Introduction: Women, ecology, and economics: new models and theories

The Call for Papers mentioned such possible topics as "The parallels between women's work, environmental services and natural resource use with regard to valuation, status as 'externalities,' sustainability, complementarity with financial capital, incorporation in national accounts, etc.; the role of women in creating the conditions for sustainable economies and sustainable trade; women's health as an environmental and economic issue; the economic implications of women's position as environmental stewards, especially in the South; and the impact of globalization on women, from an ecological economics perspective." The journal's editors suggested an additional topic of interest which we listed as women and population policy.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

Canadian Indigenous female leadership and political agency in climate change

The Canadian federal election of 2015 was a watershed moment for women’s political agency, indigenous activism and climate justice in Canada. Since 1990, skyrocketing fossil fuel extraction, especially in the Alberta tar sands, had generated escalating environmental crises on First Nations territories. Extreme weather events due to climate change were impacting communities across the country, with particular implications for women’s caring and other unpaid work. Ten years of attacks on women’s organizations and priorities by the conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper had angered female voters. In response, indigenous and settler women’s organizing on climate and environmental justice, fossil fuel extraction and voting rights was an important factor in Harper’s October 2015 defeat. Justin Trudeau, elected on promises to address climate change, indigenous rights and gender equity, now faces the challenge of delivering on both distributive and procedural climate justice. This story of extraction, climate change, weather, unequal impacts, gender and political agency in a fossil fuel-producing country in the Global North has implications for gender and climate justice globally. Canada contains within its borders many examples of environmental racism stemming from fossil fuel extraction and climate change, paralleling global injustices. The politics of addressing these inequities is key to a successfully managed energy transition away from fossil fuels. In the Canadian case at least, women’s leadership – especially indigenous women’s leadership – is emerging as crucial.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada IDRC and SSHRC File Agreement No. 2017-0082 and SSHRC File #: 895-2013-1010 Project period: 01-April-14 to 31-Mar-2

Participation and Watershed Management: Experiences from Brazil

Public participation is emphasized in many new institutional approaches to resource management, especially watershed governance. The implementation of participatory management frameworks, and capacity-building for civil society participants, deserve close attention. This paper reports on an ongoing project in Sao Paulo State, Brazil, which is designed to strengthen the ability of local and NGO representatives to participate in democratic water management structures.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

Ecofeminism, Commons, and Climate Justice

Much recent work in ecological economics, degrowth, climate justice, and political ecology focuses on ‘commons’ as an emergent paradigm for sustainable governance institutions to address or rectify ecological crisis. This paper summarizes definitions and typologies of commons, give some examples of commons which help to further climate justice, and discusses these ideas from an ecofeminist perspective.his research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, FRN IDRC and SSHRC File Agreement No. 2017-008

NAFTA and the Future of Environmental Regulation

While NAFTA contains more "green" language than any previous trade pact, the agreement is also unprecedented in the freedom it allows investors and the extent to which it curtails government policy flexibility - important areas of concern for the environment. Especially in Canada, where environmental policy is primarily a provincial responsibility, questions have arisen about the workability and constitutionality of federally-negotiated international agreements like NAFTA which may have broad impacts on the ability of provincial governments to regulate and set environmental policy. Without embarking on constitutional questions in detail, this paper briefly explores some of the environmental policy issues raised by NAFT

EQUITY, ECONOMIC SCALE, AND THE ROLE OF EXCHANGE IN A SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY

This paper explores these theoretical and practical issues, considering the question of the environmental and ecological impacts of economic activity from the viewpoint of the scale at which this activity takes place and the exchanges across time and space which affect its sustainability. Following a consideration of the dynamics of economic change in the next section, the paper discusses the meaning of trade/exchange, economic scale, and political/ecological/economic boundaries before returning in the final section to the two equity-related issues outlined above.This research was supported by the International Development Research Centr

Feminist Ecological Economics

This article provides an overview of feminist ecological economics, with special attention to three particular aspects: its theoretical foundations and relation to other schools of thought, its implications for activism and public policy, and directions for future research work.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

Environmental activism and gender

In the following sections, this chapter discusses and provides a number of examples from around the world to illustrate each of these aspects of environmental activism and gender — the empirical, theoretical, and dynamic—ending with a few concluding remarks.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

SCALE, ECOLOGY AND COMPLEX SYSTEMS

The relationship between political jurisdictions and ecologically-sensible geographic areas is a central concern of political ecologists; few are the cities, provinces, states or countries which map closely onto watersheds, airsheds, aquifers, ranges of migratory birds or top predators, or any other terrestrial space which makes (more-than-human) ecological sense. As the need becomes more pressing to devise policies which help to reduce human impact on ecological systems, the inefficiencies and dysfunctionalities which result from this disjuncture between political spaces and ecological spaces are becoming more readily apparent. It is extremely difficult to devise and implement policies to protect Monarch butterflies, the ozone layer, North Atlantic groundfish stocks, or even the Oglalla aquifer, due in large part to the many political jurisdictions which must commit to policies and their enforcement. Ecological issues which are of central concern for some jurisdictions matter only peripherally or are swamped by other economic or foreign-policy considerations for other jurisdictions, leading to the familiar gridlock in environmental policy -- which of course exists not just at the international level, but also at regional and local scales (Press, 1994:84-107; Bhaskar and Glyn, 1995; Borgese, 1995:151-166; Schreurs and Economy, 1997; Adam, 1998:104-125; Altvater, 1998:34-39; O’Connor, 1994; Eckersley, 1998; Harvey, 1996:203-204; Rifkin, 1991:288-289). Even in the unlikely event that political (and other) ecologists were to reach a consensus on how to create a global, nested series of political jurisdictions and boundaries which respected the earth’s most important ecological features and systems, it would not be at all easy to redraw political boundaries in this way, especially if democratic principles were to be employed (Low, 1997). Moreover, much of the literature on globalization stresses the declining importance of political jurisdictions and policy-making anyway, in the face of increasing global corporate power (Korten, 1995; Sachs, 1993). So what is the point of discussing the relationship between political scales and ecological scales? In this paper, I will try to argue that the importance of political scale (both as a concept and in its grounded, appropriate ecological application) extends far beyond policy-making and supersedes corporate erosion. Political scale provides a primary means for humans to “make sense of” the world and come to terms with our place in it, as individuals and as a species.Its value is educational, epistemological, ontological, and cultural; in fact, political scale can be seen as both a motivator and agenda for action.Complex systems theory offers a number of insights about scale questions. After discussing some of these theoretical issues, I will return at the end of the paper to the role of political scale in a practical sense for activists

Public Participation and Ecological Valuation: Inclusive=Radical

This paper discusses the gender and class implications of “public participation” processes, which are increasingly used in Europe, North America, and elsewhere as a basic component of environmental and public policy decision-making. While they are grounded in strong political and ecological rationales, public participation processes can potentially exacerbate gender, ethnic, class, and other inequities. The paper focuses on the complexities of conceptualizing and designing public participation processes which are gender- and diversity-sensitive and take into account the different kinds of relationships with the environment held by different members of society. The more inclusive and diversity-sensitive these processes are, the more radical their implications