Perspectives on Environmental Justice in Scandinavian Green Transitions

Call for papers

Green Transitions Workshop series: 18 October 2022 and 17-18 November 2022

This workshop is organised by Sebastian Lundsteen and Melina Antonia Buns

Scandinavian discourses on green transitions predominantly center around techno-scientific solutions and the regulation of pollutive industries. Although absent of sociocultural perspectives, green transitions raise questions of social justice and equal distribution which essentially also are concerns of environmental justice (EJ). As a vastly expanding field, EJ has traditionally gravitated around questions of inequality, privilege, race and power structures in the Global South and the US. However, EJ is also a regional concern that traverses scales and connects local struggles with global structures. Focusing on the societal and environmental challenges contemporary green transitions entail, this workshop seeks to connect perspectives of justice with green transitions in and of Scandinavia to explore its spatial, temporal, and socio-political dimensions.

The aim of the workshop is to: (1) facilitate the creation of a new research community across Scandinavia; (2) provide an engaging environment for the discussion of EJ research within and on Scandinavia, both theoretically as well as practically; and (3) engage with the conundrum of the absence of socio-economical perspectives in past and present Scandinavian struggles of green transitions.

It is hoped that this workshop will also result in an exploratory co-authored paper discussing the possibilities, perspectives, and challenges of EJ research in and of Scandinavia.

The workshop is funded by The Greenhouse and is part of the Greenhouse Green Transitions Workshops.

Click the button below to download a pdf of this call for papers:

CfP-Perspectives on Environmental Justice in Scandinavian Green Transitions

Practical details

This workshop will combine a digital meeting and an in-person meeting.

The digital meeting on 18 October 2022 will combine lectures and exploratory collaboration for the in-person meeting will take place in Stavanger on 17-18 November 2022.

Who should apply?

We direct this workshop in particular towards PhD candidates and early-career scholars working on environmental justice-related topics in the Scandinavian countries. We invite proposals from the environmental humanities, including disciplines such as history, political sciences, anthropology, sociology, geography, etc.

Application process

Applications should be sent by 2 September 2022 and should include an abstract of no more than 250 words and a brief biographical note of the author(s). Please send your application to sebastian.lundsteen@uis.no The workshop will take place online (in October) and at the University of Stavanger, Norway (in November). Travel and accommodation costs will be covered. Should restrictions on travel and events make it impossible to meet physically, the second part of the workshop may be moved to a digital platform.

Contact details

Questions can be directed to either of the organizers:

Call for paper: Frontiers in Sustainability

How to Achieve a Planetary Health Diet Through System and Paradigm Change?

About this Research Topic

The call for a transformation toward planetary health diets (such as the one suggested by the EAT-Lancet Commission in 2019) is getting louder and more urgent. Such diets take into account not only human health, but also the ecological sustainability of global food systems and the natural systems that enable human societies to flourish. More recently the 2022 IPCC AR6 Working Group III report also acknowledged this point. The report suggests a shift towards more plant-based diets for high meat-consuming population groups, as these diets are considered by many to be essential for climate change mitigation and adaptation, for restoring damaged ecosystems, and for alleviating the sixth mass extinction of species.

Food-related consumer practices, consumer behaviours and characteristics (gender, class, etc.) have been the focus of significant and high-quality social science research. However, sustainability transformation in food systems is largely a political and power-related question. This Research Topic draws attention to prioritising questions of power in this context. How can we identify and influence drivers – beyond individual practices – to generate system and paradigm level change? The incumbent actors (e.g. various industries) and structures (e.g. those related to subsidies) strongly resist transformational change. For example, even when industry actors seemingly accept change, they prefer to align it with their own short-term business interests and existing technology infrastructures (e.g. monocultures) or invest in technical fixes that might help mitigate impact but not on the scale that is urgently required. The transformation is also a question of change agents at various levels and in various societal spheres including citizens and civil society organisations attempting to gain power or empowering themselves through ideas and action. Specifically, purposive change in food systems is also about discursive power, as well as about cultivating and establishing new values, norms, and paradigms, associated with the deeper, stronger leverage points for societal change. Last, but not least, it is a question of a transformation in food systems governance.

