The Importance Of Political Ecology

Political ecology is a broad study about a range of topics concerning the relationship between human and environment. According to Paul Robbins (2004), it is a term that is generally based on empirical studies of the relation between social and environmental system, with particular focus and definite consideration on power relations (Robbins in Benjamin and Svarstad 2010:20). As it is known to embraces a range of topics, where some stresses on the political economy while others are pointing more towards the formal political institutions, (but at the same time) there are still some that emphasizes that the environmental changes are more important than the emphasizing of narratives or stories about that change. Political ecology explores these

For example, political ecology researchers often showed that environmental crisis like deforestation was not an issue of the commons, but is an issue within the decision-making process which is fundamentally flawed at the first place, particularly as regarded tenure regimes. Development is not just about economics, but also about the exercise of power and the establishment of hegemony. Herewith, political ecology is used as a critical approach which in many of the cases are used to detect circumstances that researchers think should be changed, with references to the overall values such as human rights and justice (Robbins in Benjamin and Svarstad 2010:31). That is to say that helps in identifying the ‘lie of the land’ in hasty assessments made by international experts in complete disregard of local ecological knowledge. In this case, it acts as a critique where it seeks to expose flaws in approaches that are dominative to the environmental system that are favored by large institutions as in corporation, the state and international authorities. Furthermore, it works to ‘denaturalize’ certain kind of social and environmental conditions, showing them to be the contingent (accidental) outcomes of power, and that it is inevitable. Through this way it acts as a hatchet, cuts and prunes away the stories, methods, and policies that create destructive social and environmental

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park as a part of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest is located in southwestern Uganda in East Africa. It was declared as an UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site in 1994 and is known for its exceptional biodiversity with over 160 species of trees and over 100 species of ferns. Not only that, many endangered species including the mountain gorilla can be found here and are a huge tourist attraction that benefits the country economy (UNESCO 2015). In the case of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (referred to as BINP hereafter), the locals are struggling for their livelihoods as they are depending on their ecological surroundings as part of their everyday existence. However, to understand more of the use of the notions hatchet and seed, we have to first understand the concept of what discourses