Political Ecology | ScienceGate

Increasing recognition of the irrefutable urgency to address the global climate challenge is driving mitigation efforts to decarbonise. Countries are setting targets, technological innovation is making renewable energy sources competitive and fossil fuel actors are leveraging their incumbent privilege and political reach to modulate energy transitions. As techno-economic competitiveness is rapidly reconfigured in favour of sources such as solar energy, governance puzzles dominate the research frontier. Who makes key decisions about decarbonisation based on what metrics, and how are consequent benefits and burdens allocated? This article takes its point of departure in ambitious sustainability metrics for solar rollout that Portugal embraced in the late 2010s. This southwestern European country leads on hydro and wind power, and recently emerged from austerity politics after the 2008–2015 recession. Despite Europe’s best solar irradiation, its big solar push only kicked off in late 2018. In explaining how this arose and unfolded until mid-2020 and why, the article investigates what key issues ambitious rapid decarbonisation plans must address to enhance social equity. It combines attention to accountability and legitimacy to offer an analytical framework geared at generating actionable knowledge to advance an accountable energy transition. Drawing on empirical study of the contingencies that determine the implementation of sustainability metrics, the article traces how discrete acts legitimate specific trajectories of territorialisation by solar photovoltaics through discursive, bureaucratic, technocratic and financial practices. Combining empirics and perspectives from political ecology and energy geographies, it probes the politics of just energy transitions to more low-carbon and equitable societal futures.

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Facilitating Prescribed Fire in Northern California through Indigenous Governance and Interagency Partnerships

Fire ◽

10.3390/fire4030037 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (3) ◽

pp. 37

Author(s):

Tony Marks-Block ◽

William Tripp

Keyword(s):

Political Ecology ◽

Prescribed Fire ◽

Prescribed Burning ◽

Participant Observation ◽

Fire Suppression ◽

The United States ◽

Northern California ◽

Prescribed Burn ◽

California Department ◽

State Regulations

Prescribed burning by Indigenous people was once ubiquitous throughout California. Settler colonialism brought immense investments in fire suppression by the United States Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention (CAL FIRE) to protect timber and structures, effectively limiting prescribed burning in California. Despite this, fire-dependent American Indian communities such as the Karuk and Yurok peoples, stalwartly advocate for expanding prescribed burning as a part of their efforts to revitalize their culture and sovereignty. To examine the political ecology of prescribed burning in Northern California, we coupled participant observation of prescribed burning in Karuk and Yurok territories (2015–2019) with 75 surveys and 18 interviews with Indigenous and non-Indigenous fire managers to identify political structures and material conditions that facilitate and constrain prescribed fire expansion. Managers report that interagency partnerships have provided supplemental funding and personnel to enable burning, and that decentralized prescribed burn associations facilitate prescribed fire. However, land dispossession and centralized state regulations undermine Indigenous and local fire governance. Excessive investment in suppression and the underfunding of prescribed fire produces a scarcity of personnel to implement and plan burns. Where Tribes and local communities have established burning infrastructure, authorities should consider the devolution of decision-making and land repatriation to accelerate prescribed fire expansion.

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Integrating pattern-based modelling and political ecology in land-use change research: the case of Mexican dry tropics

Journal of Land Use Science ◽

10.1080/1747423x.2019.1681527 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 15 (2-3) ◽

pp. 252-269 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Fernanda Figueroa ◽

Leonardo Calzada ◽

Jorge A. Meave

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Land Use Change ◽

Political Ecology ◽

Dry Tropics

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Exploring the Entry Points for Political Ecology in the International Research Agenda on Global Environmental Change

Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie ◽

10.1515/zfw.1999.0011 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 43 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Helmut Geist

Keyword(s):

Environmental Change ◽

Political Ecology ◽

International Research ◽

Research Agenda ◽

Global Environmental Change ◽

Global Environmental ◽

Entry Points

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The Delta is Dead: Moral Ecologies of Infrastructure in Turkey

Cultural Anthropology ◽

10.14506/ca34.3.04 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 34 (3) ◽

Author(s):

Caterina Scaramelli

Keyword(s):

Working Class ◽

Political Ecology ◽

Economic Crisis ◽

Moral Economy ◽

Moral Authority ◽

Ecological Change ◽

Theoretical Understanding ◽

Water Flows ◽

Environmental Infrastructure ◽

New Habitats

In a Turkish delta, fishers, scientists, and residents articulate contrasting moral ecologies of infrastructure. Contesting the infrastructural remaking of delta environments, fishermen connect ecological change to the concerns of working-class livelihoods; scientists assert a unique moral authority to create new habitats for selected species; and activists couch claims of ecological justice within existing legal spaces, all against the backdrop of increasing authoritarianism and economic crisis. This article extends insights from anthropological discussions of moral economy into political ecology to advance a new theoretical understanding of environmental infrastructure. I offer the notion of a moral ecology of infrastructure, theorizing infrastructure and ecology as inseparable, rather than set in opposition. In my use of the term, moral ecologies are assessments of justice and motivations for action that concern relations between humans and nonhumans. These assessments are not necessarily couched as resistance, but also encompass hegemonic and capitalist projects. This analytic proves helpful for understanding how, and why, people confront and respond to environmental transformations in an infrastructural world. At stake in these claims are moral notions of human and nonhuman livelihoods, notions that include those of water flows, birds, fish, sandbars, trees, and others. Özet Bir Türkiye deltasında balıkçılar, bilim insanları ve deltanın sakinleri, altyapının birbirine zıt ahlaki ekolojilerini ifade ederler. Her bir grubun delta ortamlarının yeniden altyapılandırılmasına karşı çıkış nedeni farklıdır: balıkçılar ekolojik değişimi işçi sınıfının geçim kaygılarıyla ilişkilendirir; bilim insanları seçili ender türlere yeni habitatlar oluşturmak için kendilerine özgü ahlaki bir otorite ortaya koyarlar; ve çevreciler artan otoriter rejim ve ekonomik krizler kıskacında, mevcut yasal alanlarda ekolojik adalet iddialarını dile getirirler. Bu makale, çevre altyapısına dair teorik yeni bir anlayış geliştirmek için ahlaki ekonomi ile ilgili antropolojik tartışmaları politik ekolojiyle ilişkilendirmektedir. Ahlaki altyapı ekolojisi kavramını önererek, altyapıyı ve ekolojiyi birbirine zıt olmaktan ziyade birbirinden ayrılmaz kavramlar olarak görüyorum. Ahlaki ekolojilerden kastım, insanlar ve insan olmayanlar arasındaki ilişkilere dair gelişen adalet anlayışı ve eylem motivasyonlarıdır. Ahlaki ekoloji mutlaka direnç demek değildir; aynı zamanda hegemonik ve kapitalist projeleri de kapsamaktadır. Bu yaklaşımla, insanların altyapı dünyasındaki çevresel dönüşümlerle nasıl ve niçin karşı karşıya kaldıklarını ve bu dönüşümlere nasıl tepki verdiklerini anlayacağımızı iddia ediyorum. Bu iddialarda dile gelen, insani ve insan dışı geçim kaynaklarına dair olan ahlak kavramlarıdır; suların akışını, kuşları, balıkları, kıyı kordonlarını, ağaçları ve diğerlerini içeren kavramlar.

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