The overall goal of this Research Topic is to shed light on the above issues and challenges related to achieving planetary health diets on both a regional as well as global scale. We encourage papers focusing critically on the following topics:

• Challenging the power of the incumbent global food industry, and in particular of dominant meat industry actors
• Overcoming structural and infrastructural barriers in food system transformation
• Empowerment of various societal actors attempting radical change
• Breaking the cycle of inertia between governments, industry, and citizens, whereby inaction / low priority feeds itself
• Tackling the psychological barriers to the acceptance of the necessity of transformational food system change
• A just transition in food systems, considering the global South and the global North, as well as the indigenous peoples of these lands
• Global animal agribusiness vs. small-scale animal agriculture
• Discursive power, values, norms, worldviews, and paradigms either resisting or enabling change
• New policy tools for regulating food production and consumption, especially within governance, using principles of strong sustainability
• New business models for food industry actors, e.g. not-for-profit businesses
• The position of indigenous worldviews, land rights and politics in achieving planetary health diets
• Assessing the EAT-Lancet 2019 report on a planetary health diet and the discussion this landmark publication has generated
• Systemic transformation vs. responsibilization of “consumers”
• Analysis of the concept of “diet” regarding how it is leveraged in the context of food system transformation, and to what ends
• Historical, philosophical, societal, and cultural aspects of the idea of a diet for “planetary health”

This Research Topic welcomes original research papers, perspectives, theoretical and methodological papers, policy position papers, case studies, and reviews.

We look for abstracts between 250-300 words.

Keywords: food systems governance, planetary health diet, values, paradigms, sustainable food systems, strong sustainability, power, empowerment, just transition, plant-based diet, inertia

Abstract Submission Deadline 23 September 2022

Manuscript Submission Deadline 13 January 2023

More information: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/39728/how-to-achieve-a-planetary-health-diet-through-system-and-paradigm-change

The 3rd International Conference on Rural Socio-Economic Transformation

The Department of Communication Sciences and Community Development (SKPM) IPB University are pleased to cordially invite you and POLLEN Network to participate and submit the abstract in The 3rd International Conference on Rural Socio-Economic Transformation (RUSET) which will be held from 10 until 11 August 2022 (hybrid) at the IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia.

The theme of the 2022 conference is “A Transdisciplinary Approach for Promoting Sustainable, Resilience and Just Rural Transitions in the Era of Climate Crisis”.

Deadline of abstract submission: 26th June 2022.

Selected articles will be published in the international proceeding.

Please register and submit your abstract online through http://ruset.skpm.ipb.ac.id

RUSET Organizing Committee
Alfian Helmi

http://bit.ly/alfianhelmi

Call for application – CES Summer School

The Pluriverse of Eco-social Justice

11-16 July 2022

Organized by the Ecology and Society Workshop (ECOSOC) of the Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra:

CES | Alta (plus other locations in Coimbra, PT)

Application until 1 MAY 2022

Overview

The Ecology and Society Workshop at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra (ECOSOC, CES), with the support of the COST Action “Decolonizing Development” (DECOLDEV), and the H2020-ITN projects “Just transition to the Circular Economy” (JUST2CE); and “Listening to Citizen Voices for a Greener Europe” (PHOENIX), invite applications for the “Pluriverse of Eco-social Justice” Summer School, to be held July 11 to 16 in Coimbra, Portugal.

The Summer School aims to provide co-learning and co-production of knowledge at the intersections of social and ecological issues through a diversity of political-ecological lenses. It builds on the collective experience developed by ECOSOC over the last 10 years with engaged and insurgent research-action on environmental justice and labor environmentalism, the commons, ecofeminism, eco-Marxism, degrowth, alternatives to development, postcolonial/decolonial critique, and emancipatory pedagogies.

The School is created through the ongoing collaborations within ECOSOC, and between its members and other projects and networks, including DECOLDEV, JUST2CE and PHOENIX, as well as social movement and community organizations in Portugal and transnationally. It thus brings together CES researchers with other local and international activists and scholars, to provide nurturing conceptual and practical tools for enacting alternative ecosocial horizons.

The backgrounds of ECOSOC and the associated projects provide the central thematic axis of transformations for more just and ecological worlds, in the context of the climate crisis and the so-called Anthropocene. The mainstream Anthropocene and Climate Change narratives identify a new (geologic) epoch in which the “human species” is the dominant geological force. These narratives have been criticized by scholars and activists who point out that the major changes in the biophysical forces of the planet are due to a particular political-economic system (Capitalism) coupled with its racialized, patriarchal, and colonial logics, in which a particular segment of humanity has caused this crisis. Thus it has been argued that it would be more precise to talk about Racial Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Anthro-Obscene, White Manthropocene, and to emphasize systemic change.

