Political ecology is the study of the relationships between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues and changes. Political ecology differs from apolitical ecological studies by politicizing environmental issues and phenomena.
The African forest elephant is one of the two living species of African elephant. It is native to humid tropical forests in West Africa and the Congo Basin. It is the smallest of the three living elephant species, reaching a shoulder height of 2.4 m. As with other African elephants, both sexes have straight, down-pointing tusks, which begin to grow once the animals reach 1–3 years old. The forest elephant lives in highly sociable family groups of up to 20 individuals. Since they forage primarily on leaves, seeds, fruit, and tree bark, they have often been referred to as the 'megagardener of the forest'; the species is one of many that contributes significantly to maintaining the composition, diversity and structure of the Guinean Forests of West Africa and the Congolese rainforests. Seeds of various plants will go through the elephant's digestive tract and eventually pass through in the animal's droppings, thus helping to maintain the spread and biodiversity of the forests.
Black studies or Africana studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field that primarily focuses on the study of the history, culture, and politics of the peoples of the African diaspora and Africa. The field includes scholars of African-American, Afro-Canadian, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, Afro-European, Afro-Asian, African Australian, and African literature, history, politics, and religion as well as those from disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, education, and many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. The field also uses various types of research methods.
Carl Ortwin Sauer was an American geographer. Sauer was a professor of geography at the University of California at Berkeley from 1923 until becoming professor emeritus in 1957. He has been called "the dean of American historical geography" and he was instrumental in the early development of the geography graduate school at Berkeley. One of his best known works was Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (1952). In 1927, Carl Sauer wrote the article "Recent Developments in Cultural Geography", which considered how cultural landscapes are made up of "the forms superimposed on the physical landscape".
The resource curse, also known as the paradox of plenty or the poverty paradox, is the hypothesis that countries with an abundance of natural resources have lower economic growth, lower rates of democracy, or poorer development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources. There are many theories and much academic debate about the reasons for and exceptions to the adverse outcomes. Most experts believe the resource curse is not universal or inevitable but affects certain types of countries or regions under certain conditions. As of at least 2024, there is no academic consensus on the effect of resource abundance on economic development.
The Niger Delta is the delta of the Niger River sitting directly on the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria. It is located within nine coastal southern Nigerian states, which include: all six states from the South South geopolitical zone, one state (Ondo) from South West geopolitical zone and two states from South East geopolitical zone.
Robert W. Kates was an American geographer and independent scholar in Trenton, Maine, and University Professor (Emeritus) at Brown University.
The African Studies Association (ASA) is a US-based association of scholars, students, practitioners, and institutions with an interest in the continent of Africa. Founded in 1957, the ASA is the leading organization of African Studies in North America, with a global membership of approximately 2000. The association's headquarters are at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The ASA holds annual conferences and virtual events for its members year-round.
Paul Richards is an emeritus professor of technology and agrarian development at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, and adjunct professor at Njala University in central Sierra Leone. He was formerly a professor in the Department of Anthropology, University College London for many years, and previously taught anthropology and geography, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
Philippe Le Billon is a researcher known for his work in political ecology and on the political economy of war. A Fulbright Research Chair at UC Berkeley and Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Le Billon is a professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) with the Department of Geography and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. He earned an MBA at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University in Paris and a doctorate at the University of Oxford. Prior to joining UBC he collaborated with the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).
The African bush elephant, also known as the African savanna elephant, is a species of elephant native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of two extant species of African elephant and one of three extant elephant species. It is the largest living terrestrial animal, with fully grown bulls reaching an average shoulder height of 3.04–3.36 metres (10.0–11.0 ft) and a body mass of 5.2–6.9 tonnes (11,000–15,000 lb); the largest recorded specimen had a shoulder height of 3.96 metres (13.0 ft) and an estimated body mass of 10.4 tonnes (23,000 lb). The African bush elephant is characterised by its long prehensile trunk with two finger-like processes; a convex back; large ears which help reduce body heat; and sturdy tusks that are noticeably curved. The skin is grey with scanty hairs throughout.
Christopher Oluwole Rotimi is a retired Nigerian Army brigadier general, diplomat and politician, he served during the Nigerian Civil War, and was the Governor of Western State while Nigeria was under military rule from 1971 to 1975. Oluwole Rotimi became the Nigerian Ambassador to the United States in 2007.
Hans-Georg Bohle was a German geographer and international development researcher.
Michael Mortimore was a British geographer and a prolific researcher of issues in the African drylands. He was an academic in Nigerian universities for over 25 years. He ran a British research consultancy, Drylands Research. He is best known for an anti-Malthusian account of population-environment relationships, More People, Less Erosion, and field-based studies of adaptation to drought.
J. Richard Peet is a retired professor of human geography at the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University in Worcester MA, USA. Peet received a BSc (Economics) from the London School of Economics, an M.A. from the University of British Columbia, and moved to the USA in the mid-1960s to complete a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. He began teaching at Clark University shortly after completing his PhD from Berkeley, remained there for over 50 years, with secondments in Australia, Sweden and New Zealand. He was 'forced' into retirement in 2019, when 79 years old.
Michael Storper is an economic and urban geographer who teaches at the University of California (UCLA), Sciences Po and London School of Economics.
Sara Sweezy Berry is an American scholar of contemporary African political economies, professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and co-founder of the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins.
Raymond L. Bryant is a British-Canadian geographer and Professor Emeritus of Political Ecology at King's College London. He is known for his founding contributions to the interdisciplinary field of political ecology.
Nancy Lee Peluso is an American rural sociologist. She is the Henry J. Vaux Distinguished Professor of Forest Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2006, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
The Niger Delta swamp forests is a tropical moist forest ecoregion in southern Nigeria. It consists of freshwater swamp forests in the Niger Delta of the Niger River. This swamp forest is the second largest in Africa after the Congolian swamp forests. Although there are large cities just outside the ecoregion, the area has been relatively isolated by the difficulty of building roads across the swamps, although this is changing with development of oil and logging industries. Scientific surveys have only begun in recent years, and new species were being identified into the 1990s. Crude oil exploration and pollution has been a threat to forests in the Niger Delta region.
“Fellow Spotlight: Michael Watts”, American Academy in Berlin, 2016
