Definition
As global ecological crises deepen, the scramble by the powerful for what land, water, and resources are left is accelerating. The resulting environmental injustices, whether known as accumulation by dispossession, ecological debt, ecologically unequal exchange, or other related forms, are intensifying. Behind all such trends is a complex global political economy- a capitalist world-system enabling and reinforcing ecological imperialism. Ecological imperialism can be conceptualized as the subjugation of the economic, political, and/or social institutions of a (generally semiperipheral or peripheral) country for the biophysical, metabolic needs of the (generally core or semiperiphery), inextricable from the purpose of making such resources accessible and amenable (in the right...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Burkett, P. (2006). Marxism and ecological economics toward a red and green political economy. Leiden: Brill.
Chase-Dunn, C., & Hall, T. (1997). Rise and demise: Comparing world-systems. Boulder: Westview Press.
Davis, S. J., & Caldeira, K. (2010). Consumption-based accounting of CO2 emissions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(12), 5687–5692.
Feng, K., Chapagain, A., Suh, S., Pfister, S., & Hubacek, K. (2011). Comparison of bottom-up and top-down approaches to calculating the water footprints of nations. Economic Systems Research, 23(4), 371–385.
Foster, J. B. (2002). Capitalism and ecology: The nature of the contradiction. Monthly Review, 54(4). Retrieved from http://monthlyreview.org/2002/09/01/capitalism-and-ecology
Frame, M. (2016). The neoliberalization of (African) natures as the current phase of ecological imperialism. Capitalism, Nature, and Socialism, 27(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2015.1135973.
Frame, M. (2018). The role of the semiperiphery in ecologically unequal exchange: A case study of land grabbing in Cambodia. In S. Frey, P. Gellert, & H. Dahm (Eds.), Ecologically unequal exchange: Environmental injustice in comparative and historical perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Galli, A., et al. (2012). Integrating ecological, carbon and water footprint into a “footprint family” of indicators: Definition and role in tracking human pressure on the planet. Ecological Indicators, 16, 100–112.
Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heinrich, M. (2004). An introduction to the three volumes of Karl Marx’s capital. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Hertwich, E. G., & Peters, G. P. (2009). Carbon footprint of nations: A global, trade-linked analysis. Environmental Science & Technology, 43(16), 6414–6420.
Heynen, N. (2007). Neoliberal environments: False promises and unnatural consequences. London: Routledge.
Hornborg, A. (2011). Global ecology and unequal exchange: fetishism in a zero-sum world. Abingdon: Routledge.
Lenzen, M., et al. (2012). International trade drives biodiversity threats in developing nations. Nature, 486(7401), 109–112.
Lenzen, M., et al. (2013). International trade of scarce water. Ecological Economics, 94, 78–85.
Luxemburg, R. (1964). The accumulation of capital. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Magdoff, H. (2003). Imperialism without colonies. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Moore, J. W. (2001). Marx’s ecology and the environmental history of world capitalism. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 23(3), 134–139.
Moore, J. W. (2003). The modern world-system as environmental history? Ecology and the rise of capitalism. Theory and Society, 32(3), 307–377.
Moore, J. W. (2011). Transcending the metabolic rift: A theory of crises in the capitalist world-ecology. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(1), 1–46.
Moore, J. W. (2012). Cheap food & bad money: Food, frontiers, and financialization in the rise and demise of neoliberalism. Review: A Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center, 33(2–3), 225–261.
O’Connor, J. (1998). Natural causes: Essays in ecological Marxism. New York: Guilford Press.
OECD Report. (2019). Biodiversity: Finance and the economic and business case for action. https://www.oecd.org/env/resources/biodiversity/biodiversity-finance-and-the-economic-and-business-case-for-action.htm
Peet, R. (2009). Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO. London/New York: Zed Books. Second edition
Singh, S. J., & Eisenmenger, N. (2010). How unequal is international trade? An ecological perspective using material flow accounting. Journal fur Entwicklungspolitik, XXVI, 57–88.
Smith, J. (2016). Imperialism in the 21st century: Globalization, super-exploitation, and capitalism’s final crisis. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Smith, D. A., & Mahutga, M. C. (2009). Trading up the commodity chain? The impact of extractive and labor-intensive manufacturing trade on world-systems inequalities. In J. Bair (Ed.), Frontiers of commodity chain research (pp. 63–82). Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Steen-Olsen, K., Weinzettel, J., Cranston, G., Ercin, A. E., & Hertwich, E. G. (2012). Carbon, land, and water footprint accounts for the European Union: Consumption, production, and displacements through international trade. Environmental Science & Technology, 46(20), 10883–10891.
Vasudevan, R. (2017). The significance of Marx’s theory on money. Monthly Review. https://mronline.org/2017/09/18/the-significance-of-marxs-theory-on-money/
Weinzettel, J., Hertwich, E. G., Peters, G. P., Steen-Olsen, K., & Galli, A. (2013). Affluence drives the global displacement of land use. Global Environmental Change, 23(2), 433–438.
Wiedman, T. O., Schandl, H., Lenzen, M., Moral, D., Suh, S., West, J., & Kanemoto, K. (2013). The material footprint of nations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(20), 6271–6276.
Wiedmann, T., et al. (2010). A carbon footprint time series of the UK: Results from a multiregion input-output model. Economic Systems Research, 22(1), 19–42.
Yu, Y., Feng, K., & Hubacek, K. (2013). Tele-connecting local consumption to global land use. Global Environmental Change. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.04.006.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Frame, M. (2021). Ecological Imperialism: A Theoretical Overview. In: Ness, I., Cope, Z. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29901-9_205
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29901-9_205
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-29900-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-29901-9
eBook Packages: HistoryReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities