Shadow ecologies of conservation: Co-production of salmon landscapes in Hokkaido, Japan, and southern Chile

• Published in: Geoforum Vol. 61; pp. 101 - 110
• Main Author: Swanson, Heather Anne
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.05.2015
• Subjects: Chile; Commodity chains; Japan; Landscape; Political economy; Political scientists; Salmon; Sustainability; Trade; Water pollution; Landscape; Chile; Salmon; Sustainability; Commodity chains; Japan
• ISSN: 0016-7185; 1872-9398
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.02.018

•Examines effects of salmon trade on landscapes in Chile and Japan.•Argues conservation projects in Japan are intertwined with degradation in Chile.•Draws attention to how political economy affects landscapes of “core” regions.•Calls for an expansion of the geographies through which we define “sustainability.” Japan has long been infamous for what political scientist Dauvergne (1997) has called its “shadow ecologies,” the effects of its natural resource consumption on environments beyond its borders. What has drawn little attention, however, are the ways in which resource exploitation abroad also affects the ecologies that lie within the borders of Japan. This paper explores these secondary effects – what one might call the “shadow” of Dauvergne’s “shadow ecologies” – through ethnographic and historical research on the Chile–Japan salmon trade. This commodity chain exports the environmental burdens of salmon farming, such as water pollution, to southern Chile. Yet, at the same time, this trade has enabled unexpected changes in Japanese salmon worlds, including new forms of “eco-friendly” fisheries management, citizen-based conservation projects, and indigenous rights movements. Examining the linkages between environmental decline in Chile and environmental restoration in Japan, this article asks how geographically distant ecologies and species become intimately connected through political economic processes. By focusing on multispecies landscapes, rather than commodities, per se, it argues for additional attention to how the environments of “core” regions are affected by transnational trade. As it does so, it highlights a need to attend more carefully to the countryside–countryside connections that existing work on city–hinterland relations tends to miss.