Environmental

UNIT 9 POLITICAL ECOLOGY Sociology: Nature

and Scope
Structure
9.0 Objectives
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Political Ecology: Understanding the Term
9.2.1 Is Ecology Apolitical?
9.2.2 Assumptions of Political Ecology

9.2.3 Main Concerns of Political Ecology

9.3 Culture, Nature and Power
9.3.1 Modernity and Control of Nature

9.3.2 Colonial Outlook on Land and Forest in India

9.3.3 Protests and Environmental Movements

9.4 Environmental Justice
9.5 Let Us Sum Up
9.6 References
9.7 Answers to Check Your Progress

9.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this unit you should be able to:

 Explain what political ecology is

 Discuss the relationship between culture and nature
 Narrate some aspects of colonial policies on land forest in India
 Grasp the necessity of environmental justice

9.1 INTRODUCTION
In the past several decades various disciplines like sociology, anthropology,
political science, biology, geography and history have embraced the political
ecological approach to gain a deeper understanding of environment and
human interactions. Political Ecology is distinguished domain of social
research which aims to understand the complex relations between
environment and social institutional lives by a critical analysis of the different
means of access and control over environmental resources. It emerged in the
backdrop of various environmental movements which generated public
debate on environmental issues, emerging problems, conflicts over its
abundance and scarcity.Political ecology aims to understand the political
contestations over the nature-society relationships, their directions,

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written by Kiranmayi Bhushi, IGNOU, New Delhi 113
Envisioning implications of environmental health and sustainable livelihoods. Political
Environmental
Sociology ecological research proceeds from central questions, such as – what are the
causes of regional environmental degradation, who benefits from wildlife
conservation efforts and who loses, what kind of social, cultural and political
movements and agitations have emerged to address the social inequalities
related to environment and its accessibility.

9.2 WHAT IS POLITICAL ECOLOGY?

When we think of nature, we tend to imagine it in its most natural form-
pristine. We assume that the mountains and seas popularly depicted on
calendar images and posters exist at a distance from human communities. We
do however know that this is rarely the case, as any visit to even a remote
mountainous or coastal region will show us- humans are embedded in nature.

This integral aspect produces a series of interactions between humans and the
natural environment they inhabit, which has shaped all aspects of human life.
Whether one lives in cities or at the foothills of the mountains, all human
communities ultimately are interacting with nature and its resources to build
their lives. The concern of an approach of political ecology is to ask the
question of whether this interaction is devoid of politics or not.

Political ecology, generally defined, examines the politics, in the broadest

sense of the word, of the environment. Political Ecology rejects the view that
environmental degradation can be understood as a simple objective problem
amenable to scientific and technical fixes—e.g., ―there are just too many
people,‖ or ―we just need cleaner and more efficient production or disposal
technologies.‖ Instead, Political Ecologists emphasise that there is ecology of
politics and a politics of ecology. The former refers to central role that natural
resources—their distribution, allocation, and extraction—play in shaping the
nature of political and social institutions within a society. Ecological
conditions influence, the development of social structures and institutions, by
imposing challenges and opportunities for meeting basic needs. Moreover,
ecology is political. When there is scarcity, there are decisions which have to
be made over how things are doing to be allocated, who will receive and who
will not. Besides the distribution of resources and benefit streams, decisions
are made over which groups in society bear the burden of environmental
degradation. Hierarchies, privilege, and power all come into play, as social
dynamics shape use patterns of natural resources, as well as fundamental
definitions of what constitutes environmental problems, which causes them,
and what the solutions should be.

