Integrating knowledge from social and natural sciences for biodiversity management: The asymmetric information trap

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Power theories in political ecology

Power plays a key role in definitions of political ecology. Likewise, empirical studies within this field tend to provide detailed presentations of various uses of power, involving corporate and conservation interventions influencing access to land and natural resources. The results include struggle and conflict. Yet, there is a lack of theoretical elaboration showing how power may be understood in political ecology. In this article, we start to fill this gap by reviewing the different theoretical perspectives on power that have dominated this field. There are combinations of influences, two of them being actor-oriented and neo-Marxist approaches used from the 1980s. Typically, case studies are presented of environmental interventions by a broad range of actors at various scales from the local to the global. The focus has been on processes involving actors behind these interventions, as well as the outcomes for different social groups. Over the last two decades, in political ecology we have increasingly seen a move in power perspectives towards poststructuralist thinking about "discursive power", inspired by Foucault. Today, the three approaches (actor-oriented, neo-Marxist and Foucauldian) and their combinations form a synergy of power perspectives that provide a set of rich and nuanced insights into how power is manifested in environmental conflicts and governance. We argue that combining power perspectives is one of political ecology's strengths, which should be nurtured through a continuous examination of a broad spectrum of social science theories on power

Recognising Recognition in Climate Justice

We argue that in order to achieve climate justice, recognition needs to be given more attention in climate research, discourse, and policies. Through the analysis of three examples, we identify formal and discursive recognition as central types of recognition in climate issues, and we show how powerful actors exercise their power in ways that cause climate injustice through formal and discursive misrecognition of poor and vulnerable groups. The three examples discussed are climate mitigation through forest conservation (REDD), the Great Green Wall project in Sahel, and the narrative about climate change as a contributing factor to the Syrian war.Institute of Development Studie

Boligsosialt utviklingsprogram i Moss kommune - en foranalyse

Agderforskning har på oppdrag fra Moss kommune gjennomført en foranalyse av det boligsosiale arbeidet i Moss og innhentet og sammenliknet enkelte nøkkeldata som beskriver situasjonen.Foranalysen er initiert av kommunens deltakelse i Husbankens boligsosiale utviklingsprogram,som pågår fram til mai 2014. Våre analyser og vurderinger er gjort med utgangspunkt i følgende: - Intervjuer med nøkkelpersone på rådmanns/enhetslederniv i Moss, Rygge, Råde og Våler - Et fellesmøte med nøkkelpersoner fra Moss kommune og brukerrepresentanter - Tilgjengelig statistikk og data - Relevante nasjonale og kommunale styringsdokumenter, NOU-er og annen relevant forskningslitteratu

Critical climate education: Studying climate justice in time and space

What education should children and youth be offered about climate mitigation choices? Drawing on critical pedagogy, political ecology, and environmental justice, I here suggest the elaboration of a critical climate education that would provide citizens with knowledge and skills to respond to the climate crisis with responsible action. I argue that students need to learn to critically examine options in their own countries for reducing greenhouse emissions and to discuss whether or not each of these measures may contribute to climate justice in time and space. A critical climate education should also offer insight into reasons why some climate mitigation alternatives have been embraced instead of options that could provide more climate justice in time and space. The need for a critical climate education is illustrated with a case study about climate mitigation choices that have been made in Norway without concern for climate justice

Bioprospecting: : Global discourses and local perceptions - Shaman Pharmaceuticals in Tanzania

Bioprospecting: Global discourses and local perceptions Shaman Pharmaceuticals in Tanzania Bioprospecting is an activity whereby researchers and agents for pharmaceutical companies travel to various parts of the world to collect samples of biological material. They often go to traditional healers and survey what medicinal plants the healers use for treating various diseases. Back in the laboratories, the plant samples are systematically screened, and this constitutes an important basis for the development of modern medicines. The sociologist Hanne Svarstad has written a doctoral dissertation in which she analyses global narratives on bioprospecting, as well as local perceptions among traditional healers in Tanzania. The Convention on biological diversity says that benefits from bioprospecting is to be shared fair and equitable with source countries of the biodiversity, and an equitable sharing is also encouraged with indigenous and local communities. According to the win-win narratives , this is exactly what happens in specific instances of bioprospecting. Biopiracy narrative , on the other hand, depict bioprospecting as exploitation, and with a particular reference to the involved patenting. In Tanzania Svarstad has traced different actors who have been visited by agents from the American company Shaman Pharmaceuticals. Many traditional healers were ambivalent towards the bioprospecting. They wanted new opportunities for participating in this activity, but at the same time they expressed disappointment with their experiences with the American company as well as with Tanzanian bioprospectors. Svarstad found that none of the two global clusters of narratives gave a satisfactory key to the interpretation of the case. For the healers bioprospecting implies positive features such as increased acceptance and status in society. Furthermore, it provides them with a seldom opportunity of accessing knowledge from modern science regarding the medicinal plants on which they themselves are local experts. The healers were disappointed about what they obtained of access to scientific knowledge from Shaman Pharmaceuticals, and in one area this caused the elaboration of a strategy to get more successful when new opportunities for bioprospecting would appear. The dissertation also shows how the meeting with representatives of modern medicine can be seen as problematic for healers when the collectors of their medicinal plants ignore that the traditional practice and knowledge often is embedded in a spiritual belief. Svarstad s study is based on qualitative social science methodology. It focuses on epistemological questions regarding the contribution of knowledge from sociological research in fields where simple types of narratives often are powerful despite that they may be constructed on weak bases

