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This essay reads the Taiwanese Malaysian author Chang Kuei-hsing's 1998 novel Elephant Herd from an ecological perspective. A novel about the Sarawak communist insurgency (1963–90)—an important but underrepresented conflict during the Cold War in Asia—Elephant Herd reappraises the legacies of this conflict through its ecological impact on the Bornean landscape and peoples. It critiques existing historical recollections of this period, which take the perspectives of either the colonial British government and its subsequent Malaysian inheritors or the largely ethnic Chinese leftist insurgents who sought to establish an independent Borneo state. The novel argues for a postcolonial remapping of Borneo beyond colonial statecraft and Cold War geopolitics in this contested territory, which are narrated through Chinese civilizational and Malay and British national narratives of place. It does so by staging a transformation of the settler Sinophone subject in Borneo, manifesting encounters in the Borneo rainforest that reveal the Indigenous experience of this insurgency and the cost of state-making projects in Borneo through environmental ruins such as elephant tusks. The novel concludes by proposing a postcolonial Bornean identity that begins from the perspective of the Indigenous Iban people, whose voices reframe the Sinophone narrator's assumptions about land, history, and place beyond a settler point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intensity of Bangkok's urban heat island during the dry season can be as high as 6–7° and in the densest areas the urban heat island's intensity is approximately 4°C. The urban heat island thus is causing a city already oppressively hot to become even hotter. The urban heat island also contributes to health problems, such as heat stroke and fatigue, particularly to those with lower incomes. We historically examine the numerous causes of Bangkok's urban heat island, such as the lack of green space, high levels of air conditioning, and high rates of vehicle exhaust fumes. For example, Bangkok has only three square metres of green space per person which is one of the lowest in all of Asia. Local governmental weaknesses, administrative fragmentation, prioritisation of economic growth and limited buy-in from the private sector have intensified Bangkok's urban heat island, and imposed numerous barriers to actions that would reduce heat, such as establishing green space, restructuring urban transport or creating and following an effective urban plan. Ideas mooted to remedy these problems have yet to come to fruition, largely because of bureaucratic inertia, fragmentation and divisions within the relevant lead organisations. The political ecology lens also reveals how political–economic processes largely determine the vulnerability of urban inhabitants to heat, but also that thermal governance is highly unequal and unjust. Those who contribute to and profit the most from Bangkok's urban heat island, such as real estate developers, shopping mall owners, and automobile corporations, suffer the least from its effects, whereas low-income communities hardly contribute to this problem, yet are the most vulnerable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction draws out and amplifies the major themes engaged in this special issue of "Abolitionist Rhetorics." Insurgent abolition, we contend, far from marking yet another "turn" in disciplinary history, compels the field to reckon with its conditions of possibility and, in that encounter, with its abolition. It does so inasmuch as it proffers an immanent limit to the rhetorical field's intellectual imagination; in its invention of a planetary vocabulary and praxes of relationality and scale that cuts against rhetoric's imperial commonplaces; and by confronting rhetoricians with their disavowed desires for radical realization. In the upshot, the larger stakes of abolitionist rhetorics go beyond epistemic and disciplinary refurbishment. Instead, we argue that abolition—as seen in the rebellions, insurgencies, and resistances that have marked the twenty-first century—are unfoldments of radical survivance and living in the late racial capitalocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on how the environmental assets of old industrial regions were commodified and channelled in new productive processes , along with domesticating and distributing old and new negative externalities and risks unevenly in spatial and social terms. We adopted a political ecological approach to grasp how the emergence and dynamics of agency in such spaces are related to the mobilization of environmental resources, how peripheral industrialization is linked intimately to ecological exploitation jeopardizing the sustainability of old and new trajectories and how such processes are embedded in the ecological 'lock-in' position of OIRs. Our analysis rests on Hungarian case studies which produced empirical results and theoretical lessons beyond this context, for further studies in peripheral industrial regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joan Martínez-Alier and Goutam Karmakar engage in a conversation where they examine the discourses of the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, political ecology, and the Entropocene, exploring environmental (in)justices and focussing on decolonial approaches to addressing them. This discussion, as Joan and Goutam believe, can inform readers about the inner workings of colonial capitalism and the extractivist economy, the involvement of environmental activists, and the incommensurability of values in ecological economics. In order to develop an equitable and environmentally sustainable society, this conversation aims to comprehend the dynamics linking environmental concerns, activism, and socio-economic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the environmental and health implications of the construction of the Panama Canal. It highlights the significant amount of dirt and rock that was moved during the excavation and the lack of attention given to where this material was dumped. The article discusses the transformation of landscapes and the loss of wetlands and mangroves during this period. It also examines the decision-making process behind the location of dumps, which was influenced by concerns about public health and economic gain. The article emphasizes the power relations and economic concerns involved in canal construction and the impact on ecosystems in Panama. [Extracted from the article]

