Reading Climate Change and Climate Governance as Political Ecologies
Reading Climate Change and Climate Governance as Political Ecologies
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DOI：
10.4324/9781315759289.ch23
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发表时间：
2015-06
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
D. Liverman
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
D. Liverman
政治生态学为理解从地方到全球范围内的气候变化的原因、后果和应对措施提供了强有力的见解——将物质自然与排放和脆弱性的结构性驱动因素，以及个人和机构行为者的力量以及他们所采用的叙述、解释和辩论气候变化和应对措施交织在一起。气候变化是一个突出环境和社会正义问题的问题，可以将许多政治生态学家与行动主义和政策联系起来。它的特点是其通过大气公域的全球影响力、威胁和解决方案的存在范围以及在制度上与国际政策紧密联系的研究团体。本章探讨政治生态学如何分析气候变化的地理原因，包括各国对化石燃料消耗和土地利用变化的不同责任。其次，本章重点关注气候变化脆弱性，其中政治生态学为不同地区干旱和其他极端气候的政治经济以及气候变化与其他压力（例如新自由主义对农民的压力）交叉的方式提供了宝贵的见解。第三，它考虑了对气候变化的反应，以及如何利用政治生态学来分析缓解（例如通过能源政策和碳抵消）和适应。我认为，气候变化在不同的批评文献中为政治生态学提供了丰富的问题。我认为，气候变化将政治生态学与其某些起源联系起来，以努力了解灾害脆弱性以及贫困与环境退化之间的交叉点，但也使我们陷入有关发展、能源和土地利用未来的高度政治化的辩论。政治生态学视角可以反驳对气候政治经济的过度强调，这种强调可能会抹杀个人和社区的作用，或者无法认真对待科学和自然。政治生态学还可以通过对文化、话语和科学研究的理解，提供对气候态度变化的见解，包括气候怀疑论。然而，大多数关于气候的批判性研究并不自我认定为政治生态学，并且常常忽视气候变化原因和后果的空间性、物质性和体现。
Political ecology provides powerful insights into understanding the causes, consequences and responses to climate change from local to global scales – interweaving material nature with the structural drivers of emissions and vulnerabilities, as well as with the agency of individual and institutional actors and the narratives they embrace to describe, explain and debate what is happening to climate and what should be done about it. Climate change is an issue that highlights questions of environmental and social justice and can connect many political ecologists to activism and policy. It is distinguished by its global reach through the atmospheric commons, by the existential scope of the threats and solutions, and by a research community that is institutionally well connected to international policy. This chapter explores how political ecology can analyze the geographical causes of climate change, including the differential responsibilities of countries for fossil fuel consumption and land use change. Second, the chapter focuses on climate change vulnerability where political ecology has provided valuable insights into the political economy of drought and other climate extremes in different regions, and the ways in which a changing climate intersects with other stresses, such as those of neoliberalism on peasant farmers. Third, it considers responses to climate change and how political ecology can be used to analyze mitigation – through energy policy and carbon offsets for example – and adaptation. I will argue that climate change offers a wealth of questions for political ecology in a diverse critical literature. I suggest that climate change connects political ecology back to some of its origins in efforts to understand hazard vulnerability and the intersections between poverty and environmental degradation – but also takes us forward into highly politicized debates about the future of development, energy and land use. A political ecology perspective can counter an over-emphasis on the political economy of climate that can erase the agency of individuals and communities or fail to take science and nature seriously. Political ecology can also provide insights into changing attitudes to climate, including climate skepticism, through understandings of culture, discourse and science studies. However, most critical research on climate is not selfidentified as political ecology and often overlooks the spatiality, materiality and embodiment of climate change causes and consequences.