This book explores the political ecology of agrofuels as an encompassing socio-spatial transformation process consisting of a series of changing contexts, political reconfigurations, and the restructuring of social and labour relations. It includes conceptual chapters as well as case studies from different world regions (North America, Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia) and levels (local, national, transnational). The Political Ecology of Agrofuels advances a conceptualisation of agrofuels that helps to fill existing research gaps. It covers global food regimes and agrarian politics as well as political arenas such as energy, climate, transport and trade. It reflects on the biophysical materiality of agrofuels, new forms of nature appropriation, struggles, discursive framings, the building of hegemony, shifting geopolitical constellations, socio-spatial configurations of power, the construction of territory, the agency of social movements and the different ways in which agrofuels are politicized at different scales. This book asks how patterns of mobility, emissions regulation, food and energy production and consumption, and social relations (e.g. labour, class and gender relations) are shaped and re-shaped by the materiality and representations of agrofuels in both the Global South and North. The book provides tools for thinking about the diversity of the conflicts, struggles and spatial, socio-ecological and politico-economic reconfigurations and perpetuations engendered by current production and consumption patterns in the agrofuel sector.

Through international case studies, this book evaluates how various policy challenges are having an impact on specific agricultural policy regimes, and what future lessons might be learnt from key policy experiments around neoliberalism and multifunctionality.

Sustainable Production Consumption Systems brings together a set of designed case studies intended to provide a more in-depth understanding of challenges and opportunities in bringing knowledge and actions closer together for the sustainable management of specific production and consumption systems. The case study approach enabled researchers to engage directly with some of the actors involved in the production, consumption or regulation of specific goods or services and other stakeholders affected by those processes. Such engagement was particularly worthwhile when it helped mobilize actors to pursue linking knowledge with action in ways that improve the prospects for sustainability.

The earth's not dying, it's being killed. Only a movement for renewable energy will save it.

As demand for natural resources increases due to the rise in world population and living standards, conflicts over their access and control are becoming more prevalent. This book critically assesses different approaches to and conceptualizations of resource fairness and justice and applies them to the analysis of resource conflicts. Approaches addressed include cosmopolitan liberalism, political economy and political ecology. These are applied at various scales (local, national, international) and to initiatives and instruments in public and private resource governance, such as corporate social responsibility instruments, certification schemes, international law and commodity markets. In doing so, the contributions contrast existing approaches to fairness and justice and extend them by taking into account the interplay between political scales, regions, resources, and power structures in "glocalized" resource politics. Various case studies are included concerning agriculture, agrofuels, land grabbing, water resources, mining and biodiversity. The volume adds to the academic and policy debate by bringing together a variety of disciplines and perspectives in order to advance both a research and policy agenda that puts notions of resource fairness and justice center-stage.

This book addresses key questions on biofuels within agrarian political economy, political sociology and political ecology. Contributions are based on fresh empirical materials from different parts of the world. The book starts with four key questions in agrarian political economy: Who owns what? Who does what? Who gets what? And what do they do with the surplus wealth? It also addresses the emergent social and political relations in the biofuel complex and, given the impacts on natural resources and sustainability, engages with questions about people-environment interactions. At the same time, the book is concerned with the politics of representation, that is, what are the discursive frames through which biofuels are promoted and/or opposed? The book analyses the institutional structures, and cultures of energy consumption on which a biofuels complex depends, and the alternative political and ecological visions emerging that call the biofuels complex into question. Across sixteen chapters presenting material from five regions across the North-South divide and focusing on fourteen countries including Brazil, Indonesia, India, USA and Germany, these topics are addressed within the following themes: global (re)configurations; agro-ecological visions; conflicts, resistances and diverse outcomes; state, capital and society relations; mobilising opposition, creating alternatives; and change and continuity. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies.