Abstracts+Bios

Panel I (Thursday 22nd Nov, 17:00-18.30) The Local and Global Dimensions of Sustainability through Empowerment: Transsubjectivities, Transnational Ecologies, Transnational Movements

 

Innovation of collective action identities as climate change adaptation strategy, trade-offs between State and "the local"  

Karl Heinz GAUDRY 

Focus on topics I (Does climate change and the quest for sustainable development bring along civil disobedience) and V (which kind of alternative mechanisms of political and scientific global cooperation may counteract the effects of climate change from a sustainable perspective?)

It has been widely accepted that cities and their urbanizing process will be the main cause for the shifts in ecosystems services provision. Spatial planning (SP) has been increasingly recognized as a tool for providing a vision for development, for protecting the rights of people, and the environment, for the coordination of investments and for avoiding the duplication of resources by the different departments and spheres of government. During the 80s and 90s, under the light of Rio, particularly in Latin America, several policies sought to decrease the economical disparities and unbalances between regions through the free market. Short after the global economy contradicted the neoclassic predictions of regional convergence, several endogenous development theories and models emerged at the national and sub-national level. Embracing a greater mosaic of the cultural and institutional components, several territories were recognized as legitimatizing functional regions of emerging-Nation-like development projects. Based on the "European Conference of Ministries responsible for Regional Planning" (CEMAT) - guidelines on sustainable spatial planning, several transition and developing countries recognized the advantages of spatial planning (SP). SP has been increasingly accepted as a democratic development tool. Most of the transition and development countries are still at their initial phase of implementation and far from articulating all relevant factors. However, traditional aspects of land management techniques, adaptability, innovation and the conservation of cultural diversity and approaches for sustaining the ecosystem services’ provision, as foreseen by the UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (BR), remain mostly unattended and largely detached from most levels of government and scales of jurisdiction. The research aimed at identifying the multiple influences BRs have over the State planning scales and their SP instruments. The research area was located in the transboundary BR of Calakmul in Mexico and the Maya BR in Guatemala. Based on social sciences methods, particularly grounded theory, the results showed that networks are build through actors with shared identities who in turn, who built organizations and institutions that define and sustain their collective values. Emerging or existing organizations of shared identities prove to develop legitimizing institutions that allow the spatial conservation or expansion of their appropriation and agglomeration processes. Considered as a natural development path, organizations specialize and diversify their strategies for power and territorial conservation. New identities and the rise of new collective organizations were recognizable in both case studies. The Mexican and Guatemalan case offered an insight into the innovation of identities that used nature conservation values as collective constituencies. The spatial units from the Mexican and Guatemala case studies served as excellent examples of value exchange and their institutionalization for the conservation of(dominant) world-views. The results mirrored a processes of territorial and dynamic borderdefinition, trade-offs' strategies for world-view conservation, this is particularly evident through spatial planning, as it was symbiotically legitimized through the State by virtue of a Biosphere Reserve designation.

Bio: Karl Heinz Gaudry is a PhD Student at the Institute for Landscape Management, University of Freiburg, Germany.

Socio-ecological conflicts as a challenge for sustainability: The mining industry in the Atacama Desert and the undermining of the local community. Narratives and images of a crisis

Fernando Campos-Medina

The approval of Law 19,300 "Environmental Bases" in 1994 is generally represented as the beginning of a process of modernization of the Chilean environmental management that will culminate with the creation of the Ministry of Environment in 2010 by the law 20,417 in the context of growing sustainable global governance. This article challenges the official representation of modernization as only a simple institutional improvement and proposes as an alternative thesis a growing process of depoliticization in the society-nature relation during the last 20 years.

In order to support this interpretation, I would like to show how continuously framing the ecological debate under the notions of sustainable extraction of natural resources and sustainable pollution management control, is insufficient to deal with the negative and pervasive consequences for the local community of the extractive industries, which make for the base of the Chilean economy. In other words, the argument proposes that it is still possible to have improvement in a sustainable production and concurrently reinforce the socio-ecological conflict at the local level when industrial clusters achieve regional extension highly pressuring for productive inputs i.e. water, land, energy.

This paper attempts to critically discuss the notion of sustainability performed by official discourse and specially the cooper industry in Chile as an effective strategy to improve the environmental condition -in its natural and human dimension- in the Atacama Desert. Through a set of interviews and photographical material is shown the emerging critics from the community regarding the limits of a real sustainability under i) the expansionism character of the mining industry, ii) the water depletion of fossil deposits, iii) the overarching energetic demand, iv) the concentration of land right iv) the agriculture crisis and the depopulation of rural areas historically inhabited by Aymara population, v) the consolidation of regional mono-production as a national and international form of economic integration.

From the socio-ecological conflict perspective it is possible to understand how even the compliance with sustainable requirements provoke the intensification of the environmental crisis in Latin America, where historically the integration into the global markets has signifies a devastating regional productive restructuration. In this process environment as well as the living condition have been subordinated to the economic growth of mono-productive industries which allocate the damages at the local level and relocate the profit out of the region of origins.