Political ecology refers to the study of the relationships between

environmental concerns, interests and movements and the unequal access of
environment as a whole to different social groups. Its intellectual origin dates
back to 1970s when anthropologists started looking at the relationships
between ecology and political economy to understand the bourgeois
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environmental agitations. Different scholars like Dianne Rocheleau, Arturo Environmental
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Escobar, Richard Peet, Piers Blaikie, Bunyan Bryant, Eric Wolf, Johnston and Scope
Barbara etc. have contributed to its intellectual foundations and established
the tradition of political ecology examining the relationships social power
and functioning of ecologies. Theoretical insights from social sciences have
been used to analyse questions of access and control over environmental
resources, production and consumption of environmental debates, understand
forms of environmental disturbance, degradation, and rehabilitation.
Proliferation of peasant studies and critiques of colonialism during 1960s &
1970s also spurred the interest in the changing environmental landscape and
community relations in the backdrop of the formation of developmental state.
Scholars influenced by Marxian political economy began raising questions of
class differentiation among rural societies, peasant mobilisation against the
colonial rule, and increasing impact of international market on rural poor in
developing countries.

Scholars working in this field have paid attention to the construction of

environmental knowledge, environmental practices of different ethnic groups,
classes, races and genders. They insist in drawing attention to the empirical
engagement with different social groups, their stakes and solutions to social-
environmental problems. Political Ecology highlights the significance of
wider economic, political structures as well as cultural discourses in shaping
the way people are related to environmental conditions.

9.2.1 Is Ecology Apolitical

When we are discussing whether something or someone is political we are
usually referring to a question of power. Do power dynamics between various
communities (countries; city residents versus rural inhabitants; caste groups),
within communities (between men and women, members of different classes)
affect the way in which resources are used and the environment is shaped?
Political ecology answers that question with a resounding yes, but that has
not always been a dominant approach.

One of the significant ways in which our conception of the environment

around us was shaped was through what we term as apolitical approaches.
Such approaches are grounded in the notion that the environment and its‘
state is shaped by objective factors such as the kind of resource and most
importantly the population dependent on it. The approach was characterised
by Malthus‘ arguments on the ecology which was premised on a concern of a
growing human population. He claimed that a rising population would put an
unbearable strain on natural resources leading to poorer living conditions for
everyone. The approach was to become extremely popular and is frequently
invoked when we think of how we frame the environmental question. The
burden of making sustainable living a continued possibility is placed on
countries which have large populations, these invariably tend to be
developing or poorer countries of the world. It is argued that the population
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Envisioning bomb is ticking and not defusing it will cause worldwide damage. However
Environmental
Sociology when we think about our current environmental state, a significant fact that
emerges is that resource use has very little to do with population sizes. In fact
the richer countries of the world are consuming more resources than the
poorer nations. If we think of how to address the problem of our environment
today, we need for the most developed parts of the world to actually rethink
the ways in which they consume. But who will compel these countries that
are economically and politically dominant to do so. In other words, is it
possible to discuss ecology and environmental conflict without looking at the
question of power?

Another popular apolitical approach has been that of modernisation imagined

through technological use promoting efficiency or through a market based
approaches which prices ‗environmental goods‘ in a way to promote better
and efficient use. The assumption once again is that matters of technology
and markets are removed from questions of power. However historical
evidence tells us otherwise. The transfer of technology from one country to
another can often cause more harm than good. Technology to use or
appropriate resources can work differently across contexts because human
interaction with nature (mediated through technology) is also shaped by
power relations. In the Indian context for instance, the Green Revolution
strengthened the claims around land for a section of OBC castes in India,
leading to a new set of caste conflicts emerging in the agrarian setting.
Furthermore, the transfer of technology or pricing mechanisms often move in
the direction of being transferred from countries of the Global North
(developed countries) to those of the Global South (developing countries). It
is premised on the idea that the former are more knowledgeable and can aid
the Global South- indicative of power relation that exists between the two.

Political ecology rests on the foundation that questions of power cannot be

separated from the environment. Definitions vary, however if we are to pull
together the various ways in which the term has been interpreted then the
common elements point to a study that seeks to draw in concerns about
distribution of power alongside production regimes and an ecological
analysis ( Greenberg and Park, 1994). Another way to look at it has been to
define it as a study that lies at the intersection of an ecologically rooted social
science and principles of political economy (Pete and Watts, 1996).

