Environmental Political Theory

What I want to present to you today is an argument for why NATURE, as a concept and term of art, should be retained by contemporary environmental political theory despite some recent claims by theorists like Bruno Latour and environmental historians like William Cronon to the contrary. In other words, what I want to do is offer an argument for what NATURE might continue to offer us as 21 st century participants engaging in the critical task of rethinking the boundaries between nature and politics, the human and nonhuman etc. Or, one last time, what we lose when we jettison NATURE as a concept. To do this I'll turn to the work of St Thomas Aquinas and in particular his account of natural law. And my answer in short—just to preview— is that what we lose when we abandon the concept NATURE is something like the ability to belong to, to establish and work at friendship with—these are Aquinas's words—the more-than-human world we inhabit. And the crucial point I think-and that I hope to make-is that this friendship goes beyond merely acknowledging our interconnectedness and hybridity—as important as that may be—and requires a certain care for and respect for boundaries as anyone who has ever tried to make friends and failed knows.

This work is Chapter 11 in the John M. Meyer and Jens M. Kersten edited volume "The Greening of Everyday Life" (Oxford University Press, 2016), pp.183-97. It builds in part upon my earlier work "Plumwood, Property, Selfhood and Sustainability" in trying to tease out the elements that are valuable in the Lockean tradition of property theory, which I identify with the idea of belonging, and distinguish these from and contrast them with the reductive and instrumentalizing aspects of that tradition, which I associate with notions of possession and the dynamics of self-validating reduction. I suggest that the predominance of the latter dynamics in modern Western lives creates what I call a "tragedy of the uncommon", in which healthy and fulfilling bonds of social belonging, experiential connection to the earth and to food production are steadily rendered distant and opaque. Against these tendencies, I set the transformative social potential of contemporary experiences of community gardens.

This chapter draws heavily on some of my recent work (Barry, 2012) in which I have discussed the ideas of Alasdair MacIntyre and Vaclav Havel and what these two thinkers can contribute to green political theory. Here, I wish to extend the discussion and further develop that conversation. First a qualifier. What is presented here is introductory, ground clearing and therefore necessarily suggestive (as well as extremely under-developed).
That is, it is the start of a new area of exploration rather than an analysis based on any exhaustive and comprehensive knowledge of both thinkers. In this respect, it is green reading of both MacIntyre and Havel, a movement from green theory towards the latter rather than in the opposite direction.Scholars of both MacIntyre and Havel will no doubt find much to disagree with perhaps in what follows, based as this chapter is on both an incomplete review of the full scope of the work of each thinker, coupled with an at best partial or novice’s understanding of the full complexity of their thought.
Part I explores Havel’s thought with a particular emphasis on his ethicised notion of political action and critique (‘living in truth’) and his focus on the centrality of dissent (both intellectually and in practice) as central to political critique and action. Part II offers an overview of MacIntyre interpreted as a putative green thinker, with a particular emphasis on his ideas of dependence and vulnerability. Part III attempts to draw some common
themes together from both thinkers in terms

Published in 'Governing the Environment in the Early Modern World' edited by Sara Miglietti and John Morgan

This chapter first sketches Winstanley’s life and work. The subsequent section discusses his argument that private ownership of the earth and natural resources was a form of political control, and the means by which a minority could maintain political power. The third section shows how Winstanley conceived of labour as a means of resistance to this system of ownership and the alternative system that labouring upon resources would create in its place. The final section explores the ‘praxical’ elements of Winstanley’s work, his connection between theory and practice.

