The People and the Earth: Ecopopulism in the Light of
Laclau’s Theory of Populism and Environmental Politics
Dr. Md Nazmul Hasan
Independent Researcher
Ph.D. (Visva-Bharati,
Santiniketan, India)
Abstract: This paper examines the rise of ecopopulism, an
emerging form of politics that connects environmental concerns with a populist
worldview. It argues that traditional approaches to environmental crises – such
as expert-led governance, technocratic policy, and market solutions – are
increasingly seen as inadequate. Ecopopulism, in contrast, presents ecological
harm as a form of collective injustice experienced by ordinary people and
caused or ignored by powerful elites such as governments, corporations, and
global institutions. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism, the paper
defines ecopopulism as a discursive and political logic that constructs “the
people” as victims of ecological damage and pits popular ecological demands
against elite power structures. Key concepts such as the empty signifier and
the chain of equivalence explain how diverse environmental and social
grievances – such as pollution, displacement, health risks, and loss of
livelihoods – can coalesce into a shared political project. The article also
highlights that ecopopulism can take both left-wing and right-wing forms,
ranging from ecological justice movements to nationalist uses of green
rhetoric. Finally, it applies this framework to the Indian ecological context,
showing how struggles over land, water, forests, and development reflect
populist dynamics. The paper concludes that ecopopulism can deepen democratic
participation in environmental politics, but it also carries risks of
oversimplification and exclusion.
Keywords: Ecopopulism; Ernesto Laclau; Environmental Politics;
Chain of Equivalence; Empty Signifier; Environmental Justice;
1.
Introduction
Today,
environmental crises have become a defining feature of global political life – climate
crisis, biodiversity loss, and ecological degradation now shape public
discourse and policy agendas worldwide. Traditional political frameworks offer
no answers to these challenges. To counter these challenges, a new intersection
has emerged between environmental politics and populism. “Ecopopulism”, an
emerging concept, refers to the blending of ecological concerns with a populist
political logic, mobilizing “the people” against perceived elites or
establishment actors seen as responsible for environmental degradation. It also
refers to the articulation of ecological concerns through a populist framework
that constructs a political antagonism between “the people” and forces held
responsible for environmental degradation, such as political elites,
corporations, technocratic institutions, or global economic systems. As
ecological crises grow worldwide, environmental issues are now the epicentre of
political debate, becoming sites of ideological struggle, mass mobilization,
and political identity formation. The rise of ecopopulism reflects a broader
transformation in both populism and environmentalism. Populism is no longer
confined to economic or cultural grievances, while environmental politics has
expanded beyond technocratic governance and post-materialist values.
Ecopopulism emerges where ecological harm is experienced as a collective
injustice and articulated as a political failure that demands popular
intervention. Despite its growing relevance, ecopopulism remains conceptually
underdeveloped and misunderstood. It is sometimes dismissed as a rhetorical
strategy, conflated with environmentalism more broadly, or reduced to nationalist
appropriations of green discourse. Such interpretations overlook its deeper
political logic and its capacity to reshape how ecological problems are
understood, politicized, and contested. This paper tries to define ecopopulism
as a discursive and political logic that integrates ecological concerns into
populist constructions of “the people” and political antagonism. Drawing on
Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism, the essay argues that ecopopulism operates
through the articulation of ecological demands into chains of equivalence that
oppose popular ecological interests to elite power structures. This paper
examines the origins of ecopopulism, its theoretical foundations, its
variations across ideological contexts, and its implications for democracy and
environmental governance. This paper also examines ecopopulism through the lens
of Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism, arguing that Laclau’s insights
into political discourse and the construction of “the people” provide a
conceptual foundation for understanding how environmental issues are reframed
as populist political projects.
The term “ecopopulism” appears in Andrew Szasz’s 1994
book, Eco Populism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice,
where he uses it to describe grassroots environmental justice politics focused
on toxic waste and hazardous materials. The book is widely regarded as the
academic origin of the term in environmental and social movement studies.