9.2.2 Assumptions of Political Ecology

More recently, political ecology has realised links with gender studies and
social movement analyses. The broad scope and interdisciplinary nature of
the field lends itself to several definitions and understandings. However,
common assumptions across the field give it relevance. Raymond L. Bryant
and Sinéad Bailey (1997) have developed three fundamental assumptions in
practicing political ecology:

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 Costs and benefits accompanyingenvironmental change are distributed Environmental
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unequally. Changes in the environment do not affect society in a uniform and Scope
way: societal differences of hierarchy whether based on ethnicity or class
or political access to power all have bearing on who benefits and who
loses from environmental changes Political power plays an important
role in such inequalities.

 This unequal environmental distribution inevitably strengthens or

reduces existing social and economic inequalities. In this assumption,
political ecology runs into political economies as any change in
environmental conditions must affect the political and economic status
quo.

 the unequal distribution of costs and benefits and the reinforcing or

reducing of pre-existing inequalities hold political implications in terms
of the altered power relationships that are produced.

What emerges through these definitions is a concern about how social

relations between individuals shapes their interaction with nature while
addressing questions of environmental change and damage, community, state
and international level action on environmental issues and movements around
environmental questions.

9.2.3 Main Concernsof Political Ecology

In this regard it would instructive for us to look at some of the main issues
around which work and research in the field of political ecology has centred.
Robbins (2012) identifies five central themes in recent work.

a) The Degradation and Margenilisation Thesis: is concerned with

changes that have taken place in the use and management of resources.
The changes could have occurred as a result of community or state (both
local and external) intervention owing to the link of these economies
with global/local markets. The changes are seen as leading to
unsustainable use and practices, leading to poverty of populations
dependent on resources and in turn leading to further exploitation of
resources.

b) Conservation and Control Thesis looks at how aims of conserving the

environment can work in contradictory ways. This occurs when state or
other institutions (national or international environmental groups) take
away control of resource management and use from communities and
transfer it to other hands. Such efforts might displace livelihood practices
and management styles that were in fact more environmentally
sustainable.

c) The environmental conflict and exclusion thesis explores how at a time

when we are facing resource exploitation, access to resources can
become a charged political issue. This can occur either when resources
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Envisioning are enclosed and managed by state or private interests or could also be a
Environmental
Sociology time when resource use remains unequal between or within communities.
For instance if land ownership is restricted only to men from upper and
dominant castes then access is unequal and can stand to challenge.

d) Environmental subjects and identity looks at how at a time of

contestations around the environment new identities are forged by groups
looking to secure rights over the environment. The identity that lies at the
foundations of such groups are built around the ecology and in doing so
can bring together varied groups (of class, caste, gender) to protect the
environment. The ecological concerns of such groups tend to revolve
around basic questions of livelihood.

e) Political Objects and Actors seeks to look at the interaction between

humans and non-human objects from a political perspective. It is
premised on the notion that political and economic systems are affected
by the networks or the patterns of interaction that exist between humans
and nature. Influential states or organisations can exert changes in these
networks often causing harm, which has in turn resulted in movements
arising from local communities.

Thus the field of political ecology rests on the belief that power relations and
the social relations they are embodied in play a critical role in not just
shaping our environment but also in how we respond to the changing
environment.

Check Your Progress 1

1) Political ecology rests on the foundation that questions of

……………cannot be separated from the environment.

2) Explain conservation and control thesis given by Robbins with suitable

examples.

…………………………………………………………………………….

…………………………………………………………………………….

…………………………………………………………………………….

…………………………………………………………………………….

…………………………………………………………………………….

9.3 CULTURE, NATURE AND POWER

There is a general opinion in much of the scholarship in sociology and among
scholar studying environment that the present crisis in environment is a result
of human intervention and domination of nature.This human intervention is
so drastic that the present age is termed as the Anthropocene Epoch. This
anthropogenic (originating in human activity) have their roots in the way
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nature was conceptualised in the rational traditions of Europe. We take an Environmental
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over view of this view and then discuss the specific case of Colonial policies and Scope
related to land and forest as an outcome of this idea of nature. The state
policies whether in colonial society or in contemporary contexts do not
always address the interest of all its citizenry, if anything pre-existing
structural inequalities further worsened in the wake of environmental
disasters. As can be seen in the environmental policies of British India and
subsequent environmental policies in Independent India.Many of the
environmental movements and protests in India involved the women, the
tribals, the poor and the peasants who are victims of environmental
degradation, unjust use of resources through state policies etc. It is
thesestruggles by people that has given rise to environmental justice which
we will discuss in our next section

Box 1: The Anthrpocene Epoch

The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to

describe the most recent period in Earth‘s history when human activity
started to have a significant impact on the planet‘s climate and ecosystems.
The word Anthropocene is derived from the Greek words anthropo, for
―man,‖ and cene for ―new,‖ coined and made popular by biologist Eugene
Stormer and chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000.

