Political ecology is the study of how political, economic and social factors relate to environmental issues and climate change. Political ecology differs from conventional ecological studies by foregrounding power relations in environmental issues and phenomena.
As an academic discipline, political ecology integrates ecological social sciences with political economyPeet and Watts, 1996, p.6. in topics such as degradation and marginalization, environmental conflict, conservation and control, and environmental identities and social movements.Robbins, 2012. Scholars in political ecology are drawn from a variety of academic disciplines, including geography, anthropology, development studies, political science, economics, sociology, forestry, critical agrarian studies and environmental history.
Overview While the broad scope and interdisciplinary nature of political ecology lends itself to multiple definitions and understandings, the field shares some common assumptions. Political ecology is frequently seen as an approach to the study of environmental issues, but it can also be understood to define a lived reality and a praxis for change. Raymond L. Bryant and Sinéad Bailey developed three fundamental assumptions in practising political ecology:
First, changes in the environment do not affect society in a homogenous way: political, social, and economic differences account for uneven distribution of costs and benefits. Second, "any change in environmental conditions must affect the political and economic status quo." Third, the unequal distribution of costs and benefits and the reinforcing or reducing of pre-existing inequalities has political implications in terms of the altered power relationships that then result.
In addition, political ecology attempts to provide critiques and alternatives in the interplay of the environment and political, economic and social factors. Paul Robbins asserts that the field has a "normative understanding that there are very likely better, less coercive, less exploitative, and more sustainable ways of doing things".Robbins, 2012.
From these assumptions, political ecology can be used to:
inform policymakers and organizations of the complexities surrounding environment and development, thereby contributing to better environmental governance. understand the decisions that communities make about the natural environment in the context of their political environment, economic pressure, and societal regulations. look at how unequal relations in and among societies affect the natural environment, especially in the context of government policy.
Scope and influences
Since the 1970s, the field's scope and goals have shifted, as different influences have gained or lost importance. Peter A. Walker traces the importance of the ecological sciences in political ecology. He points to the transition, for many critics, from a ‘structuralist’ approach through the 1970s and 1980s, in which ecology maintains a key position in the discipline, to a 'poststructuralist' approach with an emphasis on the 'politics' in political ecology.Walker, 2005, p.74-75. This turn has raised questions as to the differentiation with environmental politics as well as the field's use of the term of 'ecology'. Political ecological research has shifted from investigating political influence on the earth's surface to the focus on spatial-ecological influences on politics and power—a scope reminiscent of environmental politics.
Much has been drawn from cultural ecology, a form of analysis that showed how culture depends upon, and is influenced by, the material conditions of society. According to Walker, political ecology has largely eclipsed cultural ecology as a form of analysis. As Walker states, "whereas cultural ecology and systems theory emphasize[s] adaptation and homeostasis, political ecology emphasize[s] the role of political economy as a force of maladaptation and instability".
Political ecologists often use political economy frameworks to analyze environmental issues. Early and prominent examples of this were the study Silent Violence: Food, Famine and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria by Michael Watts in 1983, which traced the famine in northern Nigeria during the 1970s to the effects of colonialism, rather than an inevitable consequence of the drought in the Sahel, and The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries by Piers Blaikie in 1985, which traced land degradation in Africa to colonial policies of land appropriation, rather than over-exploitation by African farmers.
Relationship to other disciplines
Anthropology and geography Originating in the 18th and 19th centuries with philosophers such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Thomas Malthus, political economy attempted to explain the relationships between economic production and political processes.Ritzer, 2008: 28.Perry, 2003: 123. It tended toward overly structural explanations, focusing on the role of individual economic relationships in the maintenance of social order.Wolf, 1997: 7-9. Eric Wolf used political economy in a neo-Marxist framework which began addressing the role of local cultures as a part of the world capitalist system, refusing to see those cultures as "primitive isolates".Wolf, 1997: 13. But environmental effects on political and economic processes were under-emphasised.
Conversely, Julian Steward and Roy Rappaport's theories of cultural ecology are sometimes credited with shifting the functionalist-oriented anthropology of the 1950s and 1960s and incorporating ecology and environment into ethnographic study.Perry, 2003: 154-157.
