This paper explores the importance of incorporating the socioecological realities of alternative networks into analyses of rural development. Cultural theory is examined, which provides a base upon which rural development can identify difference in worldviews based on difference in sociological...

Undoubtedly, the transformations and changes that took place in the postsocialist Romania have affected the whole rural in many different ways. The withdrawal of the state in the position of mediator, the need for a developed private sector, the laws concerning denationalisation and...

The reform of water policies in Brazil has involved a combination of regulatory norms and economic-incentive instruments. Nonetheless, contrary to its formal objectives, the process has largely failed to prevent widespread environmental impacts and growing spatial and sectoral conflicts. The...

Over the last several years research has examined anew the potential for climate change to induce political conflict and potentiate social unrest. Several explanations for the relationship between weather and social unrest have been proposed, including the idea that temperature, acting through a...

Should we reject money when we value nature? Like most environmentalists, ecological economists are increasingly divided on this question. Synthesizing political ecology with ecological economics, we argue that this way of framing the question is limited. We propose a reformulation of the...

In this paper, a review is conducted on the use of the concepts of Michel Foucault in forest policy analysis. In doing so, three major questions are posed: (1) how Foucauldian thinking has influenced the analysis of forest policy, (2) what has been excluded from the analysis, and (3) how a...

The awareness of the scope of the environmental problems of the planet has gone global since the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972. Furthermore, analyzes of economy and ecology were deeply renewed in recent years. They are likely to provide practical...

The transition to sustainability will be difficult. Environmental sustainability entails living within the Earth’s limits, yet the majority of scientific studies indicate a condition of overshoot. For mainstream economists sustainability means perpetuating economic growth. Consequently,...

The loss of genetic diversity of thousands of plants and crops has been well documented at least since the 1970s, and has been understood as a result of epistemological and political economic conditions of the Green Revolution. The political economic arrangement of the Green Revolution,...

An analysis of the underlying causes of environment destruction debunks the idea that the poor are the principal cause of environmental degradation in present-day societies. The paper also identifies some of the major areas of economic theory and institutional biases in market economies that...