in the food system, specifically what or who is allowed to live and what is let die in the \"doing of good.\" This article aims to show how the practice of eating produces the socio-ecological harm most ethical consumers set out to avoid with their dietary choices. I examine the food systems that produce ethical products for 1) the hierarchical ordering of consumer health in the Global North over the health and well-being of workers in the Global South and 2) how vegetarianism involves the implicit privileging of some animals over others. The article takes take a genealogical approach to the political ecology of food ethics using Black and Indigenous studies in conversation with animal geographies. I draw on Mbembe's (2016) necropolitics, Weheliye's (2014) \"not quite human\" and Lowe's (2015) critique of humanism to develop a conceptual framework for what lives or dies as a result of ethical dietary choices. I use this framework to examine commodities for the socio-ecological harm that their production extends into the world under the guise of \"doing good\" or \"being ethical.\" Taking a harm reduction and food sovereignty approach, I advocate for a new ethical framework that includes a limited case for consuming animals.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47200142","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}
{"title":"Book review of Brondo, Keri Vacanti. 2021. Voluntourism and multispecies collaboration: life, death, and conservation in the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef","authors":"J. Dean","doi":"10.2458/jpe.5220","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5220","url":null,"abstract":" ","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44217705","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}
Håvard Haarstad, Siddharth Sareen, Tarje I. Wanvik
Climate-related targets abound, but it is unclear how important they are driving actual transformations. Scholars have often taken a sceptical view of official climate discourses, including their ambitious targets, and instead turned their attention to civic, or 'real', action. In this paper we try on the opposite view. Contributing to a 'speculative political ecology', we argue that climate-related targets, even those without hard policies directly attached to them, can render climate change more governable and actionable. In a fragmented, polycentric and dispersed governance landscape, the immutability of a 'hard' number can create coherence, direction and measurability to policy action. We examine a particular target, and its associated governance instruments, which has arguably had a transformative effect on urban policy. Our empirical focus is Norway's Zero Growth Objective in urban transport policy. We follow the target from its first formulation as a soft goal around 2006 and until 2019, when it has materialized as a hard target shaping funding streams and concrete policy interventions, and most likely, emission levels. Arguable, it has been a highly effective frame for triggering policy action.
{"title":"Climate targets as more than rhetoric: Accounting for Norway’s Zero Growth Objective","authors":"Håvard Haarstad, Siddharth Sareen, Tarje I. Wanvik","doi":"10.2458/jpe.4691","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.4691","url":null,"abstract":"Climate-related targets abound, but it is unclear how important they are driving actual transformations. Scholars have often taken a sceptical view of official climate discourses, including their ambitious targets, and instead turned their attention to civic, or 'real', action. In this paper we try on the opposite view. Contributing to a 'speculative political ecology', we argue that climate-related targets, even those without hard policies directly attached to them, can render climate change more governable and actionable. In a fragmented, polycentric and dispersed governance landscape, the immutability of a 'hard' number can create coherence, direction and measurability to policy action. We examine a particular target, and its associated governance instruments, which has arguably had a transformative effect on urban policy. Our empirical focus is Norway's Zero Growth Objective in urban transport policy. We follow the target from its first formulation as a soft goal around 2006 and until 2019, when it has materialized as a hard target shaping funding streams and concrete policy interventions, and most likely, emission levels. Arguable, it has been a highly effective frame for triggering policy action. ","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43756152","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}
S. Fuller, T. Ngata, Stephanie B. Borrelle, T. Farrelly
Plastics pollution is a global, relational, integrated, and intersectoral issue. Here, we undertook narrative analysis of semi-structured interviews with nineteen key plastic pollution decision-makers. They offered a contextual lens to understand challenges facing Pacific Island (Te Moananui) nations in preventing plastics pollution. We build on the work of Ngata (2014-2021) and Liboiron (2014-2021) to situate the narrative analysis within a "waste colonialism" framework. We argue that plastics pollution as waste colonialism transcends environmental, policy, and industry concerns. "Indigenous political ecologies" of plastics pollution provide an understanding by which plastics pollution prevention can be examined at multiple scales. These include, at the international level: trade agreements and import dependency, donor aid and duplication, and transnational industry influence. At the local level: pressure from local plastics manufacturers, importers and suppliers, and barriers to accessing the latest science. Located within a global and regional context, our findings capture the systemic and long-standing impacts of colonialism on Indigenous responses to plastics pollution prevention and management, highlighting its effects on human and environment health and wellbeing. Sustainable solutions to plastics pollution for Te Moananui require the centering of its peoples and their deep, lived, and intergenerationally transmitted knowledges in the identification of challenges and solutions, the implementation of activities, and amplification of a shared regional voice.
