ABSTRACT
In contrast, political ecologists attempt to complete the story through work oriented around the idea of a ‘politicised environment’. In the process, they agree with their mainstream counterparts that the Third World is wracked by an environmental crisis but, unlike the latter, then ask ‘Whose environmental crisis?’ That question focuses attention squarely on issues of political and economic causality, and ensures that political ecologists do not fall into the trap (as do many mainstream writers) of treating the Third World’s ‘environmental crisis’ in isolation from the much wider developmental crisis to which it is inextricably linked. This book approaches the Third World’s environmental crisis from the vantage-point of the interests and actions of the main actors involved in the conflict that habitually surrounds that crisis. However, this chapter first examines the idea of a politicised environment-its possible meanings and topography-as well as the implications for the field of Third World political ecology of research based on this idea.
