Environmental geopolitics: an introduction to questions and research approaches

Most people have a sense of what the field of geopolitics is: it has something to do with how place intertwines with power being exercised or challenged. Geopolitics is related to how decisions are made with a particular, place-related outcome or vision in mind: overcoming a boundary, expanding territory, or making sure that someone or something else does not threaten a boundary or a territory. Geopolitics might most easily be associated with states or countries and how they relate to each other over spatial issues such as the control of boundaries and territory. Yet there are other actors or interest groups beyond states, and there are spaces and places that are beyond, within, and between the spaces claimed by states. The field of geopolitics, then, considers far more than how states make place-related and spatial decisions and actions. It encompasses many kinds of struggle to control places and place-related activities – What kinds of things can happen here? Who is allowed to be here? Who gets to make those decisions? – and considers different actors, interest groups, voices, and perspectives on spatial activities and processes.