Christos Zografos

University Pompeu Fabra | UPF · Department of Political and Social Sciences

Cities’ increasing vulnerability to the effects of climate change calls for greater attention to urban transformational adaptation as a path towards environmental and social resilience. Through the initial Superblock project in the Poblenou neighbourhood of Barcelona – whereby traffic pacification is combined with new open space and transit network...

Following Illich’s (1974) notion of convivial tools and the distinction he makes between “self-propelled transit” and “motorized transport” of mobility, we apply the emerging paradigm of degrowth to urban mobility. Based on the degrowth literature and Illich’s work, we derive principles and criteria for the mobility of a degrowth society that inclu...

In this article, we argue that othering is central to the government of climate change. Critically engaging with Foucault’s ideas on biopolitics and racism, we elaborate a conceptual perspective for analysing how such a “technology of government” operates. We review diverse literatures from geography, political ecology, critical adaptation studies...

Carbon taxation is a core instrument for climate mitigation. Its implementation, however, faces popular resistance. In this paper we study one of the most emblematic mobilizations triggered by the carbon tax issue, the Yellow Vest movement in France. We use Q-methodology, a mixed-method approach to identify discourses (or viewpoints) held by protes...

A Green New Deal could put severe pressure on lands held by Indigenous and marginalized communities and reshape their ecologies into “green sacrifice zones.” Such cost shifting risks reproducing a form of climate colonialism in the name of just transition. Avoiding cost shifts opens interdisciplinary research questions regarding land-use policy, ec...

This chapter presents a case study on labour‐intensive agriculture to explore the importance of local power asymmetries as determinants of multiple and overlapping vulnerabilities. Understanding multiscalar, multidimensional vulnerabilities and mechanisms giving way to them beyond the biophysical and livelihood aspects are essential to address ‘mor...

Why do people who care about the environment adopt behaviours that are not consistent with their beliefs? Previous studies approach this as a case of cognitive dissonance, researchers looking into the strategies through which people reduce gaps between their attitudes and their behaviours. Here we start from the premise that there is no dissonance,...

Building on the framework of emotional political ecology, we seek to expand ways of studying the relationships between emotion, power, and environmental conflict. Our review of work in feminist studies, human geography, social psychology, social movement theory, and social and cultural anthropology suggests the need for a theoretical framework that...

This special issue presents findings and reflections of scholars who participated in the European Network of Political Ecology (ENTITLE). By mobilising conceptual frameworks from several strands of Marxist and post-structuralist theory—and empirically engaging with a range of historico-geographical processes—the articles in this issue contribute to...

To avoid dominant positivist explanations of links between climate change and security, I use alternative, human security approaches to study how climate security is managed in one of Spain’s most endangered coastal ecosystems, the Ebro Delta. I find that increasing the downstream flow of sediments retained in upstream dams is a crucial measure for...

Conflicts over tree plantations in the global South challenge the image of sustainability and efficiency that some states and forestry companies construct for themselves and forestry extractivism. Research on the power dynamics of tree plantations has up to now focused on conflictive interactions between states, private capital and local population...

Research on climate change adaptive capacity has yet to explore how the increasing frequency and severity of climate change induced events are impacting the ability of vulnerable urban dwellers in the global North to cope and adapt to such events. Australia has already been witnessing increased frequency and severity of extreme heatwaves in its maj...

There is a growing interest in the connection between climate change and migration, but literature so far has mostly focused on climate refugees, permanent migrants, and the implications for destination countries. Seasonal workers, one of the most vulnerable groups in the agricultural sector, have received scant attention. Nonetheless, several gove...

We welcome the attention of Gsottbauer, Logar, and van den Bergh (thereinafter GLV) to our contribution. However, their critique misrepresents what our article was trying to do, so it merits a response. Our article offered a framework for assessing the conditions under which one may, or may not engage with processes that value nature in money terms...

Outcome and context-focused approaches to climate change adaptation dominate the relevant literature. Taking into account values and perceptions of affected actors and decision-makers is a fundamental and necessary prerequisite for a more effective, legitimate and fair climate policy and has not been given the necessary consideration. This paper us...

Paniagua, A.; Bryant, R. and Kizos, T. (eds.) (2012)The Political Ecology of Depopulation: Inequality, Landscape and PeopleZaragoza: CEDDAR, 311 p.ISBN 978-84-92582-77-8

Food sovereignty can be conceptualized as a political proposal for social change in the field of agri-food relations. However, specific strategies of how to achieve this transformative potential are diverse, and context-dependent. The paper explores this diversity by examining discourses on the food sovereignty construction process in Catalonia. Us...

