New markets for the conservation of so-called ecosystem services, like the ability of a wetland to mitigate floods, are emerging worldwide. According to environmental economists, these markets require some metric - ecological or otherwise - that names the relevant characteristics of the service to be traded as a commodity. But while this is often assumed to be a simple task of science, I argue that the environmental regulators, eco-entrepreneurs, and conservationists who actually design and implement metrics are not so easily brought into agreement. In “rolling-out” revamped metrics and protocols, regulators and their conservationist allies in one market in Oregon haven’t established the conditions for market success so much as they have constrained entrepreneurs. The solutions to ecosystem destruction 20 years ago - privatization, commodification, and commercialization - have become the obstacles which limit the market’s future viability. The moments when capitalists find themselves saying “let’s sell nature to save it” - or when states say it for them - can spell trouble for capitalists at the same time that they seem like their escape hatch. Still, the short-term and long-term effects of market design may differ; barriers to the market now may prove to be its success later.

The Indian Chipko movement is analyzed as a case study employing a geographically-informed political ecology approach. Political ecology as a framework for the study of environmental movements provides insight into the complex issues surrounding the structure of Indian society, with particular attention to its ecological and political dimensions. This framework, with its focus on social structure and ecology, is distinct from the more traditional approaches to the study of social movements, which tend to essentialize their purpose and membership, often by focusing on a single dimension of the movement and its context. Using Chipko as a case-study, the author demonstrates how a geographical approach to political ecology avoids some of this essentialization by encouraging a holistic analysis of environmental movements that is characterized by a bottom-up analysis, grounded at the local level, which also considers the wider context of the movements growth by synthesizing socio-political and ecological analyses. Also explored are questions on the importance of gender-informed approaches to the study of environmental activism and participation in environmental movements in India.

Coal mining carries significant impacts for surrounding livelihood practices. Yet, in order to explain how specific impacts become grounded within a particular community, attention must be given to the complex assemblage of socio-political and economic forces operating at the local scale. As such, this paper builds upon 3 months of field research in 2010 to describe the impact of decentralized extractive resource governance at coal mines near the rural coastal village of Sekerat, East Kalimantan. Employing evolutions in political ecology research, the analysis focuses on the evolving governance ‘space’ in order to explain how institutional analyses of resource extraction governance and livelihood governance can be integrated to understand how scalar processes construct a range of real and perceived impacts which condition the decision-making modalities of local villagers. A case is then made for giving greater consideration to the importance of temporality and materiality to explaining how land-based and wage-labour livelihood practices have become ‘reified’ within the local village.

Studies of adaptive governance in social-ecological systems have identified common features that assist social actors in responding to environmental pressures. Among these features, multiple sources of ecological knowledge, trust, and networks between actors have been highlighted as properties that contribute to successful governance arrangements. However, studies in adaptive governance have also been critiqued using a political ecology approach. This is due to their under-theorization of political elements that can constrain or promote the formation of the features of adaptive governance. In particular, power dynamics between actors and the subsequent privileging of one source of knowledge over another might have an effect on governance arrangements. In China, environmental degradation is a serious issue. The Qinhuai River, located in the city of Nanjing, has experienced significant ecological decline over the last 30 years as urbanization pressures on the system increased. Over the same period, China has undergone changes in state-society relations, including allowing the formation of NGOs. Since the turn of the millennium, several NGOs have begun working on issues related to the Qinhuai River, including raising awareness and producing information on the environment. This study examines the features of adaptive governance in a critical light by situating them in the local political context of China. The relationship between NGOs, fishers who use the Qinhuai River and government are examined using Social Network Analysis and semi-structured interviews in order to understand the production of information, networking and trust between these actors. It is shown that the existing arrangements to include NGOs and fishers in the river’s governance activities are guided by a corporatist system of state-sanctioned representation. This is not conducive to adaptive governance arrangements, despite the increasing existence of ENGO networks and new sources of knowledge over the last decade. It is thus important that studies of adaptive governance take steps to contextualize their findings within the local political climate.

Kingston is a city facing serious environmental challenges. In common with other Third World cities, these have usually been documented from the perspective of affluent and powerful urban residents. Very little research has explored the spatial and social distribution of environmental problems in the city, or has examined the ways that individual citizens from a variety of backgrounds understand the urban environment. These problems have often been packaged as discrete issues, when in fact they cannot be understood or alleviated without knowledge of their economic, political, and cultural aspects. Urban environmental problems require political solutions that address uneven power relations and ineffective structures of urban governance. In this thesis, I address these issues in Kingston through an application of the themes of nature, power and participation. A mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods were used to explore the ways in which urban residents from different age, gender and class backgrounds construct the city and its environmental problems. The knowledge of marginalised individuals and groups is placed in the foreground and is used to provide an alternative analysis of Kingston’s ecology. These understandings are then used to assess critically the structures of urban governance, and to suggest possible changes that could be made to these. The research confirms that there are significant environmental problems in Kingston, and that these have serious negative impacts on many urban residents. It shows that these problems are understood differently by the various social groups within the city, and that the burdens of environmental problems vary socio-spatially across the Kingston Metropolitan Area. Despite this, there is a general consensus that environmental improvement is desirable. However, for this to be achieved there need to be fundamental alterations in the social structures and political organisation of the city.

