Helmut Geist (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgien)

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<b>
Exploring the Entry Points for Political Ecology
        in the International Reserach Agenda on Global Environmental Change
</b>

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Pages 158 - 168


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With the growing need for social science input into the
        research agenda on global environmental change, it emerged since about
        one decade that traditional disciplines have certain difficulties to undertake
        and organise this type of research. It has been widely recognised by now
        that valuable inputs arise from sub-fields that are usually inter- or
        multidisciplinary in scope. Thus, a rather marginal field such as political
        ecology, settled at the interface between political economy, human ecology
        and ecological analysis, has begun to shift next to the centre of theorizing
        and empirical modelling. This in particular relates to the social key
        drivers of - but also human responses to - environmental change. The paper
        analyses the bifurcations since 1992 of the newly emerging framework into
        the agenda on global environmental change. The most recent 1999 Science
        Implementation Strategy of LUCC is taken to further explore in more detail
        two of the numerous entry points for political ecology. The Land-Use/Cover
        Change (LUCC) Core Project of IGBP and IHDP is probably the most ambitious
        international research effort aimed at a better (and rapid) understanding
        of land use/cover changes. Though since about 20 years land changes are
        seen to be far more rapid than changes resulting from climate change,
        precise estimates of rates of changes are not yet available mainly due
        to a lack of the full understanding of key drivers (or social processes)
        behind. LUCC has asked for inputs from research communities to broaden
        the terminology and concepts used. From the perspective of political ecology,
        two - among many - entry points are seen in (1) rooting any understanding
        of change in people&#146;s local decisions about resource use (which in
        aggregate is the stuff of global environmental change), and (2) look at
        local decisions and ecological milieux as embedded into a web of social
        relations that spans from household dynamics to access, assets, entitlements,
        markets, surplus extraction and the state. With regard to the latter,
        it is part of the success story of political ecology to have rejected
        the widely discussed concept of a &#132;tragedy of the commons&#147; and
        replaced it by the notion of a &#132;tragedy of enclosure&#147;.

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