Policy agendas increasingly respond to the perceived security threats of climate change, not least via its effects on water. Yet, solid links between climate, water, conflict and security have seldom been substantiated empirically. Drawing from the conceptual framework and empirical results of the EC-funded research project CLICO (‘Climate Change,...

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 question into “when and how to value with money?” and “under...

Climate change is likely to increase the frequency and intensity of water-related hazards on human populations. This has generated security concerns and calls for urgent policy action. However, the simplified narrative that links climate change to security via water and violent conflict is wanting. First, it is not confirmed by empirical evidence....

Conflicts between artisanal and industrial fishermen—targeting increasingly scarce resources in Senegal—are posing a serious threat to human security and are only symbolically addressed by the country's fisheries governance regime. Severely outmatched in terms of political influence and size, artisanal fishermen are more vulnerable to the fallout o...

This paper proposes an eco-integrated methodology for managing the structural uncertainty (EMSU) that is inherent in socio-ecological systems. The methodology incorporates the human factor side by side to economic and environmental aspects and in this way considers the system as complex, reflexive and emergent. Reflexivity implies the existence of...

The study explores reasons behind conflicts regarding the installation of wind farms in Terra Alta, a rural county in Catalonia. Our study identifies three main causes of conflict. First, and in accordance to the coceptual framework of political ecology, the conflict forms part of a more generalised conflict regarding the «macro-concentration» of e...

The study explores reasons behind conflicts regarding the installation of wind farms in Terra Alta, a rural county in Catalonia. Our study identifies three main causes of conflict. First, and in accordance to the coceptual framework of political ecology, the conflict forms part of a more generalised conflict regarding the «macro-concentration» of e...

The Mediterranean and neighboring countries are already experiencing a broad range of natural and man-made threats to water security. According to climate projections, the region is at risk due to its pronounced susceptibility to changes in the hydrological budget and extremes. Such changes are expected to have strong impacts on the management of w...

We discuss the recent emergence of ‘deliberative ecological economics’, a field that highlights the potential of deliberation for improving environmental governance. We locate the emergence of this literature in the long concern in ecological economics over the policy implications of limited views of human action and its encounter with deliberative...

Conflicts over the installation of wind farms constrain the potential to adopt an effective means for mitigating climate change. Although conventional wisdom attributes wind farm opposition to ‘not in my back yard’ attitudes, research shows that this explanation fails to incorporate the multiplicity of underlying motivations of opposition. Instead,...

For indigenous communities around the world, ecotourism is not only a means of protecting valuable and threatened ecological and cultural resources but also a viable economic opportunity for maintaining livelihoods. Consequently, communities need to know to what extent ecotourism is the economic activity that best satisfies their needs, given avail...

Social enterprises are businesses with primarily social objectives that reinvest their surplus in the community rather than seeking to maximise profit for shareholders. However, there is a debate regarding the drivers and the role of the social enterprise, the outcome of which is expected to have serious implications for the future of the instituti...

Although sustainable tourism that contributes to biodiversity protection seems to be important anywhere in the planet, ecotourism is rarely examined as a rural development opportunity outside the context of ‘mega-diverse’ countries, i.e. those 12 countries1 that between them harbour 60–70% of the total biodiversity of the planet. Collecting data fr...

This paper explores the context of environmental justice (EJ) in Scotland, and presents a case study whereby the main attributes for an indicator of EJ were identified, encompassing procedural and distributive aspects of justice. Through a participatory process, weights were assigned using a Multi-Criteria Analysis tool, the Analytical Hierarchy Pr...

The paper examines issues pertinent to the strategic planning and management of ecotourism. The use of Multi-Criteria Analysis in ecotourism is an innovative applica-tion of an existing methodology that has been traditionally employed in environmen-tal planning and project appraisal to address conflicting stakeholder objectives over scarce natural...

We discuss the recent emergence of "deliberative ecological economics", a field that highlights the potential of deliberation for improving environmental governance. We locate the emergence of this literature in the long concern in ecological economics over the policy implications of limited views of human action and its encounter with deliberative...

El estudio investiga las razones que explican un conflicto sobre la instalación de parques eólicos en Terra Alta, una comarca rural de Cataluña. Identificamos tres razones principales. Primero, y de acuerdo con el marco conceptual de ecología política, el conflicto eólico forma parte de un conflicto más generalizado sobre la ‘macro-concentración’ d...