According to Andrew Szasz, ecopopulism is a form of environmental politics that
emerges from grassroots struggles against environmental degradation, especially
toxic waste and pollution, led by ordinary people whose health and communities
are directly affected. Szasz uses the term to describe movements in which local
residents mobilize against corporations and state institutions, framing
environmental harm as an issue of injustice imposed on “the people” by powerful
economic and political actors. It is closely tied to the rise of the
environmental justice movement and reflects a bottom-up challenge to
technocratic and market-driven environmental governance (Szasz 4). He defines
ecopopulism as a form of environmental politics rooted in grassroots struggles
of everyday people confronting toxic waste and environmental hazards, framing these
issues as matters of justice against powerful economic and political interests
(Szasz 5-6).
The term “eco-populism” was coined by British green
energy entrepreneur Dale Vince in his book Manifesto: The Battle for Green
Britain (2020). He framed the concept as a strategy applying a populist
style to environmental problems. This is a normative political strategy. Vince
uses eco-populism to argue that climate politics should adopt populist
framing to win mass support. The emphasis is rhetorical and electoral rather
than sociological. In his book, he also argues that environmental policy must
be framed in terms of ordinary people versus entrenched elites in order to cut
through political barriers and win broad public support for a rapid green
transition (Vince 5)
2. Populism as Political Logic
To define ecopopulism, it is first necessary to
clarify the meaning of populism. Following Ernesto Laclau, populism is best
understood not as a fixed ideology but as a political logic through which
collective identities are constructed (Laclau, On Populist Reason117).
Populism arises when social demands remain unmet by institutional systems and
begin to recognize themselves as equivalent expressions of a broader structural
failure. In this process, disparate demands, economic, cultural, or social, are
linked together in a chain of equivalence and articulated as the will of “the
people.” This collective subject is constructed discursively and positioned
against an antagonistic other, typically framed as elites, establishments, or
power blocs or power structures. The unity of “the people” is symbolic and
contingent rather than sociologically homogeneous. Populism, in this sense, is
not inherently democratic or authoritarian, progressive or reactionary. Its
political content depends on how “the people” and “the elite” are defined and
which demands are articulated as central. This theoretical openness allows
populism to intersect with environmental politics in multiple ways, giving rise
to ecopopulism.
Ernesto Laclau reconceived populism not as a fixed
ideology tied to the left or right, but as a discursive logic through
which political identities and antagonisms are constructed. For Laclau,
populism involves articulating a chain of equivalence among disparate social
demands, uniting them under the signifier “the people” and opposing them to an
antagonistic bloc often framed as the elite or establishment (Laclau, On
Populist Reason 77). Political subjects are not pre-given; they are
constructed through discourse, and populist movements perform this construction
by creating oppositional frontiers that make certain actors legible as “the
people” and others as enemies. Laclau’s emphasis on hegemony, discourse,
and antagonism foregrounds the contingent nature of political identities.
A hegemonic project arises when a political force partially organizes a
fragmented social field by linking otherwise distinct demands into a common
project. This process depends on discursive articulation, in which signifiers
such as “the people” become focal points of shared grievance (Laclau, On
Populist Reason 93). In Laclau’s framework, the political is always a
contested ground, and populism emerges as one way of organizing political
conflict by simplifying antagonisms into a people-versus-elite schema that
resonates broadly. Importantly, Laclau’s theory allows populism to be deployed
across ideological spectrums because the chain of equivalence and the
construction of a unified political subject are not bound to specific policy
content. This insight is crucial for understanding ecopopulism, which fuses
environmental concerns with traditional populist dichotomies.
3. Defining Ecopopulism and Historical Emergence of
Ecopopulism
Ecopopulism can be defined as a political and
discursive formation in which ecological issues are articulated through a
populist logic that constructs “the people” as collective subjects of
ecological harm and positions elites or dominant systems as responsible for
environmental degradation. Unlike traditional environmentalism, which often
emphasizes scientific expertise, regulatory governance, and individual
responsibility, ecopopulism frames environmental problems as outcomes of
political exclusion and structural injustice. Ecological degradation is not
presented as an abstract global challenge but as a lived experience affecting
ordinary people, communities, and future generations. Ecopopulism thus
politicizes ecology by embedding it within narratives of popular sovereignty,
moral outrage, and democratic struggle. It rejects depoliticizing environmental
issues and insists that ecological futures must be decided collectively rather
than delegated to technocrats or markets.