Pemanfaatan hutan  merupakan salah satu bentuk dari penggunaan sumber daya alam. Pemanfaatan hutan yang sesuai dengan prosedur dan regulasi yang berlaku tentu akan memiliki dampak yang positif bagi pembangunan dan perkembangan daerah. Namun, minimnya regulasi dan pengawasan seringkali mengakibatkan penyalahgunaan fungsi hutan. Pemanfaatan hutan yang tidak sesuai dengan regulasi dan prosedur yang berlaku dapat mengakibatkan kerusakan pada lingkungan, yang tentu saja juga berdampak pada masyarakat luas. Di Kabupaten Banyumas, belum adanya kebijakan lingkungan hidup yang mengatur tentang pemanfaatan hutan menjadi objek penelitian ini. Dan sebagai fokus penelitian, kami meneliti bagaimana keberadaan objek wisata Baturraden Adventure Forest sebagai tolak ukur bagaimana kebijakan pemanfaatan hutan, dalam hal ini adalah hutan produksi di Kabupaten Banyumas. Artikel ini berjudul Analisis Kebijakan Lingkungan: Studi Kasus Pemanfaatan Wisata Hutan Produksi Baturraden Adventure Forest. Metode penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode penelitian kualitatif, dengan menggunakan pendekatan studi kasus.Tujuan artikel ini adalah mengetahui bagaimana implementasi kebijakan pemanfaatan hutan di Kabupaten Banyumas dengan mengambil obyek wisata Baturaden Adventure Forest sebagai contoh kasus. Sasaran penelitian ini adalah para pihak dan instansi terkait dalam kebijakan pemanfaatan hutan di Kabupaten Banyumas, seperti Badan Lingkungan Hidup (BLH), PT. Perhutani, Dinas Pemuda, Olahraga, Kebudayaan dan Pariwisata  Kabupaten Banyumas, Badan Penanaman Modal dan Pelayanan Perizinan (BPMPP), serta pihak dari Baturraden Adventure Forest sebagai pengelola obyek wisata tersebut.

Abstract:This essay explores how a recent body of work by Thai artist Piyarat Piyapongwiwat uses an immersive video installation to create a context that affectively connects the viewer with a group of exploited Cambodian labourers. While the struggles of these labourers—whose livelihoods are being eroded as the mountain that has sustained them for generations is fenced off, privatized and mined to supply urban development with limestone—may seem remote and disconnected from the lives of privileged, urban exhibition-goers, Piyapongwiwat’s work belies this disconnection. The affective portal created by the video installation allows us to not only empathize with the labourers, but to see how their sense of their own agency and power to change their plight is negated by what seem to be inexorable autonomous processes of capitalist development beyond their control or influence. At the same time, she enables us to see how we (the privileged viewers) can conveniently ignore our own complicity in these exploitative conditions through that same ideological sleight of hand that allows us to abdicate our responsibility for these seemingly autonomous processes from which we indirectly benefit. This learned acquiescence to exploitation, and concomitant alienation from a sense of agency to challenge these processes, benefits State-sanctioned extractive capitalist exploitation and perpetuates the power to oppress. The essay explores how Piyapongwiwat interweaves fictive, poetic narrative with documentary footage of the limestone quarry labourers, offering critical distance to examine the workings of the ideologies that perpetuate this status quo. The juxtaposition of documentary and poetic, philosophical and political narratives in the artwork offers a fertile space in the imagination for resistance and reclamation of agency through a search for truth beyond the ideologies that serve State and capitalist power.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, along with the longings for a return to "normal state", statements that nothing will be the same afterwards could also be heard. However, the real task remains in deconstructing the relationship between the pre-pandemic normality and the political consequences that coronavirus has shed light on. Hence, the idea of a global risk society, developed by sociologist Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, could easily be recalled within those circumstances. Questioning the role of politics and political science while assuming that we live in a post-industrial age, the central idea presupposes that politics is displaced from the traditional areas of big, ideological questions. In other words, in the age of Anthropocene marked as reflexive modernization, it is being considered that politics is merely taking place as subpolitics, dealing with individual things considering small, everyday life politics. Deprived of big questions, it rather anticipates manmade risks as the consequences of modernization and achievements of the changed nature related to production and distribution in capitalist societies. Though, this paper aims to see how the global state of emergency-as a state of exception-shook such ideas, illuminating their hidden ideological charge with the goal to normalize the relations of power and domination within society. In this regard, the paper also seeks to contribute to the discussion of the importance of social and political crises and transformations, and to affirm a critical concept of theoretical practice.

