Environmental resource management policies worldwide have long insisted on the need to involve local communities and their diverse ecological knowledges in management planning and decision-making. In SubSaharan post-colonial countries, however, formal resource management is still largely dominated by bureaucratic governance regimes that date back to colonial power structures and that rely mainly on professional or formal knowledge. In this study, we use a political ecology approach to analyze disputes over eucalyptus plantations in the Taita Hills, Kenya. The approach recognizes the plurality of socially constructed and powerladen perceptions of environmental resources. We found that local people regard eucalyptus plantations not only as a threat to local water resources but they also highlight historical injustices and the loss of control over, and cultural relationships to their land. Bureaucratic resource management institutions, however, support the planting of eucalyptus to meet national demands for commercial forestry. Management officials also plead a lack of "valid" evidence for the negative impacts of eucalyptus on local water resources, diverting attention away from the formal environmental governance system which has unequal sharing of benefits, unclear policies, and internal incoherence. Recognition of historically rooted asymmetries of knowledge and power provides a step towards social transformation, ending a long-standing reproduction of subalternity, and promoting environmental justice and pluralism in decision-making. Keywords: bureaucratic knowledge; environmental justice; eucalyptus; Kenya; knowledge asymmetries; local ecological knowledge; political ecology; resource management RésuméLes politiques de gestion des ressources environnementales dans le monde insistent depuis longtemps sur la nécessité d'impliquer les communautés locales et leurs diverses connaissances écologiques dans la planification, l'aménagement et la prise de décisions. Dans les pays post-coloniaux subsahariens, cependant, la gestion formelle des ressources est encore largement dominée par des régimes de gouvernance bureaucratique qui remontent aux structures de pouvoir coloniales et qui reposent principalement sur des connaissances professionnelles ou formelles. Dans cette étude, on propose une approche d'écologie politique pour l'analyse des disputes sur les plantations d'eucalyptus dans les collines de Taita au Kenya. L'approche reconnaît la pluralité des perceptions sur les ressources environnementales en tant que socialement construites et chargées des relations de pouvoir. On a constaté que pas seulement les populations locales considèrent les plantations 1 Johanna Hohenthal, PhD student, Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Finland. Email: johanna.hohenthal "at" helsinki.fi. Marinka Räsänen, MSc. Email: marinka.rasa "at" gmail.com. Dr. Paola Minoia, Adjunct Professor, Development Studies, Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. Email: paola.mi...