This study uses political ecology and social and environmental justice frameworks to examine stakeholder attitudes towards tourism development and ecological restoration in a cross-border context. The purpose of this paper is to develop conceptual frameworks for understanding stakeholder attitudes towards cross-border tourism and ecological restoration that occur in the context of uneven power relations. Data were collected through personal observations, secondary sources such as legal documents and reports, and 56 in-depth interviews and two focus groups with tourism and conservation stakeholders from the US-Mexico border. The findings revealed how abundant social and environmental justice issues, such as unequal social and ecological mobility, access to resources, and power relations impact stakeholder attitudes. This study offers a new conceptual framework that considers socioeconomic, cultural, and religious/spiritual ties to a border landscape, aimed at understanding the injustices related to stakeholder in tourism development and ecological restoration initiatives. The equitable distribution of benefits derived from tourism and landscape restoration is further emphasized in the conceptual framework, as is the need for expanding social and ecological mobility. The paper contributes to the political ecology of cross-border tourism destinations by augmenting social and ecological mobility as a critical component of developing nature-based tourism in border areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past several decades, the spatial extent of national parks, forest reserves, and other protected areas has expanded rapidly, encompassing more than 16 percent of the Earth’s terrestrial and inland water area in 2024. This expansion of protected areas has often led to population displacements and heightened restrictions on access to land and natural resources for indigenous peoples and other local communities, at times precipitating various conflicts, contestations, and broader forms of noncompliance with conservation regulations. Despite ongoing challenges in resolving trade-offs between conservation and livelihood objectives, the recently established Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) seeks to achieve even more ambitious conservation targets. These include GBF Target 3—sometimes referred to as the “30 × 30” target—of encompassing 30 percent of all terrestrial and marine ecosystems in protected areas or other effective area-based conservation measures by 2030. The GBF’s vision for achieving Target 3 implicitly assumes, however, that widespread challenges related to noncompliance in conservation governance can largely be resolved in their present manifestation(s), and prevented from reemerging as the scale of the global conservation estate increases. Seeking to deepen our understanding of the emergence and recurrence of illicit or otherwise non-rule-complying behaviors in everyday practices of conservation governance, we draw on a case study of the Manas Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve in the India-Bhutan borderlands region, northeastern India. Highlighting key findings from this case study, we foreground the concept of illicit resilience to encompass a suite of informal factors and dynamics that lead to the persistence of de facto land uses and management regimes in ways that often strikingly diverge from de jure prescriptions for resource conservation within protected areas. These dynamics include (1) long-term insurgency and political unrest; (2) collusive corruption, patronage, and local politics; and (3) elite-driven processes of informal resettlement and subsequent occupation of forestland. In short, we argue that a deeper understanding of such forms of illicit resilience and their underlying drivers will be crucial for more accurately conceptualizing both feasibility constraints on, and socioenvironmental justice implications of, efforts to rapidly upscale the spatial remit of conservation areas by 2030 and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Novel” nature-based solutions, implemented through urban spatial plans and rezoning policies, paint an apolitical picture of the rejuvenation of the floodplains of Delhi. This paper uncovers the socio-ecological injustice rooted in these decisions that lead to the eviction of small-scale farms. This is discussed through the political ecology framework and examined as an approach of bourgeois environmentalism. The spatial policies in the Draft Master Plan for Delhi 2041 are traced through previous master plans, specifically for Zone O (river zone) of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. This allows for the unpacking of a larger urban socio-ecological imaginary being produced. In this paper, we find that, first, the river zone plan erases the marginalized, and, second, it potentially makes the way clear for the ecologically sensitive floodplains to be used for developing recreational activities targeting the elite. Therefore, like previous plans, this plan leads to the marginalization of both the river and the marginalized by ontologically separating them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many critics of the global rise in conservation displacements have traced the origins of this trend to nineteenth-century California and the establishment of Yosemite National Park. This historical narrative is often labeled the Yosemite model, which is characterized by the violent eviction of Indigenous peoples to create unoccupied wilderness. I propose that the Yosemite model historical narrative overgeneralizes events and neglects the larger geo-historical context. Through a close reading of archival records, I recover countering voices and alternative versions that complicate the Yosemite model narrative. The central goal of this article is to locate evidence from Yosemite’s past that can aid in imagining a future parks model more inclusive of Indigenous heritage claims and rights. Throughout, I give close attention to decades of changing geo-historical context, which allows a clearer perspective on conservation enclosures while providing hope for a more inclusive future national park model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although historians and archaeologists have been quick to point out the political and economic conditions that tend to foment sea piracy, less attention has been given to the ecology of ‘blue crimes’. This article offers an empirical synthesis of recent archaeological work on piratical sites from the Age of Sail (ca. 1570–1860) while drawing parallels to both ancient Mediterranean and contemporary sea piracy in order to highlight some common patterns and explore the broader potential of a political ecology framing. I argue that sea piracy is in part an effect of ecological conditions and in turn produces its own political and ecological effects. I also consider Graeber and Wengrow’s transhistorical argument about the ‘ecology of freedom’ as it applies to sea piracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the construction of autobiographical discourse in Ramón Gómez de la Serna's book "Automoribundia." It delves into themes of death, identity, and the ethical responsibility of the narrator. The author emphasizes the importance of truth and authenticity in the autobiographical genre, while acknowledging the fluid nature of identity. The article also discusses Gómez de la Serna's writing style, influences, and his exploration of solitude and rejection of wealth and ambition. Additionally, it touches on his relationship with objects, women, and his political affiliations. [Extracted from the article]

