17. Salpa Liberation Ecology

17. Salpa Liberation Ecology

LIBERATION ECOLOGY

Submitted  By: Salpa Shrestha                                                Master in Development Study Partial requirement of Population and Development paper Instructor : Prof. Amulya Ratna Tuladhar Kathmandu University 7-June-11

                                           

                                                             Abstract

This paper ‘Liberation Ecology’ is an assignment for the partial requirement of the paper population and development. The objectives of this paper is to link 3 relatively disconnected discourses namely environmental crisis, demography and development discourses with the help of political economy, power-knowledge field and critical approaches to Ecological science.

This paper is divided into different inside the box as well as out of the analysis about the current environmental crisis and land degradation. The political and economic tensions are viewed from different lenses from political ecology to global settings. The paper analyses the powerful environmental movement against the unregulated capitalistic growth.

This critical review of ‘Liberation Ecology’ explores the impact of political ecology in today's developing world, question what we understand by development and raise questions about change on global change.

                                                       Table of content

Contents                      

Abstract 2

Table of content 3

Summary. 4

Authorial context 5

Subject paper context 9

Theoretical category. 10

Multiple theoretical lenses analysis. 12

Judgment 24

Synthesis. 27

Bibliography. 29

                                                             Summary

The paper  ‘liberation Ecology’ explores the boundaries of political Ecology and adds up the  ‘post structuralist’ element in it. It has analyzed different development discourse and tried to find out the actual fact behind these discourses.

Mapping the development theories through gemology and cartography of development is another innovative approach. Showing the role of civil society, state and market. The paper finds the origin of political ecology and political economy, discussed the various elements of current social movements and the identity politics behind it.

                                                              Authorial context

 

The book ‘Liberation Ecologies’ is edited by Richard Peet and Michal watts. It was first published in 1996 by Routledge. The second edition was published by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE.

The writers:

                                                                     Michael J. Watts  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          .                                                                                  

 Michael J. Watts is "Class of 1963" Professor of Geography and Development Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading critical intellectual figure of the academic left. An intensively productive scholar, he works on a variety of themes from African development to contemporary geopolitics, social movements and oil. As Perrault notes, his work charted a "rigorous and wide-ranging theoretical engagement with Marxian political economy" (Perrault, 2004:323), with contributions to the development of political ecology, struggles over resources, and - more recently - how the politics of identity play out in the contemporary world.

This should not obscure the fact that during the early 1980s Watts adhered to a populist analysis, and that the politics of identity of which he is now critical was criticized earlier, by non-Geographers who engaged with populists linked to the subaltern studies project of that decade. His main role has tended to be not that of an innovator so much as a conduit; to transmit ideas generated outside geography by non-geographers, communicating them to other geographers who don’t yet know about these external theoretical developments. Geographers who are unaware of the origin of these ideas occasionally attribute them in error to the messenger.

Raised between Bath and Bristol in the UK, Watts received his bachelor's degree in geography and economics from University College London in 1972 and his PhD in 1979 from the University of Michigan. His PhD work was on agrarian change and politics in Northern Nigeria, published as Silent Violence in 1983. He joined the faculty of the Geography Department at UC Berkeley in 1979, and served from 1994 to 2004 as Director of the Institute of International Studies, a program that promotes cross-disciplinary global and transnational research and training. Watts was named a 2003 Guggenheim fellow for his research on oil politics in Nigeria, a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2004), and the Smuts Lecturer at Cambridge University in 2007. In 2004 he was awarded the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society.

He is a member of Retort collective, a Bay Area-based collective of radical intellectuals, with whom he authored the book Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War, published by Verso Books.

He is also on the advisory board of FFIPP-USA (Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace-USA), a network of Palestinian, Israeli, and International faculty, and students, working in for an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and just peace.

Recent articles:-

• Watts, MJ. 2007. Revolutionary Islam and Modern Terror. In Allan Pred and Derek Gregory (eds), Violent Geographies, London, Routledge, pp. 175–205.
• Watts, MJ. 2007. The sinister political life of community, in G. Creed, The Romance of Community, SAR Press.
• Watts, MJ. and I Boal. 2006. The Liberal International. Radical Philosophy, 140, Dec, pp. 40–45.
• Watts, MJ. 2006. Empire of Oil. Monthly Review, 58/4, 1-16.
• Watts, MJ. 2006. Neither There War nor their Peace/All Quiet on the Eastern Front. In Okwui Enwezor (ed), The Unhomely. BIACS @: Seville, pp. 27–31 (reprinted in New Left Review, 41, September 2006, pp. 88–92.
• Watts, MJ. 2004. Resource Curse? Governmentality, Oil and Power in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. Geopolitics [Special issue] 9/1.

                                                            

                                                            

                                                        

                                                            Richard Peet

 

J. Richard Peet, Ph.D. professor of geography at graduate school of geography at Clarks University. Professor Richard Peet has a BSc (Economics) from the London School of Economics, an MA from the University of British Columbia, and a Ph D from the University of California, Berkeley. His areas of interest include: social and economic geography, political       ecology, liberation ecology, development theory, geography of consciousness and rationality, philosophy and social theory, iconography, semiotics, and critical policy studies.

 

Current Research and Teaching

Critique of Neo-Liberal Development Theory; Globalization, Global Governance Institutions; Economic Policy, Financial Crisis, Geography of power; Global political Ecology; Economic Policy in India; Global political ecology

Recent Books

·         Global Political Ecology edited with Paul Robbins and Michael Watts, London: Routledge 2010

·         India’s New Economic Policy edited with Waquar Ahmed and Amitabh Kundu, London: Routledge 2010

·         Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO re-written and updated, London: Zed Press, 2009

·         Theories of Development: Arguments, Contentions, Alternatives with Elaine Hartwick, New York: Guilford Press 2009

·         Geography of Power: The Making of Global Economic Policy, London: Zed Press, 2007.

·         Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank, and WTO Zed Press, 2003.

·         Theories of Development with Elaine Hartwick, Guilford, 1999, 2002.

·         Modern Geographical Thought Blackwell, 1998.

·         Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements (edited with Michael Watts) Routledge, 1996; second revised edition, 2004.

 

 

Recent Articles

·         “Marxism in the future of Nepal” Republica 2010-01-01. http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=13511

·         “Making Sense of Globalization” (with E. Hartwick and I Chatterjee), in A Compendium of Economic Geography, London: Sage. ed R Lee, A Leyshon, L McDowell and P. Sunley (2010).