These critical conversations point out the power of narratives, fragmenting the universalist and heteropatriarchal Anthropocene; while suggesting alternative imaginaries such as Just Transitions, New Eco-Social Pacts, Diverse economies, Post-Development, Chultucene, Pluriverse, and Abolitionism.

Application Instructions: Send to ecosoc@ces.uc.pt by May 1, 2022, the following documents, in one single PDF:

  • Curriculum Vitae (CV)
  • 250 words Description of yourself, your relevant interests and experiences
  • 750 words (max.) Motivation Letter, stating why you wish to participate in this Summer School, what you hope to gain and what you hope to contribute


Key Dates

  • May 1: Application deadline
  • May 15: Notification of acceptance
  • June 15: Registration deadline

Contact: For any questions, please contact ecosoc@ces.uc.pt

More information, visit: https://ces.uc.pt/summerwinterschools/?lang=2&id=37071

CfP POLLEN2022: The Politics of Agroecology in Sub-Saharan Africa: Critical Perspectives

Organizer/main contact person: Patrick Bottazzi and Sébastien Boillat, Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 12, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland

Agroecology is commonly defined as a triple object combining ecologically sounds agronomic practices, a corpus of scientific knowledge and a social movement (Wezel et al. 2009). It has been argued that its wide adoption in sub-Saharan African present the potential to foster adaptation to climate change, biodiversity protection, and farmers’ food sovereignty and livelihoods. Despite these assumptions, recent literature on sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) revealed that most of the agroecological initiatives are led by ‘classical’ development and conservation agencies such as NGOs, government, research institutes and more recently private ‘organic’ industry (Isgren and Ness 2017; Bottazzi and Boillat 2021; Boillat, Belmin, and Bottazzi 2021).

This issues raises several questions related to the ‘political appropriation’ of agroecology (Giraldo and Rosset 2018; Altieri and Toledo 2011) and its real emancipatory potential for rural societies in SSA. What are the discourses, narratives and power relations prevailing in agroecological movements, projects and programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa? Do these represent a potentially counter-hegemonic movement that empowers producers and consumers? Or, to the contrary, do they entail new mechanisms of appropriation of nature that build on dominant neo-colonial ecologies? Who are the winners and the losers in the process of transition to agroecology? Given these potentially strongly divergent outcomes, we postulate that a strongly critical approach is needed to scrutinize the power relationships at play around the promotion and implementation of agroecology in the region.

We invite contributions to several related topics such as:

  • Politics, discourse, narrative and strategies of agroecology
  • Territorial aspects, access to natural resources and land rights
  • Just transition, labour and vulnerable people
  • Power asymmetries, transnational networks
  • Gender, ecofeminism and reproductive spaces

If you are interested to contribute to this session, please send your presentation title (max. 20 words), your name, your affiliation, an abstract of maximum 250 words and 3 keywords to Sébastien Boillat (sebastien.boillat@giub.unibe.ch) or Patrick Bottazzi (patrick.bottazzi@giub.unibe.ch) by January 29th, 2022.

References

Altieri, Miguel A, and Victor Manuel Toledo. 2011. “The Agroecological Revolution in Latin America: Rescuing Nature, Ensuring Food Sovereignty and Empowering Peasants.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 38 (3): 587–612. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2011.582947.

Boillat, Sébastien, Raphael Belmin, and Patrick Bottazzi. 2021. “The Agroecological Transition in Senegal: Transnational Links and Uneven Empowerment.” Agriculture and Human Values.

Bottazzi, Patrick, and Sébastien Boillat. 2021. “Political Agroecology in Sub-Saharan Africa: Repertoires of Collective Action and Strategies of Farmer Unions in Senegal.” Sustainability.

Giraldo, Omar Felipe, and Peter M Rosset. 2018. “Agroecology as a Territory in Dispute: Between Institutionality and Social Movements.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 45 (3): 545–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2017.1353496.

Isgren, Ellinor, and Barry Ness. 2017. “Agroecology to Promote Just Sustainability Transitions: Analysis of a Civil Society Network in the Rwenzori Region, Western Uganda.” Sustainability 9 (8). https://doi.org/10.3390/su9081357.

