ENVI 217 - Political Ecology of Natural Resources

Using the lens of political ecology to probe a variety of local and global case studies, we will examine how natural resource conflicts are shaped by multiple kinds of power. We will interrogate what is assumed and taken-for-granted in natural resources management and examine the dominant institutions and tools shaping territories, land access and use, oil and mineral extraction, biodiversity conservation, and struggles over the energy transition. While this course looks to make visible how states and elites shape space through natural resource control, it also attends to how marginalized people and communities work to defend and remake their lives and livelihoods in the face of displacement, dispossession, and degradation. Offered every year. (4 Credits)