Bio: Fernando Campos Medina is a sociologist by the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago and Master in Urbanism and Housing Studies by the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, Barcelona Spain. Currently, PhD Candidate at the Graduate School Human Behaviour in Social and Economic Change (GSBC) Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany completing his third year of Study. As professional experience he has taught in the Master in European Urbanism at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar, Germany and in the Master in Residential Habitat at the University of Chile, Santiago. He has been researcher at the Housing Institute of the University of Chile, where also collaborate actively as peer reviewer for the Journal of territorial studies “Revista INVI”. 

His research Project studies the spatio-temporal restructuration as theoretical key in the sociological explanation of modernity. The study case is the institutional environmental modernization in Chile and its capability to restructurate the territory in terms of natural and social relations whenever is defining concepts as modernization, sustainability, extractives industries, economic cluster, pollution control, rational uses of resources and so on. Particular focus has been done to the extractive industries in Chile -specially mining, forest industries but also energy production- and how its expansion impacts over the local ecosystems and community in the contexts of growing depoliticization of the socio-ecological conflict.   

Indigenous Territories and REDD+ - A case study with the Tembé in Pará, Brazil

Lucas de Souza Martins

 

The objective of this research is to show the relation between the limits of the instrument for environmental politics and development REDD+ in the Brazilian indigenous territories and the indigenous Tembé-community in Pará, Brazil. REDD+ is an international instrument to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the reduction of deforestation, forest degradation, sustainable forest management and carbon enhancement (REDD+). Different actors are involved in the implementation of the project like the adviser C-Trade, the non-governmental organization POEMA in cooperation with the federal university of Pará, the FUNAI as federal institution to administrate and execute the indigenous politic as well as the federal states attorney´s office. The research shows only a little view on the indigenous perception of REDD+. The Tembé community suffered for various decades a significant external influence by actors who want to explore their natural resources, endorse environmental damages and occupy indigenous territories. Nowadays the indigenous people try to become more independent from these influences and recover their traditions to receive more acceptance in and by society. The instrument REDD+ emerges at a point where the community still lives in a precarious social situation and high dependency on federal resources. The research discusses three main points: What is the perception of REDD+ by the Tembé and what do they know about it? Is it possible to achieve a financial autonomy by REDD+, what results in an improvement of their cultural and political participation to strengthen their general autonomy? What is the role of the law and in which sense does the legal basic conditions approve the negotiation between different groups of society with different social power and the reproduction of their (mainly economical) interests? The research includes interviews with different representatives of the involved actors.

Key words: REDD+, Tembé, indigenous territories, indigenous rights    

Bio: Lucas de Souza Martins is a student of Geographical Science at the Freie Universität Berlin. He wrote his Bachelor Thesis on the subject “Indigenous Territories and REDD+ - A case study on the Tembé in Pará, Brazil”. 

Panel II (Friday 23rd Nov, 14:15-16:00) Thinking the Transnationality of national Environment of/through Water

 

 *** THIS PAPER HAS BEEN CANCELLED *** 
Wei qi: China, Latin America, and the Panama Canal

Dellvin Williams │Hamburg Conference, Hamburg, DE, 2011

The objective of this paper is to reconsider the role of the Panama Canal in spatial expansion of Chinese influence in Latin America. While historically grounded studies of water control have thoroughly detailed shifts in the commodification and privatization of urban waters systems beginning in the second half of the 19th century, this paper maintains that the current problem to be resolved concerns relating the socio-environmental and political appropriation of water circulation using the renewed interest of Asian trade in the Panama Canal. By doing this I am seeking to locate the space of strategically channelled water flows as a force and means of production that links complex local socio-environmental processes to global shifts in economic processes. I also wish to propose a framework for analysis that permits viewing the socio-ecological processes concerning controlled as a necessarily critical to both hegemonic ascent, and to the overall “expansionary logic of the world capitalism”. The paper concludes by considering how the space of the water circulation opens up the theoretical and practical possibility for thinking about the linkages between sustainability and patterns of long-term accumulation, and national economic growth at the level of world-economy. 

Keywords: Waterways, Capitalism, China, Latin America, trade.

Bio:  Dellvin Williams is a currently a researcher at Bielefeld University and a Ph.D. student at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York. His research interests include capitalist world-ecology, maritime transport, and global commodity chains analysis. Williams has presented his work in various parts of the Caribbean, Europe, and South Asia. 

 

Financing Solutions for Innovation and Sustainable Development for Energy in Costa Rica

 Daniela García 

Costa Rica announced its carbon neutrality by 2021; however, the real challenge is in the implementation by means of a national sustainable energy strategy. The possibilities to reach 100 percent of electricity generation expanding hydropower appears as the “dominant” solution, however this approach entails environmental problems and social conflicts that compromise sustainability in the long term. Alternatively, the strategy consisting in a higher diversification of renewable energy sources, i.e. with a relevant role of solar energy, remains relegated. The question guiding my research is how to create a path based upon alternative renewable sources in order to reach 100 percent renewable electricity generation, foreseeing carbon neutrality by 2021. There is a wide range of explanations in this respect that could be clustered in two groups: governance and people. First, a change in the energy route is a matter of governance with the number of challenges it entails. Second, energy developments are also a matter of strategic actions, from people or actors, oriented to strengthening the position of e.g. solar power into the national energy mix. This presentation discusses the set of theories and approaches from Agency, Governance and Path-dependency in the attempt to answer this question.