Although ecopopulism has been discussed in different
contexts, its core lies in integrating ecological discourse with populist
logic. Andrew Szasz’s early work on environmental justice movements in the
United States described a form of radical environmental
populism arising out of grassroots resistance to toxic waste and
pollution, arguing that such movements reframed environmental issues as matters
of collective survival and justice for ordinary people (Szasz 6). More
recently, analysts have conceptualized “environmental populism” as the
politicization of green issues within populist rhetoric and strategy across
Europe, where both left- and right-wing actors incorporate environmental
narratives into broader populist agendas (Fu 10). In this sense, ecopopulism
operates by portraying environmental degradation as a threat to the ordinary
people and implicating elites, whether political, economic, or technocratic, as
failing, or even colluding in, ecological harm. Environmental issues, which
historically might have been framed in technical or expert terms, are reworked
into a narrative with clear antagonistic frontiers: the people who suffer the
consequences of environmental degradation versus the elite who perpetuate it. The
roots of ecopopulism can be traced to grassroots environmental justice
movements that emerged in the late twentieth century. These movements
challenged mainstream environmentalism for neglecting the experiences of
marginalized communities exposed to pollution, toxic waste, and environmental
hazards. Andrew Szasz’s analysis of environmental justice struggles in the
United States described these movements as a form of ecological populism that
mobilized working-class and minority communities against corporate and state
actors (Szasz 10).Unlike conservationist or preservationist traditions,
environmental justice movements framed ecological harm as a violation of social
and political rights. This framing transformed environmental politics into a
struggle over power, recognition, and democracy, laying the groundwork for
contemporary ecopopulist discourses. In recent decades, ecopopulism has
expanded globally as climate change and ecological crises have become
increasingly visible. Mass climate protests, indigenous resistance to
extractivism, and youth-led environmental movements articulate ecological
demands in explicitly populist terms, accusing political and economic elites of
betraying the people and the planet.
4. Ecopopulism and the Empty Signifier
One of the most useful tools for understanding
ecopopulism is Laclau’s concept of the empty signifier. An empty signifier is a
term that lacks a fixed meaning and can unify diverse demands by symbolizing a
shared political horizon (Laclau, On Populist Reason 71). Words such as
“justice,” “freedom,” or “the people” function in this way. In ecopopulism,
signifiers like “the planet,” “climate justice,” or “ecological survival” often
operate as empty signifiers. They do not refer to a single policy or ideology but
serve as symbolic points around which heterogeneous ecological and social
demands can converge (Laclau, On Populist Reason 96). The emptiness of
these signifiers allows different groups to invest them with their own meanings
while recognizing a shared antagonism. This discursive flexibility is essential
for ecological mobilization in complex societies. Environmental crises affect
people differently, but ecopopulist discourse enables these experiences to be
articulated as equivalent expressions of a systemic ecological failure.
5. Chain of Equivalence and Ecological Demands
Ecopopulism relies on constructing chains of
equivalence that link diverse ecological and social grievances. These may
include climate vulnerability, loss of livelihoods, public health crises,
indigenous dispossession, food insecurity, and democratic exclusion. While
these issues are not identical, ecopopulist discourse presents them as
interconnected consequences of a dominant ecological order. Through this
equivalential logic, ecological issues are no longer isolated or sectoral. They
become central to a broader critique of political and economic power. The chain
of equivalence transforms ecology from a technical problem into a political
problem that demands collective action. This process very much aligns with
Laclau’s claim that political unity does not emerge from shared identity but
from shared opposition. In ecopopulism, the ecological “people” is constituted
through its opposition to actors and power structures perceived as responsible
for environmental destruction.
