Ecologically unequal exchange and landesque capital on Kinmen Island

• Two conceptual tools in historical analyses of environmental issues and political ecologies have gained much attention in recent years: ecologically unequal exchange and landesque capital. The former narrows in on how societal relations of power allow for the physical transfer of environmental degradation—upon which our daily consumption rests—to places far away from our environmentally clean (and therefore often presumed sustainable) homes, cities and regions. The latter focuses instead on the power of human activity to improve environmental conditions, commonly in terms of soil fertility, biodiversity, land cover, carrying capacity, resilience vis-à-vis ecological degradation, or other dimensions of sustainability. One draws attention to the geographically uneven and ecologically detrimental consequences of human activities, while the other draws attention to the potential of human activities to reinforce the resilience and sustainability of social-ecological systems. There is an interesting tension between these processes which calls for closer inspection. The purpose of this paper is to bring them together in the same empirical analysis.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Kulturgeografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Human Geography (hsv//eng)

Keyword

ecologically unequal exchange

landesque capital

environmental degradation

land improvement

Publication and Content Type

art (subject category)

ref (subject category)