Political ecology examines the relations between communities and the environment, with a focus on the postcolonial world. Reports about human-nature interactions in geographically exotic contexts have fascinated western audiences from the very beginning. Political ecology brings an important critical dimension connected to how postcolonial politics generates social and ecological crises. Extrapolating and adapting political ecology outside the Global South is particularly challenging. The ways in which political power, economic interests, social hierarchies, as well as culture or ideologies contribute to the construction of the environment remain less discussed in Eastern Europe. The political ecology of the European periphery points to multiple violations of environmental rights, as well as the environmental victimization of individuals and communities, especially marginalized ones. The political ecology of the European periphery is an alternative discourse that mobilizes the imagination of researchers and activists to find ways of organizing nature-society relations that are both more socially just and ecologically sustainable. Read by actor Daniel Popa, with an illustration by Andreea Chirică https://theanthro.art/the-political-ecology-of-the-european-periphery-lucian-vesalon/