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Nature, Poverty and Power: Assessing Challenges to Sustainable Development DevNet Conference November 25-‐26, 2010, CSD Uppsala, Sweden
Parallel Sessions – November 25
1. Sustainable Development as a Problem of Global Distribution Venue: Norrland I Chairs: Susan Paulson, Department of Anthropology and Latin American Studies, Miami University, Ohio Alf Hornborg, Human Ecology Division, Lund University At the roots of many of the development trends that are now being considered “unsustainable” are market mechanisms and new technologies that encourage accelerating flows of natural resources (e.g. fuels, metals, foodstuffs, forest products, nutrients) over increasing distances. These flows often represent highly asymmetric transfers of resources from some regions, which may become increasingly specialized in extraction of primary products and increasingly impoverished in terms of biodiversity, resources, population, and purchasing power, to other regions, which instead tend to grow in terms of the concentration of materials and nutrients, energy use, population, and purchasing power. Many of the global environmental problems that concern us today are predictable consequences of these increasingly intensified resource flows and concentrations. This applies both to typical problems of developed regions such a carbon dioxide emissions, concentrations of heavy metals, and eutrophication, and to those of less developed regions, which tend to experience a loss of biodiversity, soil fertility, and ecological resilience. Globalization implies that these are problems we all share, as we are all involved in the global order of extraction, production, and consumption that generates these different kinds of environmental problems. This session welcomes trans-‐disciplinary contributions that discuss theoretical, methodologic-‐ al, or empirical aspects of the relation between globalization and sustainability. Participants: Adebanjo, Awe Ben Alarcón Ferrari, Cristián Andersson, Kerstin B Andersson, Sara Apaydin, Fatma Muge Bergquist, Daniel A. Cassetti, Gabriele Eckerman, Ingrid Elmeadawy, Mohamed Friman, Eva Gallardo, Gloria
Hajdu, Flora Hermele, Kenneth Hjort-‐af-‐Ornas, Anders Hollander, Ernst Håkansson, N. Thomas Jacobson, Klara Kaijser, Anna Karlström, Isabella Liljestam, Agneta Löfquist, Lars Malm, Andreas
Melander, Veronica Mossberg, Daniel Nam, Kiwoong Norling, AnnaKarin Park, Jinha Portillo, Bruno Strandenhed, Linda Tollefsen, Aina Ueyonahara, Jorge Williams, Christian Wilson, Mark Århem, Nikolas
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Presentations: Ecological Unequal Exchange, Terms of Trade & Environmental Load Displacement Kenneth Hermele, Human Ecology Division, Lund University Unequal Exchange has been studied in terms of unequal flows of labour time (Emmanuel), or purchasing power (Prebisch, Singer) in order to judge if there exists a systematic favouring of a part of the world system (the North) at the expense of another part (the South). However, such studies, although relevant in their own right, do not take ecologically unequal exchange into consideration. This paper discusses various measures to capture the ecological content of international trade flows. Such indicators suffer from reductionism in the sense that they attempt to measure various and sometimes disparate aspects of ecological loads in one catch-‐all indicator. For instance, material flow analysis (Fischer Kowalski, Adriaanse et al) is used to measure trade flows in weight, which means that the weight of the traded commodities is used as a proxy for ecological load or value. This obfuscates the difference between ecologically problematic and not so problematic commodities (cf tons of toxic waste vs tons of sand). Similarly, ecological footprint analysis (Rees & Wackernagel) as well as water footprints (Hoekstra) and Carbon footprints reduce the ecological dimension to area, litres and carbon dioxide, respectively. Nevertheless, reductionist measures have the merit of presenting complex issues and conditions in seemingly clear and easily understandable (and transmitable) metrics, and this paper argues that measure – especially the Carbon and Ecological footprints – have the potential of convincingly being used to discuss ecological unequal exchange, which could play a central role in changing the Climate Change debate, from one that discusses where emissions are being produced, to one that focuses on where emissions are being consumed; the resulting shares of responsibility open for another distribution of responsibilities for Climate Change and hence for introducing justice and fairness into Climate Change Politics. It turns out that approximately 20 percent of the Carbon Dioxide emitted ought to be shifted in terms of responsibilities, comparing a consumer with a producer perspective. Chains of carbon: The globalization of production and the rise in CO2 emissions Andreas Malm, Human Ecology Division, Lund University Recent research has demonstrated that the acceleration in CO2 emissions over the last decade has been largely driven by the relocation of industrial production to countries such as China. But the relationship between the globalization of production and the expansion in fossil fuel consumption remains to be explored in some depth. Exactly why does outsourcing of manufacturing to the semi-‐ periphery breed higher emissions levels? Is it because distances increase when production chains are stretched out, because energy is consumed more wastefully in the semi-‐periphery, because environmental regulation is looser there, or for some other reason or combination of reasons? Is the relationship between globalization of production and CO emissions historically contingent or inherently necessary – i.e.: can we imagine the former to proceed without a continuing rise in the latter – or, to put it another way, what precisely is the role of carbon in the world-‐wide redistribution of wealth from poor to rich, from periphery to core, labour to capital? This paper will try to spell out some of the theoretical implications of our present fossil mode of globalization. Drawing on the wave of fresh research into global trade and CO2 emissions, a case study of China, and the methods of critical political economy, it will seek to locate the element of carbon in the globalization of production as it has transformed the world economy over the last decades. Deepening our understanding of these connections is imperative in the struggle against business-‐as-‐usual. Will the transition to a fossil-‐free economy require a break with the logic of globalizing capital, or is the latter compatible with a sustainable use of energy?
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Contradictions in the International Forest Regime: Poverty and Wealth, Development through Unequal Exchange and Global Political Ecology Cristián Alarcón Ferarri, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences The state of the world’s forests has been widely associated with the quest for “sustainable development”. Currently climate change intensifies the role of forests at the core of an international forest agenda based on global-‐local links within the politics of climate change. Such a forest agenda is deeply connected to what has been called the international forest regime (IFR), a specific international regime that would be formed by norms, rules, standards and procedures aimed at forest issues. Yet there are material and historical formations of forest-‐society relationships operating as condition of possibility of the so-‐called IFR. This materiality, its historical conflictive constitution and how this has been specifically developed in the age of global neoliberal capitalism is frequently not properly recognized in understandings and conceptualizations of the IFR. Therefore this paper delves into the material, discursive and historical characteristics of the current IFR in order to propose a different framework for the analysis of IFR. Such a framework takes into account unequal material flows of forest bio-‐mass, techno-‐mass and labour in the age of the neoliberal ecological project. This implies to look at the material sources of contradictions within the IFR and hence the paper focuses on the analysis of the production and reproduction of poverty, wealthy, development through unequal exchange and a global political ecology vis-‐à-‐vis forests and tree’s biomass. The paper is informed by empirical material from Chile and Sweden. The paper has four sections. The first section analyses and offers a critique of the mainstream understanding of the IFR and based on that critique the paper offers an alternative framework for understanding of the IFR. The second section looks at contradictions in the IFR. The third section uses the cases of Chile and Sweden for the study of the issues addressed in the first and second section of the paper. The fourth section offers some conclusions.
