Development

The Social Cost of Environmental Solutions

Citation:

Dauvergne, Peter, and Genevieve LeBaron. 2013. "The Social Cost of Environmental Solutions." New Political Economy 18 (3): 410-430.

 

Authors: Peter Dauvergne, Genevieve LeBaron

Abstract:

This article assesses the social consequences of efforts by multinational corpor- ations to capture business value through recycling, reusing materials and reducing waste. Synthesising evidence from the global environmental justice and feminist and international political economy (IPE) literatures, it analyses the changing social property relations of global recycling chains. The authors argue that, although recycling more would seem to make good ecological sense, corporate programmes can rely on and further ingrain social patterns of harm and exploita- tion, particularly for the burgeoning labour force that depends on recyclables for subsistence living. Turning the waste stream into a profit stream also relies on prison labour in some places, such as in the United States where the federal gov- ernment operates one of the country’s largest electronics recycling programmes. The ongoing corporatisation of recycling, the authors argue further, is devaluing already marginalised populations within the global economy. Highlighting the need to account for the dynamism between social and environmental change within IPE scholarship, the article concludes by underlining the ways in which ‘green commerce’ programmes can shift capital’s contradictions from nature onto labour.

Keywords: multinational corporations, environmental justice, political economy, recycling, labour, e-waste, global recycling chain

Topics: Development, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Health, Land Tenure, Multi-National Corporations, Political Economies Regions: Africa, Americas, North America, South America, Asia, South Asia Countries: United States of America

Year: 2013

Open-Pit Peace: The Power of Extractive Industries in Post-Conflict Transitions

Citation:

Paarlberg-Kvam, Kate. 2021.“Open-Pit Peace: The Power of Extractive Industries in Post-Conflict Transitions.” Peacebuilding 9 (3): 289-310.

Author: Kate Paarlberg-Kvam

Abstract:

Three years after the peace accord signed by the Colombian government and the country’s largest guerrilla group, the guerrillas announced a return to arms. The announcement was met with dismay, but not surprise, as the numbers of murdered ex-combatants and social leaders rise and the government’s tepid commitment to the peace process sputters and stalls. At the centre of this violence have been the extractive industries. How should peace studies make sense of the power of extractivism, often described as a key element of postconflict reconstruction around the globe? This article focuses on Colombia as a case study of the contradictions of the postliberal peace, as stated commitments to gender justice and economic redistribution are undermined by commitments to mining and biofuel profits. A decolonial feminist lens, informed by Latin American anticapitalist feminists, sheds light on these contradictions and illuminates possibilities for a transformed peace in a postneoliberal world.

Keywords: extractivism, decoloniality, peacebuilding, Colombia

Topics: Armed Conflict, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Development, Extractive Industries, Gender Mainstreaming, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Peacebuilding, Security, Sexual Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2021

Bioenergy Policies in Africa: Mainstreaming Gender amid an Increasing Focus on Biofuels

Citation:

Molony, Thomas. 2011. "Bioenergy Policies in Africa: Mainstreaming Gender amid an Increasing Focus on Biofuels." Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining 5 (3): 330-41.

Author: Thomas Molony

Abstract:

Many developing countries are now working to update their existing energy strategies and to formulate their bioenergy policies to accommodate rises in domestic and external supply and demand for biofuels. This paper presents a case for mainstreaming gender into African countries’ bioenergy policies, and uses a review of the literature on gender and bioenergy to suggest some important avenues for future research to expand the current poor state of information on gender and the newer issue of biofuels. The paper opens with a brief discussion on the motivation for interest in biofuels in some African countries and suggests that in the integrated global context of biofuels, the conditions that generate inequality between rich and poor remain unchanged. It then discusses equity and energy poverty, and points to the lack of empirical evidence on gender issues relating specifically to biofuels. From this it turns to our knowledge of what the existing state of broader bioenergy use can tell us about bringing gender equity to African national bioenergy policies, and suggests that gender equity can be ‘energized’ through a perspective that focuses as much on social roles and relations between men and women as it does on ascribed responsibilities. National level bioenergy Policy Working Groups (PWGs) are then introduced as having an important role to play in ensuring that gender issues are mainstreamed into bioenergy policy within the context of the increasing focus on biofuels.

