Introduction: Political Ecology and Canadian Political Economy

The papers in this special iSSU. e of Studies in Political Economy are, with one exception, drawn from presentations made at the SPE annual conference in February 2002. The conference objective was to provide a forum for public and scholarly engagement with the questions of political ecology and political economy.The papers provided a number of critical perspectives on the themes of sustainable development and the politics of environmental degradation, and several innovative papers suggested new ways of rethinking conventional assumptions of environment and governance. The topic was especially germane for 2002 given the plans then underway for the "Rio+10"UN summit on Sustainable Development subsequently held in Johannesburg in August 2002. Given the minimal results of this meeting, the critiques and reformulations of the papers included in this issue seem even more important now. It is particularly important for political economists today to broaden their horizon to the ecological.As neoliberalism broadens its influence world wide, its principal proponents in governments and corporations have tried to incorporatethrough processes such as Agenda 21 and other global conventions and actions-environmental concerns and politics into their rhetoric. This has changed the tone and substance of many of its original intentions, making it part of a larger agenda of changing the rules of accumulation around the world. Ecomanagerialism and sole concern with a conservationist version of "sustainability" have attempted to sideline the more critical intentions of linking the environmental debate to issues of development and justice)