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2. Community-‐based and Community-‐driven Natural Resource Management – a Tool for Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development? Venue: Småland Chairs: Lasse Lindström, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University and Maricela de la Torre Castro, Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University Community-‐based and -‐driven natural resource management are held forward as a means to achieve poverty reduction and sustainable development, and also form part of development assistance provided by e.g. the World Bank and UNDP. But what is the track record? What is the relationship between the participatory elements of community-‐based and –driven natural resource management and the outcomes in terms of poverty reduction and sustainable development? What is the nature of the participatory institutions established in such a context? What institutional arrangements enable influence and ownership from people living in poverty, and what arrangements do not? Are they the result of a self-‐organization of people living in poverty, articulating genuine participation? Or are they captured by local political and economic elites and by external agents and “facilitators”? The workshop invites papers which discusses theoretical, methodological, and/or empirical aspects of community-‐based and -‐driven natural resource management. Papers dealing empirically with successes and failures in developing countries applied to landscapes (e.g. agricultural systems, forestry, etc.) and seascapes (e.g. fisheries, aquaculture, and marine protected areas) are particularly welcome.
Participants: Akatama, Leena Andersson, Elina Andersson, Hanna Beckman, Malin Bengo, Irene Björk, Inger Björk, Jenny Bodin, Örjan Boyd, Emily Brandt, Kenny Bustmante Antezana, Inés Cadine Epang, Epiepang Carrasco, Ignacio Edquist, Erika Eitrem, Gunilla Emenius, Carin Engström, Linda Fadhili Charles, Bwagalilo Farahbakhsh, Neda Fincke, Annelie Gerhardt, Karin Goldman, Amy
Grandin, Jakob Guest, William Hejnowicz, Adam Peter Ibrahim, Lattiff Josephson, Magnus Joseph, Hahirwa G. Jones, Mike Kateka, Adolphine Kokko, Suvi Lim, Marcus Mapinduzi, Muhochi Minoia, Paola Möller, Sven-‐Olof Ölund, Anders Nunes Esposo, Claudia Paniagua Rodríguez, Carlos Perch, Leisa Pham Thi Bich, Ngoc Rohana Withanachchi, Chandana Salomonsson, Lennart Pokapanich, Kantamala Segnestam, Lisa
Smeds, Josefine Sokolova, Tatiana Stadlinger, Nadja Stoddard, Isak Tabi Nkongho Ashu, Samuel Taymoory, Panteha Troell, Max Vuong, Thao Wahlberg, Nils Wärnbäck, Jan Wetterstrand, Hanna Wikman, Anna
Presentations: Environmentality and Community-‐based Forest Carbon Offsets: Case Studies from India and China Emily Boyd, University of Leeds and Stockholm Resilience Centre
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The rise of forest based carbon offset projects across the global south has grown rapidly in recent years with a carbon market worth over $650 billion a year. The World Bank estimates the total mitigation need at over $500 billion a year by 2030. India and China have been at the forefront of the development of carbon-‐offset technologies, projects and programmes. Both countries have seen two of the first-‐ever registered Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) carbon forest schemes. Broadly, these schemes have much to contribute to our understanding about what it is that influences the formation, design and implementation of such mechanisms for successful community-‐based forest management and poverty alleviation. Yet, current appreciation of how CDM contributes to local agency, knowledge and new understandings of the environment remains poorly understood. The paper explores the environmentalities of carbon offsets focusing on the narratives, institutions and the agency created by two forest carbon schemes that are distinct in their geographical context, yet uniform in their design under the global CDM governance structure. Environmentality is broadly about the relationship between changes in government practice and technologies and the related changes that occur in practice and beliefs about the environment. Project histories, developments and the particular choices of participatory methods and mechanisms are examined in two cases to give insight into the ways that carbon forest offsets may open up new subjectivities and provide space for negotiation to tackle social-‐ecological challenges of land use change and degradation. Decentralized Governance in Irrigation Management: Toward Empowerment and Poverty Reduction Pham Thi Bich Ngoc, Department of Water and Environmental Studies Linköping University New challenges in the twenty-‐first century on water crisis, increased population, rapid urbanization and economic integration call the needs in the improvement of water management and governance to ensure food security, poverty reduction and sustainable development. As the starting point for whole reform in water sector, irrigation reforms with main focus on the institutional framework and the decentralization in irrigation management have been implemented in many developing countries in last two decades. Initiatives of these reform aim at strengthening institutional framework and governance; enhancing stakeholders’ participation and empowerment in water management; developing partnerships between public, private and community; improving water performance toward service-‐oriented approach. Vietnam Government’s efforts in institutional framework reform in water sector focused on decentralization, participation, privatization have began since 1990s, in the same tunes with renovation process (doi moi) started in 1986. Irrigation in transition toward decentralized irrigation management with the wide applications of Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT) and Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM). Main objectives are to delegate power and responsibilities of irrigation management from public service enterprises to local water user organizations (WUOs), improve active participation of farmers through bottom-‐up and community-‐driven approaches, enhance capacity and empowerment for local authorities and farmers in irrigation management, increase sustainable efficiency in agricultural production for improved farming income and poverty situation. Undoubtedly, IMT/PIM in Vietnam has attained the significant achievements in last 15 years thanks to government’s reforms in policy and legal framework as well the great contributions of involved actors such as state-‐owned irrigation management companies (IMCs), local water user organizations (WUOs) and farmers. However, the achievements are still far from the expected targets. It seems there exist many challenges and constraints that hindered the implementation process. This study is looking for the answers for the questions; Does local governance hinder decentralization in irrigation management? If so, how does it influence the roles and performance of local WUOs involved in
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irrigation management, and therefore impact the irrigation performance as well as poverty reduction? Above-‐mentioned questions will be addressed in the study through the assessment of local governance for decentralized irrigation management in Vietnam. It will start with the assessment of roles and performance of WUOs in term of their participation and power in decision-‐making, accountability, transparency, autonomy and sustainability. The strengthens and weaknesses will be analyzed in order to point out main what are main constraints and obstructions relate to local governance in irrigation management in Vietnam. Power Asymmetries in Small-‐Scale Fisheries– A Barrier To Governance Transformability? Beatrice Crona and Örjan Bodin, Stockholm Resilience Centre and Dept of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University Adaptation and mitigation to global as well as local environmental problems calls for the transformation of many contemporary and unsustainable governance approaches. Recent interest has therefore sprung up around factors that facilitate, and hinder, societies from transforming governance of natural resources. This paper explores how distribution of power among actors can affect the generation of knowledge and mental models relating to a small-‐scale fishery, and how this in turn can affect governance transformation in a resource dependent community. Power is defined from a relational perspective as the level of cost incurred if one party unilaterally withdraws from a relationship. We use data on social networks for communication of local ecological knowledge and gear exchange to explore a number of issues. First, we map the network of gear exchange within the community and find that the majority of individuals lending gears to others are in fact fishers. Next we examine to what degree power and knowledge accrue to the same individuals and find a strong correlation between centrality in knowledge exchange and gear exchange networks. Individuals occupying central positions in a knowledge network can be instrumental in determining which knowledge and interpretation of ecological signals is most dominant. If such central positions coincide with high levels of power this can have effects on governance of natural resources in several ways. We therefore combine quantitative network data with qualitative interviews to explore characteristics of simultaneously powerful and knowledgeable individuals, focusing on a number of factors potentially affecting governance transformability, such as the type of extraction methods used, perceived problems surrounding the fishery, connections with external agencies involved in resource management, and potential sunken cost effects as a result of investment in gear. Our results show that a majority of the most influential individuals show little recognition of declining fisheries, yet as measured by their relations, they have the most advantageous position for furthering their views on trends in the resource through their links within as well as beyond the village. We relate our findings to existing theories of influence and governance transformability at the community level and explore ideas on how social networks can help identify potential change agents in communities experiencing inertia with respect to collective action for improved resource management. Community-‐Based Approaches to Natural Resources Management and the Dynamics of Space: Perspectives from Lake Victoria Fisheries Adolphine Kateka, Södertörns University After the perceived failure of the top-‐down state-‐led approaches to the management of global natural resources, community-‐based approach became central to contemporary debates within neo-‐ liberal approaches to development. In spite of repeated failures to deliver benefits in terms of
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poverty reduction and sustainable use of natural resources, the policy continues to be popular and attractive to policy-‐makers. This has led many to question its efficacy as a developmental tool and to explore conditions under which community participation succeeds or fails. Findings have consistently revealed that success stories remain islands in the ocean of failed cases. This paper analyzes the implied and hitherto inadequately explored conceptual link between community participation, poverty reduction, and resource sustainability. The paper draws on the suggestions in recent literature on the need for a serious re-‐evaluation and rethinking of community-‐based approaches and presents as a case study the community-‐based experience from the Lake Victoria fisheries. Using the concept of space as a lens through which to view practices of community-‐based approaches to natural resources management, the paper explores issues of power and agency in making and shaping spaces for community participation in natural resources management. The paper examines the emergence of different kinds of spaces for community participation as a result of community-‐based drive to natural resources management, highlights how the main features from the top-‐down state-‐led approaches have their imprint on contemporary community-‐based approaches with implications. It goes on to explore the dynamics and dimensions of participation in institutionalized (invited spaces) and non-‐institutionalized spaces (more organically created spaces, made and shaped by people themselves). The paper concludes that the realization of community-‐ based approaches as tools for poverty reduction and resource sustainability, calls for a greater understanding of the micro-‐politics of participation as a situated practice. This in turn calls for approaches that locate spaces for participation in places in which they occur framing their possibilities with reference to actual political, social, cultural and historical particularities.
