From Dispossession to Compensation: a political ecology of the Ord Final Agreement as a partial success story for Indigenous traditional owners

The recent digging of a new channel for water delivery to expand irrigation in the Ord provides a good opportunity for unearthing the native title agreement that allows for intensification of agriculture there. Initial irrigation development in this north-eastern Australian catchment did not include recognition of, consultation with, or distribution of benefits to Indigenous people impacted by dam creation and land flooding. Forming agreement between those affected by previous dispossessions, and associated accumulation of wealth via mining and irrigation, with those initiating such activities was an important and challenging process. The Ord Final Agreement (OFA), formalised in 2006, came from negotiations between Miriuwung and Gajerrong traditional owners and government and private interests. Through qualitative research, I dissect the context and content of the OFA to identify the strengths and weaknesses therein. While the agreement does allow for co-management of significant land- and waterscapes, it does not provide for Indigenous water rights, showing one instance of loose ends and missing links within the Ord.     

Scalar politics and strategic consolidation: The Norwegian Gas Forum's quest for embedding Norwegian gas resources in domestic space

Underthun, A., Kasa, S. & Reitan, M. 2011. Scalar politics and strategic consolidation: The Norwegian Gas Forum's quest for embedding Norwegian gas resources in domestic space. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 65, 226–237. ISSN 0029-1951.

The article discusses political initiatives and networks that aim to enhance the use of Norwegian natural gas resources in domestic space. Through perspectives on state rescaling and scalar politics, the authors explore the strategies of the Norwegian Gas Forum (NGF). This political network serves as an umbrella organization for regional political initiatives for local distribution and exploitation of natural gas along the Norwegian coast. It is argued that the initiatives demonstrate a scalar politics that counter tendencies of state rescaling in the realm of petroleum politics, where the state is less willing to invest and intervene in domestic natural gas utilization. The article examines the NGF's policy work, organizational composition, and ‘networks of association’ with other organizations. This is framed in the analysis as ‘scalar politics’ aiming to secure the member regions’ current and future dependence on domestic gas supplies. The important networks of association in relation to the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) and the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) implied compromise and consolidation among the regional members of NGF, but also empowered NGF on important policy issues.     

Intervention: Simulating the War on Global Terrorism

Abstract

Students analyze a contemporary geopolitical event from a comprehensive geographic perspective using role play simulation, discussion, and decision-making. The three-day activity provides teachers with a realistic, ready-made classroom lesson that combines powerful conceptual learning with drama and surprise. The task of the teacher is to transform the map into a transparency and review the teacher background and student background information sections. During the capstone socratic seminar, students generate their own geographic concepts and principles inductively.     

A Study in Historico-Geography—The Establishing of the Ohio-Michigan Boundary Line

Abstract

Geography is a part of scientific knowledge devoted to the study of two fundamental relations of human life: relations with the natural world and relations across space. These relations do not exist in isolation but are merely aspects of life as a whole. They must be understood and taught as parts of a total theory of human existence. Marxism is such an attempt to holistically understand the world. It is also, however, an attempt to change the world. Although Marxists recognize that capitalism has yielded enormous technical and material benefits for a minority of the world's people, we now find other competing purposes rising to primary positions in the list of urgent societal tasks. These purposes include equalizing living standards, finding jobs for the present doomed generation of children, removing the economic and social tensions underlying dangerous military antagonisms, and achieving a stable, managed relation with the natural environment. For purposes like these, Marxists consider capitalism outdated as a form of social and economic organization. Most Western Marxists are also critical of the centralized socialism of the Soviet Union. Socialism in the Soviet Union has achieved a modest standard of living for its working class. But the Soviet Union has yet to begin an approach towards a true model of socialism in the sense of decentralizing economic and political power directly to the mass of the people. Because we live in capitalist countries however, the focus of this critique is capitalist, rather than Soviet-style socialist society.     

Another political ecology of civil society reflexiveness against urban industrial risks for environmental justice: The case of the Bisasar landfill,Durban, South Africa

The concerns of political ecology since its beginnings as a field have been predominantly set in rural areas with limited focus on urban industrial risks. Further, debates on the global South (often from Anglo‐American perspectives) have not fully appreciated the divergent and differentiated perceptions of urban risks and, therefore, everyday forms of resistance within civil society. Instead, work has mainly focused on civil society power relations against the state and industry that are driven by coherent populist political agendas. Against this setting, this paper's contribution aims to better contextualize ‘other’ third world localities in political ecology through a case study of urban industrial risks in the upper/middle income (as opposed to rural, low/lower middle income) country, South Africa. In doing so, the paper sheds light on the derelict aspect of civil society contestation, especially along class and ethnic lines, over urban landfill infrastructure as a livelihood resource or a health hazard. The paper draws upon frameworks of self‐reflexivity and reflexive localism as complementary to the mainstream political ecology to illuminate differentiated civil society reflexiveness and therefore, aims to advance the discussion of other political ecologies. The case study of the largest formal landfill site in Africa, the Bisasar landfill situated in Durban, highlights differences underlying power relations and constraints within civil society (in leadership, social networking, resources and mistrust) that have implications for mainstream political ecology notions of civil society coherence.     