The logic of
equivalence intensifies political antagonism by emphasizing commonality among
demands and sharpening the frontier between “the people” and “the elite.” In
ecopopulist movements, this logic manifests in narratives that oppose ordinary
people, ecosystems, and future generations to corporations, financial
interests, and political institutions complicit in ecological harm. Slogans
such as “people over profit” or “system change, not climate change” exemplify
this logic. They simplify complex ecological processes into moral and political
binaries that enable mass mobilization. This simplification is not a distortion
but a constitutive feature of political articulation (Laclau, On Populist
Reason 78). Radical ecopopulism uses the logic of equivalence to challenge
the legitimacy of existing ecological governance regimes. It rejects
market-based solutions and incremental reforms, framing them as elite
strategies to preserve power while appearing environmentally responsible. Opposed
to the logic of equivalence is the logic of difference, which seeks to manage
ecological demands individually and reintegrate them into existing systems.
Technocratic environmental policies, corporate sustainability initiatives, and
green consumerism often operate through this logic by addressing ecological
concerns without challenging underlying power structures. When ecological
demands are differentiated and institutionalized in this way, the chain of
equivalence weakens, and the populist frontier dissolves. Ecopopulism thus
faces constant pressure from strategies that depoliticize environmental issues
and reduce them to matters of management or efficiency (Laclau, New
Reflections xiv). The tension between equivalence and difference defines the
trajectory of ecopopulist movements. Their success depends on their ability to
resist co-optation while maintaining broad popular appeal.
6. Left-Wing and Right-Wing Ecopopulism
Ecopopulism is not confined to a single ideological
orientation. Left-wing ecopopulism emphasizes ecological justice,
redistribution, and democratic transformation. It links environmental
sustainability to social equality and challenges capitalist growth models.
Right-wing ecopopulism, by contrast, often combines
selective environmental rhetoric with nationalism, cultural exclusion, or
scepticism toward global environmental governance. In these cases, ecology is
framed as a matter of protecting national landscapes or resources from external
threats rather than transforming social relations (Fu 9-12). This ideological
diversity underscores the importance of understanding ecopopulism as a
political logic rather than a normative position. The same populist structure
can produce radically different ecological visions depending on how “the
people” and “the enemy” are defined.
On the left, ecopopulism often emerges
from grassroots movements and progressive parties that frame
ecological crises as symptoms of broader socioeconomic injustice. Left-leaning
environmental populists argue that environmental destruction is linked to
capitalist exploitation and structural inequality. They elevate ecological
concerns as issues that affect “ordinary people”, workers, farmers, and
indigenous communities whose voices have been marginalized by both markets and
technocratic elites. Many contemporary movements, such as global climate
strikes led by youth activists, embody this fusion. These movements expand the
boundaries of populist politics by asserting that climate change is not merely
an environmental issue but a democratic crisis in which ordinary people must
confront entrenched elite interests that resist meaningful change. Through
public demonstrations and digital mobilization, they articulate environmental
degradation as central to lived experience, thus forging equivalences among
diverse constituencies that share ecological vulnerability.
From Laclau’s perspective, these movements perform a
discursive operation that restructures political conflict: ecological
degradation becomes a signifier around which multiple demands – social justice,
economic reform, and democratic inclusion—converge. In this way, ecopopulism on
the left can be seen as a hegemonic project that seeks to unify heterogeneous
social forces around the idea that environmental sustainability and democratic
empowerment are inseparable.
Ecopopulism also appears on the right, though its
content and implications often diverge markedly from left-leaning variants.
Right-wing ecopopulists may mobilize ecological themes in ways that reinforce nationalism,
cultural identity, and xenophobia. In parts of Europe, for example, right-wing
parties have adopted selective environmental rhetoric—such as emphasizing
pollution control or resource protection—while rejecting international climate
commitments seen as imposed by cosmopolitan elites or foreign interests (Fu
10).In these cases, environmental issues are reframed as threats to national
sovereignty or traditional ways of life. Right-wing ecopopulists use ecological
concerns not to challenge existing power structures in favour of broader
democratic participation, but to assert that outsiders, bureaucratic elites, or
global institutions undermine the interests of the nation’s people. This aligns
with Laclau’s notion that populism can manifest across different ideological
terrains; the discursive logic remains the same (people vs. elite), but the
content of the “people” and the identity of the “elite” shift based on
narrative and political context. Crucially, right-wing ecopopulism may
instrumentally adopt environmental themes to expand electoral appeal without
committing to structural environmental reforms. This thin ideological
core allows environmental discourse to be grafted onto broader nationalist
projects that resist international cooperation or critique global environmental
governance as elite-driven. These dynamics illustrate how, in a populist
framework, environmentalism can be appropriated to serve political ends that
diverge from progressive ecological justice.