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3. Movement and the Neoliberal State: Probing the Politics and Contestations of Poverty/Displacement Venue: Norrland II Chair: Staffan Löfving, Uppsala Centre for Sustainable Development, Uppsala University The first decade of the millennium witnessed a process of securitization of migration by which the neoliberal state fortified its borders and relocated (or "outsourced," as the idiom goes) its mandate to discipline and penalize; a displacement of accountability amidst aggressive reforms for system transparency. This took place in conjunction with the deepening of disparity spawned in both North and South. The issue of poverty alleviation increasingly became confined to discourses of individual empowerment and responsibility and evolved, as practice, within the bureaucratic fields of policy and development management. Such attempted alleviation, however, is but one approach of the neoliberal state to exclusion and dispossession. The administration of justice is another. The criminalization of the livelihood strategies and of the social presence of the poor (i.e., the criminalization of the consequences of poverty) now appears to be an integral part of the "security" of thelife-‐worlds of the non-‐poor. This workshop calls for papers on people's exposure to and contestation of neoliberal security. By taking the notion of poverty to include the social and economic ramifications of displacement, and in an effort at centralizing the politics of defiance of the displaced proper we welcome discussions on movement in both spatial and social terms. The etymologically homologous pair of "mobility" and "mobilization" motivates our approach, as well as the problematically predominant perception that strategies of "exit" (migration) and "voice" (political participation) are locked in mutually exclusive positions or alternatives. Whether movement is understood as the crossing of spatial borders between and within states, or as the coming together of people around a political claim or vision, it seems clear that a free movement of people constitutes a key problem to the consolidation of the power of the neoliberal state while, paradoxically, their forced movement and the depolitizication of their claims are at the core of that very consolidation. Participants: Andrae, Gunilla Moksnes, Heidi Asher, Kiran Montoya, Ainhoa Baviskar, Amita Ng’weno, Bettina Bereketeab, Redie Nielsen, Kenneth Bo Byerley, Andrew Norr, Emelie Chowdhury Rahman Azad, Ataur Ojutkangas, Aina-‐Maria Rudebeck, Lars Eile, David Karlsson, Bengt G. Slotte, Ingrid Lindell, Ilda Thynell, Marie Milling, Marie Zhang, Qian Mohammed Yasin, Yasin
Presentations: Poverty, Development and the Yolngu Response – A Case Study from Arnhem Land, Australia Ingrid Slotte, School of Global Studies, The University of Gothenburg In the last few years indigenous poverty has become a “hot topic” in Australia within political debate as well as academia. Much of the debate has been a response to the shift in political direction away from self-‐determination for the indigenous population to new liberal ideas of “mainstreaming”, implemented during four successive liberal governments between 1996 and 2007, and culminating in
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a dramatic government intervention in Arnhem Land in June 2007 (Northern Territory Emergency Response). Although there has been a shift back to labour in Australia, the policies implemented during the liberal era remain in place and are under continuous development. The intervention was intended as a response to claims of child sexual abuse and neglect in Aboriginal communities in northern Australia, but only a handful of suspected cases were found. The intervention involved health check ups of Aboriginal children backed up by defence force presence, government take over of local Aboriginal councils and land, and “compulsory income management” of all Aboriginal recipients of social security payments. Since 2007 new reforms keep being rolled out. In 2009, the local state government identified twenty Aboriginal “growth-‐towns” in northern Australia where they promise to provide “real jobs” and “real opportunities” for Aboriginal people. Funding to small outstations where Aboriginal people live a largely traditional lifestyle has ceased. What will this mean for the Yolngu? Will outstation dwellers be forced to move in to the townships and abandon a lifestyle based in part on hunting and gathering? This paper will document liberal reform and local Yolngu responses since the 2007 intervention. Law as Place-‐maker: Legality in National and International Constitution of Ethnic Territories in Colombia Bettina Ng'weno, African American and African Studies Programme, University of California, Davis. By the end of the 1990s thirteen Latin American countries had ratified the International Labor organization (ILO) Convention 169 of 1989, which enshrines the rights of Indigenous and tribal peoples to “lands they traditionally occupy”. In addition, by 2007 seven of those countries had set up territories for specific groups defined by cultural distinction in their new Constitutions or governing frameworks, in line with the ILO convention. In Colombia this resulted in the creation of new laws regarding ethnic territories for Indigenous and Afro-‐Colombian communities emplacing them both on the ground and in specific relation of other members of the Colombian nation. How is place constituted between these national and international legal spaces? What ideas of place are instilled or left out? How does the interaction between the national and the international uphold the efficacy of law as place-‐maker? This paper looks at these questions through the case study of ethnic claims to territories in Colombia since the 1991 national constitution. In particular, it looks at the new defining feature of struggles over land as a turn away from arguments of justice to ones of legality and rights. The Cloak of Democracy: Securitisation and the Neoliberal State in Post-‐War El Salvador. Ainhoa Montoya, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester Eighteen years after the cessation of the war that devastated El Salvador throughout the 1980s, violence has become deeply ingrained in the everyday life of this country. The ongoing high levels of violence have not provoked an outcry from the Salvadoran governments and international community, but are instead deemed residual problems within a new stage of liberal democracy and neoliberal capitalism. Homicides, extortion, ordinary crime, and a landscape in which security is being outsourced while militarisation is simultaneously increasing have made the experience of violence in post-‐war El Salvador highly unintelligible. My fieldwork in a Salvadoran municipio in 2009 allows me to argue that youth gang violence, a conspicuous manifestation of the country's violence, has been deployed as a scapegoat by the ARENA governments, thereby obfuscating other aspects of violence that might call into question the successful completion of the country's transition from war to peace.