To those scientists who do think the Anthropocene describes a new

geological time period, the question is,
when did it begin, which also has been
widely debated. A popular theory is that
it began at the start of the Industrial
Revolution of the 1800s, when human
activity had a great impact on carbon and
methane in Earth‘s atmosphere. Others
think that the beginning of the
Anthropocene should be 1945. This is
when humans tested the first atomic
bomb, and then dropped atomic bombs
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The
resulting radioactive particles were
detected in soil samples globally‖.‗The
testing of the bomb and resultant mushroom cloud created a powerful new
symbol of the destructive power of the human species‘
(https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/anthropocene/). And pic credit: https://
commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nagasakibomb.jpg)

9.3.1 Modernity and Control of Nature

Conceptions about nature and what it is to be human has a long history and
genealogy, however The Enlightenment project, an intellectual tradition of 17
and 18th century Europe, which centred human beings as masters of their 119
Envisioning destiny has a central role in the way nature was conceptualised. The
Environmental
Sociology enlightenment emerged out of the preceding Scientific Revolution and its
achievements which made reason, rationality and observational knowledge
the basis of human endeavour. Human abilities were also the focus of
renaissance period that took to the Protagoras‘ - A Greek philosopher -
dictum: "man is the measure of all things‖.Broadly speaking, Enlightenment
greatly valued empiricism and rational thought and championed the ideal of
advancement and progress. Modernity is an outcome of all these historical
events and accompanying thinking in Europe.

There may be nuanced versions how modernity conceptualised nature but the
predominant idea was /is to conquer nature for the purpose of humanity. An
anthropocentric view which places human beings interests above all other
sentient beings of nature was part of modernity.The science promoted by
many intellectualsof that period, including Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton and
Francis Bacon separated nature from society as a mechanistic, divisible and
exterior. The increasingly control of nature was viewed as progression
towards a civilised society. Thus, ‗primitive cultures‘ such as the hunter-
gathers who lived in close proximity to nature were seen as backward and
without the wherewithal to conquer nature.

While nature was to be exploited there were also the critiques of

modernisation who romanticised all that is wild and pristine.Accounts of the
relationship between humans and nature, as they appear in the history of
ideas, convey ambiguous messages that identify humankind as both destroyer
and rescuer, and wilderness or "natural nature" as both threat and refuge.
Nature is also a resource which needs to be conserved and managed. The
many conceptions of nature only helped serve various politico-economic
ends. In the next sub section we will discuss colonial conceptions of land
and nature to see how these conceptions find their place in the colonial
exploitation and protection of resources. It is worthwhile to take a general
overview of colonial outlook on land and forest as they have a bearingon
contemporary environmental movements as well.

9.3.2 Colonial Outlook on Land and Forest

Many of the popular protests by tribal communities and other marginalised
people in independent India, especially in 1970s onwards were against state
policies which made survival difficult for these communities. During the
1970s and the ‗80s, India witnessed a range of popular protests. The protests
were against the forest policies of the Indian state. On the one hand, the
policies restricted the forest dwellers‘ and peasants‘ access to forest resources
and, on the other, led to rapid environmental degradation. The Indian state
involvement in building big dams also displaced of indigenous people from
their native lands and resulted in organised protests and movements.

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These protests have their antecedents in colonial history of India. Forest Environmental
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policies, laws on commons etc. were directly drawn from colonial and Scope
legislations.