7. Ecopopulism as Discursive Practice
Understanding ecopopulism through Laclau’s discourse
theory clarifies why environmental politics, traditionally associated with
technocratic expertise and post-materialist values, has become part of populist
mobilization. In environmental populism, ecological issues become sites of
discursive struggle, contested meanings about nature, justice, and
responsibility are articulated in ways that resonate with “the people.”
Populist discourse simplifies complex environmental realities into political
antagonisms, crafting narratives that make ecological crises salient to broader
audiences and turning environmental governance into a matter of political
identity and agency. This discursive reframing aligns with the idea that there
is no “beyond of discourse” where politics operates outside of contested
symbolic meanings. Environmental subjects, such as “clean air” or “climate
justice”, take on political significance only through processes that link them
to collective identities and antagonistic social relations. When ecopopulists
declare that elites ignore ordinary people’s ecological concerns, they are
leveraging the same discursive mechanism that underlies other forms of
populism. Ecopopulism has significant implications for democracy. By
politicizing ecological issues, it expands democratic engagement and challenges
the monopolization of environmental decision-making by experts. Ecopopulist
movements insist that ecological futures are collective matters requiring
popular participation. At the same time, ecopopulism carries risks. Simplified
antagonisms may obscure internal diversity and suppress deliberation.
Nationalist ecopopulism may undermine global cooperation necessary to address
planetary crises. These tensions reflect broader dilemmas inherent in populist politics.
8. Challenges and Contradictions
Ecopopulism faces several challenges that stem from
both pragmatic and theoretical limitations. First, its discursive
nature can lead to strategies that prioritize short-term mobilization over
long-term policy solutions. By simplifying complex ecological problems into
stark people-versus-elite binaries, ecopopulist narratives risk obscuring the
multifaceted scientific, economic, and institutional dynamics that shape
environmental governance. While populist frames can energize publics, they may
also reduce commitment to nuanced or collaborative solutions that require
technical expertise and cross-sectoral cooperation. Second, ecopopulism’s
capacity to unite diverse constituencies around ecological demands can also
fragment along ideological fault lines. What unites people in opposition to
elites might not translate into agreement on specific environmental policies.
For example, left-leaning ecopopulists might emphasize systemic economic
transformation to achieve ecological justice, whereas right-leaning variants
might emphasize national control over environmental resources without
addressing structural inequalities. Finally, the nationalist strands of
ecopopulism may undermine efforts at global environmental cooperation. By
framing environmental governance as dominated by external elites or
international institutions, these narratives can encourage scepticism toward
multilateral environmental agreements and weaken international climate action
efforts.
Despite these challenges, ecopopulism also opens
opportunities for rethinking environmental politics. By placing environmental
issues at the centre of populist contention, it elevates ecological concerns
from technocratic policy boxes into core political debates. This has the
potential to expand democratic engagement with environmental governance by
making ecological justice a matter of collective identity rather than a
specialized concern confined to experts and bureaucrats. Moreover, ecopopulist
movements can pressure mainstream political actors to take environmental issues
seriously, shifting the Overton window of acceptable policy options and forcing
elites to respond to popular demands for sustainability and climate action.
This dynamic extends Laclau’s theory: when disparate environmental grievances
coalesce into broader political projects, they challenge hegemonic
configurations and open space for alternative forms of political imagination.
9. Laclau’s Framework and the Indian Ecological
Question
Indian environmental movements are frequently examined
through political ecology, development studies, or postcolonial frameworks.