I. INTRODUCTION: COMMODIFICATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL GOODS S HOULD there be markets for environmental goods? For instance, should we trade carbon and biodiversity credits? The debate over markets and nature is often polarized. On the one hand, there is a position that assumes that 'all nature is for sale' or, more precisely, that there are no principled reasons for excluding certain environmental goods from commodification. Markets are seen as an important tool for dealing with environmental problems, precisely because these are market failures. A combination of existing markets, new markets (for example, carbon trading), and hypothetical markets (environmental valuation and costbenefit analyses) should allow for socially optimal outcomes. This approach can be found in several major reports, 1 and is adopted by many governments and international institutions. On the other hand, the opposite position argues that 'nature is not for sale' or, more precisely, that most environmental goods should not be commodified. For instance, Robert Goodin and Michael Sandel both argue that emissions trading is morally problematic (see below). 2 Sandel also criticizes other variants of nature commodification, such as trophy hunting and ticket resale for nature parks. 3 Moreover, markets are often seen as the cause of environmental problems, rather than being a solution. These scholars plead for limiting the scope of markets, both real and hypothetical. 4 A more radical interpretation considers these new environmental markets, such as emissions trading, as the newest stage of capitalism. The Green Economy, for instance, is seen as a discourse that legitimizes further capital accumulation, by turning environmental goods into commodities. 5

In 2008 Ecuador adopted a new constitution that pioneered rights for nature. This case might seem to have come out of nowhere but there are theoretical, as well as practical, precedents that informed it. This chapter is concerned with discussing the idea of rights for nature, and will do so in the following steps: I will first introduce the idea as such, and show whence its conceptual toolkit is borrowed; this is followed by a presentation of the rights of nature in Ecuador; I will then look at other cases of rights for nature, mapping continuities and differences with Ecuador; finally, I will ask the question that drives this chapter, namely what the rights of nature tell us about the politics of nature: what possibilities are being inaugurated, and what lessons can already be learned? Once we pick out the constitutive elements of the rights of nature, both in theory and practice, we will be in a position to reflect on their meaning and on the promises they hold for an environmental politics of the 21st century.

"This paper examines what would be a fair distribution of the right to emit greenhouse gases. It distinguishes between views that treat the distribution of this right on its own (Isolationist Views) and those that treat it in conjunction with the distribution of other goods (Integrationist Views).

The most widely held view adopts an Isolationist approach and holds that emission rights should be distributed equally. This paper provides a critique of this 'equal per capita' view, and the isolationist assumptions on which it depends. It examines four arguments for this view, finding each wanting.

It then presents two general challenges to the 'equal per capita' view, and, indeed, any views which treat the distribution of greenhouse gas emissions in isolation from other goods.

It concludes by outlining and defending an alternative (Integrationist) approach to the distribution of rights to emit greenhouse gases"

This book addresses a central dilemma facing efforts to promote environmental sustainability: while environmental challenges including climate change threaten the very fabric of our lives, ambitious efforts to address these rarely resonate with the everyday concerns and ideas most pressing to citizens.  The book analyzes both the opportunities and constraints facing such efforts to promote environmental sustainability. I first theorize an approach to “contested materiality” and then draw upon this to engage values embedded in everyday practices – including land use, automobility, and householding – in affluent postindustrial societies.  The aim is to open up new ways of thinking about property, freedom, and citizenship that might foster a more resonant and expansive political imagination.

Hans Jonas’ philosophy of responsibility is a major contribution to environmental ethics and political theory, but aspects of it have proven controversial. Jonas’ critics, in particular Richard Wolin, have argued that his thought is deeply reactionary. By contrast, Nathan Dinneen has sought to show that Jonas’ apparent eco-authoritarianism is misunderstood. I argue here that Dinneen’s interpretation is probably too generous, but also that Wolin’s wholesale critique is fundamentally misguided. Rather, the vast majority of Jonas’ thought is of enduring value, including a nascent ecological republicanism which has thus far been overlooked by commentators.

An exploration of Hannah Arendt's philosophy in terms of issues related to the earth, earth and world alienation, space, place, and nature.  I examine her work in The Human Condition and other books and essays, connecting it to developments in ecological thought and critical social theory.  I provide a historical, philosophical, and political perspective on these topics and argue for the relevance of her ideas.

This is a final draft of the article published in Environmental Ethics 11 (Fall 1989): 243-258. This assessment of  the Promethean dimension of Marx's thought is accurate, but though it mentions Marx's more dialectical side and its potential implications, this aspect is seriously neglected in the article . A more balanced assessment is presented in "Marx's Natures," a draft version of which can be found on this site. This article should be read in connection with the latter one.

In Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis acknowledged that “numerous scientists, philosophers, theologians and civic groups have enriched the Church’s thinking” on sustainability. Hospitals and health care organizations may not be an obvious resource for ecological inspiration, but they have been responsible for shaping the contours of sustainability as well. While some Catholic health care organizations have already established measures to mitigate climate change, Laudato Si’ challenges all of Catholic health care to reflect the dual concerns for “God’s creation and the poor and outcast.” Concretely, two ways this can be achieved are by cutting carbon emissions and reducing water footprints.

John Stuart Mill is known as the first canonical Western philosopher to espouse a stationary state of economic growth, and as such he can be seen as an important totemic figure for reformist strategies in environmental ethics. However, his reputation among environmental thinkers has been rendered more ambiguous in recent years by increased attention to his essay "Nature". The "Nature" essay has been much used lately by critics to oppose claims (1) that independent nature may properly be seen as important in any way as an ethical guide or inspiration, and (2) that Mill's philosophy may feasibly be viewed as pro-environmentalist. This use of Mill's essay is mistaken, and has undermined appreciation of the potential significance of Mill's thought for environmental philosophy. When examining the most detailed of the critical treatments of the essay, reading "Nature" as an anti-environmentalist text badly distorts the essay's meaning by ripping it from the context of Mill's intentions as well as from the very specific and significant historical circumstances and biographical conditions of its production. Attending properly to these factors shows that the essay is unrepresentative of Mill's general position and rather philosophically weaker than its reputation. Reading the text as a definitive statement of Mill's supposed anti-naturalism is thus mistaken and fails to recognize different modes and significances in "following nature", some of which Mill supported. The "Nature" essay is an aberrant outlier in the Mill canon, and one which should no longer be allowed to undermine Mill's strong and important environmentalist credentials.

In the 1970s, deep ecologists developed a radical normative argument for ‘ecological consciousness’ to challenge environmental and human exploitation. Such consciousness would replace the Enlightenment dualist ‘illusion’ with a post-Enlightenment holism that ‘fully integrated’ humanity within the ecosphere. By the 2000s, deep ecology had fallen out of favour with many green scholars. And, in 2014, it was described as a ‘spent force’. However, this decline has coincided with calls by influential advocates of ‘corporate social and environmental responsibility’ (CSER) and ‘green growth’ (GG) that urge market actors to ensure voluntarily that social and environmental ‘problems are addressed holistically’. Given that CSER and GG have also been associated with rent seeking, privatisation and reducing incomes of the poor, could it be that the deep ecologists’ once radical ideas today serve to legitimate forms of exploitation that they once decried? A critical realist perspective can problematise deep ecology’s highly normative response to exploitation and alienation. By settling ontological questions in favour of holism and promoting moral voluntarism, deep ecology failed to address how actors with different interests might adopt green ideas. This blind spot can be cured by focussing instead on the active deployment of ethics, morality, values, beliefs, ideas, and knowledges by political actors in historically specific contexts. Both critical normative and critical realist modes of engaging with environmental values are important; however, at a time when holism and voluntarism are gaining influence, critical realism offers helpful insight into the uses and abuses of such values.

Mientras se afianza el consenso científico acerca del origen antropogénico de graves problemas ecológicos como el calentamiento global, se comprueba que los valores dominantes en los regímenes de democracia liberal han de ser reformulados. Sin embargo, la filosofía política liberal no ha destacado por su sensibilidad ante tales problemas. En este artículo se examinan algunas ideas liberales concernientes a la relación entre los seres humanos y la naturaleza, prestando atención a un incipiente “liberalismo verde” y al negacionismo ultraliberal. Este examen mostrará que las discrepancias internas del pensamiento liberal en lo relativo a los problemas ambientales van más allá de cuestiones de política práctica, revelando una ruptura profunda en los niveles epistemológico y ético que afecta a la fundamentación de los valores democráticos.