CfP POLLEN2022: Intersections of Political Ecology and STS: New Perspectives, Potentials, Limitations

Co-conveners:
Ekin Kurtiç – Brandeis University, Crown Center for Middle East Studies
Aybike Alkan – TU Berlin, Institut für Philosophie, Literatur-, Wissenschafts- & Technikgeschichte
Maral Erol – Işık University, Humanities and Social Sciences Department

Session background:

In the last decade, scholarship at the intersection of political ecology and science and technology studies (STS) has been on the rise. The intellectual alignment of these fields of study has materialized as a result of particular shifts in each field, making the overlaps and differences between these fields more visible. While political ecologists have paid increased attention to questions of knowledge production concerning the environment, STS scholars have shown a growing interest in considering the political entanglements of environmental scientific knowledge (Goldman and Turner 2011: 5) and in deepening the incorporation of political economic and geopolitical analyses in their works (Kaşdoğan 2016). Moreover, political ecologists’ expanding interest in the materiality of ecological life has led to a novel interest in concepts and methodologies of STS (Robbins 2011: 76).

This panel discussion aims to revisit the new perspectives, potentials, and limitations revealed through this cross-fertilization at a time of intensifying ecological destruction and resulting injustices and struggles, as well as of expanding attacks on environmental science, especially considering that STS has been blamed for having contributed to the post-truth era and to the suspicions around issues of climate change (Fuller 2016). We welcome empirical and theoretical contributions addressing how the insights of political ecology and STS can inform each other.

The guiding questions include but are not limited to:
● Combining STS and political ecology perspectives, how do we reach a more robust and complex analytical and theoretical approach in understanding environmental change?
● What kind of new perspectives do social studies of scientists and technical experts provide in political ecological inquiries?
● How and to what extent do STS concepts and methodologies engage with ecological justice, equity, and rights – issues that have long been at the center of political ecology?
● How can the political ecology perspective open or foreclose new ways of understanding the politics of and around environmental knowledge production and circulation, particularly regarding climate change?
● What are the potentials and/or limitations of the intersection of political ecology and STS in exploring and contributing to radical, decolonial, and emancipatory ecologies?
● Which socio-ecological themes and topics lend themselves well to and would benefit from a political ecological analysis informed by STS (and vice versa)?

We invite panel presentations that reflect on these questions or any related ones based on empirical research or conceptual reflection. If you want to join our panel session, please send your abstract (max. 250 words) to ekinkurtic@brandeis.edu, maralerol@gmail.com, and aalkan@ku.edu.tr no later than January 26th, 2022. Please include the presentation title, 4-5 keywords, affiliation (if applicable), and contact information in your abstract.

References

Fuller, S. (2016) “Embrace the inner fox: Post-truth as the STS symmetry principle universalized.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. Available at: https://socialepistemology.com/2016/12/25/embrace-the-inner-fox-post-truth-as-the-sts-symmetry-principleuniversalized-steve-fuller/#comments.

Goldman, M. J. and Turner, M. D (2011) “Introduction,” In Knowing nature: conversations at the intersection of political ecology and science studies. Goldman, M. J., Nadasdy, P., & Turner, M. D. (Eds.). (2011).. University of Chicago Press.

Kaşdoğan, D. (2016) “In-Between Political Ecology and STS: A Methodological Provocation.” ENTITLE Blog Post: https://entitleblog.org/2016/12/07/in-between-politicalecology-and-sts-a-methodological-provocation/

Robbins, P. (2019). Political ecology: A critical introduction. John Wiley & Sons.

CfP POLLEN2022: Crises in/of forest carbon offsetting

Session organizers:

Kirstine Lund Christiansen, University of Copenhagen

Adeniyi Asiyanbi, University of British Columbia Okanagan

Jens Friis Lund, University of Copenhagen

Session background

Forest carbon offsetting continues to stumble through various crises – unrelenting global deforestation, growing severity of wildfires and other extreme weather events, widespread criticisms and local resistance, and enduring problems of additionality, leakage, and permanence (Gifford 2020; Hajdu and Fischer 2017; Asiyanbi and Lund 2020; Milne et al. 2019). Nevertheless, carbon forestry initiatives have found renewed impetus from the Glasgow Climate Pact and the proliferating promises of net-zero carbon emissions by governments and corporations. Market capital increasingly penetrates carbon forestry initiatives through growing marketization of publicly-funded projects, through plans and evidence of carbon market expansion and integration, and through the inflow of market finance and philanthro-capital. While the intensification of neoliberal capitalism and associated exclusionary and violent logics in carbon forests and wider conservation landscapes is being rationalized through particular narratives of escalating environmental breakdown (Le Billon 2021), carbon forests also serve as a fix for capital’s crisis of accumulation and related crisis of legitimacy (Palmer 2021; Carton 2019). Furthermore, forest carbon offsetting initiatives themselves both precipitate and are confronted by various other kinds of crises across local project sites, verification chains, and across spaces of offset trading and ‘consumption’. Understanding the logics and effects of these crises requires investigations of both the broader, interconnected structures of capital, science, and politics within which carbon forestry is embedded as well as the relations, actions, and motivations of actors operating in various parts of the carbon forestry network.

