Political Ecology

Political ecology is an academic field that seeks to understand human societies and their relationship to nature. Political ecology posits that environmental problems are intrinsically political and need to be understood in a broader framework that takes local as well as global actors into consideration. An important overarching goal of political ecology is to understand and participate in the forces linking social change, environment, and development. Academic studies using political ecology perspectives of analysis are appearing with greater frequency in contemporary environmental scholarship. While geographers and ecological economists have taken the lead in this endeavor, other fields, such as anthropology, history, and sociology, are joining in this collective effort. However, different shades of political ecology draw from a number of academic subdisciplines including: cultural and ...