A mini-series on Cities and Geopolitics by Urban Political Podcast
in collaboration with the Second Cold War Observatory and Urban Geography Journal
What happens when we bring questions of power, territory, infrastructure, and ecological transformation into the same conversation? In this bonus episode of the Cities and Geopolitics miniseries, Nitin Bathla is joined by Malini Ranganathan and Garrett Graddy-Lovelace to explore the emerging field of geopolitical ecology. Moving beyond conventional understandings of geopolitics as a matter of states, borders, and great-power competition, the conversation examines how ecological processes, environmental governance, agrarian transformations, and everyday struggles over land, water, energy, and food have become central to contemporary geopolitical contestations.
Drawing on examples ranging from agricultural frontiers and resource extraction to environmental justice movements, the discussion explores how geopolitical projects are materialised through ecological relations and how ecological crises, in turn, reshape political orders across scales. The episode reflects on the growing entanglement of environmental change, security, infrastructure, and global inequality, while considering what a geopolitical ecology perspective can contribute to understanding a rapidly urbanising and warming planet consumed by wars and blockades.
The speakers discuss the intellectual origins of geopolitical ecology, its relationship to political ecology and critical geopolitics, and its potential to illuminate emerging struggles over territory, sovereignty, and planetary futures in the twenty-first century.
Edited by Anne Goßler.
Additional Links:
Palestine Heirloom Seed Library – which we feature in the Food As Necropolitics forthcoming paper as a key example of a ‘geopolitical agroecology’ in that it is a transnational land-based solidarity of Palestinian ‘seed protectors’ (Garrett Graddy-Lovelace is a Seed Protector with PHSL) https://www.palestineheirloomseedlibrary.com/
Initiative for Participatory Research in Agroecology (https://agroecologyfund.org/key-initiatives/initiative-for-participatory-research-in-agroecology-ipa-global/) – I am a researcher in this global network, tracing the wide scope of agroecology movements and their increasingly interconnected political goals and methods – another ‘geopolitical agroecology’ in the making.
UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants & Others Living in Rural Areas (https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1650694?ln=en)
The Nyéléni Global Forum (https://nyeleniglobalforum.org/)
Geopolitical ecology for our times, Garrett Graddy-Lovelace, Malini Ranganathan, 2023, Political Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.103034
Picking up arms against a collapsing planet: militarised ecologies on a planetary scale, Corinne Lamain, Esther Marijnen, Nico Edwards, Thijs Jeursen, 2026, Geoforum, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104636
The military green transition: Decarbonisation as warfighting opportunity, Nico Edwards, 2026, Political Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2026.103573
Guests:
Garrett Graddy-Lovelace
Garrett Graddy-Lovelace researches and teaches agricultural policy and agrarian geography as Provost Associate Professor at American University School of International Service, where she co-founded the Ethnographies of Empire Research Cluster and the Race, Climate & Agrarian Justice Lab. As a community-based scholar, she co-founded the Disparity to Parity project (co-authoring a book connecting US farm justice to India MSP movement), the Agroecology Research-Action Collective, and the Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance Seed Policy group. She is lead-researcher for US chapter of the international Initiative for Participatory Research in Agroecology. PhD in Geography from University of Kentucky; Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School.
Malini Ranganathan
Malini Ranganathan is Associate Professor in the School of International Service at American University and an urban geographer and political ecologist by training. Her research examines the political economy of land, labor, and environmental justice in urban areas of India and the U.S. She is the co-author of Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City (Cornell Press), winner of the 2024 Leeds Prize for best book in critical urban anthropology. She is also the co-editor of Rethinking Difference as Racialization in India: Caste, Tribe, and Hindu Nationalism. She is currently finishing a book titled The Urbanization of Caste Power (forthcoming with Cambridge Press), focused on her longstanding scholar-activism and historical research in Bengaluru, and working on a second book, Climates of Labor Migration: Planetary Ecologies of Caste and Racial Capitalism.
Host:
Nitin Bathla
Nitin Bathla is a transdisciplinary researcher working at the intersection of urbanization, the environment, society, and the arts. He holds a Doctorate in Urban Studies from ETH Zurich and is currently jointly affiliated with ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. He is the author of the award-winning book Researching Otherwise: Pluriversal Methods for Urban and Landscape Studies and the critically acclaimed documentary Not Just Roads.
Nitin serves as an editor for the journal Urban Geography and the Urban Political Podcast, and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Urban Political Ecology and Shared Habitats. His current research focuses on the political ecology of nocturnal urbanization and public illumination in Switzerland.