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4. Health, Resilience and Poverty Venue: Skåne Chairs: Pieter Fourie, Department of Politics, Macquari University, Sydney, Australia and Maj-‐Lis Follér, School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg The link between epidemics, poverty and other development challenges is well established. Poverty, marginalization and lack of equality drive pandemics, which in turn undermines societies’ ability to move out of chronic poverty. Some societies (even in the context of large-‐scale epidemics) have been remarkably resilient to the impact of the pandemics such as AIDS, SARS and avian influenza, whereas others are struggling, with some analysts warning of large-‐scale state fragility and eventual collapse. Our workshop aims to understand how socio-‐political mechanisms interact to determine who lives, who dies, and which societies remain resilient in the face of such vast systemic shocks. Poverty and economic development are direct cofactors in most global epidemics, and in order to address them in a systemic and sustainable manner, all these variables should be understood and addressed. This session welcomes inter-‐ or transdisciplinary contributions that discuss theoretical and/or empirical aspects of the interrelationship between health and poverty on the one hand, and resilience on the other. We welcome two kinds of papers: (1) those that explore the theoretical/conceptual discursive environment dealing with long-‐wave shocks and resilience, and (2) those that provide empirical or case study examples of such instances of resilience. Participants: Frérotte, Naomi Nordfeldt, Cecilie Fröcklin, Sara Quinlan, Tim Galaz, Victor Sawers, Larry Körling, Gabriella Stillwaggon, Eileen Larsson Lidén, Lisbeth Ternström, Ingela Machado-‐Borges, Thaïs Widmark, Charlotta Östman, Malin Melin, Mia Presentations: The Racial Politics of Sex Eileen Stillwaggon, Gettysburg College, USA and Larry Sawers, American University, USA Racialized notions of sexuality dominate AIDS discourse on Africa. Long-‐held Western beliefs of an exceptional and exotic African sexuality pervade the literature on HIV/AIDS and dictate HIV-‐ prevention policy that is primarily focused on sexual behavior, even though abundant empirical evidence now demonstrates that risky sexual behaviors are more common in affluent countries where HIV prevalence is low. But the myth of African sexual exceptionalism survives in the reigning conventional wisdom that concurrent sexual partnerships drive the epidemics of HIV in Africa. Our paper examines the role that racialized depictions of ‘sexuality’ play in distorting HIV-‐prevention policy. AIDS policy replicates representations of ‘African society’ as embodying a sexual culture that makes the region vulnerable to rapid spread of HIV. We examine the success of the concurrency hypothesis, in the absence of empirical support, as an example of the determined efforts to characterize the AIDS epidemic as the result of a peculiar African vulnerability that derives from its eccentric sexual culture. The exclusive focus of global AIDS policy on sexual behavior is unscientific because it departs from a century of epidemiological inquiry into the complex nature of disease causation and consequently ignores a wealth of biomedical evidence of the role of cofactors and medical transmission in HIV
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infection. The obvious differences in health profile between Africa and more affluent regions include high prevalence of malaria, helminthic diseases, and malnutrition, and a scarcity of safe medical care, but those factors are not considered in the formulation of AIDS policy. The racialized version of African AIDS has several important consequences. First, it depicts Africans as peculiarly susceptible to AIDS because of a culture that promotes risky behavior. Thus it is African culture, rather than lack of access to clean water or safe medical care, that puts Africans at risk. Second, it promotes the notion that Africans are therefore in need of continuing instruction from Westerners on safe sexual behaviors. Third, it distracts much needed attention from those factors which do increase African risk of acquiring or transmitting HIV, such as malaria and helminthic infections and unsafe medical care. Policy organizations insist on message control, claiming that Africans cannot keep in their heads two different (albeit complementary) messages – safe sex and safe medical care, or healthy bodies and healthy behaviors. Only in a racialized discourse, that seems so natural to many in the AIDS field, is it possible to censor the substantial evidence of unsafe medical care and cofactor infections and leave Africans at risk. The myths of hypersexualized African culture are important for maintaining the locus of control in the international organizations and bilateral agencies, although the reason for that is subject to various interpretations, which we consider in the paper. The immediate result, however, is clear: Africans continue to suffer from preventable and curable endemic diseases that make them more vulnerable to HIV infection and they continue to become infected through unsafe medical care. AIDS policy for Africa is almost everywhere a dismal failure, not because the solutions are technically or logistically so difficult, but because the causes of the epidemic do not match the agenda in policy circles. Supernetworks in Global Health Goverance Victor Galaz, Stockholm Resilience Centre Emerging and re-‐emerging infectious disease (EIDs) not only result from complex interactions in social, economical and ecological systems. They also seriously challenge the steering capacity of governance at all political levels. This paper elaborates a number of often ignored, and hard resolved institutional puzzles related to the multilevel governance of EIDs. These puzzles -‐ related to the impacts of institutional fragmentation, redundancy, and efficiency trade-‐offs in centralized vs. decentralized decision-‐making and response – are analyzed using the global and national institutional challenges posed by e.g. avian influenza, SARS and Ebola hemorrhagic fever. The paper discusses the evolution of "supernetworks" – networks that coordinate networks – as an emerging governance mechanism at the global level to secure early warning and response. It maps out a number of recent organizational innovations promoted by the World Health Organization to overcome these puzzles: i.e. the close integration of innovations in information and communications technology to its organizational structure; increasing support to regional early warning and response nodes; and the creation of informal and flexible information sharing, and coordinating transnational networks. The results show that this strategy has some clear resemblances with the features of what crisis management scholars denote “High Reliability Organizations” – organizational processes that operate efficiently despite continous shocks and surprises, and the constant risk of catastrophic repercussions resulting from organizational failure. However, the results also points to a number of hard-‐resolved weaknesses in the existing organizational model. These are related to remaining
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geographical gaps; insecure funding; and a lack of recognition of underlying social-‐ecological drivers for EID such as land use change, loss of habitats, and climate change. The analysis build on extensive document studies, and interviews with key actors involved in EIDs preparedness and response at the World Health Organization, the European Center for Disease Control, and non-‐state organizations such as the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Multiple Stressors in Southern Africa: The Links Between HIV/AIDS, Food Insecurity, Health and Resilience Now and in the Future Tim Quinlan, Health Economics and AIDS Research Division, University of KwaZulu-‐Natal, South Africa A "livelihoods crisis" has continued to unfold across southern Africa throughout this decade, with many more people than during the 1990s now living 'close to the edge' and increasingly unable to absorb shocks or stresses. Arguably, something dramatic has changed in the region, and most assessments understand this to be as much a crisis of livelihoods or of development in general, as a series of simple food shocks. The resilience of livelihood systems has clearly come under intense pressure over the past decade. Understanding the underlying causes of this crisis inevitably means untangling the knot of 'multiple stressors' which lie at the root of regional food insecurity and poverty, deteriorating health outcomes for children in particular, compounded in particular by the AIDS epidemic. Using a "multiple stressor framework" to understand this crisis, the causes and consequences of deteriorating livelihoods is presented with particular emphasis on children's health and the AIDS epidemic.
