Political Ecology

Political Ecology

What is the relationship between politics and the environment? How people use the land and natural resources is profoundly influenced by politics. Whether a particular habitat is conserved or degraded often has much to do with the structures of a country’s land laws, tax codes, and agricultural policies. However, increasingly, politics is being defined by changing environmental conditions. National policies about environmental protection, guerrillas seeking a secure base for their operations, and the natural defense provided for an independent country by a surrounding sea all reveal an intertwining of environment and politics. How governments respond to ecological crises like the loss of biodiversity, pollution, and climate change has become an important political issue. Let’s examine this complex two-way interaction between politics and the environment.

6.0.7 Chain of Explanation

Chain of Explanation

When geographers Piers Blaikie and Harold Brookfield used the term political ecology, they were interested in trying to understand how political and economic forces affect people’s relationships to the land. They suggested that focusing on proximate or immediate causes (for example, the farmer dumping pesticides in a river or the poor peasant cutting a patch of tropical forest) provided an inadequate and misleading explanation of human-environment relations. As an alternative, they developed the idea of a chain of explanation as a method for identifying ultimate causes. The chain of explanation begins with the individual land managers, the people with direct responsibility for land-use decisions—the farmers, timber cutters, firewood gatherers, or livestock keepers. The chain of explanation then moves up in spatial scale, tracing the land managers’ economic, cultural, and political relationships from the local to the national and, ultimately, the global scale.

One of the primary areas addressed by the chain-of-explanation approach is the character of the state, particularly the way that national land laws, natural resource policies, tax codes, and credit policies influence land-use decision making. For example, if a state assesses high taxes on land improvements, such as terracing and channeling, its tax policies actually create disincentives for land managers to implement soil conservation measures. Conversely, if a state provides cheap loans to land managers to build such structures, its credit policies encourage soil conservation. There are many examples of state influences on individual land-use decisions, leading Blaikie and Brookfield to argue that one cannot fully explain the causes of environmental problems without analyzing the role of the state.

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6.0.8 Geopolitics and Folk Fortresses

Geopolitics and Folk Fortresses

geopolitics The influence of geography and the habitat on political entities.

Spatial variations in politics and the spread of political phenomena are often linked to terrain, soils, climate, natural resources, and other aspects of the physical environment. The term geopolitics was originally coined to describe the influence of geography and the environment on political entities. Conversely, established political authority can be a powerful instrument of environmental modification, providing the framework for organized alteration of the landscape and for environmental protection.

folk fortress A stronghold area with natural defensive qualities, useful in the defense of a country against invaders.

Before modern air and missile warfare, a country’s survival was aided by some sort of natural protection, such as surrounding mountain ranges, deserts, or seas; bordering marshes or dense forests; or outward-facing escarpments. Political geographers named such natural strongholds folk fortresses. The folk fortress might shield an entire country or only its core area. In either case, it is a valuable asset. Surrounding seas have helped protect the British Isles from invasion for the past 900 years. In Egypt, desert wastelands to the east and west insulated the fertile, well-watered Nile Valley core. In the same way, Russia’s core area was shielded by dense forests, expansive marshes, bitter winters, and vast expanses of sparsely inhabited lands. France—centered on the plains of the Paris Basin and flanked by mountains and hills such as the Alps, Pyrenees, Ardennes, and Jura along its borders—provides another good example (Figure 6.14).

Figure 6.14: The distribution of landforms in France. Terrain features such as ridges, hills, and mountains offer protection. Outward-looking escarpments form a folk fortress that protected the core area and capital of France until as recently as World War I. Hill districts and mountain ranges lend stability to French boundaries in the south and southeast.

Thinking Geographically

Question 6.15

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Expanding countries often regard coastlines as the logical limits to their territorial growth, even if those areas belong to other peoples, as the drive across the United States from the East Coast to the Pacific Ocean in the first half of the nineteenth century made clear. U.S. expansion was justified by the doctrine of manifest destiny, which is based on the belief that the Pacific shoreline offered the logical and predestined western border for the country. A similar doctrine led Russia to expand in the directions of the Mediterranean and Baltic seas and the Pacific and Indian oceans.

6.0.9 The Heartland Theory

The Heartland Theory

heartland theory A 1904 proposal by Mackinder that the key to world conquest lay in control of the interior of Eurasia.