CONCEPTOS CLAVE: Liberalismo, sostenibilidad, negacionismo climático

Liberalism is a term employed in a dizzying variety of ways across the humanities and social sciences. This essay seeks to reframe how the liberal tradition is understood. I start by delineating different types of response – prescriptive, comprehensive, explanatory – that are frequently conflated in answering the question “what is liberalism?” I then discuss assorted methodological strategies employed in the existing literature: after rejecting “stipulative” and “canonical” approaches, I outline a contextualist alternative. On this (comprehensive) account, liberalism is best characterised as the sum of the arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognised as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, over time. In the remainder of the article I present an historical analysis of shifts in the meaning of liberalism in Anglo-American political thought between 1850 and 1950, focusing in particular on how John Locke came to be seen as a liberal. I also explore the emergence of the category of "liberal democracy". I argue that the scope of the liberal tradition was massively expanded during the middle decades of the twentieth century, such that it came to be seen by many as the constitutive ideology of the West. This capacious (and deeply confusing) understanding of liberalism was produced by a conjunction of the ideological wars fought against “totalitarianism” and assorted developments in the social sciences. Today we both inherit and inhabit it.

On January 28-29, 2016, at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, the Canadian Studies Program sponsored a conference, “Fossil Fuels and Radical Sovereignties: Boardrooms, Blockades, and Jurisdictional Struggles over Oil and Gas Development in ‘North America,’” that dealt with major current issues relating to the law and the environment with a particular emphasis on the rights of First Peoples, frequently described by the terms, Aboriginal or Indigenous. Due to work, I missed several of the presentations, but I was able to hear many of the papers and engage in conversations, observations, and raise questions with several of the presenters and attendees. While the conference presenters showed real concern for justice toward the environment and First Peoples and several of the papers offered excellent summaries of recent relevant social action and legal cases, they lacked references to the social sciences of the law relevant to these events and cases. Instead of using this extensive literature to interpret their material, the presenters frequently substituted an analytical concept more derivative of identity politics than the social sciences. Thus I critically review several issues of interest to social scientists, by focusing on perhaps the least ideological of the papers with a more in-depth reference to concepts of major researchers in the areas of social sciences, the law, the environment, and First Peoples.

El objetivo del “desarrollo sostenible” es un lugar común de muchos discursos políticos de nuestro tiempo. Sin embargo, las visiones “prometeicas” del desarrollo han oscurecido paulatinamente su sentido originario, reduciendo a la vez su alcance normativo. Este artículo revisa la dimensión ética del desarrollo sostenible, partiendo de una concepción universalizable del desarrollo cuyo fin es el despliegue y la adquisición de capacidades humanas. Asimismo, la sostenibilidad ecológica se concibe como un principio básico de cualquier concepción de la justicia intergeneracional que aspire a garantizar la libre elección entre distintas concepciones de la vida buena a los seres humanos futuros. Este carácter esencialmente normativo del desarrollo sostenible lo distingue como un ideal “inacabado”, pendiente aún de articulación política mediante criterios alternativos de valoración social.

"Written in an engaging and accessible manner by one of the leading scholars in his field, Environment and Social Theory, completed revised and updated with two new chapters, is an indispensable guide to the way in which the environment and social theory relate to one another.

This popular text outlines the complex interlinking of the environment, nature and social theory from ancient and pre-modern thinking to contemporary social theorizing. John Barry:


examines the ways major religions such as Judaeo-Christianity have and continue to conceptualize the environment

analyzes the way the non-human environment features in Western thinking from Marx and Darwin, to Freud and Horkheimer

explores the relationship between gender and the environment, postmodernism and risk society schools of thought, and the contemporary ideology of orthodox economic thinking in social theorising about the environment.
How humans value, use and think about the environment, is an increasingly central and important aspect of recent social theory. It has become clear that the present generation is faced with a series of unique environmental dilemmas, largely unprecedented in human history.

With summary points, illustrative examples, glossary and further reading sections this invaluable resource will benefit anyone with an interest in environmentalism, politics, sociology, geography, development studies and environmental and ecological economics.