Bio:  Daniela García Sánchez is a first year doctoral Student at the Economics and Social Science Graduate School in the University of Hamburg and and associate PhD student in the GIGA Institute of Latin American Studies.

Impacts of climate change on water management in Colombia

Martha Bolivar 
(Abstract will be added soon) 

Panel III (Friday 23rd Nov, 16:30-18:00) (Post)Colonial Narratives in Geographical (Trans-)National Spaces

 

Entgrenzter (‚Natur‘-)Raum und transnationaler ökologischer Erinnerungsort: Amazonien als Topos internationaler Umweltorganisationen in den 1970/80er Jahren 

Kevin Niebauer 

Tropenwälder dienen schon seit längerer Zeit als Sammelbecken für diverse Naturbilder, Repräsentationspraktiken und Vorstellungswelten (Flitner, 2000: S. 11). Diese wiederum prägen politische, kulturelle und soziale Praktiken in ihrem Verhältnis zu ‚Natur‘ oder ‚Umwelt‘. Bedeutungsebenen, die im Verlauf der Geschichte in Form von Mythen, Reiseberichten, Karten oder Diskursen um die Region Amazonien kreisten, weisen einerseits bestimmte Kontinuitäten und Gemeinsamkeiten auf und ändern sich andererseits aber auch ständig und können außerdem in Konkurrenz zueinander stehen. Ob nun als grüne Hölle, klimatische Wärmepumpe, genetisches Reservoir, biodiverse Schatzkammer oder als tropisches Paradies (Ludwig, 22007: 166; Flitner, 2000: 12; Slater, 2002: 188) – gemeinsam ist den meisten Leitmotiven im Falle Amazoniens ein zugrunde liegender exogener „politischer Prozess der räumlichen Organisation“, in dessen Verlauf jene ‚periphere‘ Region während der letzten Jahrhunderte in die jeweiligen Herrschaftssysteme eingegliedert worden ist (Hochstetler & Keck, 2007: 140f.). Vermutlich ungewollt trat die umweltpolitische Eingliederung Amazoniens seit den 1970er Jahren in die Fußstapfen vorausgehender räumlicher Erschließungen, indem erneut von ‚außen‘ ein Netz aus bestimmten dominanten Bildern, Metaphern und Symbolen über die Region gespannt wurde. Diese zirkulierten wiederum innerhalb internationaler Netzwerke und wurden schließlich durch die Massenmedien einer breiteren Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht. 

Zwischen ‚Moderne‘ und ‚Regenwald‘, beziehungsweise ‚Kultur‘ und ‚Natur‘ wurde in diesem Zusammenhang eine ontologische und epistemologische Differenz geschaffen, wobei die ‚Natürlichkeit‘ Amazoniens mit der Vorstellung einherging, dass es sich in kultureller Hinsicht um einen ‚leeren Raum‘ handele. Raumtheoretiker wie Henri Lefébvre (1974) und David Harvey (2001) haben in diesem Zusammenhang gezeigt, dass jeder ‚Raum‘ immer sozial konstruiert ist. Dies gilt ebenso für den vermeintlichen ‚Naturraum‘. Im Laufe der Zeit scheinen sich jedoch bestimmte Raumvorstellungen durchgesetzt zu haben. Der sprachlich- symbolische Referenzrahmen konnte sich dabei einerseits auf tatsächliche Verhältnisse beziehen, klammerte andererseits aber auch bestimmte Realitäten aus. Da die Region ingrößerem Umfang erst während der 1970er Jahre in das Blickfeld einzelner Umweltorganisationen gerückt ist, stellt dieses Jahrzehnt den Anfang meines Untersuchungszeitraums dar. Dabei möchte ich vor allem die kognitiven und symbolischen Repräsentationen dieses diversen Raums in den Blick nehmen, um auf diesem Wege Rückschlüsse auf die gesellschaftlichen Reaktionen auf eine sich verdichtende Globalisierung zu ziehen. Dadurch soll die steigende Relevanz von gesellschaftlichen Natur- und Umweltkonzepten durch die Verknüpfung von umwelthistorischen, kultur- und raumtheoretischen Ansätzen untersucht werden. Drei übergeordnete Analyseebenen werden hierbei im Zentrum meines Promotionsvorhabens stehen. Da wäre zunächst die Akteursebene einzelner nicht-staatlicher Umweltorganisationen und den für ihr Handeln und Denken konstitutiven transnationalen Netzwerken und Wissenstransfers. Jene Akteure sind in diesem Kontext deshalb von Bedeutung, da durch sie der Kurs der globalen Umweltdebatten maßgeblich beeinflusst wurde. Da das zirkulierende Wissen bezüglich Amazoniens auch immer mit verschiedenen Raumvorstellungen und –konstruktionen einherging, konzentriert sich meine zweite zentrale Analyseebene auf die Untersuchung von Raumrepräsentationen. In Anlehnung an Henri Lefebvre (1974) verstehe ich jene Räume als konstruiert und imaginiert. Eine dritte Ebene wäre in Anlehnung an das noch junge umwelthistorische Projekt der „ökologischen Erinnerungsorte“[1] der Versuch, Amazonien als transnationalen ökologischen Erinnerungsort zu begreifen, da die Region spätestens seit den Diskussionen um die globale Erderwärmung als ein Raum mit bestimmten dominanten Funktionen und Bedeutungen permanent ins Feld geführt wird und als Referenzpunkt ins kollektive Gedächntis vernetzter epistemic communities eingegangen ist. Auch der Aspekt der Visualität und Medialität dieser transnational zirkulierenden Raumkonzepte wird in diesem Zusammenhang ein Bestandteil meiner Untersuchungen sein. Mit Hilfe dieser drei Analyseebenen lassen sich aus zeithistorischer Perspektive menschliche Natur- und Umweltkonzepte problematisieren, indem die Ebenen Erinnerung, Ort und Raum miteinander verknüpft werden. Aus welchen Quellen speisten sich die räumlichen Repräsentationsformen Amazoniens und mit welchen transnational zirkulierenden Bildern, Texten und Symbolen ging dies einher? Welches Spannungsfeld entstand zwischen der transnationalen Entgrenzung dieses Raums und den handlungsrelevanten lokalen, regionalen und nationalen Grenzen konkreter Problemkonstellationen und Interessenlagen? Welche Konfliktlinien und Machtverhältnisse geben sich im Zusammenhang mit (Natur-)Raumkonzepten zu erkennen und welche Aufschlüsse liefern diese bezüglich postkolonialer Nord-Süd-Beziehungen? 

