Geography in America at the Dawn of the 21st Century

Environmental Politics:
Multi-Scale Struggles over
Natural Resource Control
The emphasis given to conflicts over natural resource
access, control, and management, has led some cultural
and political ecologists to place politics front and center
of their discussions. The focus on power relations and
political processes that influence the dynamics of environmental
change occurs at multiple scales, with emphasis
on local and regional settings (Fig. 8.1—area 4). From
the micro-politics of the household and community to
macro processes originating at the national and international
levels, explicit connections are made between
poverty and power relations and between environmental
degradation and political-economic processes—what
Bryant and Bailey (1997: 27–47) call “the politicized
environment”. Edited collections by Schroeder and
Neumann (1995) and Peet and Watts (1996), along with
Bryant and Bailey’s synthetic work, Third World Political
Ecology, represent a concerted effort “to refine and deepen
the political” in examining human–environmental
interactions (Peet and Watts 1996: 39).
At the local level, several studies focus on gender
politics and resource control conflicts linked to interventions
by the state in agricultural development and
environmental “stabilization” projects (Carney 1993a;
Schroeder 1995, 1999). In the case of a state-directed irrigated
rice development scheme in the Gambia, Carney
and Watts (1990) show how intra-household conflicts
over land and labor control were fought out in the
naming of fields as either individual (kamanyango) or
family (maruo). These designations held important
implications for control over farm labor and output.
Their analysis shows how production politics are simultaneously
material, cultural, and symbolic processes that
in some circumstances adversely influence agricultural
performance.
Moving back and forth between local and national
levels, Rangan (1995, 1996) and Watts (1998b) situate
their studies of deforestation in the Garwhal Himalayas
and the ecological devastation of petroleum extraction
in Ogoniland (Nigeria), respectively, in relation to localnational
politics over resource control. In contrast to the
populist interpretations of these struggles as exemplars
of grassroots environmentalism in which “the people”
are characterized by a set of common interests, Rangan and
Watts emphasize the conflicting goals and politics and the
heterogeneous groups associated with these movements.
Their findings challenge the overly simplistic populist
interpretations that have become common in conjunction
with neoliberal and “newly democratic” states.
Bryant and Bailey similarly privilege the political dimensions
of environmental change and resource conflicts.
“Putting politics first,” they define political ecology as
“an inquiry into the political sources, conditions, and
ramifications of environmental change ...[thus] the
role of power in the mediation of relations between
actors over environmental matters becomes of paramount
importance (Bryant and Bailey, 1997: 188, 191).
Ironically, their actor-oriented approach, which systematically
addresses roles played by the state, multilateral
institutions, business, environmental non-governmental
organizations, and grassroots actors, may leave little
room for the environment itself. Vayda and Walters
(1999) critique this “politics without ecology” approach
for claiming to explain environmental change without
demonstrating the environmental effects of resource
struggles.
An explicit attempt to forge analytical links between
social dimensions of resource management, environmental
change, and policy-making is addressed by a
number of authors in a special issue of Land Degradation
and Development edited by Batterbury and Bebbington
(1999). Blaikie (1994) discusses epistemological and
methodological issues involved in conducting what
Batterbury et al. (1997) call the “hybrid research”
agenda. Zimmerer’s study of crop plant biodiversity
in the Peruvian Andes integrates cultural, historical,
economic, and environmental history with ecological
analysis (Zimmerer 1996a).
Protected Areas: Conflicts,
Markets, and Conservation
Strategies
Cultural Ecology · 103
The creation of national parks and other types of
protected areas has historically entailed the expulsion
of indigenous peoples from ancestral lands and denied
them access to resources critical to their livelihoods.
Cultural ecological research on protected areas highlights
conflicts over natural resource access, control
and management among park authorities, conservation
organizations, and local peoples. These studies examine
the historical origins of what Neumann (1998) calls
“the national park ideal,” document land- and sea-user
resistance to protected area policies, and propose
alternative strategies that privilege local customary