Urban eco-geopolitics

Abstract

Geopolitics should be understood as a broader subject than the usual association ‘nation-states + international relations + military power + geographical conditions’ suggests. Actually, ‘geopolitics’ is nothing but an explicitly political approach to social–spatial analysis, even if we pragmatically reserve the term for situations in which we face state interventions and strategies aiming at socio-spatial control and/or expanding political influence. Similar to the Copenhagen School’s ‘wider agenda’ for security studies, I think it is useful to develop a ‘wider agenda’ for the critique of geopolitics—for instance, one that clearly incorporates some urban problems as relevant subjects. ‘Eco-geopolitics’ refers to the governmentalisation of ‘nature’ and the ‘environment’, using the ‘environmental protection’ and often even the ‘environmental security’ discourse as a tool for socio-spatial control. Within the framework of this governmentalisation, there are increasing connections between local-level expressions of socio-spatial control in the name of ‘environmental protection’ and national and global agents and agendas. More concretely, ‘urban eco-geopolitics’ is above all related to strategies of socio-spatial control apparently designed to prevent people from ‘degrading the environment’, though in fact they have several social and spatial implications. Rio de Janeiro is here nothing but an illustration of a very general phenomenon. Nonetheless, Rio is a ‘privileged laboratory’ due to an almost unique conjunction of factors: (a) a proverbial ‘abundance of nature’ (i.e. a huge national park inside the heart of the metropolis); (b) a similarly proverbial socio-spatial inequality (hundreds of favelas coexist with elite neighbourhoods in the context of a complex segregation pattern that also includes a huge periphery and an extreme socio-spatial stigmatisation); (c) a ‘modernising drive’ that has significantly changed Rio’s urban space several times since the beginning of the 20th century, being recently represented by the direct or indirect effects of the ‘sporting mega-events fever’ that has dominated Rio’s city marketing since the last decade.

Key words:

• geopolitics
• ecology
• environmental justice
• cities
• Rio de Janeiro

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Federico Ferretti for inviting me to give the lecture at University College Dublin in March 2016 that was the basis for this paper. As far as the publication of the paper is concerned, Bob Catterall’s encouragement was crucial— as always. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to Kurt Iveson: his stylistic suggestions contributed to make the text clearer and less imperfect. The remaining faults are of course mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 French original: ‘il s’agit de rapports entre des forces politiques précisément localisées, qu’elles soient officielles ou clandestines: lutes sanglantes entre groups ethniques ou factions religieuses, guerres entre nations, lutte d’un people pour son independence, menaces de conflits entre grands États’.

2 French original: ‘[ … ] des rivalités de pouvoirs sur un territoire, qu’il soit de grandes ou de petites dimensions, y compris au sein des agglomerations urbaines’.

3 At a more general level, an increasingly ‘hard’ side of urban eco-geopolitics has existed for many years, although its global importance is still underestimated. Let us keep in mind, for example, the ‘Water War’ in Bolivia in 2000 (also known as the ‘Cochabamba Water War’) as an example.

4 A forerunner of which was E. Reclus’s critical and dialectical approach to environmental problems (see, i.e. Reclus 1864, 1868–69, 1905–1908).

5 French original: ‘[ … ] mais ce son toujours des privilégiés qui habitent les villes-jardins et le bon vouloir des philanthropes n’est pas suffisant à conjurer les conséquences de l’antagonisme qui existe entre le Capital et le Travail’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marcelo Lopes de Souza

Marcelo Lopes de Souza is a professor at the Department of Geography of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.