TERRITORIAL ECOLOGIES: The Turn towards Territories of Ecological Dignity

An ecological perspective on territory helps to decolonize the hegemonic and racialized state-centric notion of territory as the demarcation and domination of human and non-human beings. Based on recent scholarship and radical social movement practices, this chapter offers an alternative definition of territory as a series of values, places, and spatial practices that coheres to produce a collective political subject. This broader conception of territory allows for richer understandings and evaluations of diverse political and ecological formations, including the state itself but also socioenvironmental movements like the Colombian Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, ecopolitical regions like Abya Yala, and alternatives to state governance like democratic confederalism. The concept is strategically useful for the field of political ecology because territory connects space and politics, especially alternative designs of ecopolitical structure rooted in just relations and solidarity towards ecological dignity.