Feminist political ecology and legal geography: A case study of the Tonle Sap protected wetlands of Cambodia

Abstract

Legal geography (LG) unravels the co-constitutive relationship between law, space and society. Much LG scholarship has focused on urban issues situated in the Global North, but there is an emerging scholarship that explicitly extends this effort to the Global South and to rural locations. For example, Gillespie's LG research in Southeast Asia exposes problems in governance institutions and decision-making processes that can unintentionally exacerbate existing socioeconomic disadvantage. The feminist political ecology (FPE) approach, as conceptualized by Rocheleau et al. and more recently expanded upon by Elmhirst provides a useful additional framework for considering the intersectionality of social and environmental factors which constitute identity, and the mutual dependency between identity and ecological processes. In this paper we argue that marrying an LG perspective with FPE results in a more nuanced understanding of complex legalhuman-environment dynamics. Our focus on lore/law plus gendered identity as a lens for analysis blends an emergent LG literature with insights from FPE. This paper draws on research from a pilot project on the formal and informal regulatory mechanisms that enable and/or disable sustainable conservation in the protected wetlands of the Tonle Sap (lake) in central Cambodia.

Ruang Gender Haruskah Selalu dipisah? Ruang Kelola Wilayah Adat dan Pendekatan Ekologi Politik Feminis

“…Sejak kemunculannya, beberapa akademisi sudah menggunakan kerangka konsep ekologi politik feminis untuk menganalisa beberapa hal, seperti ketimpangan penguasaan sumber daya air (Adams et al, 2018;Cole, 2016), perubahan ekologi dan aktivisme gender (Hanson & Buechler, 2015;Siscawati, 2013), ketimpangan penguasan tanah akibat pembukaan perkebunan besar kelapa sawit (Elmhirst et al, 2015(Elmhirst et al, , 2017, keanekaragaman sistem pertanian (Nyantakyi-Frimpong, 2017), dinamika antara hukum-manusia-lingkungan yang bersifat informal (Gillespie & Perry, 2019), ekslusi perempuan dalam ruang penguasaan, pemanfaatan, dan pengelolaan hutan dan lahan pertanian (Ramdhaniaty, 2018;Ratnasari et al, 2020) dsb.…”

Feminist legal geographies

“…Similarly, in their discussion of the Central Cambodian protected area wetlands of Tonle Sap, Gillespie and Perry (2019) examine how the system of management implemented to enforce the international protected area laws results in negative impacts that affect the lived experiences of local residents, and especially women. The authors note gendered disparities that include how women gain access to information about the regulations, noting that men in the community learn from government officials directly, while women receive information second hand.…”

“…In this introduction to our theme issue on feminist legal geographies, we provide a short entre´e to the papers by exploring the 'doing' of feminist legal geographic work through, first, a methodology-focused section. In the second section we turn to some of the key messages that the authors illustrate by way of research in Cambodia, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and the US in respect to the hopes and failures of law to exercise and claim various rights: to asylum (Gorman, 2019), housing (Meth et al, 2019), protective areas (Gillespie and Perry, 2019), reproductive choice (Statz and Pruitt, 2019), and legal rights and capabilities within marriage (Schenk, 2019), and in cyberspace (Farries and Sturm, 2019). Together, they speak the vibrancy of emerging feminist legal geographic literature and echo work in feminist legal studies, which is characterized by the breadth of subjects it engages with (Davies and Munro, 2016).…”

Restricting spatial lives? The gendered implications of conservation in Cambodia’s protected wetlands

“…Prior research on the conflict between human needs and conservation on the Tonle Sap further informed this research agenda (Gillespie, 2017(Gillespie, , 2018Gillespie and Perry, 2018). From previous study, located in an alternative Ramsar designated wetland (Boeung Tonle Chhmar) on the Tonle Sap, it emerged that local people had gender-differentiated concerns about conservation regulations (Gillespie and Perry, 2018).…”