Keywords: gender, women, bioenergy, policy, development, Africa

Topics: Agriculture, Development, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Energy Regions: Africa, East Africa, West Africa Countries: Malawi, Mali, Tanzania

Year: 2011

Gender Dimensions of Sustainable Consumption

Citation:

Weller, Ines. 2017. “Gender Dimensions of Sustainable Consumption.” In Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment, edited by Sherilyn MacGregor, 331–44. London: Routldege.

Author: Ines Weller

Annotation:

Summary:

Sustainable consumption and production patterns have been prominent issues from the very start of the sustainable development debate. In fact, Agenda 21, the plan of action adopted at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro stated that ‘the major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in industrialized coun-
tries . . .’ (UN 1992:31). Although the urgent need for fundamental changes in consumption and production patterns, which would transform societies and push them in the direction of sustainable development, has been recognized since that time, particularly in the Global North, there are still very few signs that any such transformation is taking place. World energy consumption grows unabated as global carbon emissions continue to rise. The fundamental inequalities between the Global North and South also remain, despite very high rates of growth in the newly industrialized and developing countries of the Global South in particular (IEA 2013). In this context, and especially in the context of sustainable patterns of consumption and production, the attitudes and behaviours of private citizens and consumers, their perceptions of environmental problems, and associated use of resources all play an important role. Hitherto, however, these debates have neglected the significance of gender, gender relations, and gender justice for sustainable consumption.

In this chapter, I will focus on debates and research in Germany/Western Europe. I begin by introducing the definitions, objectives, and areas of responsibility of various actors for sustainable consumption. This compact overview focuses in particular on the relationship between production and consumption as gendered societal spheres. I then move on to consider the tension that exists between the theory of privatized environmental responsibility, on the one hand, which criticizes tendencies to overstate and moralize the power of private consumers to shape change and, on the other, women as change agents for more sustainable consumption. The next part of the chapter is organized around the distinction, which is useful for analyzing the gender aspects of sustainable consumption, between explicit and implicit gender dimensions. With reference to feminist theorist Sandra Harding (1986), I draw together the individual and structural levels of gender as explicit gender dimensions. Both of these are for the most part based on statistical data and empirical findings, particularly concerning gender differences and, in this respect, link to ambivalence between the analysis of gender and gender hierarchies, on the one hand, and the reproduction of traditional gender images and dichotomies on the other. The discussion focuses in particular on the symbolic conceptual level of gender, which I consider in detail in relation to a specific example. The background is the feminist critique of the claim of the natural sciences to objectivity (Orland and Scheich 1995). Drawing on the example of a study on the volume of food waste, I draw attention to several gender-related ‘blank spaces’ and gaps in the data that have been produced in this field. This emerges more clearly from closer consideration of the treatment given to male-coded production and female-coded consumption. (Summary from original source)

Topics: Development, Environment, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Justice Regions: Europe, Western Europe Countries: Germany

Year: 2017

The Politics of Green Transformatios

Citation:

Scoones, Ian, Melissa Leach, and Peter Newell. 2015. The Politics of Green Transformations. Routledge.

Authors: Scoones, Ian , Melissa Leach, Peter Newell

Annotation:

Summary:

Multiple ‘green transformations’ are required if humanity is to live sustainably on planet Earth. Recalling past transformations, this book examines what makes the current challenge different, and especially urgent. It examines how green transformations must take place in the context of the particular moments of capitalist development, and in relation to particular alliances. The role of the state is emphasised, both in terms of the type of incentives required to make green transformations politically feasible and the way states must take a developmental role in financing innovation and technology for green transformations. The book also highlights the role of citizens, as innovators, entrepreneurs, green consumers and members of social movements. Green transformations must be both ‘top-down’, involving elite alliances between states and business, but also ‘bottom up’, pushed by grassroots innovators and entrepreneurs, and part of wider mobilisations among civil society. The chapters in the book draw on international examples to emphasise how contexts matter in shaping pathways to sustainability. Written by experts in the field, this book will be of great interest to researchers and students in environmental studies, international relations, political science, development studies, geography and anthropology, as well as policymakers and practitioners concerned with sustainability. (Summary from Research Gate)

Table of Contents:

