The term is most useful to authors like Bryant, Watts and Peet who argue for the importance of a phenomenology of nature that builds from post-structuralist concerns with knowledge, power and discourse.
As part of this management their ecological composition is changed (through types of planting, harvesting and extraction) in an attempt to make them resemble more closely the simplified statistical systems with which they are measured.
In this manifestation, which focuses primarily on the administration of particular resources at a national level, ecogovernmentality is linked to the larger governmental aims identified by Foucault of securing the wellbeing of its inhabitants by managing "a complex composed of men and things" (93).
Scott's work on scientific forestry in early modern Europe shows how the rational models constructed by state foresters were part of the larger body of statistical knowledge created to manage population and facilitate "taxation, political control, and conscription" (23).
Luke argues that heightened awareness of social vulnerability to environmental factors coupled with the increased importance of macro-economic competition (rather than Cold-War military confrontation) in geo-political power struggles led to the rise of sustainable development as the synthesis of these two interrelated concerns.
The disciplinary power of governmentality is refigured as "enviro-discipline", a broader concept that "expresses the authority of eco-knowledgeable, geo-powered forces to police the fitness of all biological organisms and the health of their natural environments" (146).
As the application of ecogovernmentality to climate change has evolved, the principles of the theory have also been applied — in appropriately modified ways — to studies of state and local government as well as private and nonprofit organizations.
Ecogovernmentality-grounded theories and methods of analysis have also begun to emerge as tools for examining climate change in fields outside political economy, such as communications and international relations.
[1] Sverker Jagers and Johannes Stripple's work published in 2003 identified the importance of non-nation-state actors (NNSAs) in climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts and suggested that "private regimes" like the insurance industry may be more successful than national and global power structures in addressing the problem.
[3] She demonstrated a method of discourse analysis particularly suited for addressing climate change, examining objectives, fields of visibility, technical aspects, forms of knowledge and formation of identities.
Chukwumerije Okereke, Harriet Bulkeley and Heike Schroeder published a study in 2009 that examined possible problems of power, relationships, structures, and agency in climate governance at scales other than national or global.
[9] Peter Weingart, Anita Engels and Petra Pansegrau published a study using a similar combination of methods in 2000,[10] but Boykoff's work was cited in An Inconvenient Truth and has received far more scholarly and public attention.
[11] In another communications-related study, David Ockwell, Lorraine Whitmarsh and Saffron O’Neill applied governmentality concepts to a U.K. government marketing campaign aimed at increasing "green" behaviors in citizens.
Robyn Dowling argued for inclusion of ecogovernmentality perspectives regarding identity formation in the field of human geography in her 2008 paper, which addressed a variety of issues, including climate change.