·         “Ten Pages that Changed the World: Deconstructing Ricardo” Human Geography 2, 1: 81-95(www.hugeog.com)

·         “Global Governance”, “Development: Dependency” (with E Hartwick) and “Radical Geography” and “International Organizations” International Encyclopedia of Human Geography Oxford: Elsevier 2009

·         “Global Development and Finance Institutions” and “Development Governance” in P.A. O’Hara (ed), International Encyclopedia of Public Policy. Volume 2: Economic Policy, GPERU: Perth, 2009: 139-151 and 299-309. http://pohara.homestead.com/Encyclopedia/Volume-2.pdf

·         “Madness and Civilization: Global Financial Capitalism and the Anti-Poverty Discourse” Human Geography, 1, 1 (2008): 82-91 (www.hugeog.com)

·         "Deconstructing Free Trade: From Epistemic Communities to Ideological Communities in Struggle” Transactions Institute of British Geographers 32 (2007): 576-580

·         Review Article “Nepal's Geography of Underdevelopment” Monthly Review November 2007. 59, 6: 52-8

·         “Imaginarios de Desenvolvimento” in B. Mancano Fernandes, M. Inez Medeiros Marques and J. C. Suzuki, Geografia Agraria: Teoria e Poder Sao Paulo: Editora Expressao Popular 2007. pp. 19-37

                                            Subject paper context

In the years since Piers Blaikie published his radical studies of soil erosion in the mid 1980s and coined the term "regional political ecology" with Harold Brookfield, human- environmental interactions in developing countries has become increasingly sophisticated. Geographers have taken a central role in debates about the social and economic causation of land degradation and hazards, and explored environmentally- inspired social movements, NGOs, and other resource management institutions.

 One landmark contribution was a special issue of Economic Geography on the theme of "Environment and Development", published in 1993. The papers from that journal issue helped to inspire a healthy debate that has echoed through the left- environmental journals and conference networks.

In the edited volume Liberation Ecologies, Richard Peet and Michael Watts have taken several re-worked papers from that special issue, and added new contributions. Their aim in Liberation Ecologies is to "integrate critical approaches to political economy with notions derived from post-structural philosophy", thereby critiquing and extending the political ecology framework.

The Subject “liberation Ecology” is comparatively new one in the field of Ecology. It close cousins “Political ecology” and “ Political Economy”, share common roots of post structuralism on how society works and how  the social processes affect the people, development, environment and liberation. The approach ‘Liberation Ecology’, criticizes government and state policies, deemphasizes population and local people as villains, demonizes capitalism (Marxian influence) and takes ecology to understand linkages .

Related articles from the field include work of Peter Marshall. In his book “Nature’s Web “he provides the first comprehensive overview of the intellectual roots of the worldwide environmental movement - from ancient religions and philosophies to modern science and ethics - and synthesizes them into a new philosophy of nature in which to ground our moral values and social action. Going beyond deep and social ecology, Marshall lays the firm foundations of liberation ecology, a dynamic philosophy for the 21st century which can help us escape the present ecological crisis and political impasse. As such, it provides the environmental movement with a comprehensive vision of a free, equal and sustainable society in harmony with nature. The book has become a standard text for the green movement as well as an original and profound contribution to environmental philosophy and ethics.

                                                  Theoretical category

Post structuralism has opened up new spaces in which alternatives can be thought and may be practiced.  The contemporary neo-liberalism is structured by an alliance between the multinational corporations and businesses, trade and growth oriented political parties, whether these are of the “left” or “right and the popular interest that must be concerned about growth because it provides ever growing consumption and employment. Yet the environmental contradictions of unregulated growth have also produced powerful environmental movements and concerned public opinion. Therefore, the political and economic tensions between growth and environmental degradation should be relieved through a number of strategies.

Liberation Ecology explores the impact of political ecology in today's developing world, question what we understand by development and raise questions about change on global change. The editors of this book use the term “liberation ecology” to refer to (i) “a critical analysis of environmental degradation and rehabilitation framed by something called development . . . ,” and (ii) “the libratory potential of struggles and conflicts . . . around these processes [of development]” .

It highlights the new theoretical engagements between political ecology and post structuralism on one hand, and a practical political engagement with new movements, organizations, and institutions of civil society challenging conventional notions of development, politics, democracy, and sustainability on other. (pg 3)It falls under the category of population and natural resource challenging the discourse of development.

In the paper the writers have defined Political Ecology as the development discourse of 1990. (pg 3). It has got Neo Marxian perspective, “ Environmental problem in the third world are less a problem of poor management, overpopulation or ignorance, as of social actions and political economic constraints.(Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987) .Blaikie and Brookfield have given example that how land degradation has social cause as well as consequences “while the physical reason why land becomes degraded belong mainly in the realm of natural science, the reason why adequate steps are not taken to counter the effects of degradation lies squarely within the realm of social science”. Where the cause of Land degradation can be due to population growth, inequitable distribution of land holdings, carve labor system practices or even high taxes.

The article shows its Malthusian connection as the writer mentions that there is comparatively increase in population growth in developing nations, decreasing the amount of arable land per head. This results in increased expectation of productivity of available land, encouraging landholders to apply unscientific techniques to obtain large amount of crop, often degrading the quality of land. From this we can conclude that Political Ecology is a Marxian as well as Neo-Malthusian approach to socio environmental relations.

Liberation ecology adds up post structuralism to the political Ecology trying to explain why things are the way they are now? What is responsible for the inter-regional relations and relations between geographical groups of people? What are influence of the socially produces discourses in the central physical, political, economic and institutional settings? In the chapter writers have criticized the western discourses for controlling people or ‘discursively regulating them’ by replacing their aspiration or desires of different social objectives with western mimicry.

The writers have given emphasis on Populism as representing an important line of thinking in and theorizing from the early 19^th century to present and promoting civil society. (pg 26). The failure of both Neo-liberal and authoritarian bureaucratic development contributed to the rise of civil society mediating the roles of both state and market often taking the form of huge organizations. Populism represents the needs and wishes of simple people in overwhelming majority and collective traditions. The language of populism is generally based on:-

1. Tension between people and those who rule.
2. Various ways in which ‘the people’ and interest are articulated or aligned with specific classes.

The writers have cited that the origin of political Ecology is these small grass root movements, acting as important ingredient in the development – environment debate i.e. Grass root green movement, indigenous technical knowledge for sustainable development or calls for administrative decentralization in local resources management. (pg 27).Much of the theories of social movement begins with Marxism, historical materialism and a dialectical theory of social and environment change.

