Political Ecology

Political ecology studies how political and cultural processes shape society (human)-nature (environment) relationships. In many cases, people have a strong attachment to their habitat through the building of cultures. Political ecology can be considered as a marriage of geography and anthropology and is characterized as an interdisciplinary approach rather than a unified methodology associated with one specific discipline.

Environmental changes affected by political phenomena in indigenous or ethnic societies are typically common subjects in political ecology, but recently, the approach is increasingly applied toward industrialized societies to analyze diversities of human relationship and conceptualization of nature based on geopolitics and several other prominent theories.

Although geopolitics is often singularly associated with political geography, the idea of geopolitics is inseparable from the importance of terrain, soils, climate, natural resources, and other elements of the physical environment to our political society. The term geopolitics is often used to describe the influence of habitat on political entities. On the other hand, political authorities have powerful potentials to modify environment through the scheme-organized alteration of the landscape and even in the name of environmental protection. In these ways, political entities influence and are influenced by the physical surroundings, and here again, we come across with a two-way relationship between human and environment.

In the past, a country’s survival was enhanced by “folk fortress,” which is a natural stronghold, such as surrounding mountain ranges, deserts, or seas; bordering marshes or dense forests; or outward-facing ESCARPMENTs.

The folk fortress was a valuable natural protection of the city and people by shielding an entire country or at least its core area. Without natural defense, for example, Korea, a land bridge leading from CHINA to JAPAN, has repeatedly been threatened by both neighbors. Korea’s history tells us how difficult it is for a country without natural protection to maintain its independence and sovereignty. Distribution of terrain is closely related to the concept of the folk fortress. We agree that an ideal country has mountains and hills around its edges and plains in the interior to provide sufficient fortification and comfortable space for people’s settlement to facilitate defense and to heighten identity of a cohesive country. FRANCE comes very close to the ideal in terms of its physical setting, but very few countries in the world enjoy similar environmental boundaries.

Other desirable borders are mountain ridges because they stand out on the landscape and cross thinly populated countrysides. In contrast, not all the topographical features are helpful in making of efficient borders and a cohesive country. Rivers usually do not serve as ideal borders because their nature of changing course and flowing through densely settled valleys, create potential problems for the countries on either bank.

An undesirable arrangement of physical features are called environmental barriers and may disrupt a country’s internal unity and isolate one part of a country from another. Environmental barriers grow separatist sentiments easily, such as internal mountain ranges in the case of PERU and SPAIN that provide guerrillas with potential bases. Both Peru and Spain have problems of internal unity, and it can be said that this is partly because of their unfavorable physical settings.

In comparison, seacoasts serve as the most efficient borders for making independent countries, as is represented by AUSTRALIA. The Australian seacoasts provide excellent natural boundaries against expansive or acquisitive neighbors. However, we should not forget that there are always exceptions to these generalizations, such as HAWAII, CUBA, and the PHILIPPINES. These interactions between human territoriality and topographical arrangements recur in several theories in political ecology as well as political geography.

Increasingly today across the world, the term political ecology has a far more restricted meaning than the scope discussed above. It refers to a form of political activism dealing with the issue of disputes of who controls natural resources and who makes the political decisions that impact the habitat and indigenous population. Power games and the politically charged environmental consequences of the struggle between haves and have-nots become the center of the new political ecology. Many political actions and decisions have a significant impact upon habitat, and warfare is the most devastating of all political phenomena. War destroys resources systematically, and it is unfortunate that warfare has been a favored practice to resolve political conflicts throughout history.

From an ecological perspective, environmental catastrophe goes on as a result of modern high-tech warfare, which destroys the delicate balance between human and habitat. Even military exercises and various tests affect habitat severely, as is the case with a drastic oil spill. The first world’s desire to control resources and territories often resulted in destruction of habitats and the displacement of indigenous peoples by the people of political economic power.

The lumber industry, commercial fishing, the development of open lands, and other enterprises are often seen as ecologically destructive, although these are not always directly involved with politics. It is time for us to rethink human involvement with habitat from an ecological point of view, and political ecology gives us fundamental insights to deal with this world. The United States is one of the countries that has a Green Party to pursue a political-ecological agenda, and the existence of this political party represents increasing concern of human impact.