1st Edition
The New Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology
The New Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology offers a state-of-the-art exploration of contemporary political ecology, grounded in the field’s radical foundations and its longstanding connections to political activism.
This book is organized around the field’s engagement with contemporary political issues, spanning 52 chapters. Part I explores Decolonizing Political Ecology, Part II examines Activism and Praxis, and Part III focuses on the Making of Twenty-First Century Natures. Adopting an inclusive, cross-disciplinary approach, the book features a gender-balanced and ethnically diverse range of authors, including contributions from scholars at various career stages. This diverse representation is reflective of a commitment to challenging established hierarchies within political ecology and recognizing the varying perspectives researchers themselves bring to the field. This editorial strategy has proven intellectually enriching, resulting in a dynamic collection that broadens and deepens our understanding of what political ecology is and what it can achieve.
Together, as editors and authors, we contribute a forward-looking overview of contemporary Political Ecology, offering an essential reference for scholars conducting research that is relevant, ethical, critical, and, hopefully, transformative, as well as for activists involved in environmental conflicts and struggles around the world.
1. Political Ecology in a Changing Climate
Jessica Hope, Elia Apostolopoulou, and Yolanda Ariadne Collins
PART I: Decolonizing Political Ecology
2. A Call for Acknowledgement, Respect and Care in Using Radical Feminist Conceptualizations of Territory from Latin America
Diana Vela-Almeida, Noémi Gonda, and Martina Angela Caretta
3. Colonial Residue: REDD+, Territorialisation and the Racialized Subject in Guyana and Suriname
Yolanda Ariadne Collins
4. Convivial Conservation Through Historical Reparations
Laila Sandroni, Henyo T. Barreto Fh, and Bram Büscher
5. Decolonial Thought and Political Ecology: Coexistence and Divergence
Farhana Sultana
6. Decolonisation in the ‘Field’: Chains of Responsibility and Ecological Justice
Michele Lobo
7. Decolonising Knowledge Production in Political Ecology
Mya Owen
8. Indigenous Political Ecologies: Centering Sovereignty and Relationality
Clint Carroll and Dana E. Powell
9. Political Ecology of Fire: Decolonial Perspectives
Kapil Yadav
10. Re-Thinking Infrastructural Environments: From Colonial Modernity to the More-than-Human
Michael Simpson
11. The Coloniality of Forestry: Decolonial Possibilities and African Environmental Ethics
Mathew Bukhi Mabele and Danstan Mukono
12. Territorial Ecologies: The Turn Towards Territories of Ecological Dignity
Christopher Courtheyn
13. Towards an Ethical Collaborative Practice in Political Ecology
Paige West and John Aini
PART II: Activism and Praxis
14. Accumulation by Defossilization and Coloniality of the ‘Energy Transition’: Lithium, Territories and Resistance in Jujuy (Argentina)
Gustavo Romeo, Melisa Argento, and Jonatan Nuñez
15. Convivial Conservation: Implementing Intellectual, Collaborative, and Communicative Praxis in a Research Project
Judith Krauss, Mathew Bukhi Mabele, and Wilhelm A. Kiwango
16. Degrowth
Brototi Roy
17. End of a Cis-Hetero Discipline? Strategies for a Queer Political Ecology
Austin Read and Yanin Kramsky
18. Energy Justice: A Multilateral View
Ellen Fungisai Chipango and Roberto Cantoni
19. From Pemba to Barranquilla: A Feminist Political Ecology of the Urban Home
Tatiana Acevedo-Guerrero
20. Grassroots Activism in Wetland Spaces: Ecological Stewardship, Regenerative Praxis, Creative Imaginations
Mary Gearey
21. Injustice in Urban Greening and Green Gentrification
Isabelle Anguelovski
22. Planetary Governance or Planetary Struggle? A Political Ecology of Grassroots Praxis
Elia Apostolopoulou
23. Revisiting Radical Futures for Neoliberal Conservation Research
Alejandra Pizarro Choy, Sara Maestre Andrés, Marina Requena-i-Mora, and Dimitris Bormpoudakis
24. Publishing in Political Ecology: Rethinking Unequal Relationships and Social Justice
Simon Batterbury and Diego Silva Garzón
25. The EJAtlas: Co-Production of Knowledge for Engaged Research to Support Environmental Justice Movements, Education, and Policy-Making
Roberto Cantoni, Daniela Del Bene, Eleonora Fanari, Marcel Llavero-Pasquina, Arnim Scheidel, and Mariana Walter
26. The Political Ecology of Collective Urban Gardening
Ioana Florea
27. Troubling Waterscapes: Counter-Mapping as a Feminist Methodology to Rethink Human-Water Relations
Arianna Tozzi and Irene Leonardelli
28. Working-Class Environmentalisms
Rocío Hiraldo
29. Young People’s Political Ecologies