This article exposes the role of women in socioenvironmentally affected contexts. The paper takes as a case of study the socio-environmental conflict taking place in Quintero-Puchuncaví (Chile), and analyses the practices deployed by women that face the operation of the Ventanas Industrial Complex (CIV) in their own bodies and territories. This research is inspired by political ecology, feminisms and ecofeminisms, and seeks to go into detail about the discussion on women's protagonism regarding the tensions that extractivism causes. The analysis and results are mainly based on information from biographical-narrative interviews with activists, neighbors, and residents of the site, developed between 2021 and 2023. The results suggest how women mobilise micro and macro politics practices where territories become particularly important. In addition, this work reflects on the emergence of practices in those territories where the recognition of eco-dependence articulates different forms of action, which friction and contest processes of commodification of life, questioning the idea of one single world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biorefineries are often lauded as revolutionary sustainable new sources of power. This article critically examines biorefineries from historical and environmentalist perspectives highlighting flaws such narratives. It proposes an alternative to the biorefinery paradigm that draws on critical environmentalist scholarship French political ecology and the German tradition of sanfte Chemie (soft chemistry). History the article argues is crucial for identifying technological dead ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the background of contemporary debates about the Anthropocene and the attendant danger of global warming and climate change, which is causally linked to the unchecked exploitation of the earth by humans, narratives which embody an earth-centric scientia sacra become tools of advocacy for the 'resacralization' of the earth. This paper explores three South Asian river narratives that offer a blueprint for mindfully inhabiting the earth under the shadow of the Anthropocene. Calling for a participatory relationship with the holiness of water, they challenge the construction of water in a rapidly globalizing, uneven society shaped by a colonial hydrology in which the ecological relationship between land and water is out of balance. Drawing attention to the multiple ways in which the human and non-human world are enmeshed in the Anthropocene, these narratives engage with environmental justice concerns and challenge the hierarchy or perspectives and worldviews regarding accepted notions of subalternity. These texts construct a triptych suggesting an embedded ecotheology of the material and the spiritual, thereby sensitising the reader to the endangered waterscapes of the Anthropocene and also to the promise of the Symbiocene through an awareness of the fluid relational field that we share with the greater-than-human world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review surveys recent evidence on environmental security, bringing diverse approaches to the subject and evidence relating to different environmental issues into conversation with one another. We focus on the five environmental issues most commonly viewed as having conflict or security effects: climate change, water, forests and deforestation, biodiversity and conservation, and mining and industrial pollution. For each issue, we consider evidence along three dimensions: the impacts of environmental variables on violent conflict, the conflict impacts of policy and development interventions vis-à-vis these environmental issues, and their global policy framing and institutionalization. Through this, we draw particular attention to the poverty and/or inconsistency of the evidence relating to environmental variations, which stands in stark contrast to the extensive evidence on policy and development interventions; noting that policymakers have been much more concerned with the former theme than the latter, we call for this imbalance to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environmental & Social Management Journal / Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental is the property of Environmental & Social Management Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The idea of planning has reappeared as an object of interest for critical research on post-capitalist organizational futures. This article offers a critical review of the emerging scholarship on planning, with reference to historical and contemporary precursors to democratic planning. Building on this review, the article develops a critical political ecology of planning that situates planning thought and practice within the matrix of the oikos. This encompasses not only the sphere of production and commodity exchange, but also the household of reproductive labor and the planetary household of the natural world. In this way, it is argued that democratic planning is indispensable for generating the forms of collective intelligibility and power needed to heal the metabolic relations of society and nature. By reimagining and reframing planning, the article aims to expand "the archive" of social imaginaries, as part of broader efforts to envision and develop more desirable organizational futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hundreds of miles of barriers span the U.S.–Mexico border, not only blocking the migration of people, but also crisscrossing National Parks and Wildlife Refuges and bifurcating important wildlife corridors in the process. Despite their location within federally protected places, the past and present construction of these barriers has progressed unencumbered by federal oversight given the waiver of dozens of environmental regulations. This shift in regulation amid increased border militarization has not been fully evaluated for its environmental effects, as federal conservation agencies tasked with managing public borderlands are increasingly prohibited from studying how barriers will affect the landscape in the long term. This research examines how the state is shaping environmental governance and knowledge politics in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, an environmentally significant and hyperpoliticized region integral to the maintenance of the United States as an imperial border-making institution. Bringing together theories on political ecologies of the settler colonial state with the racialization of nature, this article demonstrates how (1) the Department of Homeland Security has emerged as an environmental actor produced through a reconfiguration of settler state power; (2) knowledge claims about the environment are produced in ways that elide the ecological consequences of border barriers; and (3) racialized discourses of migrants are codified in environmental governing documents that support increased border militarization. I conclude with a discussion of how settler colonial technologies of environmental governance create new geographies of militarization and conservation in federally protected places along the U.S.–Mexico border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical social science research on conservation practice has long articulated the tactics that emerge out of a history of carcerality, environmental racism, colonialism, and violence against oppressed peoples. Despite these critiques, there has been little change in how conservation is conceptualised and implemented, resulting in the continuation of violence, racism, and injustice. Abolition ecologies offer a framework to see the world through a carceral lens and imagine an abolitionist future for conservation. Using Kenya as a case study, we outline the three ways that carcerality is apparent in and integral to contemporary conservation practices: legal/juridical, technoscience, and privatisation. Illuminating the carcerality of conservation practices, we posit, allows scholars and practitioners to begin to imagine and work towards a more just and liberatory conservation movement, one that minimises the perpetuation and reproduction of white supremacy, violence, and environmental injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