Welche Handlungsstrategien einzelner Umweltorganisationen lagen den dominanten Repräsentationspraktiken zugrunde? Entlang dieser Fragen soll das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen sozial-ökologischen Konfliktfeldern und den auf sie bezogenen zivilgesellschaftlichen Reaktionen aufgezeigt werden.

Bio: Von 2004 bis 2007 habe ich ein Bachelorstudium in Geschichte und Spanischer Philologie an der Freien Universität Berlin absolviert. Von 2008 bis 2012 studierte ich am Lateinamerika-Institut in Berlin den interdisziplinären Master „Lateinamerikastudien“, wobei mein Schwerpunkt auf den Disziplinen Geschichte und Anthropologie lag. Mein Interesse auf dem Gebiet der Umweltbewegungen und Umweltdiskurse konkretisierte ich im Verlauf einer Studienexkursion nach Amazonien im Jahre 2010. Daraufhin hielt ich mich dann 2011 ein halbes Jahr in Brasilien auf, um bisherige Recherchearbeiten zu vertiefen. Ich forschte ich in der Nationalbibliothek in Rio de Janeiro und in verschiedenen Privatarchiven in Porto Alegre zur Geschichte der brasilianischen Umweltbewegung. Meine MA-Arbeit mit dem Titel „Ökologische Krise und Umweltbewegung auf der Akteursebene: Ideenwelt, Handlungsstrategien und Selbstverständnis von José A. Lutzenberger (1968 bis 1992)“ habe ich im Juni 2012 abgeschlossen. Stefan Rinke und Kristina Dietz betreuten mich dabei. Seitdem vertiefe und erweitere ich einige Punkte meiner bisherigen Studien mit dem Ziel, diese im Rahmen eines geplanten Dissertationsprojekts weiterzuführen.

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[1] Siehe http://www.umweltunderinnerung.de/ (30.08.2012).

 

 Who marches for Pachamama? 

Environmental debates in Bolivia under MAS 

Anna Kaijser 

Since 2006, under the government of Evo Morales and MAS (Movimiento Al Socialismo), a coalition of worker’s unions and popular and indigenous movements, Bolivia has gone through a period of rapid transformation. MAS’ political project explicitly aims at de-colonizing and reformulating the state in line with indigenous worldviews. This involves a process of negotiation with multiple actors both within and outside the diverse assembly which MAS consists of. In Bolivia’s new Constitution and policy documents, emphasis is placed on outlining a local model for development to break free from postcolonial patterns and defining a Bolivian identity based on plurinationality.

Environmental politics have to a large extent been subsumed into this wider political project of the MAS government. MAS have positioned themselves as a radical actor in international forums for environmental politics (such as climate negotiations), promoting a radical anti-capitalist agenda and framing Bolivia as a more sustainable alternative. Terms from local indigenous traditions are frequently employed in the government’s environmental rhetoric. The government has in turn recently been criticized by social movements for keeping a double discourse on environmental issues and not applying their radical ideas at home. The government is accused for hi-jacking indigenous concepts in order to greenwash themselves and disguise their greedy intentions. Bolivia is heavily dependent on mining and extraction of fossil fuels, and several highly contested infrastructure projects are planned.

