Environmental politics as a focus of studies in political theory and ideas consist of an examination of political parties, social groups, and stakeholders involved in the context of an environmental most. It becomes critical in this to have an analysis of public policymaking and the path to implementation at the local, national and global levels. The evolution of environmental issues is often categorized under three schools of thought. The 1st generation’s primary focus had been on ‘preservation and conservation, ‘protection of wildlife and habitat’. The 2nd generation also called the modern environmentalists focused on population growth, technology, desertification, and pollution among others. The subsequent generation has a prominent focus on global issues of climate change and global warming.
It becomes crucial to assess and analyze how this specific focus on concerns for environmental issues has created mechanisms. These mechanisms often take the shape of policy and governance guided by the incentives of the parties involved. Since humans form an integral part of the environment the need to have a keen political insight while such policies get implemented becomes imperative. These schools of thought mentioned above have been criticized when looked at through a political lens. There have been stark disagreements and wrangling among different social groups when deliberations on environmental issues take place. The categorization of environmental issues often leads to simplification of the social, cultural, and political contexts of the places involved. Moreover, an anachronistic approach can misguide the entire framework of mitigation leading to deteriorating circumstances. Environmental politics creates space for the creation of several questions ranging from who causes or what causes damage as well as what constitutes ‘damage’ and to what extent as well as who get affected and how do they get affected? Is the distribution of ‘environmental bad’ proportionate or do they function in structures of power where those with historical, social, political and economic advantages decide the stories! This is popularly described as “narratives” or “discourses”. The arguments made in political ecology studies and research on these narratives and create counter narratives to challenge the dominant understanding of dealing with the environment. The examination of these narratives can help us identify the stakeholders involved and the power held by them in influencing the discourse on policy making and implementation.
James Fairhead and Melissa Leach (1995) in their work upon the region of West Africa in Guinea have examined the social science analysis and the popular assumptions that have been the guiding narrative informing policies and justifying environmental degradation of the region. They have attempted to challenge the social science analysis and forwarded contrary assumptions to guide policies. In their studies on the forest islands of Kissidougou and Ziama Forest reserve, they highlighted broad assumptions made by the dominant narrative like a) ecological succession model of climax vegetation arguing that the population growth and modernization of the region disrupted this and led to the degradation and absence of the forests b in this region, b)breakdown of the traditional ‘functional order’ of the African society with a keen classification of people between the forests or the savanna(outsiders), c)population growth and modernity that disturbed the sedentary and subsistence equilibrium of the African society. The authors have argued that these broader narratives get translated into national, regional, and international policy documents as well as guide the policies of donors and aid groups. They have argued that environmental crisis results from the multiple effects of population pressure on the institutions seeking to control resource access and use. Besides they made a case that these narratives lack empirical evidences but are loaded with stereotypes and racial biases held by the western world as they highlight that even for participatory or regional grassroot development, these popular narratives make imperative the role of the outsider in the control of rural resources. They argued that these narratives are destructive and have no policy relevance but are based upon fulfilling the vested interests of those with more power. They provided counter narratives to this social science analysis which better reflect realities surrounding African environments. These included assumptions like a) a continual vegetation transition; rejecting the single environmental maximum underlining that Africa has experienced long-period, deep climatic fluctuations rather than ‘once-extant-climax’ arguing that there is no basis for identifying a region’s fundamental, archetypal vegetation, b) a peripatetic social practice challenging static social maxima typical of western anthropology. They argued that African societies have been in constant transition with differentiated social, economic and political values. Rejecting a uniform demographic increase based on unilinear population growth, c) the social order consists of various constellations of local resource management unlike a functional structure and its establishment requires enabling policy. The counternarrative suggests that it is a question of social and political regime choices determine the forms of vegetation and social organization desired in social history and these choices vary depending upon local, global and intergenerational interests.
Similar to this, Christina Kull (2000) researched the island of Madagascar to deconstruct the popular environmental narrative on forest history and degradation challenging the common wisdom and conservation rhetoric. Madagascar has undergone instrumental conservation management and protection because of its outstanding image in the global world. It has a phenomenally large biodiversity and therefore of keen interest in environmental regulations. The author has objected to an existing dominating narrative on deforestation, erosion, and fire in the environmental history of Madagascar highlighting errors, assumptions, and rhetorical ploys to evaluate and reshape the history. The dominating narrative of the environmental history of Madagascar reflects a homogenous view of seeing nature as a pristine body devoid of human interference and fluctuations. The absence of forests is associated with humans undergoing poverty and population growth pushing an inordinate increase in practicing Tavy cultivation, logging, and conducting grassland fires. (Perrier-Humbert hypothesis). This is exaggerated and dramatized using symbolic images and scary estimates of degradation laden with errors and unquestioned assumptions. The counter-narrative seeks to put the population narrative leading to deforestation within the historical and regional contexts. It puts in perspective the role of events and activities like war, rebellion, government policies, missionary activities, and market intervention for cash crop cultivation defeating the repeated narrative on population growth is responsible for deforestation. Similarly, Fire is argued for as an integrative ecological mechanism for managing forests and ecosystems. In addition, recent research has proven that erosion in Madagascar has happened for reasons far beyond what the local population can do. It cites climatic aridification and naturally occurring ecological feedback mechanisms as major regions for erosion. Several myths are propagated and perpetuated using unchallenged evidence, for instance, Madagascar once had 100% forest cover! These myths translate into conservation policy-making riding roughshod over the actual social-ecological reality or demands of the region. This argument is augmented by recent research countering the dominant narrative, it has been found that anthropogenic transformations in Madagascar have been different in different regions. The counter research suggests a strong need for a careful triangulation between historical maps, archival sources, and palaeoecological evidence. They argue that there is a problematic sense of what constitutes geography, there is stark confusion and conflation, and selected identification of indicators like Tavy cultivation that are blamed for every environmental issue. This muddled conception of the environment gets shaped by politics of environmentalism in the shape of policies and programs. The creation of such a dominant narrative gets influenced by several factors like colonial, and post-colonial attitudes of the west, and the encounter of the west with the exotic lands of Africa enabling control of the native population from a top-down conservation approach. The ecological contexts of the western world for instance climax vegetation and mistrust of fire reflect a western bias toward controlling the landscape in the policies creating a sedentary lifestyle and undermining Traditional Ecological Knowledge in favor of scientif forestry. The author has discussed that these transitions take place based on the power of the narrative holder. The environment may seem to be the cynosure however, inherently politics, values, and structure get decided by the power-wielding narrative propagators.
