About GAEP
Environmental geography and political ecology are closely related fields. Since the 1970s, political ecology has consolidated as an interdisciplinary field (whose ambitions usually also includes contributing to an emancipatory praxis) aiming precisely at the 'denaturalising' and critically politicising of environmental issues. As for, environmental geography, it seeks to promote an 'epistemic dialogue' within geography itself, building hybrid epistemic objects in order to challenge the epistemological, theoretical and methodological gap between the study of nature and that of society. Thus, environmental geography aims at fostering an 'intradisciplinary epistemic transversality,' while political ecology can be located at an interdisciplinary level; however, both share a similar epistemological nature and similar intellectual challenges.
At GAEP, we cultivate a critical environmental geography, which has been our gateway to political ecology. As for the latter, our research projects mainly gravitate about urban political ecology. Our efforts have focused on eco-social problems, such as those related to environmental risks, contamination, disasters, vulnerability, suffering and conflicts; our focus on the role of social activism/social movements and the debates about alternatives, in particular, has constituted a good opportunity for collaboration with social actors outside the academic milieu. The subject that 'structures' almost all of our current projects, teaching experience and activism is environmental injustice. Within this framework, we have carried out critical analyses of environmental legislation and its effects, assessments of the dynamics and outcomes of environmental activism and conflicts, scrutiny of concrete examples of collaboration between researchers, practitioners and social movements organisations, critical discussion of public policies and their instruments, and so on.
Highlights
Manifest of creation of the ECOLUTAS group
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