News organizations and journalists are important and influential actors in environmental politics. Their reporting on social and environmental issues often follows issue-attention cycles (IACs) that emphasize drama and problematization to maintain public interest. This study examined nearly 13 years of news coverage to understand the media discourse about the Critically Endangered North Atlantic right whale (NARW) and its conservation. Content analysis and critical discourse analysis were used to analyze 356 texts published in six large US newspapers between January 1, 2010 and March 15, 2023. NARW conservation and management received increased public attention and an IAC began in 2017 after an Unusual Mortality Event began, with 75 percent of the sampled articles (n = 267) published from 2017 on. The Boston Globe published a majority of the sampled texts (n = 209) and Globe reporter David Abel was the most prolific journalist with 50 bylines. The coverage featured six themes representing threats to the species, science and technological development, and tourism, local lifestyle, and culture. The most common topic was that of American lobster fishing gear and whale entanglements (n = 162, 45.5%). In that discourse journalists emphasized the political ecology of NARW conservation, focusing on disagreements between whale experts and advocates and commercial lobster fishermen and their allies as they sought to influence decision making by the National Marine Fisheries Service. Journalists presented the issue through a conflict frame and each group used distinct discursive strategies in an attempt to shape the discourse and public opinion related to new or stricter regulations for the commercial lobster fishery designed to reduce the risk of entanglement for NARWs. Findings suggest that this IAC related to NARW science and conservation has already moved through at least three of five key stages and will inevitably lose public interest, which has important implications for future communication and advocacy related to NARW conservation. This case study demonstrates the continued importance of media to conservation - as public forums for discussion, essential parts of organizational strategies for change, and as an externality that can influence conservation outcomes. Support for communication research and practice are vital to successful conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the complex political and economic dynamics surrounding Bolivia's cooperative miners, challenging stereotypes and misconceptions about their livelihoods and motivations. Through a material history approach, the author, Andrea Marston, sheds light on the diverse experiences and subjectivities of cooperative miners, highlighting the nuanced social and political positions they occupy. Marston's research not only contributes to a deeper understanding of Bolivian politics but also offers insights into the connections between resource nationalism and Indigenous politics in Bolivia. The article recommends Marston's book, "Subterranean Matters," as essential reading for scholars interested in themes of nationalism, nature-society relations, and the co-production of the material world and social identities. [Extracted from the article]

Are there limits to our ability to adapt food systems to climate change? This overview paper for the special issue highlights results of research on potential limits and responses by food system actors. Responses are shaped by the critical interactions among the physical, chemical, biological, and social impacts in food systems arising from climate change. Food grains, temperate perennials, livestock, and oceanic capture fisheries and farming are covered. Climate change impacts on the biology of plants, animals, and humans, as well as the options for societal responses are explored. The results show where and how possible adaptations will be limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waste generation in Sub-Saharan Africa is increasing rapidly. While biodegradable waste remains predominant, it is rarely treated separately by municipal solid waste management systems, thus foregoing the possibility to reduce the volume going to landfills or dumpsites. This paper discusses the unique case of the small city of Dschang, Cameroon, where the municipality operates two central composting plants that treat about 20% of the city's household and restaurant waste. Using Urban Political Ecology and Social Practice Theory, this article studies waste flows, waste practices, material arrangements, power relations, social norms, institutional dynamics, and policies to identify opportunities and obstacles for organic waste sorting at the level of households and restaurants. Our analysis draws upon qualitative and quantitative data and points to the importance of the availability of multiple waste bins and monetary compensation for organic waste sorting. These factors have also facilitated the development of an informal waste sector, which might use up to 20% of the city's waste as animal feed and for home/farm composting. However, complex relations between multiple actors and the national policy framework complicate the emergence of organic waste segregation at source as a common practice. In this way, the study shows that solid waste management is also a matter of power and (micro)politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of theories have been proposed to explain why states pass legislation to regulate professional groups, and why, more recently, they have acted to curtail professional privileges. While these theories have drawn attention to the importance of power dynamics and public protection, among other factors, the role of political interests has been downplayed. This article builds on ecological theory to argue that, with some modifications, the theory illuminates the centrality of state‐profession relations and politics to regulatory change. The theory is applied to a case study of regulatory change in British Columbia, Canada impacting resources‐sector professions, with particular attention to the controversies and political considerations that shaped reform. The case study suggests that when the political and professions ecologies are overlapping and symbiotic, as they were in BC, a challenge in the political ecology can implicate professions, prompting a solution that brings change within both ecologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines contemporary German environmental politics through its connections with ordoliberalism. Ordoliberalism is a branch of neoliberalism that prescribes a strong state to structure and optimize competition within a 'social market