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5. Global Patterns of Production and Consumption, and the Effects on People in Poverty Venue: Norrland I Chair: Eva Friman, Uppsala Centre for Sustainable Development, Uppsala University Unequal and unsustainable global patterns of production, trade and consumption are a major challenge in our world today. This session focuses on the links between nature, power and poverty in the global production and consumption system. The links betwen dominating global narratives about environment and development and current patterns of global production, trade and consumption are discussed and analysed from several disciplinary angels, e.g. systems ecology, ecological economics and political ecology. Through case studies, various forms of production in the Global south and the effects these production forms can have on people in poverty are explored. Local people's responses and resistance to problematic production modes and initiatives to create alternative modes of more sustainable and equitable forms of production are also discussed. This session welcomes theoretical and/or empirical perspectives on global patterns of production, trade and consumption. Participants: Alarcón Ferrari, Cristián Lim, Marcus Bengo, Irene Löfquist, Lars Bergquist, Daniel A. Mapinduzi, Muhochi Björk, Jenny Melin, Mia Elmeadawy, Mohamed Paulson, Susan Fourie, Pieter Pham Thi Bich, Ngoc Gallardo, Gloria Pokapanich, Kantamala Salomonsson, Lennart Hajdu, Flora Hejnowicz, Adam Peter Stadlinger, Nadja Hermele, Kenneth Tabi Nkongho Ashu, Samuel Hornborg, Alf Troell, Max Jacobson, Klara Ueyonahara, Jorge Joseph, Hahirwa G. Wetterstrand, Hanna Karlström, Isabella Wikman, Anna Liljestam, Agneta Wilson, Mark
Presentations: Social Enterprises: Toward the Definition of a System for Measuring Social Enterprises' Value Irene Bengo, Management Engineering, Politecnico di Milano The recent economic crisis has underlined some critical aspects in the current economic system, which fails to answer to the interdependency principles and social problems of global development. This situation has highlighted the need of new economic, entrepreneurial and social development structures to meet the needs of at least a part of the problem. A configuration which appears potentially interesting to answer to this problem is the Social Enterprise (SE). At the basis of SE, there is the idea of transforming the maximization of profit and wealth creation – the final goal in the classical theory -‐ in the means by which the “social entrepreneur” fulfill unmet social needs and therefore may fit the North as well as the South of the World needs. A Second element of SE is the idea of transforming the social benefit which is the final goal for the non-‐profit
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system – into a real “business idea” which needs to be exploited, and realized with some of the instruments of the classical theory. The SE have relevant expected impact in term of social value creation (Borzaga 2003). However, the actual contribution of SE has not been proved yet, because of the lack of a consistent performance measurement system (PMS). This situation limits the understanding of the actual contribution of SEs to socio-‐economic developmentIn line with this point, the paper aims to investigate how SE results can be measured, (i.e. how a PMS for social enterprise can be developed) with respect to their social, environmental and economic impact. In this way, SEs could be able to benchmark their performances against other businesses (profit and non profit), to answer to their stakeholders expectations and also to overcome some of the obstacles they face in accessing finance and competing for public sector contracts (Marks 2008). Furthermore, the measurement of social value creation for social enterprises requires the consideration of a variety of outcomes for a heterogeneous set of stakeholders, often with contrasting interests (Kerlin 2006). Though most of organizations are actually multi-‐stakeholders, SE are characterized by a highly participative nature of the involvement of internal and external subjects in the strategically choices of the organization. In the context of SE, groups of local actors are regarded as agents of change in existing ‘central value systems’ of organizations and society, and participants, who are engaged in the learning process of systemic enquiry for organizational transformation and social change, become active actors. Moving from this consideration this paper aims to define a System performance measure and the central role of different stakeholders in its different stages through the literature analysis to identify the relevant performance of social enterprises and the empirical analysis, based on a survey aimed at mapping the characteristics of systems of measurement of performance in the African and South American social enterprises. Risk-‐Awareness among Small-‐Scale Farmers Using Pesticides in Tanzania and the Role of Retailers Nadja Stadlinger, Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University, Aviti J. Mmochi, Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Dar es Salaam and Linda Kumblad, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Dar es Salaam Synthetic pesticides became an integral part of agriculture in the 20th century following the attempts of the Green revolution to increase productivity. Thereby many developing countries’ agriculture changed towards large scale farming. In Africa however, small-‐scale subsistence farming is dominating the sector. Even if pesticide use is still relatively low on the African continent, very poor pesticide handling practices have been documented, which increases risks for side-‐effects. Often small-‐scale farmers are lacking proper pesticide information sources. The results from an interview survey among farmers in Tanzania and on Zanzibar showed that farmers generally lacked knowledge to manage the pesticides as prescribed by the manufacturers. Few farmers knew what kind of pesticides they where using, or had never seen the original packages, since pesticides were also sold per weight or already diluted. Farmers used little protective clothing, since they either could not see the risks associated with pesticide handling and application or did not know where to purchase protective gear. Pesticide retailers are often the only persons who can inform the end-‐users about proper pesticide handling practices. They therefore play a critical role in raising awareness of negative effects that pesticides have on human health and the environment. It is a responsibility of governments (stated in the FAO code of conduct on the distribution and use of pesticides) to create licensing systems for retailers and make sure that licensing system are being implemented. Pesticide retailers in Zanzibar, however, showed low risk-‐awareness and the persons who actually were licensed to sell pesticides were seldom present in the shops. Instead family members or young adults were hired as shop
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keepers. This left many of the end-‐users to depend on pesticide labels as their only source of information and further the shop keepers put themselves at risk of pesticide poisoning and chronic exposure due to bad handling practices. The pesticide management system in Tanzania needs to be enforced to be able to cope with a predicted increase in pesticide utilization. Further, the existing notion in the country that agrochemical use is the key to increased yields does not take into consideration the heterogeneity of the agriculture and the reality of farmers. Tanzania and the rest of Sub-‐Saharan Africa have very different preconditions compared to other parts of the world where pesticide use is high. Educational campaigns that encourage small-‐scale farmers to develop their agricultural and pest management practices would probably generate better yields than just encouraging agrochemical use. Keywords: pesticides, small-‐scale farmers, retailers, Africa
Linking Systems Ecology and Political Ecology – Insights from Case Studies in Global Food and Fuel Production Systems Cristián Alarcón Ferarri, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences System ecology (SE) and political ecology (PE) have widely been used to provide theoretical and conceptual frameworks for conducting research dealing with social systems-‐ecosystems relationships. Yet some problematic issues linked to both SE and PE have been highlighted e.g that PE gives insufficient place to a proper understanding of ecological dynamics and that SE ignores social power relations. The ongoing research project Global Patterns of Production and Consumption (GLOPAT) has been based on the attempt of conducting research combining SE and PE frameworks. Through bringing together different disciplines the project has addressed the study of production-‐consumption relations associated with case studies in three different countries: farmed salmon and seafood in Chile; maize in South Africa and bio-‐fuels in Brazil. The research process, implying collective fieldwork of researchers educated within both social theory and natural sciences, has implied a number of theoretical discussions addressing crucial epistemological, conceptual and methodological issues. Within this context raised questions have been for example: What can SE and PE (and in this case social theory in general) explain and not explain respectively? And, what can be the sources of conflicts when combining the two frameworks? Drawing insights and experiences from such a research process, this paper aims at offering a possible complementary articulation of SE and PE. Through focusing on specific set of concepts e.g. power/social power; hierarchies, organization and control; information, communication and discourses; capital and capitalism, the paper delves into the theoretical foundations of trans-‐ disciplinary research based on SE and PE. One main aim of the paper is to discuss and clarify how both approaches may offer complementary understandings of the conceptual relations aforementioned and contribute to the analysis and explanation of the project’s case studies. From a broader perspective the paper highlights the theoretical productivity and also the challenges of bringing together both social theory and natural sciences in the understanding of social system-‐ ecosystems relationships.
