Mohammad Tanzimuddin Khan

Recent contributions to ‘statistical political ecology’ have identified political and economic formations associated with the killing, criminalization and intimidation of land and environmental defenders - as well as characteristics of successful resistance movements in which defenders play a part. This chapter is concerned with the land defenders who have mobilized against resurgent coal power in Bangladesh over the last decade and a half. Many of these defenders have been subjected to violence within the context of conflicts and movements that fit emerging global patterns. However, an analysis of the political economy of coal power in Bangladesh reveals particular contradictions in the measures of ‘corruption’ and ‘rule of law’ that facilitate cross-national comparison of the contexts in which defenders face violence. This chapter concludes by highlighting the degree to which efforts to promote good governance and rule of law can facilitate the expansion of violent extractive operations that put land and environmental defenders at risk. It calls for greater attention to the ‘violence footprints’ of transnational corporations and donor agencies with whom the sovereign power of the Bangladeshi state is entangled.

This article explores the causes of the United Nations’ inertia in dealing with the Rohingya crisis since its beginning in August 2017. Here we argue that the United Nations' inherent structural weaknesses contribute to its indecisiveness in taking any effective and timely measures when faced with a humanitarian crisis. We further argue that weaknesses of the United Nations have their origins in the creation of the organization and its sole dependency on the decisions of the five permanent members of the Security Council for any intervention in humanitarian crises. In the conclusion, we consider the prospect of the General Assembly in light of the globally recognized Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine as an alternative to resolve this inherent weakness and the obstacles to taking effective and timely measures in dealing with Rohingya-like situations.

Theoretical frameworks in political ecology and participatory nature/forest conservation: the necessity for a heterodox approach and the critical moment

We seek to understand the contemporary adaptive co-management framework of natural/forest resource conservation. To do this we trace the genealogy of adaptive co-management and its call for the “democratic participation” of “all stakeholders”. We show how this inserted commercial agents as stakeholders, thus providing contemporary neoliberal accumulation regimes with a problem-solving framework for natural/forest conservation shaped by, and amenable to, their characteristic managerial discourse of “flexibility”, “innovation”, “voluntary self-regulation”, “incentivization”, “partnership”, “network(ing)”, “social learning” and “local knowledge”.

The Nishorgo Support Project, the Lawachara National Park, and the Chevron seismic survey: forest conservation or energy procurement in Bangladesh?