Watts and Peet have given a critical theory against the narrow spectrum of classical Marxism and social movements. The new social movements, opposing hegemony extends far beyond control of productive resources to include culture, ideology, and way of life and post structural work on discourse. In Marxism the class struggle is due to economy and class relation but it precludes on understanding of the novelty of recent social movements. Also there is a sharp critique on identity politics of today “Laclau (1985) ‘In 19^th century social struggle developed a unified political imaginary  whereas in 20^th century  a multiplication of points of rupture in society leads to a proliferation of antagonism , each tending to create its own space and politicize a specific area of  social relations. They are centered on identity politics e.g. civil rights, students, feminist, environmental etc, drawing on Marxist tradition but differing significantly from it.”

The scope of ecological movements is defined by Antje linkenbach (1994) “ Ecological movements are not creating a new economics for new civilization, they are not presenting a solution for crisis of the modern world ,and they do not have capacity for ending development. But they can show difficulties, shortcomings and limited scopes of the dominant as well as the alternative models for development at the level of action.”

In this way the liberation ecology is define in the first chapter, it is a discourse about nature, Marxist in origin, poststructural in recent influence, politically transformative in intent but subject still to the fiercest of debates.

                                        Multiple theoretical lenses analysis

Now looking at the issue of population, development and natural resources with multiple theoretical lenses, I will first start with environment and natural resources because according to the materialistic view the productive transformation of nature is the primary activity making possible the whole structure of human existence.

Environment

Global climate change

In the context of climate variation, anthropogenic factors are human activities which affect the climate. The scientific consensus on climate change is "that climate is changing and that these changes are in large part caused by human activities," and it "is largely irreversible."

“Science has made enormous inroads in understanding climate change and its causes, and is beginning to help develop a strong understanding of current and potential impacts that will affect people today and in coming decades. This understanding is crucial because it allows decision makers to place climate change in the context of other large challenges facing the nation and the world. There are still some uncertainties, and there always will be in understanding a complex system like Earth’s climate. Nevertheless, there is a strong, credible body of evidence, based on multiple lines of research, documenting that climate is changing and that these changes are in large part caused by human activities. While much remains to be learned, the core phenomenon, scientific questions, and hypotheses have been examined thoroughly and have stood firm in the face of serious scientific debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations.”

– United States National Research Council, Advancing the Science of Climate Change

Consequently, the debate is shifting onto ways to reduce further human impact and to find ways to adapt to change that has already occurred and is anticipated to occur in the future.

Of most concern in these anthropogenic factors is the increase in CO2 levels due to emissions from fossil fuel combustion, followed by aerosols (particulate matter in the atmosphere) and cement manufacture. Other factors, including land use, ozone depletion, animal agriculture and deforestation, are also of concern in the roles they play - both separately and in conjunction with other factors - in affecting climate, microclimate, and measures of climate variables.

Global warming is also considered to be a major threat to global biodiversity. For example coral reefs -which are biodiversity hotspots-, will be lost in 20 to 40 years if global warming continues at the current trend. In 2004, an international collaborative study on four continents estimated that 10 percent of species would become extinct by 2050 because of global warming. "We need to limit climate change or we wind up with a lot of species in trouble, possibly extinct," said Dr. Lee Hannah, a co-author of the paper and chief climate change biologist at the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science at Conservation International.

From 1950 to 2005, world population increased from 2.5 billion to 6.5 billion and is forecast to reach a plateau of more than 9 billion during the 21st century. Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, told a parliamentary inquiry: "It is self-evident that the massive growth in the human population through the 20th century has had more impact on biodiversity than any other single factor."

 The impact of human activity on environment can be calculated by the formula I PAT,

I = P × A × T

In words:

Human Impact (I) on the environment equals the product of P= Population, A= Affluence, T= Technology. This describes how our growing population, affluence, and technology contribute toward our environmental impact.

The equation was developed in the 1970s during the course of a debate between Barry Commoner, Paul R. Ehrlich and John Holdren. Commoner argued that environmental impacts in the United States were caused primarily by changes in its production technology following World War II, while Ehrlich and Holdren argued that all three factors were important and emphasized in particular the role of population growth. (PR Ehrlich, JP Holdren, Impact of population growth, Science, 1971).

The equation can aid in understanding some of the factors affecting human impacts on the environment.

In the I=PAT equation, the variable P represents the population of an area, such as the world. Since the rise of industrial societies, human population has been increasing exponentially. This has caused Thomas Malthus and many others to postulate that this growth would continue until checked by widespread hunger and famine (see Malthusian growth model).

 Environmental Impacts

Increased population increases our environmental impact in many ways, which include but are not limited to:

•           Increased land use - Results in habitat loss for other species.

•           Increased resource use - Results in changes in land cover

•           Increased pollution - Causes climate change, sickens people and damages ecosystems.

Affluence

The variable A, in the I=PAT equation stands for affluence. It represents the average consumption of each person in the population. As the consumption of each person increases, the total environmental impact increases as well. A common proxy for measuring consumption is through GDP per capita. While GDP per capita measures production, it is often assumed that consumption increases when production increases. GDP per capita has been rising steadily over the last few centuries and is driving up human impact in the I=PAT equation.

Environmental Impacts

Increased consumption significantly increases human environmental impact. This is because each product consumed has wide ranging effects on the environment. Since the ecological impacts of each product are so far reaching, increases in consumption quickly result in large impacts on the environment.

Technology

The T variable in the I=PAT equation represents how improvements in efficiency can reduce resource intensiveness, reducing the T multiplier. For example, for a situation where the human impact on climate change is being measured, an appropriate unit for T might be greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP.

Present condition

Increases in efficiency can reduce overall environmental impact. However, with P increasing exponentially, T would have to decrease drastically (doubling efficiency each time the population doubles) just to maintain the same impact with the same affluence. Over the last few years, data from the UN World Bank has shown that T has decreased and that it is likely to continue to do so in the future. However, since P has increased exponentially, and A has also increased drastically, the overall environmental impact, I, has still increased.

The solution

One of the most popular solutions today is a market-based approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants. It is a form of carbon pricing.

A central authority (usually a governmental body) sets a limit or cap on the amount of a pollutant that can be emitted. The limit or cap is allocated or sold to firms in the form of emissions permits which represent the right to emit or discharge a specific volume of the specified pollutant. Firms are required to hold a number of permits (or carbon credits) equivalent to their emissions. The total number of permits cannot exceed the cap, limiting total emissions to that level. Firms that need to increase their emission permits must buy permits from those who require fewer permits.

The transfer of permits is referred to as a trade. In effect, the buyer is paying a charge for polluting, while the seller is being rewarded for having reduced emissions. Thus, in theory, those who can reduce emissions most cheaply will do so, achieving the pollution reduction at the lowest cost to society.

