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Critical Political Ecology: The Politics of Environmental Science Tim Forsyth. Routledge, New York, 2003. xvi and 320 pp., illustrations. $40.95 paper (ISBN 0-4151-8563-7).
Critical Political Ecology offers an excellent foundation in a new approach to political ecology that addresses a wide variety of environmental policy problems resulting from the separation of science and politics. "Critical" political ecology differs from other forms of political ecology in that it seeks to make the political framing of science more transparent and takes a critical approach to the unquestioned use of science as a neutral backdrop to politics. Intellectual debates in critical theory, critical realism, and critical science all inform critical political ecology.
Tim Forsyth argues that the ecological "laws" underlying much political debate need to be considered part of environmental politics. He challenges orthodox views about the environment such as equilibrium within ecosystems and homeostatic regulation of systems, as well as largescale models like the General Circulation Model for understanding climate change. Many scientific prescriptions based on orthodox explanations have not only been ineffective against environmental problems such as declining soil fertility or socalled desertification, but they have restricted people's livelihoods. Forsyth calls for more locally determined forms of environmental management and greater public participation in the formulation of environmental science, not just access to science. In doing so, studies in critical political ecology can be used to achieve social justice in environmental policy and build on earlier studies in regional political ecology and liberation ecology.
Critical political ecology challenges the notion put forth by liberation ecologists that social movements arising from subaltern voices have been successful in reframing environmental discourse. Instead, Forsyth argues...