economy.' The article shows that ordoliberalism was built on a distinct political ecology that frames nature and the environment as potential sites of state intervention. It argues that ordoliberal political ecology can be made compatible with ostensibly opposed programs, including what we call 'fossil ordoliberalism,' 'green ordoliberalism,' and the potential for 'ordoliberal geoengineering.' Amidst the climate crisis, this ordoliberal malleability is exemplified by parties from the center-left Greens and center-right Liberals (FDP) to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Yet even in its progressive guise of a 'social-ecological market economy,' ordoliberal approaches will hit the 'glass ceiling' to socio-ecological transformation due to their technocratic orientation, democratic antipathies, and foundational commitment to market competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how political ecology can advance existing understandings of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its effects, and how the BRI can contribute to recent shifts in the study of political ecology. It argues that the idea of infrastructural overlap can sensitize discourse to the ways in which the materializations of the BRI, as a series of infrastructural megaprojects, intersect with other infrastructural formations, such as the environment and religion. By focusing on the effects of the BRI on resource-dependent communities located between the 'commons' and the 'cosmos' we can appreciate the sense of existential crisis that is triggered and exacerbated by China's world-building agenda in Southeast Asia and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Direito e Práxis is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the life and work of Giovanna Ricoveri, an anti-capitalist political ecology pioneer who played a significant role in the development of leftist, Marx-inspired environmentalist paradigms in Italy. Ricoveri's intellectual journey involved a shift from labor politics to environmental issues, with a focus on social inequalities and patriarchy. She collaborated with scholars like James O'Connor, Vandana Shiva, and Giorgio Nebbia to develop a political ecology framework that emphasized the commons as an alternative to capitalism and incorporated global perspectives. Ricoveri's legacy continues to influence political ecology frameworks and movements today, highlighting the importance of integrating ecological concerns with social justice. [Extracted from the article]

Recent years have seen an increasing recognition of the necessity to historicize and conceptualize ecological degradation in relation to capitalist and racist regimes of exploitation, epitomized by the popular concept of the "racial Capitalocene." While constituting an important effort to move beyond a color-blind environmentalism and class analysis, many of these accounts tend to abstract away from the place- and time-determined specificities of contemporary racial capitalism. This paper reconstructs the ecological thought latently present in the work of revolutionary theorists, activists, and life-long partners Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs to explore an alternative analysis. It shows that, as part of their analysis of automation of the capitalist production process, the Boggses developed a powerful account of environmental harm alongside social deprivation. Extrapolating their concepts of social and material "waste" and "wastelands," this paper argues that James and Grace Lee Boggs saw racist exploitation and ecological harm as intimately tied to the capitalist processes of valorization and devaluation. It shows that there emerges from their conjunctural analysis a novel theory of ecological racialization as well as some concrete implications for anti-capitalist, antiracist, and ecological struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Spain, small-scale agroecological production has emerged in response to the current environmental and food crisis. However, the lack of a protective legal framework, multiple sanctions and the political inertia of economic growth are deeply constraining and altering the very essence of such initiatives. In particular, new regulations introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated the formalisation and institutionalization of the agroecology sector. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the region of Madrid, the article explores the logics and processes through which agroecological producers adjust (or not) to current regulative frames, and the implications of the decisions for their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As digital technologies become increasingly ubiquitous on farms, we need to reconsider relationships between technology and agriculture. Critical agrarian studies offers some analyses of digital technologies, but rarely engages feminist perspectives, risking the repetition of problematic assumptions about scale, subjectivity and power. We draw from the strengths of feminist political ecology to think through three digital technologies – remote sensing satellites, agricultural advice apps, and automatic milking systems – that are transforming agrarian policy, practice, and social life. In doing so, we expand critical agrarian studies' approach to the digital by attending to situated knowledges, gendered labor, and emotional, intersectional, multi-species relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s, remote sensing has been used to monitor the environment, address national security concerns, and manage Earth resources within a market framework. However, environmental organizations can also utilize remote sensing data infrastructure to support oppositional narratives, legal processes, and direct action. We present a framework for the socio-technical practice of remote sensing in alliance with those communities and organizations that are struggling for environmental justice on the global commodity frontiers. Positioned at the intersection of critical geography and political ecology, we examine the ways that critical remote sensing has been adopted in five major types of environmental conflict: struggles opposing fossil fuel exploitation, timber extraction, intensive food production, water management practices, and the effects of mining. We present a baseline inventory of remote sensing resources that are useful to the five conflict types and are freely accessible online. A global perspective on the planetary environmental crisis is essential, and we suggest that remote sensing practitioners can, through workshops or online tutorials, help environmental justice organizations towards independent use of remote sensing data. The local communities should then determine whether remote sensing products can contribute to their struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, the Ghanaian government signed the Sinohydro deal, a resource-backed loan using bauxite as collateral, with Ghana's president highlighting the opportunity to develop an integrated bauxite-aluminium industry and boost industrialisation across the country. The deal has led to a number of protests against bauxite mining in Ghana, particularly at one potential site: The Atewa Forest Reserve. This paper analyses the