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- Convenors:
-
Clare Barnes
(University of Edinburgh)
Paola Ballon (University of Oxford)
Sam Staddon (University of Edinburgh)
- Chair:
-
Fiona Nunan
(University of Birmingham)
- Stream:
- B: Agriculture, natural resources & environment
- Location:
- F1
- Start time:
- 28 June, 2018 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel focusses on the complex interrelationships between multifaceted inequalities, at various levels, and environmental degradation, and how such relationships are mediated by governance initiatives. The panel aims for a diversity of papers approaching this topic from multiple perspectives.
Long Abstract:
Processes of environmental degradation in the Global South, such as land use change in forests or coastal ecosystems, overfishing, groundwater exploitation or climate change, can create or reinforce social, cultural, political and/or economic inequalities. Likewise, multifaceted inequalities in societies from individual or group levels up to national scales, can influence the form and outcomes of environmental degradation. The relationship between inequalities and environmental degradation can be mediated by institutions; policies; macro, meso and micro social and political processes; the uneven presence of state and non-state actors etc. It becomes especially important to analyse these complex interwoven processes in the context of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, as policies and practices could demand trade-offs between reducing inequality and halting degradation, or indeed create win-wins. This panel welcomes papers which examine aspects of the complex interrelationships between multifaceted inequalities, both vertical and horizontal or group-based, and environmental degradation and/or access to natural resources, or governance initiatives and practices which directly or indirectly affect such relationships. Various frameworks could be employed such as environmental justice, law, political ecology, political economy, economics or institutional analyses. Group-based inequalities could be assessed among ethnic, racial, and communal groups in an integral effort to understand its linkages, causes and consequences with environmental degradation. The panel will create a space for dialogue between scholars and practitioners exploring these questions using different frameworks and with diverging theoretical or empirical foci. The panel is organised by the DSA Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change Study Group.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Violeta Gutiérrez Zamora (University of Eastern Finland)
Paper short abstract:
From feminist political ecology perspective, this paper analyses how in Mexico liberal approaches over indigenous women's rights for political participation and gender equity in community-based natural resources management have failed and it proposes to rethink new emancipatory pathways.
Paper long abstract:
Indigenous women in rural areas of all Mexico suffer from intersectional oppression (for being indigenous and women), socio-economic inequality and lack of opportunities for political and public participation. Liberal democracy models and top-down reforms that intend to increase gender-equity in indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Mexico have failed to understand the dynamics of social inclusion and exclusion of women in such communities by considering them as only individual right-bearers. In this paper, I discuss the association between democracy and equity in natural resources management in two forest-dependent communities with government systems of uses and customs (usos y costumbres) in the Southern Sierra of Oaxaca, Mexico. Based on a feminist political ecology perspective in this paper, I analyse how liberal approaches over women's rights to political participation promote a conception of an atomised identity that creates further constraints for women to access to forest resources utilisation and decision-making platforms. In conclusion, new approaches are needed to the democratic decision-making processes and gender equity in community-based natural resources management (CBNRM). Hence they could go beyond the involvement of women in "economic benefits" and consider seriously the emancipatory pathways in which indigenous women can excise their political rights as women while participating in defence of their rights for self-government, and cultural difference.
Tina Sikka (Newcastle University)
Paper short abstract:
In this talk, I provide a comparative, critical discourse driven analysis of activism for and against climate engineering.
Paper long abstract:
In this talk, I provide a comparative, critical discourse driven analysis of activism for and against climate engineering. Arguments in support of this approach to climate remediation are quintessentially neoliberal and can be found in discourses that fetishize entrepreneurialism, support a market driven ideology, and amplify creative destruction. Think tanks like the Cato Institute (whose funds come from oil and gas companies), billionaires like Bill Gates, and scientists that work with them, constitute some for the actors whose research and discourse I examine. I contrast this with the ways in which geoengineering is framed by organizations and individuals like Bill McKibbon, Vandana Shiva, The ETC Group, and H.O.M.E. who are opposed to their use. Their claims depart drastically from neoliberal discourse and towards one that is prosocial, ecologically egalitarian, and disruptive of the current socio-economic order. They tend to frame objections to geoengineering in terms of it constituting a slippery slope, posing unmanageable risks, and being ecologically irresponsible.
The objective of this piece is twofold, first, to engage in and unpack the discursive frames behind what is a significant site of contestation over how to address climate change; and, second, to map out the practices and sites of resistance to climate engineering as it comes up against well-funded campaigns in support of its use. To conclude, I also make the argument, using social network theory, that the strategies, tactics, and modalities of activism used by those that oppose climate intervention are better equipped to shape public opinion.
Fazilda Nabeel (University of Sussex)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the breadth of informal coping mechanisms for groundwater degradation that have evolved in the absence of formal groundwater governance in Pakistan's Punjab; the power structures underlying these, and their contradicting potential to marginalise and support simultaneously.
Paper long abstract:
The paper examines the ways in which local communities adapt to the deterioration in quantity and quality of available groundwater resources through a case study of farmers in the rice-wheat belt in District Sheikhupura of Punjab, Pakistan. In doing so, it highlights the power relations that structure the nature of informal groundwater markets mediating differential access to groundwater for irrigation, as well as customary practices building on 'local' knowledge to cope with growing industrial contamination of ground water resources. It finds that in the absence of formal government oversight for groundwater sustainability, the groundwater 'conservation' agenda has come to be intervened by the "corporateness" of corporate social responsibility initiatives run by water-intensive multinational companies sourcing rice (and embedded water) for export from the study area. The paper posits that the breadth of 'governance' initiatives and responses from a range of actors have served to reinforce the skewed distribution of water and water-saving technology (and knowledge) against marginalised groups; and that these 'water injustices'are routinized, accepted and reproduced by those who suffer from them. The case study highlights that the natures and textures of informality of the groundwater economy of Punjab - and its contradicting potential to marginalise and accommodate at the same time - need to be taken into account to condition discussions of future governance strategies for groundwater.
Divya Sharma (University of Sussex) Saurabh Arora (University of Sussex)
Paper short abstract:
This paper revisits agrarian transformation since the 1970s in a green revolution region in south India through the standpoint of landless workers. Using life-histories we explore how workers traverse changing ecologies including depleting groundwater, rainfall patterns and eroding village commons.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines contrasting yet overlapping ontologies underpinning three sets of narratives of the green revolution since the 1970s in south India. The first dominant set of narratives is underpinned by modern technology including electric pump-sets for groundwater extraction, hybrid varieties (of rice), synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. This technological materiality is reinforced by income-based conceptualisations of poverty and yield-based measurements of growth. Landless workers sometimes enter these narratives, as beneficiaries of rising wages and demand for labour on farms and in the expanding non-farm economy. The second set of narratives is critical of the green revolution's human and environmental impacts. Bodies and practices of the landless enter these narratives as victims of pesticide poisoning and de-skilling, and of caste based discrimination.
Using new life-histories of elderly men and women in Tiruvannamalai district of Tamil Nadu, we offer a third set of narratives. These narratives illustrate how landless workers shaped the green revolution transformations, and how they relate/adapt to changing ecologies including depleting groundwater, variable rainfall patterns and eroding village commons. Employing the concept of intersectionality to analyse gender alongside class and caste, we focus on life-histories of the land-deprived Dalits as well as of men and women from landowning castes who lost ownership or access to their lands. These narratives do not simply challenge the dominant techno-centric histories of the Green Revolution, they are also crucial for moving beyond policies and wider political discourses engaging with the agrarian crisis in India, which continue to be centred on landowning farmers.