"

The relationship of human liberty to both external nature and human inner nature entails a complex knot of questions that have long been the subject of intense philosophical discussion. In the modern era, a strong dichotomy developed between these concepts in which human freedom was counterposed to an apparently determinate nature that existed as a valueless
res extensa. In this article, however, the author argues for the presence and vitality of an alternative concept of human liberty, one that relies not on the ownership of property but on nature as a point outside the system of human instrumental control and the hall of mirrors represented by collective solipsism. The author arrives at this point through careful study of the underresearched naturalistic scenes and elements in George Orwell’s highly
influential "1984", drawing out the complex interconnections of nature, liberty, and fulfillment found within them. This study illustrates the usefulness of the dystopian imagination to theorizing relationships between nature and humanity.

Later interpreters have usually described Gifford Pinchot and John Muir as defining two different conceptions of nature: "conservationism" and "preservationism." While the difference between these conceptions is significant, it plays a much less central role in guiding practical proposals than is typically assumed. This article highlights the independent influence and importance of contrasting conceptions of politics, and of the appropriate division between public and private worlds, to shaping the arguments and proposals of these two early environmentalist leaders. This new understanding permits a reinterpretation of the commonalities and disagreements between Muir and Pinchot and raises a new set of questions for environmentalism and American political thought.

The Anthropocene and species-being: I want to immediately confess that there is something awkward about holding these two terms together. It would seem they share little conceptual ground. The former, relatively newly minted in earth system science, designates the advent of a geological era of the human species’ own making. The latter, from the annals of Marxist theory, describes humanity’s capacity to take its own “life-activity” as its object, and thus, the historical possibilities of its own self-development. Nevertheless, in this paper I follow a hunch that this is a productive coupling. For it seems to me that it offers a new line for thinking through the relations between this novel geological era, in which the human species is now a force altering the trajectory of planetary life, and the historically specific social formation, capitalism, that has ushered in this epoch, and with it, this augmented species capacity. As a means to develop this contention I wish to explore the tensions and implications of the two contrasting formulations of the human that respectively inform these two notions: that is, as a biological species with geological agency; and as a species-being, with the capacity to consciously direct its own species’ life activity.

I think of this as one of my more significant reviews, not only due to its dealings with the underlying orientation of a major environmental philosopher but also because it is here that I say a few words about my own conception of philosophy's proper role and definition, which is similar but not identical to that of Callicott.

I examine some of the contributions to an ecological anarchist tradition that, I argue, antedates, influences, and presently remains coextensive with Murray Bookchin’s work. It is to this tradition which Bookchin returns, from which he departs, and occasionally over and past which he looks. In so doing, I situate Bookchin’s thought historically against the work of Peter Kropotkin in particular and try to illuminate some of the tendencies and tensions within both anarchist and ecological theory.

By showing how closely related Bookchin’s work is to Kropotkin’s opus, I try to restore the importance of Kropotkin for critical social theory and to stress his relevance for the future of social ecology. If, as I claim, comprehending Kropotkin is central to understanding Bookchin, then it would bode well for future social ecologists to investigate this earlier body of work as they advance and refine their theory. This comparative and critical enterprise is valuable ultimately because it allows us to better understand the origins of, changes in, and complexities concerning social ecology, and to further develop informed responses to environmental and political challenges.

Aldo Leopold’s land ethic is often compared to the ethics of many North American Indigenous communities, like Tribes and First Nations. Such comparisons can be considered important today because they are a potential option for bringing together environmentalists of all heritages in North America based on a common ethical orientation.  At a theoretical level, the potential for comparison is certainly present. I argue, however, that there are at least three serious issues that must be reckoned with by any actual attempts to bring people together around the idea of a similar ethical orientation in Leopoldian and Indigenist ethics. The first issue is that Leopoldian ideas may be similar in the abstract to some Indigenous ethics, but Leopold’s own work does not provide a model of environmental stewardship that many Indigenous peoples would identify with or find useful. The second issue is that Leopold’s history of ethics is based on a narrative the plot of which goes in the opposite direction of the narratives many Indigenous peoples would provide of their ethics. The third issue is the tendency to prioritize Leopold as the interpreter and translator of Indigenous ethics, which can grant unsubstantiated and even offensive privilege to Leopold in relation to Indigenous ethics. If left unaddressed, each issue threatens to silence important dimensions of many North American Indigenous ethics that matter deeply to the Indigenous persons who adhere to them. I conclude the paper by arguing that a better exercise would involve approaching any potential comparison with a sobering acknowledgment of and openness to differences between Leopoldian and Indigenist ethics.