politicisation of the Atewa Forest Reserve through the lens of political ecology. Political ecology recognises that forests are not neutral entities, but are shaped by political processes and dynamics. The Atewa Forest is seen as a political forest, as a particular constellation of power constituted by ideas, practices and institutions. The paper contends that the narrative constructed around the Sinohydro Deal strategically legitimizes mining in the Atewa Forest, positioning the project as a symbol of progress and national development. It also argues that the Sinohydro deal was designed to circumvent national environmental laws, leading to quick (political) success while being embedded in a powerful narrative. Therefore, the contestation over development is increasingly shaped by a discursive closure that limits dissent, influencing public opinion and decision-making. Despite presenting the developments as visions for the future, the narrative ultimately reinforces old development tropes of resource extraction, convincing even counter-movements to focus on the location rather than opposing bauxite mining as a whole. The findings are based on interviews conducted during fieldwork in 2018, 2019 and 2020, as well as analysis of secondary data such as political documents, press statements and speeches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic posed a big obstacle for nations as it affected the anticipated cash flows from the tourism and hospitality industry. Many tourist destinations have suffered as a result of the coronavirus disease 2019 crisis. Tourism and hospitality have been major source of revenue, and nations depend on them to augment their budgetary issues and support the provision of basic public services. Ethical tourism, responsible tourism, social justice, and sustainable tourism promise to be effective tools to execute this reputation agenda, which scholars have ignored. This paper proposes a conceptual framework that shows the effect of sustainability actions and justice on stakeholders in the tourism and hospitality industries, presently and for future generations. An in-depth literature review was employed using papers on sustainability actions. Using Scopus-indexed journals, 88 articles from several databases were sourced using key words. The conceptual framework provides insights into how global crises such as coronavirus disease in 2019 can be used as a gate to launch social justice in the tourism and hospitality space for employees, local tourism communities, tourists, and stakeholders globally. It provides academics and practitioners in the tourism and hospitality sectors with a fairer perspective on the development of strategies to attract tourists and better investment initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the politics of the megalith building tradition based on an ethnoarchaeological survey conducted in Liyai Khullen, an unexplored village inhabited by the Poumai Naga tribe in the Indian state of Manipur. I documented and mapped 554 stone monuments in and around the village, revealing a concentration in the habitation area and near footpaths leading to terraced fields. Additionally, I explored the stages of "feasts of merit" and the megalith building tradition through ethnography. Examining the tradition of feasting and building megaliths from the theoretical framework of "paleo-political ecology" reveals that sponsors of such costly undertakings received material benefits. These benefits include a larger share of meat and premium-quality rice beer in the feasts of others, the exclusive right to adorn homes with horns, the privilege of wearing status shawls, acquiring prestigious titles, and gaining more influence within the village. Based on the results, I argue that sponsors derived not only higher status but also material benefits within the traditional socio-political structure. The findings presented herein have archaeological implications for discussing megalithic remains among the Nagas and in Northeast India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Mughal and colonial periods, Bengal was among the most prosperous regions of the subcontinent. Despite the rapacity of the colonial administration, and despite partition, at independence, West Bengal was one of the most industrialised and developed states of India. However, its performance now is just average among Indian states. This article investigates the causes of this decline, objectively, taking a holistic view and analysing all relevant factors, using available public data and assessing the various views that are offered by scholars over the years. While partition dealt a heavy blow to West Bengal, several other factors aggravated the state's economic problems, including central and state policies. These impinged in areas of industrial and agricultural growth, urban development, human development and the state's resources for growth. In recent years West Bengal has seen better overall growth, including the industrial sector. State finances have improved and have the potential for further consolidation. Kolkata has better urban infrastructure. Increased regional cooperation with Bangladesh can undo the loss of markets and resources that partition had imposed. If managed properly, the state can further improve its overall development performance. This article offers suggestions regarding the priority development interventions that are necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws from the history and geography of science and from political ecology to trace the history of the idea that water can be conceived of, and quantified as, a global resource. We argue that this approach has contributed to the depoliticising of water-related problems by favouring technocratic and managerial responses. A method for calculating water balances was developed in Russia in the late 19th century and came to maturity in the Soviet Union in the 20th century. We begin by describing how this method was first adapted to calculating global-scale water balances in the 1960s. We then investigate how, in the 1990s, the quantification of what we call 'global water' came to be translated into popular international discourse and how this contributed to the construction of a 'global water crisis' in that decade. We also look at how it gave rise more recently to what is known as the 'planetary boundaries' approach. A particular research agenda and set of policy prescriptions follow from this way of conceiving of, and quantifying, water. They are oriented towards governance mechanisms that depoliticise water-related issues by defining and structuring water problems as essentially hydrological in nature. The recommended solutions are thus predisposed towards the technical optimisation of water use; they typically seek out demand-side management tools, and instruments that will ascribe greater economic value to water. Drawing from 'post-political' and 'anti-politics' theories, we argue that the political consequences of global water follow mainly from the way the matter-of-factness of such an approach authorises technocratic-managerial solutions. Discourses that define water problems in terms of quantity put the main focus on water per se, rather than on the social relations and realities that underlie such problems.