In this session, we are interested in the many crises in/of forest carbon offsetting, and we explore this from two angles around which political ecology can offer important insights. First, political ecology work can contribute to our understanding of the entanglements of capital and crises in forest carbon offsetting, including the ways in which crisis narratives invite and legitimize specific flows and logics of capital and the ways that actors attempt to repurpose, obscure and side-step crises, risks and complexities in order to tentatively sustain the circuits of capital and offsets (Frewer 2021; Milne and Mahanty 2019). Here, political ecology can also uncover the power-laden nature and effects of discourses, practices, and political technologies through which actors seek to grapple with actual and perceived crises that confront carbon forestry initiatives in general and at particular locales.

Second, we are also interested in the crises that forest carbon offsetting – by itself and in alignment with resource extraction and agroindustry – precipitate for local communities. On the ground, many carbon forestry projects are creating and compounding crisis for Indigenous peoples and local forest communities through empty promises, resource exclusion, food insecurity, various forms of violence, and broader marginalization (Asiyanbi and Lund 2020; Kansanga and Luginaah 2019; Fischer and Hajdu 2018; Milne et al. 2019; Cavanagh and Benjaminsen 2014). Political ecology can shed light on the ways that narratives of global crisis are being enrolled to justify local crisis, but also how proponents of forest carbon offsetting might seek to side-step, obscure, or deny local crisis in evaluation reports, advertisements, offset sale brochures, and more.

We invite papers, including conceptual, empirical, and review work that explore various forms of crises in/of forest carbon offset and the ways in which proponents are seeking to grapple with repurpose, obscure, side-step, or deny crises. Indicative topics include:

  • Crisis and logics of finance and capital broadly in carbon forests
  • Project/program failure, failure discourses, and politics of failure in forest carbon initiatives
  • Crisis branding and marketing in carbon offsetting
  • Public perceptions of carbon offsetting, including ‘downstream’ public and private buyers and users of carbon offsets
  • Political technologies for governing risk and uncertainty in carbon landscapes
  • Local perspectives on adverse impacts of offsetting
  • Narratives and initiatives suggesting ways to overcome current and expected crises of carbon forestry

If interested, please send a 250 abstract to klc@ifro.ku.dk, a.asiyanbi@ubc.ca, or jens@ifro.ku.dk by 25 January 2022.

References

Asiyanbi, Adeniyi, and Jens Lund. 2020. “Policy Persistence: REDD+ between Stabilization and Contestation.” Journal of Political Ecology 27 (1). https://doi.org/10.2458/v27i1.23493.

Carton, Wim. 2019. “‘Fixing’ Climate Change by Mortgaging the Future: Negative Emissions, Spatiotemporal Fixes, and the Political Economy of Delay.” Antipode 51 (3): 750–69. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12532.

Cavanagh, Connor, and Tor A. Benjaminsen. 2014. “Virtual Nature, Violent Accumulation: The ‘Spectacular Failure’ of Carbon Offsetting at a Ugandan National Park.” Geoforum 56 (September): 55–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.06.013.

Fischer, Klara, and Flora Hajdu. 2018. “The Importance of the Will to Improve: How ‘Sustainability’ Sidelined Local Livelihoods in a Carbon-Forestry Investment in Uganda.” Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 20 (3): 328–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2017.1410429.

Frewer, Tim. 2021. “What Exactly Do REDD+ Projects Produce? A Materialist Analysis of Carbon Offset Production from a REDD+ Project in Cambodia.” Political Geography 91 (November): 102480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102480.

Gifford, Lauren. 2020. “‘You Can’t Value What You Can’t Measure’: A Critical Look at Forest Carbon Accounting.” Climatic Change, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-020-02653-1.