Some of the studies which examine colonial environmental history ‗primarily

argue that the ecological and environmental ills of different regions of India
are a direct outcome of the exploitative colonial policies. The policies were
motivated by concerns such as revenue augmentation, expansion of
agriculture lands, and attaining of sleepers for railways, etc.Among the works
who examined the ills of colonial rule on environment are: Elizabeth
Whitcombe‘s well-known study (1995) on irrigation. It examines how the
irrigation investments and damconstruction activities of the British Raj led to
ecological degradation, salinity and malaria in the regions of Sind and
Ganges basins in north India; Likewise, Micheal Mann‘s detailed study
(1999) on the agricultural transformation in the region of Ganga-Jamuna
Doab during the early nineteenth century focuses on the salinity and mass
destruction of woodlands because of colonial policies (Arivalagan, 2003:5)

As much as there was large scale deforestation and environmental damages

throughout India, which were far reaching compared to previous empires and
political regimes, the British government also realised the valuable resource
forest were and took to conservation. The Romantic Movement in early 19 th
century England that questioned industrialisation and modernity as
destroying the lands and nature may have some influence on various
conservation societies and programmes that were started in England. These
conservation societies had considerably following among the middle class
who pushed for laws and state interventions in protecting the ecology. While
the middle class of England could enjoy such privileges, back in the Indian
colony the peasants and tribals were severely affected by the restricted access
to forests on which their survival depended.

Box 2: Forestsand Conservation in British India

TheBritish government under Lord Dalhousie introduced large scale

conservation programme, this effort was first of its kind in the world and
which was later introduced to other colonies of the British Empire. Hugh
Cleghorn's 1861 manual, The Forests and Gardens of South India, became
the definitive work on the subject and was used by forest assistants.

Dietrich Brandis who joined the British Imperial Forest Service in 1856
worked in Burma and India, formulated new forest legislation and helped
establish research and training institutions. The Imperial Forestry School
at Dehradun was founded by him.Brandis is considered the father of Indian
forestry and is known for his conservation effort termed scientific forestry.
His seminal work on Indian Trees (1906) is an expansive compendium.

MadhavGadgil and Ramachandra Guha (1994), among others, highlight

howBritish restricted the access of tribals and peasants to different kinds of
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Envisioning natural resources on which their survival depended.Collective resistances and
Environmental
Sociology protests were witnessed against this colonial to restrict access to forest and its
produce. These resistances are captured by Saldanha (2000) and Guha (1985;
1989) in north India.Sivaramakrishnan (1999)writes about the contestations
between the forest dwellers and the colonial authority in the eastern India
over a period of one-and-a-half centuries. He shows that the colonial forest
principles evolved over time; Sivaramakrishnan says, ‗…through conflict and
co-operation between a differentiated society and a heterogeneous colonial
state in the making, rural social relations and colonial power were mutually
transformed‘ (1999: 4-5).

9.3.2 Protest and Ecological Movements

´The Indian Forest Act of 1878 was a comprehensive piece of legislation that
came to serve as a model for other British colonies.'―The new legislation was
based on the assumption that all land not actually under cultivation belonged
to the state...Within India, it allowed the state to expand the commercial
exploitation of the forest while putting curbs on local use for subsistence.
This denial of village forest rights provoked countrywide protest. The history
of colonial rule is punctuated by major rebellions against colonial forestry-in
Chotanagpur in 1893, in Bastar in 1910, in Gudem-Rampa in 1879-80 and
again in 1922-23, in Midnapur in 1920, and in Adilabad in 1940‖ (Guha,
2001: 216) and By 1907, the forest department sought to protect land from
fire, as well as to restrict fodder harvests, cattle grazing, and lopping.