Deepening climate change is rendering water injustices ever more visible and deepening disputes in Latin America’s socio-ecologically delicate rural landscapes. This article analyses the fluid and multi-scalar ways in which water injustices are articulated and contested in the Peruvian Andes, increasingly threatened by climate change. The analysis draws on ethnographic-oriented research, focusing on the Yanacocha reservoir conflict in the Cunas watershed. By combining ideas from the political ecology of water and scalar politics, the study pays particular attention to how diverse justice claims by residents, private sector actors, politicians, and state authorities become intertwined and reshaped through shifting power relations across multiple scales. The study shows that water injustices are enmeshed within broader struggles over climate justice and fair agrarian futures in climate-sensitive rural regions such as the remote Peruvian Andes. In the Cunas watershed, the residents, who increasingly experience climatic threats in their daily lives, participate in cross-scaled power struggles in order to advocate for their own plural views of water justice. The study demonstrates a need to build stronger analytical linkages between intertwining claims about agrarian, climate, and water justices on multiple scales. This helps to better illuminate the many factors driving uneven water access in rural regions affected by climate change across the Global South.

Coal mining in the UK, once central to its political economy, has been in terminal decline for decades for both political and more recently environmental reasons. Against the grain of this decline, the proposal of a new metallurgical coal mine near Whitehaven (on the north west coast of England) has caused significant controversy. Those supporting the mines development say it is necessary to 'level up' from the previous decade of austerity, whereas opponents argue that new coal mining would severely undermine the transition to low carbon energy sources. Through a discourse analysis and open-ended interviews, this paper analyses the contestation of the mine through the environmental planning process, identifying how both the discursive contestation and decision-making practices are shaped by political logics (austerity/levelling up) and ecological logics (climate change). The paper finds that, as states turn towards greater levels of public subsidies as a new form of crisis management, the environmental decision-making processes which can determine the shape of investments have been severely undermined through a decade or more of reduced public investment, policy streamlining and a lack of public expertise. The paper argues that even though states may be turning towards policies subsidising energy projects, they are doing so in a context where there is a lack of state capacity due to a 'political ecology of austerity', limiting public capacity to plan for a better future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the fragmented connections of Jordan's smart grid, building on scholarship that questions how smart infrastructures reshape governance, sociospatial exclusion, and the fabric of urban life. Jordan's ambitious smart energy program is often held up as a global model by investors, as it catalyzed over US$4 billion in private investment for new renewable and smart energy development. Yet smart energy transition is experienced in powerfully uneven ways, as distributed solar installations and smart grid technologies radically remake the spaces of urban life. Rooted in sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article traces the vertical materialization of the smart grid from the ground up, from in-home smart meters through the evolving interconnections that they enact. I argue that (post)colonial property relations engender an archipelagic landscape of (dis)connectivity that redistributes the benefits and burdens of digitalization. Drawing from Glissant's archipelagic thought, I examine (dis)connection and urban fragmentation as a form of relation that links enduring (post)colonial relations to contemporary projects of smart development. In the (post)colonial world, as smart infrastructures are built into the conduits of uneven property relations, they come to incorporate not only capitalist logics but also racialized logics and historically contingent relations of exclusion and differentiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While not primarily a social theorist in the classical sense, E. F. Schumacher's interdisciplinary thought helped galvanise ecological social theory and the ecological movement more broadly. In this article, we introduce a special issue of the European Journal of Social Theory dedicated to engaging with E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful on its 50th anniversary. We provide both an overview of his life and work before locating Small is Beautiful within both its contemporary context and within today's social theoretical literature. As we show, Schumacher was a fierce critic of capitalist modernity and its 'gigantist' tendencies. As we discuss below, he advocated a metaphysical turn in economics, the implementation of intermediate technology and a reorientation of social practices in line with a more ecologically attuned political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful offers important insights for contemporary social theory. In particular, we focus on the merits of his use of 'meta-economics' and of 'scale' as a means for advancing ecological social critique. While we are sympathetic to Schumacher's approach, we are mindful of the limitations to his theoretical imagination and commence our article acknowledging his partisan metaphysics and his insensitivity to global political dynamics. To resolve this, we demonstrate that the central critical insights Schumacher provides can be substantially extricated from these problems. Our task here, therefore, is a critical reconstruction of Schumacher's approach to social-ecological critique, which we claim offers the potential to shape contemporary social theory, both within and beyond critical political ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does Chinese state capital operate in the neoliberal setting of Peruvian mining? The article tackles this question by focusing on Las Bambas, a large mine in the Andean highlands of Apurimac. We argue that China's quest for Peruvian copper entwines state capital with neoliberal and authoritarian practices of state violence in a case of 'para-coloniality.' This concept explains how Chinese mining operations build on and reproduce the legacies of European colonialism and authoritarian rule under Fujimorismo to extract natural resources from formerly colonized territories. A corollary element in this relationship is that of 'cheap security', i.e. the Peruvian state's practice of legally selling its policing services to mining companies who use them to discipline dissidents. The article draws on Critical Geopolitics, Legal Sociology and Political Ecology and highlights the shifting hierarchies of power that shape conflicts around copper extraction in the Andean highlands of Peru. