Piers Blaikie is a development scholar

Development studies

Development studies is a multidisciplinary branch of social science which addresses issues of concern to developing countries. It has historically placed a particular focus on issues related to social and economic development, and its relevance may therefore extend to communities and regions...

 who worked until 2003 at the School of Development Studies

School of International Development

The School of International Development is a department at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England. Situated within the Faculty of Social Sciences, the School of International Development has 250 undergraduates, 150 taught postgraduates, 80 PhD students, 13 associated researchers and 36...

, University of East Anglia

University of East Anglia

The University of East Anglia is a public research university based in Norwich, United Kingdom. It was established in 1963, and is a founder-member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities.-History:...

. His contribution to development has been in four areas:

• Environment
  Environmental policy
  Environmental policy is any [course of] action deliberately taken [or not taken] to manage human activities with a view to prevent, reduce, or mitigate harmful effects on nature and natural resources, and ensuring that man-made changes to the environment do not have harmful effects on...
  
  
• Agrarian Change
• AIDS
  AIDS
  Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
  
   and family planning
  Family planning
  Family planning is the planning of when to have children, and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education, prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, pre-conception counseling and...
  
  
• political ecology
  Political ecology
  Political ecology is the study of the relationships between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues and changes. Political ecology differs from apolitical ecological studies by politicizing environmental issues and phenomena....
  
  

Background

Blaikie was born in wartime Scotland, in Helensburgh. He was educated at Cambridge University, where he completed an undergraduate degree in geography (1964) and a PhD (1971). He lectured in geography at the University of Reading from 1968 to 1972, before spending 33 years at the University of East Anglia, in the School of Development Studies, where he eventually became Professor. He retired in 2003.

Major contributions

Of all his work his best known is the small volume published in 1985 Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries. In this book, and elsewhere, he argues that soil erosion should not only, or even mainly, be thought of as being the result of mismanagement, overpopulation

Overpopulation

Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth...

 or for environmental reasons but can often be due to the effects of political economy

Political economy

Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...

 on the farmer

Farmer

A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...

s. His early work was based on the case of Nepal, where the marginalisation of peasant farmers onto steep slopes has resulted in erosion. Blaikie writes A principal conclusion of this book is that soil erosion in lesser developed countries will not be substantially reduced unless it seriously threatens the accumulation possibilities of the dominant classes (p147).

Blaikie's legacy from this book was the beginnings of regional political ecology

Political ecology

Political ecology is the study of the relationships between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues and changes. Political ecology differs from apolitical ecological studies by politicizing environmental issues and phenomena....

, a particular approach to understanding the economic and political drivers of resource degradation and particularly the lack of access to natural resources suffered by poor or marginalised people. In Land Degradation and Society (Methuen,1987) the approach received further development. Blaikie regards an environmental problem as rooted in processes operationg at different nested scales, moving from the local to the international political economy

International political economy

International political economy , also known as global political economy, is an academic discipline within the social sciences that analyzes international relations in combination with political economy. As an interdisciplinary field it draws on many distinct academic schools, most notably ...

. The job of the political ecologist is to work out how these scaled factors interrelate. In AIDS in Africa Blaikie and UEA colleague Tony Barnett applied the approach to understanding the contemporary AIDS crisis in Africa, based on substantial fieldwork in East Africa.

The first edition of At Risk (1994) applied the approach once again to a range of so-called 'natural' disasters, which were found to be significantly magnified by inequality and capitalist greed. By this stage, political ecology had 'arrived' as a framework in the social sciences, and critiques began to be heard concerning the rigidities of some aspects of the framework. At Risk was rewritten and reissued in 2004, responding to these criticisms

Recognition

• Honorary Doctorate, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2009
• Winner, Netting Award, Association of American Geographers, 2009
• Listed in Simon D. (ed.) 2006. Fifty Key Thinkers on Development.
• The subject of a Special Issue of the journal Geoforum (2008) "In Honor of the Life work of Piers Blaikie in Political Ecology and Development Studies". Geoforum 39, 687-772.
• June 2004. The Royal Geographical Society Edward Heath Award for published work on Africa and Asia.
• January 2000. Life Member of the Royal Norwegian Society for Science and Letters, Oslo.
• An annual Piers Blaikie Lecture on Politics of the Environment was begun at the University of East Anglia in 2011.

Key works

• Springate-Baginski, O and Blaikie, P.M.(eds) (2007) Forests, People and Power: the Political Ecology of Reform in South Asia. London: Earthscan. ISBN 978 184407 347 4.
• Ben Wisner, Piers Blaikie, Terry Cannon and Ian Davis (2004) At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability and Disasters. London, Routledge. ISBN 0 415 25216 4.
• Blaikie, PM and Sadeque, Z. (2000) Policy in High Places: Environment and Development in the Himalayas. Nepal: International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. ISBN 92 9115 2331.
• De Haan, L. and Blaikie, P.M (eds) (1998) Looking at Maps in the Dark: Directions for Geographical Research in Land Management and Sustainable Development in Rural and Urban Environments in the Third World. Utrecht/Amsterdam: Netherlands Geographical Studies. ISSN 0169-4839.
• Blaikie, PM and S Jeanrenaud. (1995) Biodiversity and Human Welfare. Discussion Paper No.72. Geneva: UNRISD.
• Blaikie, P.M, Biot, Y., Jackson, C & Palmer-Jones, R. (l995) Rethinking Land Degradation in Developing Countries. World Bank Discussion Paper No. 289. Washington DC: World Bank. ISBN 0 8213 3329 1
• Blaikie, P.M. (l994) Political Ecology in the l990s: An Evolving View of Nature and Society. CASID Distinguished Speaker Series No.l3. Centre for Advanced Study of International Development, Michigan State University, USA.
• Blaikie, P.M. Cannon, T., Davis, I., & Wisner, B.(1994) At Risk: Natural Hazards, People's Vulnerability and Disasters. London: Routledge. ISBN 0 415 08476 8. Spanish edition 1997.
• Blaikie PM and Barnett, AS (1992) AIDS in Africa. London: Belhaven Press (Reprinted by John Wiley, London in 1994). Also Guildford Press, New York. ISBN 185293 115 9.
• Blaikie PM and Harold Brookfield (1987) Land Degradation and Society. London: Methuen ISBN 0 416 40140 6.
• Blaikie PM (1985) The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries. London: Longman. Reprinted by Pearson Education in 2000. ISBN 582 30089 4, and 0 470 20419 2 (USA only).
• Blaikie PM Cameron J. and Seddon J.D.(1980). Nepal in Crisis: Growth and Stagnation at the Periphery. Delhi: Adroit Publishers. ISBN 0 19 828414 4. Republished with new chapter in 2000. Oxford University Press, London and Delhi.
• Blaikie PM Cameron J. and Seddon J.D. (1980) Struggle for Basic Needs: a case study in Nepal. OECD Monograph Series. Paris: OECD Development Centre.
• Blaikie, P.M. Seddon J.D. and Cameron J. Aris (1979) Peasants and Workers in Nepal. Warminster: Phillips. ISBN 0 85668 112 1. 214 pps.
• Blaikie, P.M. (1975) Family Planning in India: Diffusion and Policy. London: Edward Arnold, London.