Box 3 : Kumaon Forests Laws and Resistance

Between 1911 and 1916, the forest, nearly 3000 square miles, in Kumaon
hills of now Uttarakhand state were under restricted use. Kumaoni villagers
had no legal access to forest resources for grazing and collecting fodder. The
imposition of forest management severely dislocated traditional agrarian
practices.Peoples‘ resistance and continuous struggles brought it to the
attention of British Government. People‘s main demand in these protests was
that the benefits of the forest, especially the right to fodder, should go to local
people. These struggles have continued in the post-independent era (seen in
Chipko Moveemnt) as the forest policies of independent India are no
different from that of colonial ones. Eventually, the forest campaign led the
state to appointed the Kumaon Forest Grievances Committee. Composed of
government officials and local political leaders, the committee examined
more than 5,000 witnesses in Kumaon. The committee composed a set of
nearly 30 recommendations from the resulting evidence. The committee
recommended a reduction in the area of forest under control of the forest
department, and a repeal of all regulations on grazing and collecting of fodder
from the forest. The provincial government accepted the recommendations of
the Kumaon Forest Grievances Committee. The committee also
recommended the setting up of village councils who would manage forest
lands lying within the village boundaries. This led to the creation of the
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Forest Council Rules of 1931. The Rules led to the establishment of 3,000 Environmental
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elected forest councils to manage Kumaon forests. Villagers successfully and Scope
reclaimed their use of natural resources for subsistence and brought an end to
forest exploitation on the grounds of commercial profitability under colonial
rule.

(Source, R. Guha, 2000, 2001 and A. Agrawal, 2005)

Activity

Make a list of recent environmental movements that have taken place in

India. What are the main demands of these movements and who are they
addressing these demands to? You can make a simple map of the power
relations that exist in each scenario

9.4 ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

The concept of environmental justice began as a movement in the 1980s due
to the realisation that a disproportionate number of polluting industries,
power plants, and waste disposal areas were located near low-income or
minority communities. The movement was set in place to ensure fair
distribution of environmental burdens among all people regardless of their
background.Examples of environmental burdens that may be considered
under the umbrella of environmental justice cover many aspects of
community life. These burdens can include any environmental pollutant,
hazard or disadvantage that compromises the health of a community or its
residents.

Environmental racism or environmental justice came into the American

nation‘s political and academic notice in 1982 when people of Afton in
Warren County, a poor overwhelmingly black rural county in North Carolina,
protested and struggled to stop the state of North Carolina from dumping
120 million pounds of soil contaminated with toxic polychlorinated
biphenyls (PCBs) the Warren County Protest brought to attention that people
of color and poor communities were facing ecological risks far greater than
the richer white folks. This incident brought together a coalition of civil
rights activists, environmental activists, labour, and urban reform moments
and activists, indigenous rights movements, campaigns of occupation health
etc. Together they all took note of the inter-sectionalities. ―In 1991, a diverse
group of African-American, Asian-American, Latino, and Indigenous
community activists and leaders from across the United States gathered in
Washington DC for the First National People of Color Environmental
Leadership Summit. Given its broad background, and with central concerns
around health, human and civil rights, and the environmental conditions of
everyday life, the eventual evolution of the movement‘s concerns toward
community vulnerability to climate change make sense‖(Schlosberg &
Collins,2014:360).
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Envisioning Today, hundreds of studies conclude that, in general, ethnic minorities,
Environmental
Sociology indigenous persons, people of color, and low-income communities confront a
higher burden of environmental exposure from air, water, and soil pollution
from industrialization, militarization, and consumer practices. Robert Bullard
defined environmental justice as the principle that ―all people and
communities are entitled to equal protection of environmental and public
health laws and regulations.‖ (Bullard quoted in Mohai et al, 2009) In a 1999
interview, Bullard described how ―The environmental justice movement has
basically redefined what environmentalism is all about. It basically says that
the environment is everything: where we live, work, play, go to school, as
well as the physical and natural world. And so we can't separate the physical
environment from the cultural environment. We have to talk about making
sure that justice is integrated throughout all of the stuff that we do‖ (ibid)

Another term that is an outcome of environmental justice is climate justice.

Climate Justice looks at environmental upheavals not only in physical terms

but views climate change as a political and ethical issue. Climate justice takes
into account issues of human rights, collective rights, social justice, equality
and historical responsibilities for climate change.The use of the term climate
justice is somewhat encompassing and has been widely used in the recent
past. While climate justice may be understood in different ways, its essence
can be captured through its stress on inclusive decision making regarding
climate related decisions and practices, which places the emphasis on who
bears the costs of both climate change and the actions taken to address
it.Indeed, there is growing set of legal action that address climate justice In
2017, a report of the United Nations Environment Programme identified 894
ongoing legal actions worldwide.