Geographers and anthropologists, working with their respective strengths, formed the basis of political ecology.Wolf, 1972.Watts, 1983.Piers Blaikie, 1985Hecht & Cockburn, 1990.Peluso, 1992.Greenberg & Park, 1994.Hershkovitz, 1993. Political ecology focuses on issues of power, recognizing the importance of explaining environmental impacts on cultural processes without separating out political and economic contexts.
The application of political ecology in the work of anthropologists and geographers differs. While any approach will take both the political/economic and the ecological into account, the emphasis can be unequal. Some, such as geographer Michael Watts, focus on how the assertion of power impacts on access to environmental resources. His approach tends to see environmental harm as both a cause and an effect of “social marginalization”.Paulson, 2003: 205.
Conservation There is a divergence of ideas between conservation science and political ecology. With conservationists establishing protected areas to conserve biodiversity, "political ecologists have devoted some energy to the study of protected areas, which is unsurprising given political ecology's overall interest in forms of access to, and control over, resources".Hanna, et al., 2004: 203. Political ecologists argue against the enclosure of land for conservation because it usually denies local people access to the land, harming them and hampering their livelihood systems. As Dove and Carpenter state, "Indigenous people have important environmental knowledge which could contribute to conservation",Dove & Carpenter, 2008: 4. yet conservation regimes frequently marginalize these knowledge systems by privileging technocratic expertise and external management models. Political ecologists also argue that conservation NGOs and governments extend their regulatory reach, often imposing land use restrictions that undermine Indigenous and other local communities' capacity to sustain themselves and to conserve species and areas, leaving them more vulnerable to dispossession.
Political ecology scholarship from the Global South has sharpened these critiques by foregrounding colonial continuities, resource governance, and the political economy of conservation. The works of Amita Baviskar, Nandini Sundar, and Mahesh Rangarajan demonstrate that conservation-induced displacement, particularly in tiger reserves and forest areas, frequently targets Adivasi and forest-dependent communities. These interventions reinforce long-standing patterns of marginalization under the guise of ecological protection. In Southeast Asia, conservation is deeply entangled with resource extraction, militarization and state-led development agenda. Rather than functioning as neutral ecological interventions, conservation zones in the region frequently overlap with mining concessions, logging interests, plantation expansion, and counter-insurgency operations, revealing conservation as part of a broader system of territorial control.
Western vs. indigenous views Western societies' views on ecological conservation often overlook Indigenous knowledge and cast the blame for environmental degradation on Indigenous communities. Political ecology scholars exemplify how Indigenous knowledge challenges dominant conservation narratives. Western knowledge tends to overlook Indigenous land-based practices and to undermine their value in maintaining biodiversity.
The misinterpretation of these practices can lead to misread landscapes, wherein Indigenous land use practices are framed as destructive through a colonial lens. Fairhead and Leach addressed this in their research on West Africa's environmental decline, which they frame as “false forest histories”. Their research actively addressed the false narratives projected at Indigenous land-use practices as destructive to local forests. At the same time, evidence shows that Indigenous communities have been active participants in maintaining and caring for the forest. Controlled burning emerged as a key example of misread ecological practices within Fairhead and Leach's study. Controlled burning was misunderstood as environmentally destructive to local forests and part of irresponsible land use, whereas it had positive ecological effects for the local land. Controlled burning is part of a co-adaptive system in which fire, rain, and soil are seen as interconnected entities that depend on one another to thrive.
Therefore, underscores that colonial interpretations of land management tend to take a top-down approach to forest management rather than a holistic, bottom-up approach in environmental conservation. In addition, research in political ecology has analyzed how Indigenous Knowledge (IK) is contested and or excluded within government-led resource management frameworks. This is due to Western science being prioritized over Indigenous epistemologies, leading to IK to become “othered” within the system to benefit the colonial state. On the West Coast of Canada, Indigenous land-use practices, such as the use of cedar, were exploited by colonial forces through the construction of cedar mills. This was due to the toxic air pollution and dust that the cedar mills would create, and therefore affected the Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents and mill workers. Cedar is sacred to the Nuu-chah-nulth-aht people and used within medicinal and spiritual practices. Therefore, the exploitation of this sacred wood was a clear sign of the misunderstanding and an unbalanced relationship between people and nature. Both these incidents demonstrate that IK systems are vital to understanding our ecological environment, and when IK is misunderstood or overlooked, our environment suffers.
Power in political ecology