19

Political ecology is an approach to the study of environment and development issues that has seen a rapid expansion during the last 10 to 15 years. The objective of this article is to give a brief description of this approach in French. The focus within political ecology is usually on power struggles in environmental governance. These struggles may be over material assets (land, natural resources) as well as over meaning. This again leads to studies of the narratives and discourses associated with various actors and their interests. During the last few years, dominant narratives especially on the African environment have been questioned. This research within political ecology has contributed to new knowledge on both the people-nature and science-policy linkages. Combining the ideals of clarification of values and empirical transparence, political ecology also builds on critical theory from the Frankfurter School. While the approach started out in the 1970s as a Marxist critique of neo-malthusianism, its main challenge today lies in carrying out empirically sound studies of environmental and political change without pre-made conclusions, whether inspired by a critique of malthusianism or capitalism.