Political Ecology
Political ecology began in the 1960s as a response to the neglect of the environment and political externalities from which it is spawned. Political ecology is the analysis of social forms and humans organizations that interact with the environment, the phenomena in and affecting the developing world. Political ecology also works to provide critiques and alternatives for negative reactions in the environment. This line of work draws from all sorts of fields, such as geography, forestry, environmental sociology, and environmental history in a complex relationship between politics, nature, and economics. It is a multi-sided field where power strategies are conceived to remove the unsustainable modern rationality and instead mobilize social actions in the globalized world for a sustainable future. The field is focused in political ethics to refresh sustainability, and the core questions of the relationships between society and ecology, and the large impacts of globalization of humanized nature.
Political ecology also involves conflicts between people and institutions over resources, in both developed world and developing world contexts. The use of natural resources and the creation of a sustainable environment is a critical issue that must be observed from different perspectives. Does it permit sustainable resources? Is it a threat to local security? How is income distributed through societies, both gender and location wise? Who decides how these are to be classified? These are key problems in political ecology.
Policy making. The Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, often referred to as the framework convention because it was the original effort to protect the ozone layer, was established in...
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... Carbon Market is a form of trading that specifically targets carbon dioxide (calculated in tonnes of carbon dioxide) and is the bulk of emissions trading. Carbon trading is a common method countries use to meet their obligations from the Kyoto Protocol, which involves an attempt to reduce future climate change.
Outside if politics, there are also groups called NGOs: (Non-governmental Organizations) that are not run by state or local governments that operate as nonprofits organizations; these groups have created a web of global development networks in response to governmental decision making dominated by the core (e.g., WTO, IMF, World Bank). A main point of NGOs is to have undeveloped and developing countries participate. Unfortunately, this is sometimes seen as counter-hegemonic, which is where nations dominate other nations, both economically and politically.
It is a melancholy object to those who travel through this great country to see isolated corners of this fair realm still devoted to protecting the environment. The wretched advocators of these ideals are frequently seen doling out petitions and begging at their neighbours’ doors to feed their obsession, which keeps them in the contemptible poverty that they so richly deserve.
In 1989, seventy five percent of Americans identified themselves as environmentalists, and the number has continued to grow since then (Walls 1). Environmentalism is now the most popular social movement in the United States, with over five million American families donating regularly to environmental organizations (Walls 1). Environmentalists today focus on what kind of world they hope to see in the future, and largely deal with limiting pollution and changing consumption rates (Kent 1 and 9). Modern environmentalists also have much different issues than those Carson’s America faced. With climate change becoming more threatening each year, protection of the natural world is needed more than ever. Pollution has caused the warmest decade in history, the deterioration of the ozone layer, and species extinction in extreme numbers (Hunter 2). It not only threatens nature, but also human populations, who already suffer from lack of clean water and poisoning from toxic chemicals (Hunter 16). Unlike environmental actions in the 1960’s, which were mostly focused on protection, a massive increase in pollution has caused efforts to be focused on environmental restoration (Hunter 16). Like in the time of Silent Spring, environmentalists are not only concerned with one country. Protecting the environment remains a global issue, and every nation is threatened by the
Nordhaus, Ted, and Michael Shellenberger. Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Print.
Walker, G. (2009). Globalizing Environemental Justice: The Geography and Politics of Frame Contextualization and Evolution. Global Social Policy , 9 (3), 355-382.
As stated above, there are various actors in the international community. These actors include intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations who help shape the foundation and creation of human rights. IGOs and NGOs listen to the international community to monitor and protect their human rights. According to the textbook, nongovernmental organization have been especially vocal and effective in the international system when it comes to human rights. NGOs groups that have a great impact on human rights through specific groups like Amnesty International, and the Human Rights Watch. IGOs and NGOs make the public aware of human rights issues, put pressure on good and bad states to confront issues, and lobby international organizations. As stated
Non-governmental development organizations are working to decrease and eradicate poverty throughout the world and to increase equitable treatment and well being throughout the global populace. This essay will examine two such Non-governmental development organizations and examine and contrast their values, behaviors and practices. Differences will be drawn between these Non-governmental development organizations, as well as highlighting similarities in view and achievement between both Non-governmental development organizations. Overall these differences and similarities will be highlighted in reference to their relationship to the global market and international civil society. Ultimately it will be demonstrated that, whilst Non-governmental development organizations work through different goals and processes, they are coming together in their effects to improve economic equilibrium, health and wellbeing for marginalized and impoverished countries and communities.