It has been seen that marginalised communities: tribals, women, peasants,

and the poor face the worst consequences of climate change: in effect the
least responsible for climate change suffer its gravest consequences. They
might also be further disadvantaged by responses to climate change which
might further strengthen the existing inequalities, which has been labeled the
'triple injustices' of climate change. And these people and areas have been the
focus of rising number of grass roots movements who are fighting for climate
justice such as Fridays for Future, EndeGelände and Extinction Rebellion .

Much of the discussion on climate justice also focuses on the structural

inequalities. They believe that climate action must explicitly address
marginalization of vulnerable groups from decision-making that directly or
indirectly affects their livelihoods. They strongly advocate the nurturing of
civil society and democratic governance at all scales and levels.

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Check Your Progress 2 Environmental
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and Scope
1) Enlightenment greatly valued ……………….. and …………………..
thought.

2) The Indian forest Act came into force in ………………………….

3) What did Warren County Protest highlight/

……………………………………………………………………………

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9.5 LET US SUM UP

In this unit we have tried to capturing the meaning and focus of political
ecology. We have outlined some of the concerns and assumptions of political
ecology. The political ecology can be best understood if we situate some of
the practices where politico-economic institutions created further
marginalised among people. We tried to look at forest laws in British India to
understand how sections of the country were affected by these policies, and
how these colonial policies were geared towards serving the interests of the
empires. Before that we tried to understand the ideas and conceptualisation of
nature which spearheaded a range of human activity that tried to dominate
nature, and how colonialism is an aspect of that thinking.
Peoples resistance to British policies were captured to highlight how such
resistances and protests have continuing relevance in the contemporary
contexts as state policies directly or indirectly affect many vulnerable
communities.

9.6 REFERENCES
Arivalagan, M. (2008). Beyond Colonialism Towards a New Environmental
History of India. Madras Institute of Development Studies.
Guha, R, (1985). Forestry and Social Protest in British Kumaon, 1893-1921,
in RanajitGuha, ed, Subaltern Studies IV. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, pp.54-101.
Guha, R.(1989).The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant
Resistance. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Guha, R. (2001). The Prehistory of Community Forestry in India.
Environmental History, 6(2), 213-238.

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Envisioning Bullard RD. (1996). Symposium: the Legacy of American Apartheid and
Environmental
Sociology Environmental Racism. St. John's J. Leg. Comment. 9:445–74
Mohai, P., Pellow, D., & Roberts, J. T. (2009). Environmental justice. Annual
review of environment and resources, 34, 405-430.
Schlosberg, D., & Collins, L. B. (2014). From environmental to climate
justice: climate change and the discourse of environmental justice. Wiley
Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 5(3), 359-374.
Saldanha, IndraMunshi, 1998, ―Colonial Forest Regulations and Collective
Resistance: Nineteenth Century Thana District,‖ in Richard H. Grove, Vinita
Damodaran and SatpalSangwan, eds, Nature and the Orient: Essays on the
Environmental History of South and South East Asia. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, pp. 708-733. (Paperback Edition 2000)
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movement in India. Development and change, 25(1), 101-136.
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Robbins, P. (2011). Political ecology: A critical introduction (Vol. 16). John
Wiley & Sons.

9.7 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress 1

1) Power

2) This occurs when state or other institutions (national or international

environmental groups) take away control of resource management and
use from communities and transfer it to other hands. Such efforts might
displace livelihood practices and management styles that were in fact
more environmentally sustainable. A good example of this is colonial
policies in India and subsequent protest against it.

Check Your Progress 2

1) Empiricism and rational

2) 1878

3) 1982 when people of Afton in Warren County, a poor overwhelmingly

black rural county in North Carolina, protested and struggled to stop the
state of North Carolina from dumping 120 million pounds of soil
contaminated with toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) the Warren
County Protest brought to attention that people of color and poor
communities were facing ecological risks far greater than the richer
white folks.

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