Politics of Nature: Interests, Commons Dilemmas and the State

Abstract

"In the last two decades, the politics of nature has emerged as an increasingly significant phenomenon at the local, nationstate and international levels, in both rich and poor countries and, increasingly, between rich and poor nations. We should not overlook the historical antecedents of resistance in the form of defensive reactions by peripheral communities, particularly in the colonial world, to environmental degradation entailed in commercial appropriation of natural resources backed by the state, but in recent times the scale, intensity and scope of environmental politics has constituted a qualitatively new phenomenon. In this evolution, ideas fostered by a new science of ecology have been fundamentally important, though not decisive. Ecology as a knowledge system indicates that there is an objective reality to the interests underlying conflictual ideologies of nature; in a telling formulation 'nature bats last.' This understanding, though unevenly accepted, provides scientific legitimation for core beliefs of communities long associated with nature: the interconnectedness of natural systems. But that collective long-term objective interest is relevant to political behavior only as interests are processed through cognitive frames and obtain political capabilities. The periodic catastrophes of small communities dependent on nature since neolithic times indicate the limitations of ecological imperatives in a political sense."