The Eco-Frontier Paradigm: Rethinking the Links between Space, Nature and Politics

Abstract

Psycho-mental representation of nature Spatial representation Conflicts of interest AIRIES 1 Japanese environmental research centre Japan-Local-global International network Eco-Frontier Fellowship Program Call for scholarships Increasing knowledge on global change. Need to promote international scientific cooperations.

A Confluence of Anticolonial Pathways for Indigenous Sacred Site Protection

“…Such industrialization degrades water, air, plant, animal, and human health on Indigenous lands (Benson 2012; Colombi 2012; Vogel 2012; Taylor 2014; Montoya 2017; Berry et al 2018; Bair et al 2019; Estes 2019). Colonization, in the name of conservation, also created National Parks (e.g., GCNP) and other land management boundaries, dispossessing Indigenous people from their lands for the strange concept of nature untrammeled by humans (Smyth 2002; Guyot 2011; Kelly 2011; Sletto 2011; Stevens 2014). Colonialism renamed Indigenous sites with the names of invaders (Lindford 2000; LaDuke 2005) while colonial “mentalities” were made manifest in dominant Western epistemologies and socioeconomic policies (Dongoske et al 2008; Tuck et al 2014; Black and McBean 2016; Dongoske and Curti 2018).…”

The Geopolitics of Protected Areas

“…The discussion that follows shows how these actors imagine the environment in ways that have profound implications for the governance of the environment. The actors engender an environmentality that in turn produces eco-frontiers as zones of boundless, timeless and invaluable wilderness protected from humans, especially indigenous populations (Ramutsindela 2004;Guyot 2011).…”

“…A frontier is an area of material colonisation between remaining zones of wilderness and civilisation, and it is also an active space where natural elements are considered of utmost importance (Redclift 2006;Guyot and Richard 2009;Héritier et al 2009;Guyot 2011Guyot , 2017 Arnauld de Sartre et al 2012). As a term first created by a green civil society, the ecofrontier involves 'a geographical process that motivates humans to conquer a boundless, timeless and invaluable wilderness in the name of plural ecologies to serve their own desires for control and territory building' (Guyot 2011, 678).…”

“…The eco-frontier is a way to understand the geopolitics of contemporary land expropriation through environmental actions and discourses. Eco-frontiers increase the status of natural spaces, and in doing so lead to geopolitical conflicts (Guyot 2011). This very political side of the control of nature in a geographic space -which is often hidden under other imperativescan be perfectly explained by post-Foucauldian notions of eco-governmentality and environmentality (Hebden 2006), which connect the fields of political ecology and critical geopolitics.…”

Geopolíticas del cotidiano en la frontera patagónica: Las dinámicas del habitar en torno a los Campos de Hielo Patagónicos

“…Otra estrategia en la territorialización de las fronteras fue la creación de parques nacionales. Esta herramienta permitía consolidar los reclamos territoriales de soberanía sobre las grandes extensiones de áreas naturales, controlar los 'espacios vacíos' visibles en los mapas, destinándolas a la conservación y transformándolos en espacios protegidos (Navarro 2008, Núñez et al 2012Guyot 2011Guyot , 2015, convirtiéndose a la vez en 'frentes ecológicos geopolíticos' (Guyot 2017).…”