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6. Cities, Marginalisation, Rights and Citizenship Venue: Norrland II Chairs: Ilda Lindell and Andrew Byerley, the Nordic Africa Institute, and Charlotta Widmark, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University The sustainability of future cities is a contested issue. Urban spaces and places change, there are new demands on the environment, conflicts arise around resources, new groups take place and others withdraw. Maintaining a clearly defined inside against those perceived as dangerous, contagious or otherwise undeserving (often people living in poverty) has long been a leitmotif in the production of urban space and a prerogative in demarcating the lines of rights-‐bearing citizens; of defining those with ‘the right to the city’ (Jacobs 1996, Holston 1999). The very fact that more than 1 billion of the planets 3.3 billion urban residents occupy urban settlements situated more or less outside of the ambit of formal tenurial or legal regulative parameters (UN 2008) does intimate that there has been, and continues to be, considerable latitude to creatively re-‐make, re-‐colonise and re-‐use the built space of cities. Furthermore, and as a now considerable body of literature on popular urban culture, identity and associational life attests to, life worlds in such interstitial zones – betwixt and between the traditional and modern, the makeshift and the sanctioned, the organic and the formally planned – are not static but are constantly recast and remade. However, such processes of re-‐making, and any emancipatory or material gains thus won, are often contested and contentious and always risk reversal should the state or powerful investors annul the legal ‘state of exception’ (Roy 2005). These processes confront social scientists, urban planners, architects, practitioners and political stakeholders with new urban terrains, spaces, and social, cultural and political formations that challenge and destabilise existing ways of theorising, intervening in, planning, and imagining the urban present and urban futures in ways that productively expand the numbers of urban dwellers with a real ‘right to the city’. This session welcomes contributions that explore methodological, theoretical and/or empirical aspects of the possibilities of urban dwellers living in poverty to participate in, and influence the processes that form the city, in relation to existing power structures, inequalities and conflicts of interest. More specifically, this concerns the notion of ‘the right to the city’ (and insurgent citizenship/insurgent planning), the shifting lines of inclusion/exclusion to the ‘legal city’ in time and space, changing configurations of governmentality, and the ways citizens (formally or informally) construct, challenge, and/or adopt to restraints put upon them in urban Africa, Latin America and Asia. Participants: Andrae, Gunilla Körling, Gabriella Apaydin, F. Muge Machado-‐Borges, Thaïs Baviskar, Amita Milling, Marie Bereketeab, Redie Minoia, Paola Brandt, Kenny Moksnes, Heidi Carrasco, Ignacio Möller, Sven-‐Olof Eile, David Nam, Kiwoong Eitrem, Gunilla Nordfeldt, Cecilie Emenius, Carin Park, Jinha Grandin, Jakob Strandenhed, Linda Guest, William Taymoory, Panteha Josephson, Magnus Thynell, Marie Wahlberg, Nils
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Presentations: Struggling for the Right to Pan Garbage: Female Waste Scavengers in the Streets of Belo Horizonte, Brazil Thaïs Machado-‐Borges, Institute of Latin American Studies, Stockholm University Brazil is a highly unequal and socially segregated society. The organization of urban space and the organization of labor within this space reflect the extension of social inequalities and the processes of social exclusion in the country. Based on fieldwork conducted in the city of Belo Horizonte, southeastern Brazil, this paper discusses how politics of exclusion and struggles for social inclusion are enacted through informal waste management. Filling in The Blanks: The Appropriation of Space and the Articulation of the Right to the City and Urban Citizenship in Peri-‐Urban Niamey, Niger Gabriella Körling, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University In this paper I will explore the development of neighbourhoods and the provision of basic services and infrastructure in the urban periphery of Niamey, Niger. The presentation is based on fieldwork carried out in neighbourhoods, one village and two ‘informal’ neighbourhoods on the eastern outskirts of Niamey. The area in question has developed largely outside of state intervention as customary land owners have divided up and sold land plots. These neighbourhoods are often left blank or outlined in irregular contours in maps of the city, an illustration of their incomplete integration into the ‘formal’ or ‘planned’ city, represented in straight grids and lines. However the seemingly blank and homogenous space is, as I will show, a space open for a plurality of practices and norms and for the confrontation of multiple claims to and representations of the city and the neighbourhood articulating notions of tradition and modernity and of the formal and informal. In the paper I will describe the formation and transformation of the neighbourhoods. I will show different ways in which urban space or land is appropriated by urban residents and I will trace the struggle for the establishment of public services -‐ electricity, water provision, schools, health centres, markets-‐ which mobilize a diversity of local actors and institutions in the absence of state initiatives. I will argue that these processes of neighbourhood formation in the urban margin can be seen as a negotiation for ‘rights to the city’ and urban citizenship by urban residents who make use of a wide range of different and sometimes opposing registers in claiming their ‘right to the city’. Empowering Communities: A Critical Review of the EC Programme “Non State Actors and Local Authorities in Development” Paola Minoia, Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki This communication presents some points of reflection about aims, means and results of aid policies targeting the civil society, and particularly the EC programme “Non-‐State Actors and Local Authorities in Development”. The proposed principles of empowering civil society organizations and their sustainable livelihoods are applied with a particular support to projects proposed by NGOs, either local or international. The programme’s objectives are in line with the Millennium Development Goals, but the adopted strategies also prove coherence with neo-‐liberal policies of State’s disengagement and intervention of non public entities. In fact, not only NGOs are generally considered able to act closer to the people and better advocate for their needs. They are also seen as complementary to the public institutions in providing basic services to marginalized communities, and moreover, as community-‐speakers in front of institutional authorities, as they were representing the civil society.
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However, in number of cases it has been observed that aid has over-‐empowered the recipient, often international, NGOs, instead of reaching the vulnerable communities. Therefore, the need to define more precisely civil society target groups and their representatives is a key issue that has to be better addressed by donor agencies. The communication thus proposes a categorization of Non State Actors (NSAs) by structural complexity and functions. The research has involved interviews and focus groups with different stakeholder groups in five countries of Middle East and Africa, representatives of European NSAs and EU officials. Moreover, this contribution will present a case study in Rwanda. The mentioned EC programme has funded a project in the district of Kayonza, implemented by an urban-‐based NGO having the task to facilitate the resettlement of indigenous communities expelled from protected forests.
