Nordic political ecologies

Abstract

Benjaminsen, T.A. & Robbins, P. 2015. Nordic political ecologies. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 00, 00–00. ISSN 0029-1951.

The purpose of this special issue is to demonstrate the relevance of political ecology for the study of Nordic environmental governance. As political ecology has gained a leading position in international environmental geography, Nordic geographers have increasingly been attracted to this approach. Although many have carried out political ecology research in the Global South, there has been little Nordic political ecology research at ‘home’. The contributions to this special issue demonstrate that the themes emerging in Nordic political ecology are familiar from research in developing countries, whether discussing tensions between rural or indigenous people and the state, contested environmental knowledge and how the state relates to such contestations, or prevailing discourses of sustainable land use. The Nordic context also represents a unique potential for political ecology scholarship, for at least two reasons. First, the Nordic landscape tradition suggests a potentially useful bridge between political ecology and land change science. Second, the emergence of the Arctic as a resource frontier and a geopolitical target area represents a potential comparative advantage of Nordic political ecology. This frontier is just as dynamic, environmentally and politically, as any other frontier of resource exploitation.

Keywords:

• environmental geography
• land change science
• Nordic political ecology
• political ecology
• the Arctic

Notes

1. This debate has taken place in Norwegian media (e.g. newspapers, blogs, and social media) (e.g. Svarstad & Benjaminsen 2010). A recent evaluation of the Research Council of Norway concluded that the council should make much more of its funds available for untied proposals driven by ideas from the researchers themselves, rather than by narrowly defined ‘needs’ in society (Technopolis Group 2012).

2. We use the plural form ‘political ecologies’ to stress that this is a diverse field with several possible directions, and the singular form ‘political ecology’ when we refer to the whole field.

3. The Norwegian term used was Syden, which literally means ‘the South’, but it is a common term used for countries with a warm climate and beaches, which are used as holiday destinations by Norwegians (e.g. the Mediterranean countries, the Canary Islands, the Caribbean, and Thailand).