But the idea is heavily criticizes by Eco feminism, a philosophy and movement born from the union of feminist and ecological thinking and the belief that the social mentality that leads to the domination and oppression of women is directly connected to the social mentality that leads to the abuse of the natural environment. Prominent eco-feminist Vandana Shiva makes it clear that the amount of money paid for the carbon emission by the developed nations does not compensate the destruction of global environment. “I come from the Himalaya. Our glaciers are melting. Our villages are getting flooded out or drying up. Agriculture is collapsing. Ninety percent of the food production in my area has collapsed in this year. Seventy percent of the streams have dried up. And that is not happening because of what the local people did. My journey in the environment movement began with Chipko, where women came out to hug the trees. We are now hugging our mountains and telling the polluters, “You’ve got to stop polluting, because you are stealing our water, you are stealing our food, you are stealing our snows.”

The idea is supported by Deep ecology, a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of other beings, aside from their utility. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependent nature of human and non-human life as well as the importance of the ecosystem and natural processes. It provides a foundation for the environmental, ecology and green movements and has fostered a new system of environmental ethics.

Deep ecology's core principle is the belief that, like humanity, the living environment as a whole has the same right to live and flourish, seeking a more holistic view of the world, rather than just being concerned with conservation of the environment only for exploitation by and for humans purposes, which excludes the fundamental philosophy of deep ecology humans live in and seeks to apply to life the understanding that separate parts of the ecosystem (including humans) function as a whole.

The green roots of red rebellion is paper by Jugal Bhurtel and Saleem H Ali, in  the writers have citied the cause environmental degradation as a cause on the onset of the Maoist revolution in Nepal. “Ecologist and some scholars have argued that environmental degradation is the ultimate cause of civil strife in many part of the world.” So this powerful line compels the reader to think the 10 years Maoist movement in Nepal that cost the lives of thousands of people, was actually an environmental movement with land degradation as the root cause.

Bhurtel and Ali have explored, “the accelerating the degradation of the environment that threatens the livelihoods of millions of poor people in the hills of Nepal. Such environmental degradation coupled with demographic changes widened socio-economic disparities especially in the form of access to sufficient food and land among peoples in the Mid and Far Western development regions of Nepal and indirectly led to the Maoists insurgency in these regions.” The environmental dimension of poverty in Nepal is mainly articulated around Fragile Mountain Environment, Deforestation, Soil Degradation, Demographic changes and shrinking per capita cultivated land.  The livelihood of rural poor completely depends on forests and hence forests of Nepal are once of the heavily exploited natural resources. Population growth, growing livestock numbers and poor management are all contributing to forest degradation in Nepal.

 Population

The recent rapid increase in human population over the past two centuries has raised concerns that humans are beginning to overpopulate the Earth, and that the planet may not be able to sustain present or larger numbers of inhabitants. The population has been growing continuously since the end of the Black Death, around the year 1400 at the beginning of the 19th century, it had reached roughly 1,000,000,000 (1 billion). Increases in medical technology have led to rapid population growth on a worldwide level. Current projections show a steady decline in the population growth rate, with the population expected to reach between 8 and 10.5 billion between the year 2040 and 2050.

Historically, human population control has been implemented by limiting the population's birth rate, usually by government mandate, and has been undertaken as a response to factors including high or increasing levels of poverty, environmental concerns, religious reasons, and overpopulation. Worldwide, the population control movement was active throughout the 1960s and 1970s, driving many reproductive health and family planning programs. In the 20th century, population control proponents have drawn from the insights of Thomas Malthus, a British clergyman and economist who published An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. Malthus argued that, "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio." He also outlined the idea of "positive checks" and "preventative checks." "Positive checks," such as diseases, war, disaster and famine, are factors that Malthus considered to increase the death rate.

"Preventative checks" were factors that Malthus believed to affect the birth rate such as moral restraint, abstinence and birth control. He predicted that "positive checks" on exponential population growth would ultimately save humanity from itself and that human misery was an "absolute necessary consequence."Malthus went on to explain why he believed that this misery affected the poor in a disproportionate manner.

Paul R. Ehrlich, a US biologist and environmentalist, published The Population Bomb in 1968, advocating stringent population control policies. His central argument on population is as follows:

“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies - often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparent brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance to survive.”

In his concluding chapter, Ehrlich offered a partial solution and somewhat deplorable solution to the "population problem," Compulsory birth regulation through the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired family size".

Since Ehrlich introduced his idea of the "population bomb," overpopulation has been blamed for a variety of issues, including increasing poverty, high unemployment rates, environmental degradation, famine and genocide.

In contrast some of the scholars have very optimistic view towards population growth i.e. Ester Boserup in her book ‘The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure’ argues that growth in population increases pressure to survive which pushes people to find the way to increase food production by improving technology and new innovations . Another Economist Julian Simon argued that higher population density leads to more specialization and technological innovation, which in turn leads to a higher standard of living. He claimed that human beings are the ultimate resource since we possess "productive and inventive minds that help find creative solutions to man’s problems, thus leaving us better off over the long run". He also claimed that, "Our species is better off in just about every measurable material way." Simon also claimed that if you considered a list of countries ranked in order by population density, there is no correlation between population density and poverty and famine, and instead, if you considered a list of countries ranked in order by corruption within their respective governments, there is a significant correlation between government corruption and poverty and famine

The demographic transition model (DTM) paints a glossy optimistic picture about the future that countries develop from pre-industrial to the industrialized economic system represents high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates, and at the final stage population stabilizes. The traditional demographic transition began in developed countries in the eighteenth century and continues in our current era. In less developed countries, this demographic transition started later and is still at an earlier stage in the transition.

Most developed countries are in stage 3 or 4 of the model; the majority of developing countries have reached stage 2 or stage 3. The major (relative) exceptions are some poor countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and some Middle Eastern countries, which are poor or affected by government policy or civil strife, notably Pakistan, Palestinian Territories, Yemen and Afghanistan. Although this model predicts ever decreasing fertility rates, recent data show that beyond a certain level of development fertility rates increase again.

But, DTM assumes that population changes are induced by industrial changes and increased wealth, without taking into account the role of social change in determining birth rates, e.g., the education of women. In recent decades more work has been done on developing the social mechanisms behind it.

Development theories

The relationship between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues and changes are explored by Political Ecology differing from apolitical ecological studies by politicizing environmental issues and phenomena with issues like degradation and marginalization, environmental conflict, conservation and control, and environmental identities and social movements (Robbins, 2004, p. 14).