Ann Marie Murnaghan and Laura Shillington
PART III: Making 21st-Century Natures
30. Austerity and Anti-Austerity Environmentalism
Giorgos Velegrakis, Rita Calvário, and Maria Kaika
Spotlight on Conservation
31. ‘30-by-30': Political Ecology and the ‘30-by-30’ Conservation Target
Anwesha Dutta and Rose Pritchard
32. Conservation Data Justice
Dan Brockington, Karla Ramirez Capetillo, Danielle Freya Latreche, Marina Requena Mora, Rose Pritchard, Laura Aileen Sauls, Jocelyne Shimin Sze, Ryan Unks, and Valeria Zapata-Giraldo
33. Neoliberal Conservation
Fabricio Matheus and Robert Fletcher
34. Political Ecologies of Violent Conflict
Esther Marijnen and Judith Verweijen
35. From Colonialism to Sovereignty: Political Ecologies of the Energy Transition
Diego Andreucci and Gustavo A. García-López
36. Geopolitical Ecology: Socio-Ecological Relations of Bombs, Banks, and BINGOs
Benjamin Neimark, Lorah Steichen, and Patrick Bigger
37. The Blue Economy
Rosanna Carver and Adam Jadhav
38. The Grounds of Extraction
Ben Gilvar-Parke and Gabriela Valdivia
Spotlight on Infrastructure
39. Europe’s Leaking Infrastructure
Evelina Gambino
40. Modern and Non-Modern Infrastructures
Mary Lawhon and Elshaday Girma Berhanu
41. The Political Ecology of Soybean Infrastructure in Brazil
Gustavo de L. T. Oliveira
42. New State Capitalism: Political Ecology of States ‘Protecting’ Farmland
Eszter Krasznai Kovacs
43. Political Ecology of Climate Apocalypse: Four Scenarios on Class Conflict
Murat Arsel
44. Sustainable Development: Political Ecology and a Zombie Environmentalism
Jessica Hope and Emma Mawdsley
Spotlight on More-Than-Human Political Ecology
45. A Feral Atlas
Anna L. Tsing, Jennifer Deger, Alder Keleman Saxena, and Feifei Zhou
46. Should Political Ecology Be More-Than-Human?
Charis Enns and Brock Bersaglio
47. Why Political Ontology Is Not About the Nonhuman, but What Haunts It
Mario Blaser
48. A Popular-Political Ecology of Waste
María Fernanda Solíz
49. A Volumetric Political Ecology of Atmospheres
Mary Mostafanezhad and Wolfram Dressler
50. More-than-Human Political Ecologies as a Matter of Care
Jared D. Margulies
51. Political Ecologies of Wild Animal Life
Tom Fry
52. Political Ecology and the Genome
W.M. Adams
Afterword: Think of Others
Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine, 1964–2008
Biography
Jessica Hope is Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Her ERC-funded research develops infrastructural political ecology, investigating road building and its alternatives in the Western Amazon in sites crucial for responses to climate change – Indigenous territories, conservation areas, and cities. She is an editor at Geoforum.
Elia Apostolopoulou is Associate Professor at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London. Her research bridges Political Ecology and Human and Urban Geography, focusing on how infrastructure projects and investments in the built environment shape socionatures, places, and livelihoods, often intensifying environmental, social, and spatial injustices. A significant aspect of her work is understanding the responses of affected communities and the role of grassroots activism in fostering resistance and opening pathways for radically different futures. Elia is also Senior Associate at the University of Cambridge and an editor at Dialogues in Human Geography.
Yolanda Ariadne Collins is Senior Lecturer of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK. Her work lies at the intersection of climate change governance, environmental policy, and international development. More specifically, she analyses the interplay between market-based conservation and post-colonial development.
“This impressive handbook is a landmark text. It brings together an exciting and diverse range of authors to interrogate political ecology today and set out future directions for the field. It explores several specific examples – oceans, conservation, infrastructure, agriculture, genomics and more – to bring challenging theoretical approaches to light.”
Prof Rosaleen Duffy, University of Sheffield, UK
“In this new volume, Hope, Apostolopoulou and Collins present us with a new vision of political ecology. Pushing beyond the field’s Anglo-American roots and traditional focus on place-based case studies, the chapters in this volume reflect political ecology’s diversification and embrace of decolonial theory, praxis, and activism.”
Prof Thomas Perreault, Syracus University, North America
"This is a new handbook of political ecology speaking to a new era of climate breakdown, revamped colonialism, and a revanchist patriarchy. Political ecology still offers the concepts to make sense of what is going on, and how things could get better".
Prof Giorgos Kallis, ICTA-UAB, Spain
