POLITICAL ECOLOGYCLASS # 2 Bill Derman, Noragric

OUTLINE FOR TODAY Review what is a political ecology approach

or framework A bit of marx Political ecology of coffee

URBAN POLITICAL ECOLOGY Reigning the River: Urban Ecologies and

Political Transformation by Anne Rademacher Duke University Press, 2011 She doesn’t call it political ecology but it is:

the intersections of politics, religion, history, ecology, social movements in the efforts to restore the Bagmati River

ESSENCE OF PEPolitical ecology is pluralistic in its basic concepts but it almost always includes: understanding ‘the complex relations between nature and society through a careful analysis of. . .access and control over resources and their implications for environmental health and sustainable livelihoods’ and explaining ‘environmental conflict especially in terms of struggles over ‘knowledge, power and practice’ and ‘politics, justice and governance’’.

NORTH-SOUTH Political ecologists tend to attribute the

explanation for many destructive ecological practices to the enclosure or appropriation of forests, lands and waters by private interests. Most generally it is explored as commodifying the environment and using the market to change or conserve ’nature, or the conversion of nature into commodities. This is often referred to as the commodification of nature. This is a long-term trend but has intensified in recent years.

WHAT MAKES UP A POLITICAL ECOLOGY APPROACH?

1. The study of how decisions are made about the environment? Who has the power to make decisions about the environment?

2. The study of who benefits, who loses, who are the winners and who are the losers in environmental decision making

3. A focus on the spatial scales involved – it’s usually phrased as global, national, local but this is too simplistic because global markets, for example, can interact directly with the local. Global mining companies extract copper in a particular place at a particular time

4. Takes history seriously in how the environment has been changed over sometimes long period of time, or how cropping patterns change

PE APPROACH 25. Struggles over meaning as well as over the

resource itself. For example, over animals lions, elephants, cattle. Humans place different values on the lives of other living beings.

6. Focus on how knowledge about society and the environment is produced. Whose knowledge is seen as definitive.

7. How is science used in the making of environmental and resource policies

8. Very often a normative approach – what the political ecologist thinks is best in light of concerns of poor, marginalized, and the local.

RELEVANCE OF POLITICAL ECOLOGYPE addresses the natural resource conflicts which of course are played out in local, national and international arenas. 1. environmental, degradation. Example – the Niger oil delta in Nigeria 2. conservation. The appropriation of pastoralist lands in eastern Tanzania3. the neoliberalisation of nature and its ongoing rounds of accumulation, enclosure and dispossession. For example, the appropriate of agricultural lands by governments on behalf of foreign countries or multinational corporations.4. The consequences of development programs and projects upon the environment and those dependent upon that environment for their livelihoods. The outcomes of huge dams upon rivers and the people who depend upon them.

THE METABOLIC RIFT Metabolism is the set of life-sustaining

chemical transformations within the cells of living organisms. These enzyme-catalyzed reactions allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments.

It is used as a metaphor for humans and nature, humans and their environments.

THE METABOLIC RIFT A number of researchers are using this

concept which is a metaphor to make marxism more relevant for understanding environmental issues. Adding a second contradiction to the struggle between capital and labor. The second contradiction is between capitalism and nature.

LABOR There is a metabolic interaction between

humans and the earth, and the earth is what supports life. Labor according to Marx is an eternal natural necessity which mediates the metabolism between man and nature, and therefore human life itself. In a broad sense the metabolic processes are eating, drinking, breathing, and the bases of exchanges with the environment which permits organisms to stay alive.

COFFEE Coffee is a plant native to Ethiopia Its spread from there has transformed

ecologies and societies in the subtropical and tropical areas of the world

Today 25 million people in 60 countries produce around 12 billion pounds of coffee a year

Retail sales are around $70 billion. In the world market of commodities only

petroleum has greater monetary value

PAPUA NEW GUINEA Coffee introduced into New Guinea at the

end of the 19th century Expanded in the 1930s Then as a colony coffee was seen as a

growth industry In the 1950s land opened up for white

settlers mainly from Australia Indigenous people also began making profits

from coffee

COFFEE Restricted soils and ecologies for coffee in

terms of altitude Majority of coffee harvested by hand

(whether on plantations or small holdings) Coffee berries are red and they have to be

pulped, fermented, dried, processed, shipped, roasted, packaged and then marketed before being consumed

COFFEE Throughout this process the beans are

bought and sold many times and moved to numerous locations.

With each relocation their economic and social value as well as their social and symbolic meaning changes.

Coffee – like so many other commodities – moves around the planet carried by farmers on their backs, in wheelbarrows on donkey carts, on trucks, cars, ships, airplanes, and ships.

