Introduction
Dikes are constructed out of the need for people to anticipate, mitigate, and control changes to the environment, specifically water management. However, such measures involve an entanglement of socio-environmental operations that are hard to predict and are intrinsically uncontrollable. I consider that the unpredictability of the current environmental trends is a factor of human-induced hydro-ecological and climatic variations. Gosh (2019, p. 260) states that the human race is more and more exposed to natural calamities, such as flooding. As a result, people have to deal with the serious effects on the environment, including soil erosion. Even as concerns involving the climate largely impact on the society, it is difficult to ignore the impact of political and economic forces. Therefore, it is my opinion that political-economy approach reveals an important dynamic that is not seen through the socionature dimension.
Political Economy: Enhancing the Socionature Approach
Political ecology presents a distinct way of understanding socio-environmental concerns. The school of thought was developed in the 1970s and the 1980s (Ahlborg & Nightingale, 2018, p. 381; Loftus, 2018, p.140). It has evolved within the past five decades in the context of political-economic expositions. Political ecology encompasses the role of politics in the socio-environment realm. In addition, it seems to recognize the political nature of economic and environmental matters. The political-economy approach allows for the recognition of the power that players wield in choosing how, what, and where to protect.
Dikes have very important social roles in allowing societies prone to flooding to function normally. Additionally, they can foster a variety of emotions depending on the context of the situation. Dikes can be seen in a positive light as they can turn flood-prone areas into economically and socially active areas. This means that in an attempt to explain concerns on environmental degradation, matters involving resource management politics and practices cannot be ignored. I consider that the case is more manifest in the developing nations, within the wider political economy.
The political economy analysis of environmental concerns borrows heavily from the Marxist arguments. The thoughts gave rise to a cycle of concepts of nature-society relations. Harris (2017, p. 90) states that for the most part, political judgments largely define the reasonable uses of natural resources. This is attained through the definition and implementation of basic property rights and entitlements over issues involving environmental effects. Politics establish the rules of the game that define the extent to which the human race is capitalized to adapt to the world (Nygren, 2021). This includes the processes to be followed and the waste generated as a factor of human intervention on the environment. The environmental outcomes, which may be characterized by successes or failures, are determined by the environmental policies. These strategies are formulated through a laborious political process that seeks to accommodate different economic interests.
The socionature approach describes the environmental changes and exposure to variability in connection with the social considerations of production and trade. This viewpoint amalgamates a structuralist notion of society with a positivist impression of the political-economy approach. It is adequately depicted by the political economic commentaries of land degradation and starvation (Klem & Suykens, 2018, p.755). Both the pastoralists and farmers seek to benefit from the same piece of land. While the pastoralists may overgraze, farmers will engage in over exploitation of the soils. Each of the parties depend on soil for commodity production in form of livestock products and farm products, respectively, driven by the desire to meet basic household needs.
However, there is the expectation that farmers will suffer poor or constant commodity prices even as the input costs go up. Hence, they will take advantage of aggressive production measures irrespective of their knowledge that this will ultimately cause reduced productivity. The construction of dikes comes with a positive connotation with flood prevention. On the other hand, it increases the flood hazard in areas further downstream. Research studies may point to other natural occurrences such as rising sea levels and climate change to flood occurrences (Coates & Nygren, 2020, p. 1315; Sinha, 2021). Still, the human population helps to worsen the situation by constructing high dikes upstream. The erratic weather patterns take advantage of such developments to cause major damage to villages downstream and economic losses due to flooding.
It is as a result of the combined political economic and socio-economic processes that environmental degradation occurs. The degraded soils then amount to lower yields that trigger the process of political economic tensions due to impoverishment. Another school of thought blames the society for engaging in unorthodox use of land. The irrationality and overpopulation then result in environmental problems that are manifest in many forms, including flooding (Nightingale, 2018, p.701; Harris, 2017, p. 91). By means of the socio nature perspective smallholder farmers may have to act rationally under unfavorable political economic circumstances. This is because of the pressure from the powerful or rich individuals against the powerless and poor citizens in affected regions.
Governance and the Environment
The issue of governance has emerged out of the recent political–ecological work. Environmental governance is a technical area that needs to be managed using proper infrastructure. However, it involves many sociopolitical processes centered around the need for the government to strengthen state power (Camargo & Ojeda, 2017, p. 59). The state sees the need to be forcefully entangled in environmental matters through laws to manage conservation and support modern agricultural methods. The government goes on to have a major role even in the modern neoliberal regime. Forms of governance are expected to change with time, but statecraft involvement is persistent.
The state exercises its authority by means of social mobilization that entails political influence and coercion. In such a way, the socio-environmental state develops ideas on the methods of change to recognize what needs to be governed and who is has the authority to govern (Nightingale, 2018, p.709). Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) along with private firms also get engaged by carrying out a lot of activities in project implementation and evaluation. This covers the role of supporting communities in conservation measures, including the construction of dikes.
Conclusion
Dikes are important object in environmental conservation, particularly in controlling flooding. The socionature approach to the environment does not offer a wider comprehension of the concerns giving to the rise of such environmental problems. The political economy approach provides a different viewpoint involving the interplay of politics and economics on the environment. The political economy approach involves power play as to the need to have environmental conservation. Everybody desires to engage in environmental issues based on the political and economic gains, as proposed by the Marxist theory. Governance cannot be ignored in environmental conservation as the state has to be involved in directing the involvement of different players. The state seeks to define the laws and policies entities and individuals should observe.
References
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