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging the thinking of Georges Bataille, this article examines the international politics of poison as a category of death-dealing that defies distinctions between war/not war and weapon/not weapon. Refraining from splitting poison into pesticides and chemical weapons, the article analyses political ecologies and affective economies of poison both historically and today, to illuminate which desires and strategies poison, as a technology of death, lends itself to. Taking its departure in Bataille's writing on fascism and ending with his main theory of a general economy, the article weaves through nerve agent assassinations, fumigation, and ideas about gardening, to arrive at the conclusion that poison is not so much an excessive response as it is a response to excess. Following Bataille in viewing ecology as economies of consumption and competition, the article develops a rubric of martial economies of poison to encapsulate how poison, as mode of martial expenditure, makes spaces vacant by death, and room for organisms deemed worthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban river restoration efforts are growing worldwide. Along with restoring and conserving rivers, riverside land is slated for public recreation, property development, and infrastructure for adaptation to climate change. Riverine landscapes, embedded in larger watershed ecosystems and claimed by multiple communities, are sites of contested planning in contemporary cities. In this paper, we advance the scholarship on contestation over control and access of urban rivers and floodplains by analyzing the role of river restorative legislation and water-centered planning in managing Turag, an urban river in Bangladesh. While river degradation in urbanizing regions is often ascribed to lack of regulatory controls and enforcement, we argue that restorative legislation and interventions facilitate Turag River's ecocide by processes of territorialization. Territorialization refers to the co-constitutive dynamics of river restorative legislations and interventions as well as planned infrastructure and land use changes, which erase and displace river-based communities with reciprocal relations to the river. Riverine livelihoods and lifemaking, among fishing and farming communities in the case of Turag, are erased from planning and restoration practices, and are consequently expelled from the expanding city. Drawing on qualitative and counter-cartographic investigation of one severely polluted urban river in Dhaka, Bangladesh, we show how territorialization materializes through five co-constitutive dynamics involving environmental legislation, encroachment reporting, river demarcation, encroachment evictions, and wetland to land conversions. We draw out critical implications of how river restoration can be just and advance a riverine urbanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the resistance to geothermal energy projects in the Aegean region in Turkey. It explores, drawing on the analysis of documents and the fieldwork conducted in four Aegean cities, why there is a widespread local resistance to geothermal energy, which is widely promoted as environmentally benign and renewable and, as such, critical for the low-carbon energy transition. Examining the resistance from a political ecology perspective, I show how the power/resistance nexus in the field of renewable energy is shaped in those contexts where authoritarianism, populism, and geographically specific forms of capital accumulation operate in and through each other. Specifically, I demonstrate that the formulation of geothermal policy and practices to perpetuate and consolidate the power of the authoritarian populist AKP government laid the groundwork for the generation of widespread resistances by threatening to create new environmental injustices and to deepen existing class, and gender inequalities. The study also shows that geothermal energy may be as destructive as fossil fuel-based energy when not planned, regulated, or monitored effectively. It is concluded therefore that the practice of grouping renewable energy sources in a single 'clean energy' category should be reconsidered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How fires burn across British Columbia (BC), Canada is shaped by settler coloniality, timber capitalism, state forestry regimes, criminalization of burning, and Indigenous resistance. Despite the urgency of confronting the fire suppression paradox embedded in settler colonial fire management laws and practices, approaches to studying fire in Canada that foreground Indigenous law and de-center settler colonial governance is scarce. As political ecologists and geographers working and living in the context of unceded and ancestral lək̓ʷəŋən, W̱SÁNEĆ, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, səlilwətaɬ, and syilx territories, we engage with Indigenous feminist scholarship to expose how coloniality and gender intersect in attempts to erase Indigenous sovereignty to structure and naturalize provincial fire policy and its emplaced impacts on Indigenous legal orders. Our analysis contextualizes settler-colonial provincial fire management policy in the purview of Indigenous legal orders to foreground how racial-colonial and gendered politics are obscured when colonial fire and wildfire practices are naturalized. Revisiting key moments in the political development of fire suppression across so-called BC, we contend that the suppression paradox is embedded in and reproduces a colonial logic that widens existing social and economic gaps. These gaps are uniquely gendered, as settler coloniality operates upon patriarchal lines that have actively attempted to erase Indigenous women and Two-Spirit peoples, including the laws and legal authorities that they possess and practice. Considering the 1910 Fulton Commission, we highlight an example of how women and Indigenous people were excluded from the political decision-making structures that shaped colonial fire management practices in BC. These gendered and racialized exclusions bear directly on the exclusion of Indigenous women and gender-diverse folx, and Indigenous legal orders guided by matriarchal lines of fire knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]