PRODUCTION TO CONSUMPTION Once a coffee leaves the farm it is graded and

given a quality. In Papua New Guinea, for example, coffee is the

symbol of modernity. It is the most important cash crop and the way by which farmers see it as the means of social and economic advancement. They see themselves as part of a global commercial economy according to the anthropologist Paige West.

However how they view the coffee disappears once it leaves New Guinea. The coffee from Papua New Guinea takes on a different symbolic meaning.

This symbolic meaning has changed.

COFFEE CONSUMPTION For consumers of coffee it’s good to feel that

you are making other peoples’ lives better when you enjoy really good coffee.

Images are used to sell coffee and these images change over time.

In the past there was little emphasis upon where the coffee came from, who grew it and under what conditions it was grown.

There was little attention to the ecology of coffee farms and plantations.

This has changed since the 1980s – in short something very recent

NATIONAL DIFFERENCES In the U.S. a market for fair trade and in the

Netherlands Didn’t take place in Germany until much later. Apparently Germans didn’t pay much attention

to where the coffee came from and the conditions under which it was grown but to the taste.

Why do people buy what they do, what are they willing to spend, how do they spend their money

Importance of consumption and the images that are created by companies to meet the images and fantasies of consumers.

NEW SYMBOLIC VALUE Coffee from Papua New Guinea is now sold as

single origin Organic Fair Trade These are terms invented and developed by

coffee companies and sometimes social activists to improve the ecological circumstances in which coffee is grown, to have higher benefits for producers and to create a market niche to have higher profits

They are also an effort to give coffee a story which means progress for the villagers who produce the coffee

MARKET NOT SUFFICIENT TO ESTABLISH

’FAIR TRADE’ Certification processes Organic If workers involved, conditions of workers Wages Involvement of women Quality of coffee control Accurate labeling to consumers Consumers will be willing to pay more in the

name of fairness, environment and development

IMAGES OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA Primitives, living in remote villages,

untouched, authentic Poverty stricken Hide history of dominance of coffee in the

lives of Papua New Guineans Can do political ecology through the study of

commodities and their transformations

CONFLICT AND COFFEE (1) Political ecology has relevance for conflict

but it’s also about how to understand and frame issues of environment and society.

One process which affects the environment is consumption, and how a commodity is affected by how it’s marketed. In the case of New Guinea there’s a hidden deception in marketing commodities in a way that distorts the way communities view their production and products.

Growing coffee by giving New Guineans relief from forced labor was a coercive if not a form of structural violence

CONFLICT AND COFFEE (2) In Central America in the highlands large amounts of

indigenous land was taken for coffee production by the elites. In short coffee growing was based the violent taking of land.

In Angola Portugese settlers used the power of the colonial power to also take land to grow plantation coffee. They used their power to force Angolans to work on the coffee plantations.

In parts of Indonesia Dutch planters used the power of the colonial state to take land from Indonesians to grow coffee

In short during the colonial period in parts of Africa, Asia, Central America and South America land was violently taken.

However, the colonial period is now over. Coffee growing is very different. There are large and significant differences between plantation coffee and small-holder coffee. And there are significant cooperative-grown coffees.

COFFEE AND CONFLICT (3) There are significant capital\labor issues.

Farm workers around the world are poorly paid, highly vulnerable and face many difficulties in organizing for their interests.

As with other commodities, large farm owners use a variety of forms of violence to keep wages low and conditions difficult.

While a single commodity importance of context.

What are the best ways to grow coffee? How does one change the distribution of profits along the value chain from grower to consumer?

GLOBAL POLITICAL ECOLOGICAL QUESTION Can we sustain human life as we engage in

capital accumulation appropriating and diminishing the stock upon which human life depends? This is the global political ecological question. One way of putting it for Marxists is the following:

CAPITALISM VERSUS NATURE?Capital’s insatiable appetite for ever-higher levels of profit and accumulation is reinforced by the domination of exchange value over use value, competition and the concentration and centralization of capital. The incessant accumulation amplifies the social metabolism of society, increasing the demands placed on nature. New technologies are used above all to expand production and to lower labor costs. Capital’s social metabolism is increasingly in contradiction with the natural metabolism, producing various metabolic rifts and forms of ecological degradation that have and continue to threaten the ecosystems upon which life depends.

GLOBAL PROBLEM BUT DIFFERENTIAL RESPONSIBILITIES The most extreme example of global

ecological change is climate. The mismatch between the nature and scale of ecological problems which do not respect national boundaries and the division of the world into nation-states desperately striving to keep national sovereignty pinpoints many dilemmas.