Political Ecology

Question 1

What is political ecology?

Answer 1

Marxist concern with structural inequality + interest in environmental ‘victims’
Why are poor people most affected by environmental crises?

Question 2

Case study: BT cotton in India (?;?)

Answer 2

Stone 2002:
BT cotton = GM cotton resistant to bollworm
1998 over 500 farmers in Andhra Pradesh committed suicide
Monsanto: due to bollworms
Anti-GM campaigners: GM added to poverty and indebtedness

Question 3

Clean Development Mechanism (?)

Answer 3

Kyoto Protocol 1992
Market approach allowing trading of offsets
Birth of new commodity of CO2 tonnes
Success based on what reduction targets are set

Question 4

Carbon colonialism (?;?)

Answer 4

Bachram 2004
Offsetting projects are being imposed on Global South without questioning GHGs in Global North
Benefits not equally shared

Question 5

Accumulation by decarbonisation (?;?)

Answer 5

Bumpus and Liverman 2008
Relies on baseline-and-credit trading system - credits represent additional carbon reductions from baseline emissions = difficult to be accurate
Carbon is individuated and owned - functionally and spatially abstract
Unequal distribution of rights to pollute the atmosphere and benefits from the offsets
Some may be losing rights to land and water and lack info or skills to demand higher prices

Question 6

Green capitalism (?;?)

Answer 6

Prudham 2009
market-based mechanisms
= faith in private decision making
Can’t decouple capitalism from energy/material throughput enough to make sustainable capitalism possible

Question 7

H1N1 (?;?)

Answer 7

Sparke and Anguelov 2012
2009 H1N1 pandemic
Inequalities in blame for outbreak in the media = Mexico and Mexicans
Inequalities in risk management = vs. diseases killing more poor e.g. TB or malaria; Outbreaks Near Me app = rich could have alerts; poor countries struggle to provide disease surveillance; poor had to go to work sick
Inequalities in medicine access = wealthy countries stockpiled; US investment banks and large corps got early and disproportionately large amounts
Inequalities in emergence = geographies of factory farms linked to inequalities in the global economy & capitalism - and they work to breed influenzas