Political ecologists have argued that the interests of the powerful get accomplished by different tools like policies etc that are installed after the narration building. Concessionary politics is one such critical tool to gauge the extent to which power, values, and structure influence local and regional environmental concerns. Rebecca Hardin (2011) in her study in the Central African Republic (CAR) has attempted to explore legacies and transformations in concessionary politics shaping conservation and environmental governance. The author attempts to build a broader perspective underlying the historical geo-political tensions along with transformation within the local politics that have continued to play a key role in determining resource management. The attempt is made to contrast two polarizing economic groups, i.e., logging represented by the French industrialists and conservation-based forest use represented by the German and American stakeholders. The different dynamics shaped in the context of different socio-political-economic realities of CAR represent the structure of these stake holding bodies among each other. Concessions apparently has three key stages, the first is of prospecting for resources, the second is delimitation of the land and the last is the negotiation of the circumstances of extraction, production, and redistribution. These three stages redefine transnational environmental governance as they go through changes occurring in the territory, identity, and political economy of the region in question. To understand the logic behind the present concessionary politics it becomes necessary to perceive the links between precolonial, colonial, and contemporary economic arrangements. The author argues that concessionary politics emerge from the ground up and the complex interaction of actors enables the nature of policies that govern resource management. Besides, conservation is to a large extent sometimes dependent upon making compromises through engaging with actors who are detrimental to fragile ecosystems. The understanding of concessionary politics deconstructs the role different actors play in selecting the resources, delimiting the region, and subsequently having deliberations based on the amount of power as well as appeal each actor acquires leading to the creation of conservation narratives based on that.
Likewise, Chhatre and Saberwal (2005) in their paper made a case for integrating politics with conservation. They underlined the different actors involved or directly or indirectly when conservation policies are designed and how these policies cannot operate without acquiring a political demeanor. l things aside, they made a proposition that to have effective conservation policies an evident political will is necessary. Discussing the contexts of the GHNP(Great Himalayan National Park), they mentioned that the developmental narratives for bigger projects like electricity guide the electoral politics of the region over the interests of the conservationists. Therefore, conservation advocators must build political bridges and deliberate electoral power. At the same time, they highlighted the limitations of the existing conservation policies that run while alienating the actors in this case the locals of the GHNP in making policies. The tussle between conserving the Western Tragopan vis a vis the construction of Parbati Hydroelectric Project, the one with the major electoral and developmental appeal is chosen as an agenda. The authors argue that conservationists should reconfigure their approach while seeking the protection of endangered resources. Further, they should also attempt to seek a situation wherein the larger and local stakeholders share the space for negotiation and implementation of managing the resources.
The above brief discussions on different case studies each representing the different dynamics formed by narratives point out many questions that can help us to analyze the governance of the environment by different actors. These questions include understanding and defining who “owns” the resources, who can “use” them, and most importantly who gets to “decide”. This makes the protection of the environment undoubtedly a political question. To conserve is to govern the ownership and access of natural resources as a method to prevent and respond to environmental “harm” and “degradation”. The narratives described above reflect upon the various stakeholders and justifications created by different actors acting in a range of changing socio-economic, and political contexts. It is crucial to critically perceive the narratives being used to undo or mitigate the environmental loss to have more reflective and inclusive policies.
References:
• Chhatre, Ashwini & Saberwal, Vasant. (2005). Political Incentives for Biodiversity Conservation. Conservation Biology. 19. 310 – 317. 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00012. x.
• Fairhead, James & Leach, Melissa, (1995). “False forest history, complicit social analysis: Rethinking some West African environmental narratives,” World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 1023-1035, June.
• Hardin, Rebecca. (2011). Concessionary Politics: Property, Patronage, and Political Rivalry in Central African Forest Management: with CA comment by Serge Bahuchet. Current Anthropology. 52. 10.1086/658168.
• Kull, C.A. (2000) Deforestation, Erosion, and Fire: Degradation Myths in the Environmental History of Madagascar. Environment and History, 6, 423-450.