Political ecology often utilizes the framework of political economy to analyze environmental issues. An early and prominent example of this was The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries by Piers Blaikie in 1985, which traced land degradation in Africa to colonial policies of land appropriation, rather than over-exploitation by African farmers. The origin of political Ecology can be traced down to Cultural ecology and political Economy.

Cultural Ecology studies the relationship between a given society and its natural environment as well as the life-forms and ecosystems that support its life ways. The central argument is that the natural environment, in small scale or subsistence societies dependent in part upon it - is a major contributor to social organization and other human institutions. In the academic realm, when combined with study of political economy, the study of economies as polities, it becomes political ecology.  Famous cultural ecologist. Roy A. Rappaport in his book Pigs for the ancestor describes how cultural and non cultural variables effect each other. The Tsembaga Maring are a group of slash-and-burn farmers occupying a small territory on the northern slopes of the Central Highlands of New  Guinea.  Taking them to be part of a complex ecological system which includes their human neighbors as well as the flora and fauna with which they share their territory, Rappaport argues that their elaborate ritual cycle, which ostensibly refers to spirits, in fact operates as a homeostatic mechanism regulating the size of the pig population, acreage in cultivation, fallow periods, energy expenditure in subsistence activities, protein ingestion, man-land rations, and the frequency of fighting. The sustained functional analysis relies upon quantitative data and shows how, when, and to what degree cultural and non cultural variables affect one another. The findings challenge the view that religious rituals have no effect upon the external world as well as the assumption that ecological studies of human groups require an analytical framework fundamentally different from those employed in the study of other animals. This study not only fills a gap in New Guinea ethnography but also constitutes a major contribution to ecological anthropology, the study of religion, and functional analysis.

On the other hand Political economy most commonly refers to interdisciplinary studies drawing upon economics, law, and political science in explaining how political institutions, the political environment, and the economic system—capitalist, socialist, mixed—influence each other. "Traditional" topics include the influence of elections on the choice of economic policy, determinants of electoral outcomes, the political business cycles, central-bank independence, redistributive conflicts in fiscal policy, and the politics of delayed reforms in developing countries and of excessive deficits. From the late-1990s, the field has expanded to explore such wide-ranging topics as the origins and rate of change of political institutions, and the role of culture in explaining economic outcomes and developments. When more narrowly construed, it analyzes such public policy as monopoly, market protection, institutional corruption, and rent-seeking. A more classical-liberal approach that dates from the 1970s that denotes 'public-choice' theory type approaches which question the benevolence of social planners to maximize the utility of a representative individual and instead stress how political forces affect the choice of policies that may not be so benevolent.

Now what is political Ecology? It is an interdisciplinary approach to investigating problems, issues or questions that pertain to human- environmental relationships. It emphasizes power relations, probes areas of uncertainty in dominant discourses and provide historically and geographically-oriented analyses.

These all theory has Marxian influences in them criticizing the current Neo- liberal hegemony. The neo liberals Neo liberalism describes a market-driven approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that stresses the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the political and economic priorities of the state. It is widely criticized by other disciplines like neo- Marxism for changing economic and government policies to increase the power of corporations and large business, and a shift to benefit the upper classes over the lower classes

The protests

All the above mentioned tensions and debate leads to different kind of social movements and conflicts. The grass root movements with the intent of political transformation today represents the new guiding force to the government showing difficulties, shortcomings and limited scopes of the dominant as well as the alternative models of development at the level of actions.

Political economy and political ecology has emerged due to social movement of many kinds. Much of the theories of social movement begin with Marxism, historical materialism and a dialectical theory of social and environment change.

Here in the materialistic view the productive transformation of nature is the primary activity making possible the whole structure of human existence. The productive forces i.e. labor and means of production such as tools, machines, and infrastructure are organized bye social relations like kinship, lineage and class which are fundamentally characterized by inequalities of power.

 From the dialectical view, societal dynamics emerges from contradictory opposition of material reproduction of existence, conflicts between the forces of production and a limited natural environment which results in crisis. In Marxist theory when the crisis occur the class of people with collective identity struggle and force necessary social and environmental transformation by controlling the means of production.

The environmental movement, a term that includes the conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists advocate the sustainable management of resources and stewardship of the environment through changes in public policy and individual behavior. In its recognition of humanity as a participant in (not enemy of) ecosystems, the movement is centered on ecology, health, and rights. The environmental movement is represented by a range of organizations, from the large to grassroots. Due to its large membership, varying and strong beliefs, and occasionally speculative nature, the environmental movement is not always united in its goals. At its broadest, the movement includes private citizens, professionals, religious devotees, politicians, and extremists.

 The social movements are often condemned of representation of  Identity politics i.e. political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of self-identified social interest groups and ways in which people's politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through race, class, religion, sexual orientation or traditional dominance. Groups who participate in identity politics may or may not be a marginalized class of people. However, group advocates will often have a self-belief, a self schema or explanatory narrative, that they are in fact a marginalized group. Typically, these group identities are defined in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation and socioeconomic class.

Relevance in the context of Nepal

Carbon trading in Nepal

 Nepal has signed onto “a carbon emissions reduction” agreement with the World Bank whereby it will trade surplus carbon for biogas plant. According to the agreement, Nepal is set to fetch income worth Rs.43.4 million (US$967,000) from two biogas projects which have been approved by the executive board of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto convention on Climate change. [view source] The Nepal Biogas Project (NBP) thus became the first project for carbon trading under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The whole concept of carbon trading is aimed at reducing the global environment related problem of excessive carbon emission to the environment by encouraging people, companies and countries to adopt those technologies that would not emit or perhaps reduce carbon emission to the environment. Through CDM, industrialized countries invest in projects in developing countries and obtain credits for achieved emission reductions. Each ton of carbon costs from five to ten dollars in the international market. This means that if we can develop projects that would use different sources of energies other than regular carbon emitting sources and prevent 1 ton of carbon from being emitted in the environment, we trade it and earn $10.

The emerging carbon market of this kind at international level is a blessing in disguise for country like Nepal. This is a very good opportunity that we can perhaps tap into. Positive moves are already being initiated in this regard. We have traditional systems like water mills (Pani Ghatto) still being operated in semi-urban and rural parts of the country which uses renewable water energy for grinding cereals like maize, barley, millet, mustard, etc. These traditional venues are now being recognized by the government as one of the carbon trading points. The government has planned to promote the use of these water mills which is not only beneficial to the rural people but also can be a good source of foreign currency. As responsible citizens of the country, it is now up to us to support the initiative and take a step forward.