Discussions of environmental influence, manifest destiny, and Russian expansionism lead naturally to the heartland theory of Halford Mackinder. Propounded in the early twentieth century and based on environmental determinism, the heartland theory addresses the balance of power in the world and the possibility of world conquest based on natural habitat advantage. It held that the Eurasian continent was the most likely base from which to launch a successful campaign for world conquest.

heartland The interior of a sizable landmass, removed from maritime connections; in particular, the interior of the Eurasian continent.

rimland The maritime fringe of a country or continent; in particular, the western, southern, and eastern edges of the Eurasian continent.

In examining this huge landmass, Mackinder discerned two environmental regions: the heartland, which lies remote from the ice-free seas, and the rimland, the densely populated coastal fringes of Eurasia in the east, south, and west (Figure 6.15). Far from the sea, the heartland was invulnerable to the naval power of rimland empires, but the cavalry and infantry of the heartland could spill out through diverse natural gateways and invade the rimland region. Mackinder thus reasoned that a unified heartland power could conquer the maritime countries with relative ease. He believed that the East European Plain would be the likely base for unification. As Russia had already unified this region at the time, Mackinder in effect predicted that the Russians would pursue world conquest.

Figure 6.15: Heartland versus rimland in Eurasia. For most of the twentieth century, the heartland, epitomized by the Soviet Union and communism, was seen as a threat to the United States and the rest of the world, a notion based originally on the environmental deterministic theory of the political geographer Halford Mackinder. Control of the East European Plain would permit rule of the entire heartland, which in turn would be the territorial base for world conquest. During the cold war (1945–1990), the United States and its rimland allies sought to counter this perceived menace by a policy of containment—resisting every expansionist attempt by the heartland powers. (Sources: After Mackinder, 1904; Spykman, 1944.)

Thinking Geographically

Question 6.16

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Following Russia’s communist revolution in 1917, the leaders of rimland empires and the United States employed a policy of containment. This policy, in no small measure, found its origin in Mackinder’s theory and resulted in numerous wars to contain what was then considered a Russian-inspired conspiracy of communist expansion. Overlooked all the while were the fallacies of the heartland theory, particularly its reliance on the discredited doctrine of environmental determinism. In the end, Russia proved unable to hold together its own heartland empire, much less conquer the rimland and the world.

6.0.10 Warfare and Environmental Destruction

Warfare and Environmental Destruction

Of course, many political actions have an ecological impact, but perhaps none are as devastating as warfare. Scorched earth—the systematic, intentional destruction of resources—has been a favored practice of retreating armies for millennia. However, perhaps even more devastating to local environments in war-torn regions are the unintentional effects wrought by war. For example, widespread deforestation and wildlife habitat destruction are often caused by the long-term use of heavy military equipment and explosives in delicate physical environments such as rainforests and deserts. This damage disrupts ecosystems for many years afterward, causing erosion, water-quality issues, and diminished food-production capacities.

Damage to fragile habitats has also been caused by the resettlement of refugees displaced by conflict. For example, for many years following the end of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, thousands of displaced refugees flowed out of refugee camps in search of land on which to resettle in order to feed and house their families in an already overpopulated country. Many of these impoverished individuals ventured into vital forest preserve areas adjacent to the refugee camps, as there was little land available elsewhere (Figure 6.16). These preserved forests are home to highly endangered mountain gorilla populations that have suffered significant preservation setbacks as a result of human encroachment into their habitat.

Figure 6.16: (a) Rwandan mountain gorillas and (b) their threatened habitat. The map shows the proximity of several Rwandan refugee camps to national parks, which are home to the highly endangered mountain gorilla. This geographic relationship has proven extremely detrimental to efforts to prevent the extinction of mountain gorillas.
(a: © Ralph H. Bendjebar/DanitaDelimont.com.)

Thinking Geographically

Question 6.17

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Warfare can also cause damage to key regional infrastructure, which can lead to damage of local ecosystems. For example, damage to water pipes from bomb blasts or bullets can result in bacterial contamination and water leaks that reduce the amount of safe drinking water available for local residents. Water shortages due to damaged water systems can also lead to inadequate irrigation capacity on lands already damaged by heavy vehicles or rendered hazardous by the presence of landmines. Other infrastructure—such as local waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities—can also be damaged by warfare, leading to soil and water contamination that impacts local residents and the environment in which they live long after the war ends. Clearly, warfare (especially modern, high-tech warfare) can be environmentally catastrophic. From an ecological standpoint, it does not matter who started or won a war. Everyone loses when such destruction occurs, given the global interconnectedness of the life-supporting ecosystem.