{"title":"Plastics pollution as waste colonialism in Te Moananui","authors":"S. Fuller, T. Ngata, Stephanie B. Borrelle, T. Farrelly","doi":"10.2458/jpe.2401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2401","url":null,"abstract":"Plastics pollution is a global, relational, integrated, and intersectoral issue. Here, we undertook narrative analysis of semi-structured interviews with nineteen key plastic pollution decision-makers. They offered a contextual lens to understand challenges facing Pacific Island (Te Moananui) nations in preventing plastics pollution. We build on the work of Ngata (2014-2021) and Liboiron (2014-2021) to situate the narrative analysis within a \"waste colonialism\" framework. We argue that plastics pollution as waste colonialism transcends environmental, policy, and industry concerns. \"Indigenous political ecologies\" of plastics pollution provide an understanding by which plastics pollution prevention can be examined at multiple scales. These include, at the international level: trade agreements and import dependency, donor aid and duplication, and transnational industry influence. At the local level: pressure from local plastics manufacturers, importers and suppliers, and barriers to accessing the latest science. Located within a global and regional context, our findings capture the systemic and long-standing impacts of colonialism on Indigenous responses to plastics pollution prevention and management, highlighting its effects on human and environment health and wellbeing. Sustainable solutions to plastics pollution for Te Moananui require the centering of its peoples and their deep, lived, and intergenerationally transmitted knowledges in the identification of challenges and solutions, the implementation of activities, and amplification of a shared regional voice.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45338163","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}
This article analyzes the agrarian-environmental process followed by an indigenous group in southern Mexico to request the environmental protection of their territories. This Lacandon ethnic group has singled out for (and popularized by) the traditional knowledge and management of their tropical forest environment and, more recently, for their close association with the policies of nature conservation in Chiapas. From the proposal of 'multiple governmentalities' (Fletcher 2017) we analyze the process through which their territories were declared natural protected areas. We also investigated the productive, ecological and social changes caused by environmentalism and the concretization of identities, practices and discurses. By privileging ethnographic recording and qualitative methodology, we were able to construct the historical process of territorial appropiation and the defense of their territories since the 1990's. We found that the request was sponsored, on the one hand, by socio-environmental conflicts at the beginning of the 1990's between Tzeltales and Lacandones first in Metzabok and later in Nahá; and on the other hand, by the influence of several actors that supported nature conservation, among them an international non-governmental organization and the environmental institutional apparatus recently established in Mexico. We conclude that environmentalism produced changes and meant the arrival of economic support that promoted the surveillance and disciplining of a cultural identity subject to nature conservation, converting the Lacandones into park guards under surveillance rather than guardians of nature.
{"title":"¿Por qué son ambientalistas? Las múltiples gubernamentalidades en Metzabok y en Nahá, Selva Lacandona, Chiapas, México","authors":"Tatiana Deyanira Gómez Villalpando, Tim Trench","doi":"10.2458/jpe.4904","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.4904","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the agrarian-environmental process followed by an indigenous group in southern Mexico to request the environmental protection of their territories. This Lacandon ethnic group has singled out for (and popularized by) the traditional knowledge and management of their tropical forest environment and, more recently, for their close association with the policies of nature conservation in Chiapas. From the proposal of 'multiple governmentalities' (Fletcher 2017) we analyze the process through which their territories were declared natural protected areas. We also investigated the productive, ecological and social changes caused by environmentalism and the concretization of identities, practices and discurses. By privileging ethnographic recording and qualitative methodology, we were able to construct the historical process of territorial appropiation and the defense of their territories since the 1990's. We found that the request was sponsored, on the one hand, by socio-environmental conflicts at the beginning of the 1990's between Tzeltales and Lacandones first in Metzabok and later in Nahá; and on the other hand, by the influence of several actors that supported nature conservation, among them an international non-governmental organization and the environmental institutional apparatus recently established in Mexico. We conclude that environmentalism produced changes and meant the arrival of economic support that promoted the surveillance and disciplining of a cultural identity subject to nature conservation, converting the Lacandones into park guards under surveillance rather than guardians of nature. ","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49475398","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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