While these approaches illuminate material dispossession and historical
inequality, they often under-theorize the political construction of collective
identity. Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism provides a crucial corrective by
explaining how fragmented ecological grievances become politically unified
through discourse rather than ideology (Laclau, On Populist Reason68).
For Laclau, populism is not an ideology but a logic of political articulation
that emerges when institutional mechanisms fail to absorb social demands
(Laclau, On Populist Reason 74). Indian ecological struggles against
dams, mining, deforestation, and industrial pollution, fit this condition
precisely. Environmental harm in India is rarely experienced as a single-issue
problem; it is simultaneously economic, cultural, political, and existential.
This multiplicity creates fertile ground for populist articulation.
A. Ecology as an Empty Signifier in Indian Ecopopulism
A foundational concept in Laclau’s theory is the empty
signifier, a term that unifies diverse demands without possessing a fixed
meaning (Laclau, On Populist Reason 69-71). In Indian ecopopulism,
ecology frequently operates as an empty signifier, though it appears in
culturally embedded forms rather than abstract environmental language. Terms
such as jal (water), jungle (forest), zameen (land), rivers like the
Narmada or Ganga, and sacred landscapes like the Niyamgiri hills function as
empty signifiers because they condense heterogeneous meanings: livelihood,
identity, spirituality, survival, and political rights. These signifiers do not
merely represent nature; they symbolically stand in for a broader experience of
dispossession and exclusion. In the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the river Narmada
became an empty signifier that represented displacement, ecological
destruction, authoritarian development planning, and democratic marginalization
(Szasz 12). Its political force lay in its openness: different social actors
could invest the river with their own meanings while recognizing it as the
symbol of a shared injustice. This confirms Laclau’s argument that hegemonic
projects require “empty” signifiers to represent a plurality of demands (Laclau
& Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy111-114).
B. Chain of Equivalence in Indian Ecopopulist
Movements
According to Laclau, populism emerges when isolated
social demands are linked through a chain of equivalence, transforming them into
a collective political force (Laclau, On Populist Reason 73). Indian
ecopopulism exemplifies this process because ecological damage is consistently
articulated alongside other grievances. For instance, in anti-mining movements,
environmental degradation is equivalently linked to:
- loss of
livelihood
- cultural
erosion
- health
crises
- political
exclusion
The Dongria Kondh resistance to Vedanta’s mining
project in the Niyamgiri hills demonstrates this clearly. The struggle was not
framed solely as environmental protection but as a defence of indigenous
sovereignty, religious freedom, and democratic self-determination (Temper and
Martinez-Alier). These demands became equivalent expressions of a single
structural injustice. Through this equivalential articulation, a collective
subject “the people” was constructed in opposition to the corporate
power structure and state authority. This confirms Laclau’s claim that
political unity emerges not from shared identity but from shared antagonism
(Laclau, On Populist Reason 86-87).
C. Antagonism and the Construction of the Political
Frontier
For Laclau, antagonism is the condition of the
political. A political frontier must divide society into opposing camps for
populism to emerge (Laclau, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy 125-126).
Indian ecopopulism consistently constructs such frontiers by opposing
marginalized communities to elite-driven development models. In movements
against dams, mining, and polluting industries, the antagonistic divide is
articulated as:
- people
vs corporations
- community’s
vs technocrats
- indigenous
populations vs the development state
The protests against the Sterlite copper plant in
Thoothukudi exemplify this logic. Environmental pollution was articulated not
as a regulatory issue but as a violation of the people’s right to life and
dignity. When institutional channels failed and state violence escalated,
ecological grievance was transformed into a populist confrontation (Ramanathan
1488-1490). This reflects Laclau’s insight that populism arises when
institutional mediation collapses and social demands become antagonistic rather
than administrative (Laclau, On Populist Reason 86-87).