In the Bolivian environmental debates, environmental issues are often co-formulated with conceptualizations of indigeneity, both in government rhetoric and among the movements that criticize them. I am interested in how these debates in Bolivia have become arenas for expression and negotiation of indigenous identity, and how indigeneity is mobilized to promote and legitimate environmental-political claims. In my paper, I am going to use two recent empirical examples – MAS’ positioning on climate change and the conflict around a planned highway crossing a national park and indigenous territory – to illustrate the close discursive linkages between environment and indigeneity in Bolivian debates. I also place the case of Bolivia in a larger context. The Bolivian government, as well as the social movements that criticize them, are actors in a global setting marked by post-colonial relations and heated environmental debates. The position of the ecological indigenous alternative has some weight in this setting; both the Bolivian government and the protest movements have gained recognition internationally.  At the same time, claiming the status of the ecological indigenous may imply risks for essentialization of indigeneity and exclusion of other bases for environmental-political mobilization. 

Bio:  Anna Kaijser is a PhD Candidate in Sustainability Science at Lund University, Sweden. She has a background in anthropology and gender studies. In her doctoral project she is exploring environmental debates in Bolivia under the MAS government from an intersectional perspective, focused on the mobilization, reproduction and negotiation of social categorizations within such debates. 

REDD, CO₂lonialism und Carbon Hunters

Julia Ziesche

The idea of my paper is a theoretical dialog between poststructuralist approaches and political economy to understand the social constellations in the debate on REDD+ in Brazil (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries), with a focus on understanding the production and reproduction of power relations. I understand the debate around REDD+ as a driving force for the renegotiation of power relations and therefore exemplary for analyzing participation processes, the role of social movements and the ideas of sustainability represented by various stakeholders. As an additional market mechanism for climate change mitigation and adaptation in the Post-Kyoto Protocol, REDD+ is being disputed from local to global scale. Although an international agreement within the United Nations framework, for example based on a possible official carbon market, has not been reached, projects are developed based on voluntary markets, as can be demonstrated in Brazil.

My theoretical framework analyzes how power relations, besides structural aspects, as understood in research oriented in political economy, are also constantly constituted in practice and language of actors. In their interaction interdependent categories of difference like culture, age, gender, religion, region, sexual orientation, etc. are being articulated. The anthropological contribution for understanding negotiations, often characterized as “environmental conflicts”, could be to look at those articulations and how they influence power relations. To some extent the antiessentialist political ecology suggested in Escobars article After Nature (1999), which is based on post-structural principles without denying material aspect of environmental conflicts, meets the exigencies of my proposed theoretical dialog. Brosius distinguishes the antiessentialist perspective from other political ecology approaches by highlighting its understanding of „nature“, as well of identities and interests of stakeholders as „contingent and problematic” (Brosius in Escobar 1999: 16–17). However, as I am going to demonstrate, and how comments by other authors to Escobar’s article express, some additional aspects should be considered. As a central challenge I am looking for ways of analyzing local contexts without naturalizing differences.

REDD+ implementation, as can be observed in Brazil, is officially characterized as participatory, based on knowledge exchange and considering, for example, categories of gender or indigeneity. As far as I can see, participation of local communities or civil society is ambiguous and must be contextually differentiated. That is where my analysis from an antiessentialist point of view within political ecology can be applied. The so-called participatory processes often suggest the idea of homogenous stakeholders within the areas where REDD+ implementation is scheduled, ignoring diverse power constellations within communities that can be based on kinship, age, gender, class and so on, as well as within scientific communities.

The analysis of position papers of critical stakeholders in the REDD-debate exemplifies in which contexts essentializing can be observed. For example, the dichotomy of “local” vs. “expert knowledge” on climate change is present in various texts. On the one hand, this represents the freezing of differences and asymmetries in knowledge production as well as an instrument of empowerment for local actors, due to the political contexts in which categories of difference are expressed. In either case, it becomes clear that power relations are being disputed and ideas about class, gender, ethnicity etc. are being (re)produced. These relations of power must be uncovered to fully understand how political negotiation between stakeholders manifests itself to evaluate how social groups are shaping and are being shaped by the climate change debate and what alternatives are brought forward.

Literature: 

ESCOBAR, A. (1999): After nature. Steps to an antiessentialist political ecology. In: Current Anthropology 40 (1), S. 1–30. 

Short Bio:

Julia Ziesche, *1985 Berlin

Currently enrolled in Master’s Program at the Latin American Institute, Freie Universität Berlin

Working Title of Master Thesis:

REDD, CO₂lonialism und Carbon Hunters: Der Beitrag einer nicht-essentialisierenden Politischen Ökologie zum Verständnis der REDD-Debatte in Brasilien

Bachelor of Social- and Cultural Anthropology and Luso-Brazilian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

Bachelor’s Thesis:

Inszenierung des Regenwaldes – Amazonasoper 2010 (on Indigenous Involvement in a Multimedia Art Project on Climate Change and Climate Politics)

Current research interests: land conflicts in the Brazilian Amazon, social movements, environmental politics, climate change politics.

Enhancing food security and reducing vulnerability to climate change with farmer field schools – enforced concept or vulnerable approach?