DTM in Nepal:

There is some evidence for the DTM in Pantha’s article. For instance, it is stated that fertility rates could be going down, based on the 2001 census. The number of people in the population bracket 0-4 years is lower than that in the bracket 5-9. So family planning and other methods may be working. However, more evidence is needed. The population pyramid for the census year 1971 also shows more people in the 5-9 age bracket than in the 4 and under age bracket. In further support of the DTM, however, is the fact that there are significantly fewer people in the 0-4 bracket than there are in the 5-9 bracket in the year 2001 than there were in the census year 1991. Whether this is a trend or not, however, remains to be seen.

Urban trends: While the ratio of rural to urban dwellers is larger than unity in the case of the younger age groups, it is larger than unity in the case of the working age groups. As expected this figure is larger than one for old people.

There is, as noted above, a suspected decrease in fertility rates from about the year 1991. However, Panth notes that fertility rates are much lower in the urban areas than in the rural ones. The census of 2001 revealed that for the urban areas, the number of children aged 0-4 in the urban areas was 9.42 males and 9.55 females. In the rural areas, this figure was 12.78 and 12.33 respectively. In other words, for both males and females, urban fertility rates were about 25 percent lower.

What will make DTM fail in Nepal?

According to the latest PRB data, Nepal’s birth rate is 28 per 1,000 populations while the death rate is 9 per 1000 population. So the net population growth rate is 19 per 1000. The urban population today is quite low at 14%. Further, as Ritu Panthi has stated, a significant proportion of Nepal’s population is young. According to the PRB data, 41% of the Nepalese population is under 15. When these people become of reproductive age, we can expect them to increase the population significantly unless measures are taken. Given the low levels of urbanization, low income levels, insufficient industrialization, and a still prevalent tendency to see children as assets, it is likely that the population will increase.

Green roots of red rebellion

The Maoist armed struggle in Nepal has commonly been presented as a political and socioeconomic problem.  The causes of the armed struggle are proximate to many scholars, many highlighting poverty, and inequitable distribution of wealth, social injustice and chronic failure of development efforts. These are the most common causes of conflict in most developing countries as well.  The much needed policy tool by the state to diffuse conflict is thus the provision of tangible development     where poor benefits from state development intervention. However, Exclusion from larger social, economic and political institutions may be a necessary but not sufficient cause of a conflict. On this response from state, Bhurtel and Ali, Vandana Shiva, Anne Ehrlich and Myers are some scholars in security studies that have argued that environmental degradation is the ultimate cause of civil strife in many parts of the world. In the context of Nepal, such analysis often fails to appreciate the complex inter-linkage between environmental degradation, prosperity and poverty in the hills. The history of deprivation conflicts around the world indicates that rebellions are likely to occur in remote and marginalized regions, which are often plagued by erosion, resource degradation and depletion and hence increasing scarcity of renewable resources.

Bhurtel and Ali have explored the causes accelerating the degradation of the environment that threatens the livelihoods of millions of poor people in the hills of Nepal. Such environmental degradation coupled with demographic changes widened socio-economic disparities especially in the form of access to sufficient food and land among peoples in the Mid and Far Western development regions of Nepal and indirectly led to the Maoists insurgency in these regions. The methodological constraints to establish an independent variable of the environmental degradation with respect to which other variables change with time and finally lead to violent conflicts is however difficult. The lack of empirical base on the studies conducted by former ecologists, arguing for environmental degradation as ultimate cause of conflict, has been also one reason why their analysis have not been widely accepted in policy making circles.

Nepal’s embark on development process was not a bright start. The country has a dark period of Rana regime, followed by autocratic Panchayat system. The democratic process has a very late start only since 1990 and again the country was marred by Maoist insurgency from 1996. It is important to start with development history of Nepal mainly because Nepal’s experience with development has only been the selection of development projects on ad-hoc basis, subject to availability of development aid without regard to overall integration, socio-economic justification and long range sustainability. Because of this haphazard development intervention, the development gap between the mountains and the Terai widened. After 1990, political instability took front seat and economic development had to take a back seat. The major political party NC was blamed for leaving its “socialist agenda” and thus donor driven economic reforms and liberalization were conducted in great rush. Hasty experimentation with market reform, however, did not help alleviate endemic poverty of the country and more and more people extracted further natural resource to cope up with their daily livings. This further degraded the environment aspect of Nepal. Amidst this backdrop, Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) started so called “People’s War” in 12 February 1996. The insurgency was based in Maoist Principle and it should be noted that Mao’s original Cultural Revolution had appalling environmental consequences and indeed nature was abused quite perfidiously in that context.      

The environmental dimension of poverty in Nepal is mainly articulated around Fragile Mountain Environment, Deforestation, Soil Degradation, Demographic changes and shrinking per capita cultivated land. Environmental carrying capacity of mountain regions of Nepal and all over world is very low, and therefore with repeated, high intensity use of limited resources and the chances of irreversible damage to the environment remain high. Proximate causes of depleting limits of fragile mountain habitats in Nepal could be a variety of human intervention, such as over extraction of mountain resources, over cropping and over grazing and disappearing traditional techniques of agriculture. As a consequence, deforestation and soil degradation, erosion, flooding, landslides are becoming frequent, while necessary crop yields are declining.

The livelihood of rural poor completely depends on forests and hence forests of Nepal are once of the heavily exploited natural resources. Population growth, growing livestock numbers and poor management are all contributing to forest degradation in Nepal.  The fragmentation of agriculture land as well as high increase of livestock population, leading to over grazing of high mountains of western and mid-western of Nepal is the major cause of soil erosion and desertification. The country has also witnessed three fold increases in its population since 1952/54 from 8.5 million to 23 million in 2001. Nepal’s population is projected to reach about 60 million by the end of the next century. Being a country with limited resources, Nepal certainly does not have the means to cope with such a Malthusian increase in population.

Increasing population and constant loss of renewable resources has a huge negative impact on mountain people. Food production is declining; land productivity remains stagnant indicating land degradation and excessive use of natural resources. Out of 16 mountain districts, 13 districts had negative food balance in 1985 which reached to 16 by 1995. This all has perpetuated poverty in Nepal, which not only has a spatial distribution but also social. Lower caste and indigenous people are often small land holders who gradually transform into landless workers relying on scarce wage employment.

Indications, therefore, are such that environmental degradation of the fragile hills and mountains could be as the ultimate cause of Maoist insurgency. The ecological degradation widened resource scarcity in the form of people’s access to fertile land. Lasting resolution effort of conflict can be found by considering environmental criteria and preventing depleting natural resource.