Hajdu, Flora, and Klara Fischer. 2017. “Problems, Causes and Solutions in the Forest Carbon Discourse: A Framework for Analysing Degradation Narratives.” Climate and Development 9 (6): 537–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2016.1174663.

Kansanga, Moses Mosonsieyiri, and Isaac Luginaah. 2019. “Agrarian Livelihoods under Siege: Carbon Forestry, Tenure Constraints and the Rise of Capitalist Forest Enclosures in Ghana.” World Development 113 (January): 131–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.09.002.

Le Billon, Philippe. 2021. “Crisis Conservation and Green Extraction: Biodiversity Offsets as Spaces of Double Exception.” Journal of Political Ecology 28 (1). https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2991.

Milne, Sarah, and Sango Mahanty. 2019. “Value and Bureaucratic Violence in the Green Economy.” Geoforum 98 (January): 133–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.11.003.

Milne, Sarah, Sango Mahanty, Phuc To, Wolfram Dressler, Peter Kanowski, and Maylee Thavat. 2019. “Learning From ‘Actually Existing’ REDD+: A Synthesis of Ethnographic Findings.” Conservation & Society 17 (1): 84–95. https://doi.org/10.4103/cs.cs_18_13.

Palmer, James. 2021. “Putting Forests to Work? Enrolling Vegetal Labor in the Socioecological Fix of Bioenergy Resource Making.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 111 (1): 141–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1749022.

CfP POLLEN2022: Political ecology of education – climate youth and indigenous activism

Session organizers:

Matthias Kowasch (University College of Teacher Education Styria, Austria; Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences)

Jill Tove Buseth (Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences)

Session description:

The emergent political ecology of education provides fruitful ground for problematizing and re-imagining curricula and policy (Meek & Lloro-Bidart, 2017). But with growing awareness of climate change impacts, many citizens, especially young people, see an urgent need to act for a radical socio-ecological transformation – which curricula and textbooks do not promote.

Climate youth activists, such as Fridays for Future (FFF), challenge classical environmental and sustainability education (ESE) by questioning the existing economic growth paradigm and green gestures (Kowasch et al., 2021). FFF representatives emphasize the responsibility principle and claim that those who have caused the problems should pay for it. Such (radical) environmental justice approach (Benjaminsen & Svarstad, 2020) is also highlighted by indigenous environmental activist claims. Indigenous and local people have long valued, used, and shaped “high-value” biodiverse landscapes (Fletcher et al., 2021). They often advocate for the continuance and renewal of moral relationships of responsibility, spirituality, and justice (Whyte, 2018). Importantly, Kopnina (2020) and other scholars request the integration of indigenous worldviews and environmental justice into formal education.

In this session, we therefore ask how the various movements refer to environmental justice and responsibility. We seek to share ideas on how to integrate the debate into formal education. Moreover, we want to discuss the production of political ecology knowledge in different contexts. Potential contributions thus may focus on, but are not limited to, the following topics:

  • Perspectives, viewpoints and interaction of climate youth and indigenous activists
  • Climate and environmental activism in the Global North and South
  • Integration of climate and environmental activism into formal education
  • Political ecology knowledge production in formal and non-formal education
  • Environmental justice and the principle of responsibility approaches within activism and education
  • Gaps between environmental awareness, conflict and action

If you want to participate in this session, please submit a title, an abstract of maximum 250 words, and 3 keywords by 16th January 2022 to matthias.kowasch@phst.at and jill.buseth@inn.no.

We invite academic scholars, policy makers, educators and (youth) activists from both the Global North and South to contribute with papers based on empirical studies to compare various case studies and/or with theoretical approaches. The papers should not be longer than 15 min and involve the audience to stimulate further exchange. We also welcome information regarding your positionality, so that we can consider a diversity of voices in the session.

References

Fletcher, M., Hamilton, R., Dressler, W., & Palmer, L. (2021). Indigenous knowledge and the shackles of wilderness. PNAS 118 (40) e2022218118; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2022218118.

Kopnina, H. (2020). Education for the future? Critical evaluation of education for sustainable development goals. Journal of Environmental Education 51, 280–291.