Martin David (in collaboration with Steven Engler)

Our paper advances the current debate on the enhancement of food (in)security in local, rural areas. The agricultural situation of farmers in Postrervalle in the Bolivian lowlands represents this debate. We conceptualize the adaptive and mitigative behaviour of actors, in the face of climate change, as a learning-by-doing approach, which reduces vulnerability to climate change as a collective mechanism via social interactions between different actors.

Decades of top-down extension politics left small holders aside and created hierarchic structures, making it for civil society difficult to participate in agricultural discourses. We regard this as a fundamental structural shortcoming for adaptation to climate change for two reasons. First, such hierarchic structures do not allow for a free flow of information in the agricultural sector, necessary for adaptation to climate change. On the side of executive bodies and donor organisations this manifests itself for example in a relatively low number of direct-impact assessments in agricultural extension programmes. Second, top-down cultures lead to a non-reflective culture of learning. This fundamentally conflicts with learning to adapt to climate change.

South American agricultural extension has witnessed many years of practice regarding Farmer Field Schools. Bolivia shows only moderate results, this also regards the use of FFS for adaptation to climate change. Postrervalle was such a case. The Departmental Agricultural Service in the department Santa Cruz, Bolivia, took the initiative to start with a two-year pilot program for adaptation to climate change to gain experience. Later this experience would be implemented in departmental politics of adaptation to climate change. An Bolivian NGO would execute the program, it was decided to rely on the FFS-method to introduce sustainable agricultural practices in the pilot region, Postrervalle, to combat adverse effects of climate change. Due to financial shortcomings after one and a half years the programme was nearly suspended, when accidentally an unplanned intervention fundamentally changed the motivation of farmers to adapt sustainable agriculture in order to adapt to climate change. The executing NGO had the idea to produce a documentary by the farmers themselves in order to further finance the programme. After the documentary was done, many farmers from communities nearby Postrervalle began to ask FFS-participants about the programme. Suddenly the program diffused. 

We find that this success underscores that social interactions need to become a common ground for learning. We also understand adaptation and mitigation to climate change as a societal process of learning by doing. In our case farmers were suddenly given the chance to express themselves and become part of the intervention. In our paper we contextualise these findings with various theoretical approaches, such as the vulnerability concept, research on perceptions of climate change and behavioural research. Studying the processes of Farmer Field Schools (FFS) on a local scale for a multi-year period will enhance corresponding theories and practices and leads to a rethinking of the adaptive and mitigative behaviour of civil society in the context of climate change processes in South America.

Bio:  Martin David is since 2011, Phd Student at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen, Germany. For the last three years, Martin has worked on indigenous' adaptation strategies to climat change. He has published several articles on this issue and is currently involved in an art-documentary project about the frames of the everyday-perception of climate change in the western world and the developmental world (Reality or non-reality – a little bit of both).

Panel IV (Saturday 24th Nov, 10:30-12:00) (Re)inventing Cooperation beyond the North-South Dichotomy 

 

Interorganizational Learning and Technology Transfer among Organizations of the Bioethanol Chain – An Analysis of the Transference of the Brazilian Flex-Fuel Vehicles Technology

 

Daniele Veira  

(Abstract will be added soon) 

Climate Technology Cooperation between European and Latin American Universities as a mechanism for tackling climate change

  

Julia Haselberger

Based on experiences gained in the frame of a networking scheme which involves universities from Latin America and Europe, this paper addresses the prospects of climate technology cooperation between academia, businesses, authorities and civil society in the participating regions for bridging current knowledge and technology gaps. It is argued that higher education institutions (HEIs) can make a substantial contribution to a sustainable socio-economic development in Latin America (LA) and at the same time reduce its social vulnerability to climate change impacts.

It is argued that climate change poses many challenges to all sectors of society, and the improved international transfer of knowledge and climate technology may result in reducing social and economic vulnerability to future climate impacts in LA. Drawing on examples from the EU-funded project CELA where the university partners collaborate closely with political as well as non-governmental actors and local communities to implement small-scale technological solutions for adaptation to climate variability and climate change impacts, the potential of Latin American – European university networks involving the civil society will be shown.

Thus, this paper addresses how a complementary mechanism of scientific global cooperation – i.e. the climate technology transfer university network project – may offer Latin American HEIs a window of opportunity to drive the improvement of local adaptive capacity through fostering international technology transfer and creating the corresponding capacities, especially in terms of research and development, consultancy and qualification of human capital in the field of climate technologies.

Finally, some recommendations are given which may support current efforts to reduce the overall vulnerability to climate impacts through fostering the social and economic development in Latin America by means of sustainable ITT networks.

Bio: Julia Haselberger, B.A., M.A., is a research fellow at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Research and Transfer Centre “Applications of Life Sciences”, where she is currently working in a FP7 project on energy efficient cities.  She holds a master´s degree in “European Culture and Economy” and has written her master´s thesis on the promotion of renewable energy in Germany.