In Chile’s neoliberal economy, large-scale timber plantations controlled by national and multinational forest corporations have expanded significantly on traditional indigenous territories. Chile’s forestry sector began to expand rapidly in 1974, the year following the military coup, owing to the privatization of forest lands and the passing of Decree 701. That law continues to provide large subsidies for afforestation, as well as tax exemptions for plantations established after 1974. As a consequence, conflicts have developed between indigenous communities and forestry companies, with the latter actively supported by government policies. The Mapuche people, the largest indigenous group in Chile, have been demanding the right to control their own resources. Meanwhile, they have been bearing the physical and social costs of the forestry sector’s growth. Since democracy returned to Chile in 1990, governments have done little to strengthen the rights of indigenous peoples. Government policy in this area is ill-defined; it consists mainly of occasional land restitution and monetary compensation when conflicts with the Mapuche threaten to overheat. This, however, is coupled with heavy-handed actions by the police and the legal system against Mapuche individuals and groups. From a political ecology perspective, this thesis examines how indigenous communities resort to various political strategies to accommodate, resist, and/or negotiate as political-economic processes change, and how these responses in turn shape natural resource management and, it follows, the local environment. My findings are that the environmental and social impacts associated with landscape transformation are shaped not only by structural changes brought about by economic and political forces but also, simultaneously, by smaller acts of political, cultural, and symbolic protest. Emerging forms of political agency are having expected and unexpected consequences that are giving rise to new processes of environmental change. Evidence for my argument is provided by a case study that focuses on the political strategies followed by the Mapuche movement. I analyze the obstacles that are preventing the Chilean government from addressing more effectively the social, economic, and cultural needs of indigenous peoples through resource management policies. Government policies toward the Mapuche have not encompassed various approaches that might facilitate conflict resolution, such as effective participation in land use plans, natural resource management, the protection of the cultural rights of indigenous communities, and the Mapuche people’s right to their own approaches to development. Employing Foucault’s notion of governmentality, I argue that, while the Mapuche have widely contested the state’s neoliberal policies, they have nevertheless been drawn into governing strategies that are fundamentally neoliberal in character. These strategies have reconfigured their relationship with the state, NGOs, and foreign aid donors. Operating at both formal and informal levels of social and political interaction, this new mentality of government employs coercive and co-optive measures to cultivate Mapuche participation in the neoliberal modernization project, while continuing to neglect long-standing relations of inequality and injustice that underpin conflicts over land and resources.

This thesis documents the genealogy of the development of Jakarta’s urban water supply infrastructure from 1873 (the inception of the first colonial water supply network) to the present. Using an analytical framework of governmentality, supplemented by insights from postcolonial studies and political ecology, the thesis explains the highly unequal patterns of water access in Jakarta as the product of (post)colonial governmentalities, whose relations of power are expressed not only through discursive categories and socio-economic relations, but also through material infrastructures and urban spaces. The thesis presents material from the colonial archives, Jakarta’s municipal archives, and the publications of international development agencies and engineering consultancy firms. This is combined with primary data derived from interviews, questionnaires, and participant observation of the implementation of current pro-poor water supply projects in Jakarta. This data is used to document how water supply is implicated in the discursive and material production of the city and its citizens, and to challenge conventional developmentalist and academic analyses of water supply access. Specifically, a conceptual triad of water, space, and populations – produced through, but also productive of government rationalities – is used to explain two apparent paradoxes: (1) the fragmentation of access in Jakarta despite a century of concerted attempts to develop a centralized system; and (2) the preferences of lower-income households for non-networked water supply, despite its higher cost per unit volume. This analysis hinges on an elucidation of the relationships between urban governance and urban infrastructure, which documents the interrelated process of differentiation of types of water supply, water use practices, populations, and urban spaces from the colonial period to the present. This, in turn, is used to explain the barriers being encountered in current pro-poor water supply development projects in Jakarta. The thesis thus makes a contribution to current academic debates over the ‘colonial present’. The contribution is both theoretical – in the emphasis placed upon the materiality of governmentality – and empirical. Finally, the thesis also makes a contribution to the urban and development studies literatures through its reinterpretation of the urban ‘water crisis’.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2007. Graduate Programme in Geography. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 301-324). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR32068

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-203). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2007. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 15, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-93).