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Encyclopaedia of Political Ecology

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About the Encyclopaedia

DPU_globe_FULL_masterThe Online Encyclopaedia of Political Ecology has been produced by students studying for the MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development (ESD) at UCL’s Development Planning Unit. Ensuring that development is sustainable, in both environmental and social terms is one of the greatest challenges faced by planners and policymakers today.

ESD equips participants with a critical understanding of sustainable development theory and practice, and examines the political, social and economic dynamics underlying environmental conflicts, focusing particularly upon the many approaches designed to tackle them. The course adopts an international comparative perspective, exploring the specific conditions for intervention in different contexts from all over the world but focusing specifically upon the urban Global South. This Encyclopaedia is a student-led repository of political ecology case studies which each comprise an analysis of initiatives designed to achieve sustainable development. The case studies examine and critique mainstream approaches to solving social and environmental problems in regions and cities of the Global South and explore attempts to develop more socially just and environmentally sustainable solutions to them.

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Photo © Liza Griffin

More than half of the world’s population live in urban areas and over 90% of future population growth is likely to be in cities. Much of this growth will be in the Global South. Cities today face many challenges are particularly susceptible to environmental change. For instance, many urban regions are on low lying coastal land and are at greater risk from flooding from climate change induced sea level rise and increased environmental disasters which tend to exacerbate the conditions of poorest. Mainstream approaches to these growing problems include low carbon projects designed to reduce cities’ overall contribution to climate change, international sustainable cities programmes, and ecocities.

But several scholars and activists are beginning to raise questions about the effectiveness of such initiatives. For example, are western style technological solutions really appropriate for the urban Global South? ‘Traditional knowledge’ concerning how to adapt to local and regional climatic conditions has often been substituted by new technologies which may be unsuitable or energy hungry – like air conditioning. These case studies critically examine such mainstream approaches using the framework of political ecology asking who benefits from sustainability projects? And who loses out? And critically assessing why they might succeed or fail. The work here draws on student’s own experiences and research done in their masters programme.

We hope that this critical database of case studies will be a valuable resource for budding and future scholars of political ecology interested in social justice and environmental change.