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7. The Politics of Climate Change, Gender and Development Venue: Småland Chairs: Rohan DeSousa, Centre for Studies in Science Policy, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Seema Arora Jonsson, Department of Rural and Urban Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Climate change is an environmental concern shared across nations. Different reasons and several solutions have been presented over the years. Recent global understanding has been that the increase in temperatures is anthropogenically generated due to long-‐term intensive industrial growth and high consumption lifestyles in developed countries. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is based on this understanding. However much it is accepted, the politics of climate change shows that it is not uncontested. Developing countries have managed to bring to the agenda the question of development and link it closely to efforts to ameliorate the climate change. A system wherein developing countries are funded to start projects that would mitigate the effects of climate change and contribute to development is an important cornerstone. According to some, the developed world has the technology necessary to take care of this problem and the answer is to get the technology transfer right as well as the economics of carbon trading. We invite papers that explore these areas and deal with the nexus of politics, society and the drive towards carbon trading. - How do current power relations internationally and within nations play out in the responses to climate change? How do issues of poverty and development figure in these relations? - What are the gendered dimensions of this politics and how may it entrench inequality or provide possibilities for more equitable relations? - Do the new changes provide possibilities for a change in thinking on science and especially in terms of other intersecting axes such as class, ethnicity, nationality? How might that be? - How are standard responses to climate change established? What is the role of science and how does politics make itself felt? Participants: Akatama, Leena Edquist, Erika Norling, AnnaKarin Andersson, Hanna Engström, Linda Nunes Esposo, Claudia Andersson, Kerstin B Farahbakhsh, Neda Ojutkangas, Aina-‐Maria Andersson, Sara Fincke, Annelie Ölund, Anders Arrondelle, Donna Frérotte, Naomi Östman, Malin Fröcklin, Sara Paniagua Rodríguez, Carlos Asher, Kiran Perch, Leisa Azad, Chowdhury Gerhardt, Karin Beckman, Malin Goldman, Amy Quinlan, Tim Ben Adebanjo, Awe Hasnain, M. Rudebeck, Lars Björk, Inger Hjort-‐af-‐Ornas, Anders Segnestam, Lisa Björkdahl, Göran Ibrahim, Lattiff Tollefsen, Aina Blanck, Josefin Jonsson, Seema Arora Vuong, Thao Boyd, Emily Jorge, Gabriella Whitten, Barbara Bustmante Antezana, Inés Kaijser, Anna Wiklund, Linda Cadine Epang, Epiepang Kateka, Adolphine Williams, Christian Cassetti, Gabriele Lindström, Lasse Zhang, Qian de la Torre Castro, Maricela Melander, Veronica Zink, Eren Eckerman, Ingrid Mossberg, Daniel
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Presentations: Who Needs Who? Women and REDD+ in the Case of Angai Forest, Tanzania Leena Akatama, University of Jyväskylä, Finland In the recent years climate change and gender discourse has voiced out the need for integration of gender to all climate policies and actions. Women to large extent will face the negative effects of the phenomenon the most, which adds up to the prevailing inequalities between the genders that exist in the world. (Aguilar 2009, Brody et al. 2008.) This paper looks at a greenhouse gas mitigation mechanism Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and its capacity to meet the forest agency of women in the case of Angai Forest in Southern Tanzania. REDD+ links communities living near forests to carbon sequestration while providing them compensations from global sources. (Mustalahti 2008, Verchot and Petkova 2009, Sundström 2010.) The paper is divided into two sections that discuss with the empirical experiences from Angai. Firstly I analyse women’s interests and needs to be involved in the REDD+ preparation process and lastly I look at why REDD+ as climate change mitigation policy needs women. The data was collected during field work in 2010 in Tanzania mainly using participant observation and semi-‐structured interviews in Angai communities and during a participatory carbon monitoring exercise. Political ecology and Gender and Development (GAD) were combined as theoretical framework. Results suggest that in order for REDD+ to succeed in greenhouse gases mitigation, women are key stakeholders, whose interest is also to ensure that their needs in forest use is secured. However, major challenges prevail in linking women’s existing forest agency into the Participatory Forest Management practices connected to the REDD+ preparation. There are various uncertainties in REDD+ as climate policy, but it has potential to bring local emphasis to sustainable forest use as climate change adaptation and community level agency in natural resources management. Converging and Conflicting Interests in Adaptation to Environmental Change in Vietnam Malin Beckman, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish Univeristy of Agricultural Sciences The paper is based on qualitative research in the provinces of Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue in central Vietnam during the years 1996-‐2009, by the author and collegues at Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry. The focus of the paper is on policies for adaptation and mitigation that, while increasing resilience at one scale may cause increased vulnerability at other scales. Policies on forest protection and construction of hydroelectric dams regulate flooding and prevent salt water intrusion into low land areas. However, the policies also result in severe constraints in access to land for the mountain population, which has impact on their capacity to manage risk and adapt to environmental change. It is argued that these effects are further reinforced by policies of privatization of forest land, reducing the access of the poor to common property resources. Such resources have previously had an important buffer function when coping with crises like serious floods. The resulting difference in adaptive capacity between groups with different access to resources is a critical issue for equity and social sustainability in adaptation. Key words: adaptation, social sustainability, forest policies, Vietnam, equity, vulnerability, climate change, adaptive capacity Mitigation of What and by What? Adaptation by Whom and for Whom? Leisa Perch, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-‐IG), UNDP
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The recently released report of the Committee of Development Policy of the United Nations highlighted that “while climate change may present a threat to livelihoods and the sustained achievement of development objectives, it also offers immense prospects for innovative social and economic practices’ (pp 23, Report of the Twelfth Session held March 2010). Recent reviews and analysis of the global climate change agenda have further suggested the need for coherence and convergence between climate change and other development policy. While there is no doubt that social vulnerability matters in development, a special resonance is implied in the context of climate change. There is no doubt that the climate change discourse has been highly political and highly politicized. There is also little doubt that this most significant of development challenges will benefit some and harm others, increasingly the economic and social vulnerability of those with less adaptive capacity. As the global dialogue advances on a post-‐Kyoto framework, a number of significant questions remain: Why have the global climate change discourse and agenda been so slow to address social dimensions? Can climate finance do more than represent economic transfers and trades between polluters and non-‐polluters? Are there ways and means to make both mitigation and adaptation more context-‐specific? Has the inclusion of indigenous peoples in the REDD, REDD+ and REDD++ frameworks become a proxy for inclusion? This paper will examine the existing literature on the politics of climate change and development exploring the tensions and unresolved issues to-‐date. It will also examine in depth the signed and consensus documents as well as draft text in circulation on climate change within the UNFCCC as well as the guidelines for the various financing mechanisms – the Global Environment Facility, the Special Adaptation and other Funds – as well as response approaches. The review will also look at the translation of the global agenda at the national level through National Communications, NAPAs and other reports. Key words: politics, vulnerability, coherence, convergence, context-‐specific, post-‐Kyoto The UNFCCC and Gender: Focus on the Integration of Gender Goals, COP-‐15 Meetings, Negotiations and Subsequent Activities Donna Arrondelle, School of Public Policy, University College London This paper addresses the question ‘How have the UNFCCC integrated the UN system-‐wide gender goals?’ Despite the formalisation of the aims 'gender equality' and the 'empowerment of women' by the UN’s Chief Executives Board for Coordination in the system-‐wide policy 'the United Nations system-‐wide policy on gender equality and the empowerment of women: focusing on results and impact' in 2006, to date the United Nations Framework's Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has not established a formal strategy to incorporate the system-‐wide policy. Moreover, the UN branch monitoring much of the UN’s work on gender equality and empowerment of women, ‘WomenWatch’ has not yet extended its work to evaluate the activities of the UNFCCC. In the absence of a formal UNFCCC policy and monitoring taskforce by WomenWatch, this paper sets out to critically assess COP-‐15 and subsequent activities through a gender lens, to explore how gender issues have and potentially have not been acknowledged, and more importantly, incorporated into the UNFCC's efforts providing a global response to climate change. Taking a qualitative approach, using primary and secondary data, content and critical discourse analyses are applied to reveal how the gender dimensions of climate change were addressed by the UNFCCC COP-‐15 and gender issues incorporated in their policy solutions for the future. Taking a critical approach, the wider structural power relations are also examined. The paper develops a basis for a new, gender-‐sensitive framework for COP-‐16 and beyond.