1. The Politics of Green Transformations

Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach 

2. What is Green? Transformation Imperatives and Knowledge Politics 

Melissa Leach  

3. Invoking ‘Science’ in Debates about Green Transformations: A Help or a Hindrance? 

Erik Millstone  

4. Emancipating Transformation: From Controlling ‘the Transition’ to Culturing Plural Radical Progress 

Andy Stirling  

5. The Politics of Green Transformations in Capitalism 

Peter Newell

6. The Political Dynamics of Green Transformations: Feedback Effects and Institutional Context 

Matthew Lockwood  

7. Green Transformations from Below? The Politics of Grassroots Innovation 

Adrian Smith and Adrian Ely  

8. Mobilizing for Green Transformations 

Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones  

9. The Green Entrepreneurial State 

Mariana Mazzucato  

10. Financing Green Transformations 

Stephen Spratt  

11. Green Transformation: Is There a Fast Track? 

Hubert Schmitz

 

Topics: Civil Society, Development, Environment

Year: 2015

Is This the Future We Want? An Ecofeminist Comment on the UN Conference on Sustainable Development Outcome Document

Citation:

Wilkinson, Kate. 2016. “Is This the Future We Want? An Ecofeminist Comment on the UN Conference on Sustainable Development Outcome Document.” In The Public Law of Gender: From the Local to the Global, edited by Kim Rubenstein and Katharine G. Young, 538–60. Cambridge University Press.

Author: Kate Wilkinson

Annotation:

Summary:
"In 2012, governments and people from across the globe reconvened in Rio de Janeiro for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), twenty years after the landmark UN Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED). This conference was part of a long political process to refine and implement the concept of sustainable development so as to achieve the interrelated policy aims of environmental sustainability and socioeconomic development. At the UNCSD, governments met with one main objective: to secure renewed political commitment for sustainable development. In order to achieve this, governments agreed to discuss three thematic areas in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication. Two of these themes considered the green economy in the context of the latter and an institutional framework for sustainable development. The Conference resulted in a political Outcome Document, entitled the ‘The Future We Want’, which compiled the views, aspirations and objectives of governments to achieve sustainable development" (
Wilkinson 2016, 538-39).

Topics: Development, Economies, Poverty, Environment, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Year: 2016

Negotiating Gender Expertise in Environment and Development

Citation:

Resurrección, Bernadette P., and Rebecca Elmhirst, eds. 2020. Negotiating Gender Expertise in Environment and Development. Routledge.

Authors: Bernadette P. Resurrección, Rebecca Elmhirst

Abstract:

This book casts a light on the daily struggles and achievements of ‘gender experts’ working in environment and development organisations, where they are charged with advancing gender equality and social equity and aligning this with visions of sustainable development.

Developed through a series of conversations convened by the book’s editors with leading practitioners from research, advocacy and donor organisations, this text explores the ways gender professionals – specialists and experts, researchers, organizational focal points – deal with personal, power-laden realities associated with navigating gender in everyday practice. In turn, wider questions of epistemology and hierarchies of situated knowledges are examined, where gender analysis is brought into fields defined as largely techno-scientific, positivist and managerialist. Drawing on insights from feminist political ecology and feminist science, technology and society studies, the authors and their collaborators reveal and reflect upon strategies that serve to mute epistemological boundaries and enable small changes to be carved out that on occasions open up promising and alternative pathways for an equitable future.

This book will be of great relevance to scholars and practitioners with an interest in environment and development, science and technology, and gender and women’s studies more broadly.

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Troubling Gender Expertise in Environment and Development: Voices from Feminist Political Ecology

Part 1: The Politics of Identity and Boundary Marking

1. Strategic Reflexivity in Linking Gender Equality with Sustainable Energy: An Engineer in the Gender Profession
By Rebecca Elmhirst and Bernadette P. Resurrección
In conversation with Joy Clancy

2. Is Epistemic Authority Masculine? Reflections on Gender, Status and Knowledge in International Agricultural Research and Development
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Gordon Prain

3. Epistemic Crossings of a Marine Biologist through Gender Encounters
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Maeve Nightingale

4. Beyond the Business Case for Gender: A Feminist Political Ecologist in the FAO
By Rebecca Elmhirst and Bernadette P. Resurrección
In conversation with Clara Mi Young Park

5. Challenges and Dilemmas of Integrating Gender in the Field of Environment and Development at SEI: Metrics and Metaphors
By Andreea R. Torre
In conversation with Natalia Biskupska, Marisa Escobar, Laura Forni, Emily Ghosh, Ha Nguyen, and Lisa Segnestam

Part 2: The Politics of Knowledge in Environment and Development Realms

6. The Politics of Feminist Translation in Water Management
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Seema Kulkarni and Margreet Zwarteveen