 

 

       

                                          

                                                         Judgment

In the years since Piers Blaikie published his radical studies of soil erosion in the mid 1980s and coined the term "regional political ecology" with Harold Brookfield, human- environmental interactions in developing countries has become increasingly sophisticated. Geographers have taken a central role in debates about the social and economic causation of land degradation and hazards, and explored environmentally- inspired social movements, NGOs, and other resource management institutions. Richard Peet and Michael Watts have taken several re-worked papers from that special issue, and added new contributions. Their aim in Liberation Ecologies is to "integrate critical approaches to political economy with notions derived from post-structural philosophy" (p260), thereby critiquing and extending the political ecology framework.

In their Introduction, Peet and Watts provide an interesting reading of current debates in environment and development theory. They also criticize Blaikie's political ecology for its "plurality" (p7), and they see its "voluntarist" explanations as largely "without politics or an explicit sensitivity to class interest and social struggle" (p8). Their own Liberation Ecology approach should tackle politics, including the actions of peoples' movements built around environmental justice and land rights. It should also show how local environmental knowledge is incorporated into alternative development strategies, look at the social construction of environment and development language and debates, and forge new forms of environmental history and ecology.

 Land degradation and society, the work Blaikie and Brookfield are the important contributions which explain about the land degradation in respect to nature and society. It is the compilation of various other authors’ contribution to a better understanding of land degradation

Land degradation as a social problem: 

Land degradation is considered purely as environmental processes such as leaching and erosion occurs with or without human interference. And for these processes to be described as degradation implies social criteria which relate land to its actual or possible uses.

Degradation a Latin derivation explains ‘reduction to a lower rank’. The rank is in relation to actual or possible uses and reduction implies a problem for those who use the land. Land degradation therefore directly consumes the product of labor, and also consumes capital input into production. An argument is drawn regarding land degradation that if there is abundant and chemical fertilizers can make up it is neither social nor economic problem. And without degradation it would not be necessary to move to new land with the attendant cost, no need of large chemical fertilizers etc. with the exception of the work of bulldozers, explosives, trail bikes and other tools of malice, land degradation occurs in nature. But human activity on the land changes the condition of their operation. Human-induced degradation occurs when land is poorly managed, or where natural forces are so powerful that there is no means of management that can check its progress. Hence, when talking about degradation role of land managers and the land management are two other important aspects and has an important role.

The value of land in some way reduced for the user by degradation. It is difficult, to use the term value in relation to land and is regarded as a meta-physical concept without empirical meaning so instead or value capability is used in land. When land is degraded, it suffers a loss of intrinsic qualities or decline in the capability. The effect of human interference need not always be deleterious. It is also possible to restore and improve land, and to create new productive ecosystems of which the outstanding example is the irrigated rice-terrace.

Thus, net degradation is viewed as (natural degrading processes +human interference) – (natural reproduction + restorative management).

Land management consists of applying known or discovered skills to land use in such a way as to minimize or repair degradation, and ensure that the capability of the land is continued beyond the present crop or other activity. Rotational grazing and shifting cultivation are effective strategies.

There are three main characteristic which define the relationship between land degradation and society and they are: interactive effect, interaction and scale and contradiction between the social and environmental change.

Malthus and Boserup hypothesis                      

Only a minority in 1980’s believed that the rapid increase in earth’s population is a serious concern. A steady decline in the amount of arable land means that this land will be required to produce more in order to food and industrial production for the growing population. Overpopulation and under-population must be checked.

According to Boserup, the growth of population is a major determinant of technological change in agriculture. Population becomes the independent variable and agro-technology becomes the dependent variable, the intensiveness of labor inputs and hence the capacity of the system supports the people.

Closer studies in Bhogteni

The case of Bhogteni is one of the best studies that shows that population increases are not bad at all. Comparing a decade gap from 1980 – 1990, good result is been depleted in this case.

 Population and Land resources: Bhogteni is situated on the eastern ridge of the Daraudi watershed at about 1200m. In the year 1981 the population of the village was 653 living in 107 households with as average household size of 6.1 people. Whereas in the year 1990 the population had grown to 835 living in 144 households of 5.8 people. Villagers in Bhogteni own approximately 113 ha of agricultural land, and have access to 73 ha of Schima- Castanopsis scrub land and 39 ha of Sal forest. In relation to land resources, the population density in 1981 was 290/km² or in terms of cultivates lands and forest/scrub/grazing lands 557 and 583/ km2. In 1990 these figures changed to 371, 738 and 745 persons/ km2. The average farm size in 1980 was estimated to be 1.1 ha and in 1990 it shrunk to 0.8 ha.

Livestock: In 1980 the total livestock population of the village included 167 buffalo, 275 cattle, 303 goats and 10 pigs. However these figures were changed to 195, 242, 337 and 27 respectively in the year 1990. In this year the grazing livestock is less than 1980 as farmers kept fewer cattle. In case of caste wise distribution, in 1980 the Brahmin farmers owned significantly large farms and had more cattle than the non-Brahmin household but by 1990 the Brahmins no longer kept more cows than the non-Brahmin.

Transportation: In 1980 a road linked Gorkhali with Kathmandu, Pokhara contributing many factors for development. It facilitates diffusion of new food plant and opportunities for seasonal migrating.

The continuing rapid population growth rate in Bhogteni and the already high population density may have contributed to the willingness of villagers to seek more efficient methods of managing forest lands. There are three most important factors affecting the changes in Bhogteni:

Firstly the introduction of new tenure regime for forest land. The new tenure regime provided incentives for local people to divert resources to the management of forest lands. The fall of the Panchayat system and the establishment of a more democratic government have encouraged farmers to invest labor into managing forest land through community programs.

Secondly, introduction of the road which allowed villagers to import chemical fertilizers and thus maintain or increase per capita agricultural production without simultaneous increase in livestock numbers. Though changes induced by the road have increased the intensity with which agricultural lands are used, these changes has reduced the work of the farmers and have encouraged village youths to migrate to other parts for education or seasonal job opportunity.

Thirdly, the other major change is the role of the outsiders helped villagers to adjust environmental changes. The other agents of change in Bhogteni are the small non-governmental organizations. Such as women development projects and Save the children working in Bhogteni and supporting community forestry and also encouraging livestock farming.

Neo- Malthusians were wrong as population growth did not lead to further land degradation – there is no evidence to confirm Boserup’s hypothesis that population growth will lead to internal innovations for managing forest more. Though we cannot generalize it can be concluded that the immediate threat to land is not population growth but bad forest management.

                                                      Synthesis

So from the above discussions we can synthesize that the socio-economic problems the society is facing today is more or less the problem of environmental degradation. The human existence is present in the earth due to the capacity of productive transformation of the nature. When this resource base is disturbed due to one or many cause the whole human structure need to be readjusted.

