Political economy of environmental risks of development: structure of resource mobilization and profit allocation.

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25550107
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Environmental policy and social systems
• Research Institution: Rikkyo University
• Principal Investigator: ABE Ryuichiro 立教大学, 経済学部, 特定課題研究員 (10412412)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 環境リスクの外部化 / リスク社会 / 中心ー周辺構造 / 開発政策 / 持続可能な開発 / 新自由主義 / 資本蓄積

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Investigating various development policies and projects in Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines, we delineate political economic process how the powerful transfers environmental risks into the marginalized. In Japan, safety dogma of nuclear power had long been maintained, while its government and utility companies had distorted communication of nuclear risks. In Indonesia and the Philippines, unequal power relations between development agencies and local people, and/or central government and local government make environmental assessment insufficient and externalize environmental risks into locals.
Both in developed and developing world, neo-liberal development policies bar environmental risks from been internalized and transfer them into the marginalized under the name of structural reform. Those policies make political space for rent-seeking for the powerful so that capital accumulation can be pursued even though under the climate of today's economic stagnation.

Free Research Field

ポリティカル・エコロジー