Ecologia política: onde est o os conteúdos da política?

The limited engagement of political ecology with broader social and environmental research, discourse, and policy may in part reflect the general weakness of public engagement by the discipline of geography as a whole (MURPHY, 2005). Yet, as a field that largely emerged from critiques of policy, and owes much of its intellectual genealogy to applied fields such as hazards studies (WATTS; PEET, 2004, p. 8), the ambivalence toward policy among many political ecologists seems puzzling. How can we understand this apparent ambivalence? How can we explain the indifference, if not actual hostility, toward political ecology by some policy-makers? These are the questions this essay examines. The reader (and certainly the author) may be disappointed that this essay provides no firm answers but, after 20 years of an uncertain and sometimes tense relationship between political ecology and policy, these questions merit greater discussion.