Kowasch, M., Cruz, J.P., Reis, P., Gericke, N. & Kicker, K. (2021). Climate Youth Activism Initiatives: Motivations and Aims, and the Potential to Integrate Climate Activism into ESD and Transformative Learning. Special Issue “Youth Climate Activism and Sustainable Civic and Political Engagement”, Sustainability 13(21), 11581; https://doi.org/10.3390/su132111581

Meek, D. & Lloro-Bidart, T. (2017). Introduction: Synthesizing a political ecology of education, The Journal of Environmental Education, 48 (4), 213–225, DOI: 10.1080/00958964.2017.1340054

Svarstad, H. & Benjaminsen, T.A. (2020). Reading radical environmental justice through a political ecology lens. Geoforum 108, 1–11.

Whyte, K. (2018). Critical Investigations of Resilience: A Brief Introduction to Indigenous Environmental Studies & Sciences. Daedalus 147 (2), 136–147. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/DAED_a_00497.

CfP POLLEN2022: Cultivating grassroots

Grassroots, the new section of the Journal of Political Ecology, is inviting proposals for the POLLEN 2022 panel session: “Cultivating Grassroots”

Panel Abstract:
In this panel we explore the notion of “Grassroots”, which has been mobilized by social environmental movements to link their political and life struggles with local realities and concerns. is also the name of Grassroots the new section of the Journal of Political Ecology. In the midst of a global environmental crisis, the objective of this section is to reveal and circulate local experiences, stories and reflections on the politics of
environmental change, unequal access to natural resources and uneven distribution of environmental risks, as well as alternative ways of relating with more-than-human environments. We believe that this type of platform has the potential to inform and contribute to transforming the way in which we do political ecology today, as well as to strengthen the ties between social movements and academia.

To launch this new platform, we invite contributors to explore any of the following interrelated issues:
• The notion of grassroots as a way of referring to social movements, its histories, uses, transformations and critics across different regions and times
• The evolution of grassroot strategies for socio-environmental mobilization, from the emergence of transnational agrarian movements (Borras Jr., Edelman, and Kay 2008) to the influence of social media in popular uprisings (Foust and Hoyt 2018), and from biological warfare in agricultural fields (Beilin and Suryanarayanan 2017) to ‘projection fights’ during the COP26 (Murray 2021).
• New directions and demands that grassroot movements are adopting in the face of globalization, digitalization and climate change. These include mobilization against climate inaction and injustice (de Moor et al. 2021), against new technologies of climate change mitigation such as lithium batteries that require new waves of mineral extraction (Svampa and Viale 2020), or in favor of nonhuman entities such as forest and rivers as legal persons with rights (Revet 2020).
• Any other topic related to the notion of grassroots and to the evolution and strategies of socio-environmental movements.


Traditional single authored presentations are welcome, but we also encourage pieces co-produced by academics and activists in the form of written papers or visual essays. If you are interested in contributing to this panel, please send a 250 word abstract to grassrootsjpe@gmail.com by 20th of January 2022. Accepted papers will be included in the panel and considered for publication in the JPE section – Grassroots (www.grassrootsjpe.org).

Conveners:
Grassroots section editors:
Diego Silva Garzón – Centre for International Environmental Studies (IHEID, Geneva, Switzerland)
diego.silva@graduateinstitute.ch
Emilie Dupuits – Universidad San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador)
edupuits@usfq.edu.ec

References

Borras Jr., Saturnino M., Marc Edelman, and Cristóbal Kay, eds. 2008. Transnational Agrarian Movements Confronting Globalization. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Foust, Christina R., and Kate Drazner Hoyt. 2018. “Social Movement 2.0: Integrating and Assessing Scholarship on Social Media and Movement.” Review of Communication 18 (1): 37–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2017.1411970.

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CfP POLLEN22: Critical political ecology perspectives on ‘the’ blue economy

Type of session: Panel session and/or paper session

Organisers: Kate Symons, Lecturer in Global Development (kate.symons@open.ac.uk) and Mark Lamont (mark.lamont@open.ac.uk), Lecturer in International Development, both Development Policy and Practice, The Open University, UK.

Session Abstract

The ocean’s role in global sustainable development is firmly on the agenda. Environment, conservation and development institutions are paying more attention to ocean and marine environments, and the four billion people who depend on directly on ocean resources (Cohen et al. 2019). Ideas about blue growth have emerged as a way of protecting ocean resources while simultaneously exploiting them for economic gain. Blue economies are emerging in various contexts including Africa, South Asia, Pacific Islands and Europe. Though ‘the’ blue economy can be defined in many ways, they often appear to be driven by a complex set of often-contradictory imperatives including: ecological fixes for extractives and industrial ocean-based projects such as deep-sea mining and bioprospecting; neoliberal environmental governance such as carbon credits from ‘blue carbon’; geopolitical concerns including territorialisation, security and marine spatial planning; aquaculture; and ‘blue diplomacy’ efforts to fulfil specific political and investment goals (Bond, 2019; Keen at al., 2018; Ramesh and Rai, 2018; Voyer et al., 2018). A small but growing body of critical research into blue economies foregrounds issues of power, justice and agency, questioning the idea that the ocean can simultaneously be a source of economic growth while maintaining the protection of traditional livelihoods, cultures and more-than-human life (Childs and Hicks, 2019; Cohen et al., 2019; Ertör & Hadjimichael, M., 2020; Okafor-Yarwood et al., 2020).

This session invites research which develops critical political ecological perspectives on specific blue economy policies and schemes in particular contexts, as well as blue political ecologies more generally. This could include the following themes and questions:

– How are blue economies being envisaged and implemented in different contexts? What histories, institutions, values, claims, policies, political strategies and power relations are involved in ‘actually-existing’ blue economies?

– To what extent are blue economies based on dynamics of enclosures of marine commons and limitations of community access to ocean resources? Are there examples of counter-hegemonic or pluralistic approaches to blue growth (including more-than-human approaches), or contestation of blue economy schemes?

– Do blue economies represent the further neoliberalisation of oceanic nature through dynamics such as carbon and biodiversity credits and/ or eco-tourism? Do neoliberal nature analyses adequately capture the emergence of blue economies in different contexts?

– How are blue economies entangled with more-than-human life?

– How should we understand the global politics and geographies of the blue economy? How do blue economies complicate and/ or reinforce existing notions of North and South?

Our objective is to develop the growing body of scholarship on blue economies from political ecology and related perspectives (such as human geography, development studies and environmental humanities). We also hope to develop critical perspectives on the role of the ocean in global development and environment efforts. We aim to include papers from researchers with experience of blue economies in different contexts in the Global North and South, and develop a research agenda focussed on just and equitable approaches to marine and coastal development.

Submission information:

Depending on the number of papers received, we hope to structure the session to allow 15 minutes per speaker, followed by a panel-style discussion.

Please send your abstract to one of the organisers by 15th January 2022, and please do contact one of us with any questions.

Please submit with the following information:

Name and affiliation (we recognise the contingency of research employment and welcome independent and non-affiliated papers)

Title of presentation (max 20 words)

Abstract (max 250 words)

List of max 3 key words

References

Bond, P., 2019. Blue Economy threats, contradictions and resistances seen from South Africa. Journal of Political Ecology, 26(1), pp.341-362.

Brent, Z.W., Barbesgaard, M. and Pedersen, C., 2020. The Blue Fix: What’s driving blue growth?. Sustainability Science, 15(1), pp.31-43.

Childs, J.R. and Hicks, C.C., 2019. Securing the blue: political ecologies of the blue economy in Africa. Journal of Political Ecology, 26(1), pp.323-340.

Cohen, P.J., Allison, E.H., Andrew, N.L., Cinner, J., Evans, L.S., Fabinyi, M., Garces, L.R., Hall, S.J., Hicks, C.C., Hughes, T.P. and Jentoft, S., 2019. Securing a just space for small-scale fisheries in the blue economy. Frontiers in Marine Science, 6, p.171.

Ertör, I. and Hadjimichael, M., 2020. Blue degrowth and the politics of the sea: rethinking the blue economy. Sustainability Science, 15(1), pp.1-10.

Keen, M.R., Schwarz, A.M. and Wini-Simeon, L., 2018. Towards defining the Blue Economy: Practical lessons from Pacific ocean governance. Marine Policy, 88, pp.333-341.

Okafor-Yarwood, I., Kadagi, N.I., Miranda, N.A., Uku, J., Elegbede, I.O. and Adewumi, I.J., 2020. The blue economy–cultural livelihood–ecosystem conservation triangle: The African experience. Frontiers in Marine Science, 7, p.586.

Ramesh, M. and Rai, N.D., 2017. Trading on conservation: A marine protected area as an ecological fix. Marine Policy, 82, pp.25-31.

Voyer, Genevieve Quirk, Alistair McIlgorm & Kamal Azmi (2018a) Shades of blue: what do competing interpretations of the Blue Economy mean for oceans governance?, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 20:5, 595-616, DOI:10.1080/1523908X.2018.147315