The productive transformation of nature here refers to the capacity of earth to grow crops and feed the hungry mouths that are increasing day by day. Although the pessimistic picture that Malthus had painted states that the whole existence of human being will come to an end because the earth will exceeds its carrying capacity, the recent development in science and technology  in producing genetically modified food and birth control measures have sort of proved it wrong. But one cannot neglect the fact that the population pressure is borne by the degradation of land that holds it. Let’s take an example of Nepal, due to lack of proper public health facility and social security people used to have more children. When the no of hungry mouth was raised, more productivity was expected from the limited land owned. People started to imply different techniques to produce more crops which were often unscientific like different fertilizers that at the end disturbed the ph scale of the land degrading it for the future. The forests that used to supply the fuel and fodders to the locals were illegally cut and sold for its capital value often neglecting its intrinsic value. This loss of ground cover quickly resulted in erosion with the onset of torrential monsoon season leading to larger landslides. So now people had less land or less productive land to feed the hungry mouths which pushed them inside the vicious cycle of poverty.

But the question is, how much responsible is the local area, community and country politics for the degradation of land? Today the pollution and carbon emission from one part of the globe is showing it effects in another part. As said by Vandana Shiva in her speech in Copanhagan “what climate instability is doing to peaceful communities of the Himalaya, who never use fossil fuels? But today their glaciers are disappearing. Today, instead of snow, they’re getting rainfall that washes away their villages in flash floods. Our villages are getting flooded out or drying up. Agriculture is collapsing. Ninety percent of the food production in my area has collapsed in this year. Seventy percent of the streams have dried up. And that is not happening because of what the local people did. We have climate instability.”  So it will take some to see whether the current agreement on carbon trading will be able to justify these issues.

This local and global level problem can be addressed by Political Ecology, informing policymakers and organizations of the complexities surrounding environment and development, thereby contributing to better environmental governance, understanding the decisions that communities make about the natural environment in the context of their political environment, economic pressure, and societal regulations and looking at how unequal relations in and among societies affect the natural environment, especially in context of government policy combining the efforts of cultural as well ma political economy. It has faced transition from structuralist approach in 1970s and 1980s focusing on Ecology to ‘ Poststructuralist’ approach which emphasis on the ‘politics’, the new field known as ‘Liberation Ecology’.

A field not set in concrete as an already formed structure of ideas, discourse about nature, Marxist in origin, poststructural in recent influence, politically transformative in intent but subject still to the fiercest of debates. “The intension of Liberation Ecology is not simply to add politics to political ecology but to raise the emancipatory potential of environmental ideas and to engage directly with the larger landscapes of debates over modernity, its institutions and its knowledges.”

                                                            Bibliography

• Acemoglu, Daron (2003). "Why Not a Political Coase Theorem? Social Conflict, Commitment, and Politics," Journal of Comparative Economics, 31(4), pp. 620–652 (close Bookmarks).

·         2011, Forestry Nepal: International Training Workshop on Integrated Sustainable Development in Mountain Areas and Non-Timber-Forest-Products (NTFPs) Industrial and Commercial Development

• Jodha N .S et al, 1992 Sustainable mountain agriculture perspective and issues, volume I, New Delhi Oxford and IBH publishing

·          Savantas Liberal Arts Academy, Global Environmental Degradation, Global Warming and Climate Change – Problems and Solutions June 13, 2010 

• Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response (SCHR), January 2010, Global Humanitarian Platform Background Paper “Changing environment, growing complexities, increasing demands, implications for humanitarian actors”

·         2002, THE FUTURE OF POPULATION IN ASIA Population, Natural Resources, and Environment East-West Center Research Program, Population and Health Studies publication of Honolulu: East-West Center

·         2001 census, population monograph of Nepal, Central Bureau of Statistic

• NOVA, 2005, Science in the news, Australian Academy of Science's Population and Environment Fund: Population and environment – what's the connection?

• Population Reference Bureau (PRB), human population and environment, Washington, DC Unites states

• Domroes Manfred,2003, Translating Development, the case of Nepal

• Sen Amartya,2003 Eco-economy, Building an economy for the Earth, Chapter-why should we preserve spotted Owl

• Pedersen. Ove K.  Discourse Analysis, Copenhegen business school, International Center For Business and Politics

• Ehrlich. P and Ehrlich A, 1968. Abstracted from The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development (2009)

• Fox J, 1993. “Forest Resources in a Nepali Village in 1980 and 1990: The Positive Influence of Population Growth.

• Groom M, Meffe G and Carroll C, “Principles of Conservation Biology” Third edition Kasperson R, Kasperson J, Turner II B et al, Risk at Region “Critical Environmental regions: concepts, distinctions and issues”, 1995

• Walker P, 2006. “Political Ecology: where is policy?”

• Worster D, 1994, “The Ecology of Order and Chaos”

• Breyer, Friedrich (1994). "The Political Economy of Intergenerational Redistribution," European Journal of Political Economy, 10(1), pp. 61-84. Abstract.
• Alesina, Alberto, and Roberto Perotti (1994). "The Political Economy of Growth: A Critical Survey of the Recent Literature," World Bank Economic Review, 8(3), pp. 351-371.
• Commons, John R. (1934 [1986]). Institutional Economics: Its Place in Political Economy, Macmillan. Description and preview.
• Drazen, Allan (2000). Political Economy in Macroeconomics. Princeton. Review extract, description & ch. 1-preview link.
• Krusell, Per, and José-Víctor Ríos-Rull (1999). "On the Size of U.S. Government: Political Economy in the Neoclassical Growth Model," American Economic Review, 89(5), pp. 1156-1181.
• Maggi, Giovanni, and Andrés Rodríguez-Clare (2007). "A Political-Economy Theory of Trade Agreements," American Economic Review, 97(4), pp. 1374-1406.
• Persson, Torsten, and Guido Tabellini (2000). Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy MIT Press. Review extract, description and chapter-preview links.
• Rose, N. L. (2001). "Regulation, Political Economy of," International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, pp. 12967-12970. Abstract.
• Shubik, Martin (1981). "Game Theory Models and Methods in Political Economy," in Handbook of Mathematical Economics, v. 1, pp. 285-330.

• World Bank (2010). "World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change". The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington DC 20433. 

• Weingast, Barry R., Kenneth A. Shepsle, and Christopher Johnsen, (1981). "The Political Economy of Benefits and Costs: A Neoclassical Approach to Distributive Politics," Journal of Political Economy, 89(4), pp. 642-664.