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8. Bare Necessity: Displaced Livelihoods and Subaltern Endurance Venue: Skåne Chair: Beppe Karlsson, Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University Intensified appropriation and commodification of land and natural resources continue to render large numbers of people homeless and undermine the livelihoods of entire communities. Dam constructions, mining operations, oil extraction, nature conservation, and the privatization of resources that have traditionally been under common property regimes are all examples of this. Environmental degradation and natural disasters can further enhance the loss of the local resource base. While there are cases of social movement protests to counter appropriation by the forces of state and/or capital, the absence of organized resistance appears nevertheless the more prevalent scenario in resource-‐rich peripheries. The dispossessed are hence commonly left to deal with their predicament individually or through non-‐political forms of social organizing. To this panel we invite papers that address how people -‐ individually and collectively -‐ handle critical livelihood ruptures. We call for contributions that move beyond the theoretical or conceptual framework of “resistance (vs accommodation)” studies, and suggest new ways of thinking subaltern endurance in marginalisation and displacement.
Participants: Andersson, Elina Nielsen, Kenneth Bo Århem, Nikolas Norr, Emelie Fadhili Charles, Bwagalilo Portillo, Bruno Follér, Maj-‐Lis Sawers, Larry Gustafsson, Maria-‐Therese Slotte, Ingrid Håkansson, N. Thomas Smeds, Josefine Jones, Mike Sokolova, Tatiana Löfving, Staffan Stillwaggon, Eileen Mohamed Yasin, Yasin Stoddard, Isak Montoya, Ainhoa Wärnbäck, Jan Ng’weno, Bettina Withanachchi, Chandana Rohana Presentations: Is It a Silent Travel to Death? Case of the Subaltern Children of Lucy Yasin Mohammed Yasin, University of Hamburg Afars who claim to be decadent of Kush, son of Ham and grandson of Noah are one of the nomadic people straddling across international boundaries between neighbouring states in the Horn of Africa, namely Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti. The Afar land of Ethiopia is well known as cradle of early human origin as the skeleton of the earliest human ancestors including Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago are discovered along the Awash Valley Basin in Afar Depression of Ethiopia. Until recently the central governments of Ethiopia regarded the Afar area as a hot, an inhospitable and economically useless region of the country. However, in the second half of the 20th century, the Imperial government of Ethiopia has raped the Afar land for the establishment of large scale commercial cotton farms in joint venture with the Dutch’s Handels Verenigins Amsterdam (HVA) and the British Mitchell Cotts Company. Following the 1974 regime change, the Derg government has continued the path of its predecessor and expanded state farms by further alienated the Afar pastoralists from their ancestral land. As a matter of fact, during the Derg era, the name ‘commercial farms’ has shifted to ‘state farms’ and also the owners ‘feudal lords’ has replaced by the new lord, ‘the state’. Apart from half-‐a-‐century old land-‐grabbing schemes undertaken by successive governments of Ethiopia for expanding agricultural farms, Game parks and
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Military camps, the incumbent federal government of Ethiopia come up with a new scheme of ‘Kessem-‐Tendaho Dam and Irrigation Development project’ (KTDIP) for sugarcane plantations that will alienate Afar pastoralists from around 109,000 hectares of dry and wet season grazing lands. Beside the economical and environmental predictable risks and dangers on the Afar pastoral livelihood, the execution of this project further led to demographic reengineering over the Afar land in which around 80,000 household labourers would be expected to migrate from the highlands and resettle in the surroundings of the project areas. Previously these unhealthy development interventions in to the Afar land have resulted a mushrooming of conflicts between the state and the Afars in various ways ranges from individual, clan and well organized armed resistances. Nevertheless, the Afars’ reaction against the new scheme (KTDIP) which is predicted by many Afars as ‘the beginning of the end’ seems a mere silence. Is silence the last resort for the Afar? Are there any new mechanisms designed individually and/or clan level to react against any societal threat like the KTDIP? This study will examine the reaction of the Afar for the implementation of the huge dam and irrigation project being regarded by many of them as a threat on the survival of their nation. A Devil’s Choice – Subaltern Accommodation and/or Resistance in the Context of Forced Land Acquisition in India Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo The opposition to the acquisition of agricultural land for industrial purposes that emerged in the Indian state of West Bengal from 2006 onwards represents an infrequent but by no means rare instance of organised resistance to dispossession and livelihood ruptures. In most theoretical renderings resistance signifies subaltern agency, but on the ground it comes at a price: It is oftentimes accompanied by severe hardships that lead to new forms of marginalisation and poverty. This paper focuses on the resistance to land acquisition for a (now abandoned) car factory in Singur, West Bengal, where a group of villagers have struggled – so far unsuccessfully – for the return of their erstwhile farmland for now four years. Yet the villagers’ resistance has formed only one part of a complex combination of survival and livelihood strategies, for Singur’s villagers know only too well that a one-‐sided gamble on resistance to the detriment of developing more accommodative strategies could cost them dearly in the event that their resistance proved futile. I argue in this paper that subaltern agency in the face of livelihood ruptures lies not in choosing between resistance and accommodation, but to creatively combine them. If you had asked the Singur villagers to choose between resistance and accommodation to the construction of the car factory in their locality they would have considered it a devil’s choice. They would have preferred to answer a rather Winnie the Poohish ‘both’ – and then they would have added a no less Pooish, ‘But don't bother about the land acquisition, please’. In one of A. A. Milne’s stories Rabbit once asked Winnie the Pooh:,’Honey or condensed milk with your bread?’ Winnie the Pooh was so excited that he said, ‘Both,’ and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, ‘But don't bother about the bread, please.’ Citizenship and the Politics of Natural Resource Regulation – Representation, Influence and Participation in Peruvian Mining Conflicts Maria-‐Therese Gustafsson, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University The fundamental transformations due to globalization, capitalist expansion and increased production in the countryside have affected small-‐scale peasants by generating intensified competition over rights to terrestrial resources such as land and water. In Peru, the investments in mining increased 20 times between 1990 and 1997, which has produced social conflicts concerning land rights, environmental pollution, distribution of profits, but also concerning more process-‐oriented issues about how the rural populations should be included in the decision-‐making process concerning resource-‐extraction. Currently, the processes surrounding mining conflicts constitute one of the most visible and important forms of the
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state’s presence in rural areas in Peru (Bebbington et al., 2007:78). Thus, at heart of mining conflicts are essential issues concerning peasant communities’ access to the state and how and with what rights they are included as citizens. While previous research on natural resource conflicts in Peru is often society focused (social movement) (see for instance Gil, 2009, Damonte, 2008), in this dissertation project I seek to analyze dialectically how different social forces (peasant movements, the state and the companies) attempt to transform the manifestations and implications of modes of regulation of the mining sector over a period of ten years (2003-‐2013) through an analysis of these three actors political strategies. How does the state regulate how the interests of peasant communities and transnational companies are represented at state level? How do these, in turn strive to influence the modes of regulation? The project is comparative and aims at analysing the different causes and implications of different strategic articulations. Therefore two cases where the goals and strategies of the peasant movements differ have been chosen. In the Rio Blanco-‐project the peasant movement resists the project while in the Bambas-‐project they collaborate and negotiate with the mining company about fair conditions. However, in practice different strategies are intertwined and changing and lead to multiple and even contradictory outcomes. In this paper I will develop the analytical framework of the dissertation drawing upon contextualized theories on representation, participation and influence, Bob Jessop’s Strategic-‐Relational Approach (SRA) and Cindy Katz strategy categories (resilience, reworking and resistance). Resilience means that people find survival strategies without changing the real reasons to their problem (2004:246), while reworking is about alteration of life conditions and pragmatic redirection of available reformulation (ibid; 250). Resistance is based on and deepens critical consciousness to confront and transform conditions of oppression and exploitation at various scales (ibid; 251). Through the combination of the SRA and Katz broad categories of political strategies the aim is to contribute to the debate on agency of marginalized groups immersed in conflicts concerning access to and control over natural resources.