7. Embodied Engagement with Gender and Agrobiodiversity: Leveraging Transformative Moments in Multidisciplinary Teams
By Rebecca Elmhirst and Bernadette P. Resurrección
In conversation with Marléne Elias

8. Please Genderise My Log Frame: Interactions with Technical Specialists for Gender Mainstreaming in Environment Projects
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Annette Wallgren And Victor Tsang

9. The Gender Professional as Ethnographer: Working for Equitable Forests
By Rebecca Elmhirst and Bernadette P. Resurrección
In conversation with Carol J. Pierce Colfer

10. Disaster Risk Governance and Gender Professionals: Command-and-Control and Re-Doing Gender
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Maria Holtsberg, Napapan Der Kinderen, and Hilde Jakobsen

11. Lifting the Barriers of Integrating Gender in Livestock Production
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Nicoline De Haan

12. We Build the Power in Empowerment: Feminist Activism at the Forefront of Environment and Climate Change Arenas
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Kate Lappin

Part 3: The Power of Gender Champions

13. Supporting Gender Experts: A Donor Perspective
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Maria Von Berlekom, Eva Johansson, Orawan Raweekoon and AnnaKarin Norling

14. Gender Equality Work At USAID: Mandatory as Applicable
By Kai Spratt And Charles 'Will' Lewis II

Afterword: Gender Expertise, Environmental Crisis and the Ethos of Care

Topics: Agriculture, Development, Environment, Climate Change, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, Infrastructure, Energy, Water & Sanitation

Year: 2020

Focus: (Re)Productivity: Sustainable Relations Both between Society and Nature and between the Genders

Citation:

Biesecker, Adelheid, and Sabine Hofmeister. 2010. “Focus: (Re)Productivity: Sustainable Relations Both between Society and Nature and between the Genders.” Ecological Economics 69 (8): 1703–11.

Authors: Adelheid Biesecker, Sabine Hofmeister

Abstract:

The paper is embedded in the multiplicity of discourses concerned with a viable, sustainable development of society and its economy. It makes a case for a mode of economic activity geared to systematically integrating production and reproduction processes. Its starting hypothesis is that the persistent, constantly changing and expanding crises that weigh so heavily on modern societies – above all the ecological crisis and the crisis of reproductive work – have their common origin in the separation of production from reproduction constitutive for industrial modernity. A reformulation of the category of (re)productivity – the idea of the unity of and at the same time the distinction between production and reproduction in the economic process – could set the stage for us to review today's crisis phenomena, relocalize problems, and in this way to develop new solutions for them. A sustainable society would be in a position to grasp, and shape, the economy as a (re)productive regulative system, with economic space constituted consciously as a socioecological action space.

Keywords: production, reproduction, sustainability, (re)productivity, social ecology

Topics: Development, Economies, Ecological Economics, Gender, Women

Year: 2010

“Now We Have Equality”: A Feminist Political Ecology Analysis of Carbon Markets in Oaxaca, Mexico

Citation:

Gay-Antaki, Miriam. 2016. “‘Now We Have Equality’: A Feminist Political Ecology Analysis of Carbon Markets in Oaxaca, Mexico.” Journal of Latin American Geography 15 (3): 49–66.

Author: Miriam Gay-Antaki

Abstract:

Carbon projects follow a neoliberal logic that stresses that nature is best conserved via market mechanisms. Studies and experiences of the impacts of development projects on communities and feminist political ecologies suggest that women, the elderly, the young, the poor, and the indigenous often perceive projects differently, benefit and lose in different ways, or shape the projects on the ground to fit their needs. Carbon projects have differentiated impacts within a community especially on the poor, women, and ecology; however, these differences do not tend to be the main focus of scholarship. The research presented here focuses on the effects of a wind project and a small scale reforestation project and the convergence of environment, gender and development as these are introduced into communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. This paper expands on carbon offset literature in Mexico by looking at the differential impacts of technologies on geographies and people with specific attention to gender. I find that there are important gendered differences between the wind and the forest projects, and suggest that a Feminist Political Ecology perspective is a necessary, though infrequently employed, lens through which to understand the impacts of carbon markets.

Keywords: feminist political ecology, Oaxaca, carbon projects

Topics: Development, Environment, Ethnicity, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Women, Indigenous Regions: Americas Countries: Mexico

Year: 2016

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