 

 A Meta-theoretical approach for researching sustainability in Latin America

  

Miguel Rodriguez Lopez

(Abstract will be added soon)

Bio: Co-organiser of this conference,  Juan Miguel Rodríguez López is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Globalisation and Governance and KlimaCampus (University of Hamburg). His areas of research encompass financial market institutions, political science and quantitative methods. He is currently researching cross-national comparisons of institutional factors and the economic actions of companies within the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

 

 Panel V (Saturday 24th Nov, 10:30-12:00) Transnational Economic Problems and transnational Resistances

 

Violence against environment and traditional environmentalists in the Amazon: from Eco 92 to Rio+20, a constant presence

Felipe Milanez

Deforestation in the Amazon is an extremely violent process against the environment and local populations. In the past decade, the annual deforestation rate has declined; nevertheless, violence against traditional people of the forest has persisted at a constant rate from the 80s, over ten murders per year in the state of Pará (Pastoral Land Comission annual report), highlighted by the murder of Chico Mendes in 1988, until now, with the assassination in 2011 of the environmentalist couple José Cláudio and Maria, and the peasant leader Adelino Ramos. Empirical data exposes the existence of a strong relationship between violence (murder, death threats, contemporary slavery), environmental conflicts, and land disputes that arise with the advance of capitalism into the forest. As Nancy Lee Peluso points in Violent Environments (2001), specific resource environments, as tropical forests, and environmental processes such as deforestation, constitute the political economy of access to and control over resources. Violence, in a “violent environment”, as we are going to consider the “frontiers” of the Amazon, is understood not just as a form of land expropriation, but also as a tool to control the administrative apparatus of the state (institutional access). We will present the correlation between violence and territorial occupation in the Amazon analyzing, in political ecology theory, cases of death threats and killings of community leaders, considering the various economic activities that cause conflicts over land and natural resources involving different social groups considered "traditional", or, as points Martinez-Alier, members of the “environmentalism of the poor”.

The Brazilian constitution of 1988 introduced policies to protect traditional populations. Since 1989, and with international pressures on Brazil's government during Eco92, more than 70 Extractive Reserves were created in the Amazon by governmental agencies to benefit and protect local communities. Extractives Reserves (as others different forms of sustainable settlements) aimed to guarantee access to land and forest resources to traditional populations, while reconciled a type of human settlement to a unit of environmental conservation. For the local population, these newly created areas became a crucial component for the political mobilization of traditional communities in legitimizing theirs claims over the territory. Even though, the lack of public policies and public support to help develop new strategies for those groups to survive within the forest have made possible new pressures by farmers, loggers and miners, and conflicts against new investors over the use and control of forest resources has again appeared as a constant case in the Amazon. As a case example we are going to focus the analyze on the Praia Alta Piranheira Sustainable Extractivist Settlement (Assentamento Agro-Extrativista Praia Alta Piranheira), in Nova Ipixuna (southeast Pará), where José Cláudio and Maria, two local political leaders, were killed in land dispute with farmers and loggers. I will present the history of the creation of the settlement, a profile of its members, and model of economic pressure and public institutions dealing with it.

It is important to bring violence into the analysis of property, natural resources and land control in the Amazon frontier region, as also one of the main drivers of deforestation, specially considering international panels of discussion regarding world climate change.

I will present the case of the murder of "extractivist" peasants, environmentalists, nut collectors, José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espirito Santo da Silva, in Nova Ipixuna, southeast Pará (eastern Amazon), on May 24 2011, comparing it with the murder of sister Dorothy Stang, in 2005, the violence against the projects of sustainable settlements in Altamira, where she used to live, and the murders of Gideon and Adelino Ramos (western Amazon), the 27^th May 2011, and the data produced by Pastoral Land Commission (annual reports Conflitos no Campo) about different aspects of land conflicts since 1986, in order to appoint different ways of how the problem of violence has influenced the debates around Eco92 and Rio+20, and persists as a non-solved question with the advance of capitalism in the Amazon .

Scientifical approach

I will propose a debate around the Political Ecology, and one of main subjects is to discuss the concept of "violent environment" (Peluso) in a "cultural environment", as the Amazon is seen by archeologists and anthropologists (Neves, Sheppard, Viveiros de Castro). Violence against environmental political leaders (biopolitics, Foucault), seen the political leaders as “traditional environmentalist’s” (from the “environmental of the poor” concept by Martinez-Alier), is used by new entrepreneur’s (Araújo), even in places considered “stabilized frontier” as it was when the “frontier” arrived in early 80’s  (the area around Marabá for example), as an strategy of conquest and territorialization. I propose that the idea of “frontier of capitalism” (or “frontier of expansion”) as a geographical military marc around the “arc of deforestation” should be reviewed, as new forms of capitalism pressure (industrial minery, huge cattle slaughterhouses and mega hydroelectric dams by the international capital) arrives in distant and different parts of the Amazon, and the “old” frontiers remains with the characteristics of “frontier” (oligarchic state, violence), what suggests the weakness of the concept.

Methodology

Concerning the cases reported (the murder of the couple José Cláudio and Maria, the murder of sister Dorothy Stang and the murder of Adelino Ramos), I did field work in the past two years investigating these cases (among other violent cases in the Amazon). The cases will be described based on interviews with the murdered couple, with relatives, social local agents, public agents, and on the court lawsuit. 