Rudel, K. Thomas, J. Timmons Roberts and JoAnn Carmin. 2011. “Political Economy of the Environment.” Annual Review of Sociology 37: 221-238.
I think this wholesale framing of environmental justice issues solely or primarily in terms of distribution is seriously problematic. Drawing on both ecofeminist insights concerning the inextricable interconnections between institutions of human oppression and the domination of the natural ...
Wick, K. & Bulte, E. (2006). Contesting Resources - Rent Seeking, Conflict and the Natural Resource Curse. Public Choice, 128, 457–476.
Everyone’s interpretation of environmental justice varies from their degree of belief and understanding of this serious subject. Though politics play a large role in the globalization of the world, it is those politics that have the power to accept or reject people’s notion. Though the characters in Edward Abbey’s book go about making their statement in an unacceptable way, to them, it is thought to make a difference in the amount of expansion they hope will not be made in the western states. As starhawk states, “we must have respect within to gain it” (30). With the respect of our selves, neighbors and our natural settings, there leaves no room for anything other than improvement.
Chasek, P. S., Downie, D. L., & Brown, J. W. (2014). The Development of Environmental Regimes: Chemicals, Wastes, and Climate Change. In P. S. Chasek, D. L. Downie, & J. W. Brown, Global Environmental Politics (6th ed., pp. 101-173). Boulder: Westview Press.
A human induced global ecological crisis is occurring, threatening the stability of this earth and its inhabitants. The best path to address environmental issues both effectively and morally is a dilemma that raises concerns over which political values are needed to stop the deterioration of the natural environment. Climate change; depletion of resources; overpopulation; rising sea levels; pollution; extinction of species is just to mention a few of the damages that are occurring. The variety of environmental issues and who and how they affect people and other species is varied, however the nature of environmental issues has the potential to cause great devastation. The ecological crisis we face has been caused through anthropocentric behavior that is advantageous to humans, but whether or not anthropocentric attitudes can solve environmental issues effectively is up for debate. Ecologism in theory claims that in order for the ecological crisis to be dealt with absolutely, value and equality has to be placed in the natural world as well as for humans. This is contrasting to many of the dominant principles people in the contemporary world hold, which are more suited to the standards of environmentalism and less radical approaches to conserving the earth. I will argue in this essay that whilst ecologism could most effectively tackle environmental problems, the moral code of ecologism has practical and ethical defects that threaten the values and progress of anthropocentricism and liberal democracy.
Before attacking these NGOs, their specific contributions to environmental protections must be established. It seems that NGOs made the most significant gains at and after the Stockholm conference. They established specific practices that were aimed at protecting the environment not only at national levels, but internationally. NGOs acted as liasons between nations with alternative views. Most importantly, these NGOs were established to communicate the goals of such conferences as Stockholm and the Brundtland Commission, and to pressure cooperating nations into achieving these goals without the type of pressure that would create chaos amongst the nations.
Ecologists formulate their scientific theories influenced by ethical values, and in turn, environmental ethicists value nature based on scientific theories. Darwinian evolutionary theory provides clear examples of these complex links, illustrating how these reciprocal relationships do not constitute a closed system, but are undetermined and open to the influences of two broader worlds: the sociocultural and the natural environment. On the one hand, the Darwinian conception of a common evolutionary origin and ecological connectedness has promoted a respect for all forms of life. On the other hand, the metaphors of struggle for existence and natural selection appear as problematic because they foist onto nature the Hobbesian model of a liberal state, a Malthusian model of the economy, and the productive practice of artificial selection, all of which reaffirm modern individualism and the profit motive that are at the roots of our current environmental crisis. These metaphors were included in the original definitions of ecology and environmental ethics by Haeckel and Leopold respectively, and are still pervasive among both ecologists and ethicists. To suppose that these Darwinian notions, derived from a modern-liberal worldview, are a fact of nature constitutes a misleading interpretation. Such supposition represents a serious impediment to our aim of transforming our relationship with the natural world in order to overcome the environmental crisis. To achieve a radical transformation in environmental ethics, we need a new vision of nature.
Environmental philosophy tries to make sense of the unexamined values, assumptions and ideologies behind humanities treatment of the environment and, in doing so, aims at helping to elicit an effective human response to related issues (Curry, 2011). Environmental philosophy, has gone beyond being merely an academic pursuit, now requiring the world’s population take moral responsibility for the damages caused by their industrial advances on natural systems.