The new politics of environmental degradation: un/expected landscapes of disempowerment and vulnerability

Abstract

Acknowledging environmental degradation as a profoundly political phenomenon, this article examines how uninvited environmental change transforms people's understandings of and relationships to the natural world. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in a semi-remote Canadian Anishinaabe community and among Euro-American residents of Ohio who oppose local shale energy development, I trace parallels between the disempowerment and vulnerability experienced by people with very different assumptions about the world and their place in it and very different positions within the global political economic system. While environmental justice scholars have revealed compelling correlations between social and environmental inequity, I argue that investigating environmental degradation's sociocultural impacts among relatively privileged groups can encourage more dynamic explorations of conjoined environmental/social/political systems and expose ongoing structural shifts. My comparative analysis seems to suggest that ever-increasing segments of the world's population now contend with environmental challenges that they did not authorize, and do not benefit from. I thus conclude by calling for additional investigations of environmental degradation in unexpected places and the implications of extensive inequity for global sustainability. Key words: Energy, environmental degradation, environmental justice, fossil fuels, hydraulic fracking, landscape, North America, shale gas RésuméCet article examine comment les changements environnementaux sans y être invité transforme les compréhensions des gens du monde naturel. Leur relation avec la nature est également modifiée. Je reconnais la dégradation de l'environnement comme un phénomène profondément politique. Je trace un parallèle entre l'impuissance et la vulnérabilité vécue par les personnes qui détiennent des hypothèses très différentes sur le monde et de leur place dans ce monde, et qui détiennent des positions socio-économiques différentes au sein du système économique et politique mondial. J'utilise une recherche qualitative menée dans une communauté Anishinaabe canadienne, et parmi les résidents américains de l'Ohio qui s'opposent au développement de l'énergie des gaz de schiste local. Alors que les chercheurs de justice environnementale ont révélé des corrélations convaincantes entre les inégalités sociales et de l'environnement, je soutiens que l'enquête des impacts socioculturels de la dégradation de l'environnement entre les groupes relativement privilégiés peut encourager les explorations plus dynamiques des systèmes conjoints environnementaux/sociaux/politiques, et d'exposer les changements structurels en cours. Mon analyse comparative suggère qu'un nombre croissant de gens soutiennent maintenant avec les défis environnementaux qu'ils n'autorisaient pas, et qu'ils ne bénéficient pas. Je conclus en demandant des investigations complémentaires de la dégradation de l'environnement dans des endroits inattendus, et les implications de ce grande injustice pour la d...

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