D. Logic of Equivalence and Logic of Difference and
the Neutralization of Ecopopulism
The logic of equivalence simplifies the social field
by emphasizing what different demands share rather than how they differ
(Laclau, On Populist Reason 74). Indian ecopopulist movements rely
heavily on this logic because ecological harm is immediate and embodied. Slogans
such as “this is not development” or “our land, our future” collapse diverse
grievances into a single moral narrative. While critics may view this
simplification as reductive, Laclau argues that such reduction is necessary for
political mobilization. Without equivalence, collective action remains
fragmented (Laclau, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy 127-128). In Indian
contexts, the logic of equivalence is strengthened by the lived experience of
ecological violence. Pollution, deforestation, and displacement are not
abstract risks but everyday realities, making equivalential articulation
emotionally and politically powerful. Opposing the logic of equivalence is the
logic of difference, which seeks to absorb demands individually and reintegrate
them into existing systems. In India, this logic appears through compensation
packages, rehabilitation schemes, and corporate social responsibility
initiatives. These strategies recognize ecological damage while denying its
systemic causes. By isolating demands, they weaken the chain of equivalence and
depoliticize ecological struggle. Many Indian ecopopulist movements lose
momentum precisely at this stage, as collective antagonism gives way to
individualized negotiation. This dynamic confirms Laclau’s argument that
hegemonic stability depends on breaking equivalential chains and restoring
differential logic.
One of the most significant contributions of Indian
ecopopulism to populist theory is its demonstration that “the people” need not
be defined nationally. In Indian ecological movements, the people are
constructed through shared vulnerability rather than citizenship or ethnicity.
Adivasis, small farmers, fishing communities, and urban poor populations form a
collective subject not because they share identity, but because they share
exposure to ecological harm and political neglect. This supports Laclau’s claim
that “the people” is a contingent political construction rather than a
sociological given (Laclau, On Populist Reason 94).
Right-leaning ecological narratives in India, such as
river nationalism or cultural environmentalism also operate through populist
logic. Here, ecology functions as an empty signifier tied to civilizational
identity rather than social justice. This does not contradict Laclau’s theory;
it confirms his argument that populist logic is ideologically open and
politically contestable. The struggle over Indian ecopopulism is therefore not
about whether ecology becomes populist, but how it is articulated and whom it
includes.
10. Conclusion
Ecopopulism sits at the intersection of environmental
politics and populist discourse. Through the lens of Laclau’s theory of
populism, it becomes clear that ecopopulism is not merely an ideological hybrid
but a discursive practice that constructs political subjects and antagonisms
around ecological concerns. Whether emerging from grassroots movements
advocating social and environmental justice or from nationalist parties
appropriating green rhetoric for political gain, ecopopulism transforms
environmental issues into arenas of political contestation that redefine “the
people” and “the elite.”Ecopopulism is best understood as a discursive and
political logic that integrates ecological concerns into populist constructions
of political identity and antagonism. For Ernesto Laclau’s theory, ecopopulism
can be seen as a process through which ecological demands are articulated into
chains of equivalence that construct “the people” as subjects of ecological
injustice. As ecological crises deepen, ecopopulism is likely to play an increasingly
prominent role in shaping environmental politics. Its capacity to mobilize
popular energies, challenge technocratic governance, and reframe ecology as a
democratic issue gives it transformative potential. At the same time, its
openness and contingency mean that its political direction remains undecided. Laclau’s
insights on hegemony and discourse help explain why and how ecological issues
are absorbed into populist logic, revealing both the promise and peril of
ecopopulist movements. On the one hand, they democratize environmental politics
by amplifying the voices of ordinary people; on the other hand, their
simplicity can obscure the complexity of environmental challenges and, in some
cases, fragment collective efforts. Understanding ecopopulism in this
theoretical context deepens our grasp of contemporary environmental politics
andfocuses on the ongoing struggles over how “the people” and the future of the
earth are imagined, constructed, and mobilized.
Through Ernesto Laclau’s theory, Indian ecopopulism is
not an anomaly but a powerful empirical confirmation of populist logic. Indian
ecological movements demonstrate how environmental grievances can function as
empty signifiers, form chains of equivalence, generate antagonism, and
construct “the people” as a political subject. Indian ecopopulism reveals
ecology as a site of democratic struggle rather than technocratic management.
In doing so, it affirms Laclau’s central insight: politics begins not with
consensus, but with the articulation of collective will in the face of
structural exclusion.
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