Nothing succeeds like success narratives: a case of conservation and development in the time of REDD

This article provides a case study of a project in Kondoa, Tanzania under the programme Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). It demonstrates how a success narrative came to dominate presentations about the project as a multi-win involving not only climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, but also benefits for local people and poverty reduction. Based on repeated fieldwork using qualitative methods, we find that there is lack of evidence to substantiate the success claims. These claims are in particular based on the assertion that a component of ‘conservation agriculture’ was successfully implemented as compensation for forest enclosure. Gaps between claims and evidence are often exhibited in the scholarship on political ecologies of conservation in Africa, as well as by observers of development aid projects. But how can such gaps be explained? We suggest taking the interests of the actors behind the project as a point of departure, including how individuals as well as organisations have stakes in marketing a success narrative. Furthermore, we argue that an unsubstantiated success narrative of an aid project can be maintained only when there is a lack of structures to ensure independent and adequate examinations of the project by evaluators and researchers. In this case, Norway was the funder of the project, and as the dominant funder of REDD, the Norwegian government has a particular interest in reproducing REDD success narratives, since the credibility of the country’s climate mitigation policy depends on REDD being a success. In addition, the case study demonstrates how ‘success projects’ emerge in the wake of new development fads

REDD og norsk klimakolonialisme i Tanzania

Finansiering av internasjonalt skogvern som klimatiltak (REDD) har det siste tiåret spilt en viktig rolle i Norges internasjonale profilering. Dette er et tiltak det i Norge har vært tverrpolitisk enighet om, og som frivillige organisasjoner, media og forskere har støttet, i kontrast til en betydelig internasjonal kritikk. REDD passer godt til idéen om «internasjonal kostnadseffektivitet», som har utgjort det klimapolitiske hovedprinsippet for norske regjeringer siden slutten av 1980-tallet. I Tanzania finansierte Norge ni pilotprosjekter innen REDD i 3-5 år fra 2010. Under og etter prosjektperioden har vi fulgt et av disse prosjektene som har blitt fremhevet av norske myndigheter som spesielt vellykket. Det var særlig prosjektets jordbrukskomponent, som skulle kompensere for tapt tilgang til skog, som stadig har blitt presentert som en suksess. Vi viser at prosjektet i stedet har medført omfattende negative konsekvenser for folk i landsbyene rundt den vernede skogen. Slik er dette et eksempel på at et rikt land i det globale Nord bruker sin økonomiske makt til å innføre skogvern som klimatiltak i Sør som ekskluderer folk som har brukt skogen i generasjoner. På den ene siden tjener Norge på dette vernet, først i form av internasjonal profilering, dernest finansielt dersom skogvern skulle bli en del av et internasjonalt karbonmarked slik Norge har ivret for. Samtidig skyves kostnadene over på folk lokalt, og vi ser derfor dette prosjektet og den norske REDD-satsingen i Tanzania som en form for klimakolonialisme

Reading radical environmental justice through a political ecology lens

Environmental justice (EJ) and political ecology (PE) have grown during recent decades to become leading critical approaches to socio-environmental analyses. The two fields share a history of pluralism and an openness to integrating new theoretical insights. Based on work by political philosophers in the radical justice tradition – such as Fraser, Young and Honneth – a 'radical environmental justice framework' has been established within EJ, focusing on three core elements: distributive justice, recognition and procedural justice. Later, inspired by Sen and Nussbaum, capabilities has been added as a fourth aspect. We have read this radical EJ framework through a PE lens and assess the potential for cross-fertilization between the two fields in relation to these four elements. First, the systematic treatment of distributive justice in the EJ literature provides a conceptualization that may be useful for PE in its specifications of various forms of injustice. Second, recognition is a useful perspective for both EJ and PE, but this aspect also highlights power relations that may need to be decolonized. To contribute to such a process of decolonization we suggest a focus on senses of justice and critical knowledge production. Third, the focus on procedural justice in the radical EJ framework would benefit from engagements with various power theories and discussions of participation that are prominent in the PE literature. Fourth, based on the PE viewpoint, we argue that there are two weaknesses in how capabilities theory tends to be used in the radical EJ literature: communities are discussed as homogenous groups without internal power relations; and actors and structures responsible for environmental injustice tend to be downplayed