Permeable homes: A historical political ecology of insects and pesticides in US public housing

This paper traces changes in the political ecology of insects and chemicals in US public housing since Congress founded public housing in 1937. Drawing upon the literature of critical geographies of home, urban political ecology, and medical history, it argues that the constitution of “public” and “private” space within public housing was deeply entangled with pest control practices there. Prior to 1945, reformers treated the housing as a commons, in part compelled by the mobility of bedbugs and the pesticide used to combat them, both of which were seen as serious health threats. Managers were also motivated by social welfare ideologies, while residents eagerly assisted with communal control policies in order to achieve freedom from the health insults of bedbugs. Following 1945, however, new synthetic pesticides like DDT seemed to stay safely within one apartment unit, encouraging housing managers to abandon community-oriented pest control practices. Meanwhile, curtailed budgets, particularly after the Housing Act of 1949, left the infrastructure of public housing to decay, rendering units more physically permeable even as managers neglected the communities there. The new pesticides nearly eradicated bedbugs, but tenacious populations of German cockroaches blossomed thanks to the permeable buildings and synthetic pesticides. Residents grew increasingly resistant to pesticide use as they observed that cockroach populations went unabated. The paper serves as a case for applying political ecology frameworks to domestic spaces, and also argues that housing quality and domestic pesticide use are not merely private responsibilities but should be regarded as environmental justice issues.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviewed in this article: The Rice Economy of Asia . Randolph Barker and Robert W. Herdt with Beth Rose. Using Microcomputers: A Guidebook for Writers, Teachers, and Researchers in the Social Sciences . Blaine A. Erie—the Lake that Survived . Noel M. Burns. Geology and Society . Donald R. Coates. Caves and Karst of Kentucky . Percy H. Dougherty, ed. Altered Harvest: Agriculture, Genetics, and the Fate of the World's Food Supply . Jack Doyle. The Middle East and North Africa, A Political Geography . Alasdair Drysdale and Gerald H. Blake. Clamor at the Gates. The New American Immigration . Nathan Glazer, ed. Development and the Landowner: An analysis of the British experience . Robin Goodchild and Richard Munton. Discovering Landscape in England and Wales . Andrew Goudie and Rita Gardner. The Modern Plantation in the Third World . Edgar Graham and Ingrid Floering. Social Relations and Spatial Structures . Derek Gregory and John Urry, eds. The World Food Problem 1950–1980 . David Grigg. Costa Rica: A Geographical Interpretation in Historical Perspective . Carolyn Hall. The Urbanization of Capital: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization . David Harvey Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization . David Harvey. Reviving Main Street . Deryck Holdsworth, ed. Rural Roads and Poverty Alleviation . John Howe and Peter Richards, eds. Uneven Development in Southern Europe: Studies of Accumulation, Class, Migration and the State . Ray Hudson and Jim Lewis, eds. Karst Geomorphology . J. N. Jennings. The Geomorphology of North-west England . R. H. Johnson, ed. Climate Impact Assessment: Studies of the Interaction of Climate and Society . Robert Kates, Jesse Ausubel, Mimi Berberian, eds. Public Service Provision and Urban Development . Andrew Kirby, Paul Knox, and Steven Pinch, ed. State and Market: The Politics of the Public and the Private . Jan-Erik Lane, ed. Living Cities . Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on Urban Preservation Policies. World Climatic Systems . John G. Lockwood. Urban Ethnicity in the United States. New Immigrants and Old Minorities . Lionel Maldonaldo and Joan Moore, eds. Culture and Conservation: The Human Dimension in Environmental Planning . Jeffrey A. McNeely and David Pitt, eds. The Andean Past. Land, Societies, and Conflicts . Magnus Mörner. Gaia: An Atlas of Planet Management . Norman Myers, ed. Progress in Industrial Geography . Michael Pacione, ed. Progress in Political Geography . Michael Pacione, ed. Rivers and Landscape . Geoff Petts and Ian Foster. Urbanization and Planning in the 3rd World: Spatial Perceptions and Public Participation . Robert B. Potter. One Island, Two Nations? A Political Geographical Analysis of the National Conflict in Ireland . D. G. Pringle. Circulation in Third World Countries . R. Mansell Prothero and Murray Chapman. The Ozarks Outdoors: A Guide for Fishermen, Hunters, and Tourists . Milton D. Rafferty. Suburban Burglary: A Time and a Place for Everything . George Rengert and John Wasilchick. Geomorphology and Soils . K.S. Richards, R.R. Arnett, and S. Ellis, eds. The Homes and Homeless of Post-War Britain . Frederick Shaw. Indochinese Refugees in America . Paul J. Strand and Woodrow Jones, Jr. Wild Horses and Sacred Cows . Richard Symanski. Forever Wild: Environmental Aesthetics and the Adirondack Forest Preserve . Philip G. Terrie. The Regional Economic Impact of Technological Change . A.T. Thwaites and R.P. Oakey, eds. The Good Life . Yi-Fu Tuan.     

Local communities and the new environmental planning: a case study from Zanzibar

Sub–Saharan Africa is experiencing a new round of conservation initiatives, based around democratized local institutions and local knowledge of the environment. This essay uses political ecology research from a case study settlement in the Zanzibar islands of Tanzania to interrogate how to create the enabling conditions for these new conservation programmes. The case study highlights the importance of understanding social and political issues at the local scale for appreciating the problematic trajectories of progressive environmental planning strategies in Africa in the context of democratization.