Concerning the violence data of land conflict, death threats and murders I will use the annual report of Pastoral Land Commission (Conflito no Campo), since 1986 until 2011 (last report), as annual analysis of deforestation by INPE (National Institute of Space Research), to compare the “advance” of the “frontier” with violence.

BIO: Felipe Milanez is PhD candidate and junior researcher at Centro de Estudos Sociais of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Has a master’s degree in political science by the Université des Sciences Sociales Toulouse 1, and have worked as specialized journalist in the Amazon for more than 7 years , editor of Brasil Indígena, official magazine of Brazil’s indian agency FUNAI, and editor of National Geographic Brasil magazine, publishing articles in many important magazines as National Geographic Brasil, Courrier International, CartaCapital, RollingStone magazine, Valor Econômico, Gazeta Mercanil, GQ, Indian Country Today. As documentary filmmaker also working in the Amazon has produced and directed the following films: Toxic Amazon (a work, whose importance has been outlined by the United Nations), Guarani Struggle and Cocoa Production and Amazon ForestConservation. 
 

Indigenous and peasants participation in resource governance in Bolivia and Peru

 David Vollrath

(Abstract will be added soon)

Der Begriff des Guten Lebens als Alternative für den Umgang mit natürlichen Ressourcen – Natur und Politik im Diskurs der ecuadorianischen Indigenenbewegung

Philipp Altmann 

 

Die ecuadorianische Indigenenbewegung hat den Begriff des Guten Lebens (Sumak Kawsay) als eine begriffliche Waffe für die Verteidigung der Territorien der indigenen Nationalitäten, so wie die Bewegung selbst sie definiert, entwickelt. Seit 2002 wurden die Versuche der Erdölförderung in indigenen Regionen im Amazonasgebiet als Angriffe auf die Prinzipien des traditionellen Begriffs des Guten Lebens gewertet. Die Einführung dieses Begriffs erlaubte den indigenen Organisationen vor Ort und auf nationalem Niveau, ihre Vorstellungen von Land und Gesellschaft weiter zu definieren, während gleichzeitig Koalitionen mit der stärker werdenden ökologischen Linken erleichtert wurden. Somit ist das Gute Leben nicht nur ein neuer Inhalt im Diskurs der Indigenenbewegung, sondern auch ein Instrument der Mobilisierung und des Aufbaus von Koalitionen.

Diese Präsentation wird untersuchen, was die ecuadorianische Indigenenbewegung als Gutes Leben versteht, wie sich der Begriff entwickelt hat, seine unterschiedlichen Inhalte und seinen strategischen Gebrauch in der Politik in Ecuador. Dazu baut sie auf eine diskursanalytische Bearbeitung der Veröffentlichungen der verschiedenen Organisationen der Indigenenbewegung, die durch eine Reihe von weiteren Texten von nicht-indigenen Intellektuellen ergänzt wird, die mit den Begriff des Guten Lebens arbeiten. Insbesondere die Position des neuen Begriffs des Guten Lebens in einem bereits abgeschlossenen Diskurs um die Begriffe Territorium, Nationalität, Plurinationalität und Interkulturalität soll genauer untersucht werden.

Bio: Philipp Altmann, M.A., Studium der Soziologie, Spanischen Philologie und Ethnologie an der Universität Trier und Universidad Autonóma de Madrid. Beendet gerade seine Promotion über den Diskurs der ecuadorianischen Indigenenbewegung an der FU Berlin.

 

Peacebuilding, Grassroots conflict resolution and organic local ownership in Colombia  

Soledad Granada
 

The paper addresses critical understanding of the relation between the approach for implementation of peacebuilding and the outcome in terms of grassroots conflict resolution. Particularly with regards to the role and configuration of local ownership in context of conflict or partial post-conflict. The purpose of this work is to identify the conditions under which it is possible to achieve conflict resolution at the grassroots level given the traits of such a context. Thus, this work propose a new conception of local ownership, organic local ownership, in which the decision-making power lies with civil society and organically bred peacebuilding initiatives suitable and feasible for grassroots communities (elicitive approach). This stands in direct contrast to the idea that local ownership has to be delivered from above (prescriptive approach). Furthermore, to provide empirical support, two cases (Carare and Alto Patía) within Colombia are analyzed with a focused structured comparison, the cases were selected by the rationality of comparing the different approaches of peacebuilding within development based initiatives, as scholars agree upon development as the core objective of peacebuilding. Additionally, both share being affected by coca production, which represents a key aspect behind the implementation and the outcome specifically to explain why development has been held back. 

From the theoretical angle it is evident the need for tools to meet both approaches for peacebuilding. The theory underlying claims that organic local ownership of peacebuilding initiatives bears social capital and human scale development, defined in this paper as key elements for grassroots conflict resolution. Nonetheless, it is also needed simultaneously to push forward statebuilding from above. From the empiric angle, in rural Colombia, the socioeconomic and geographic conditions, and the State patrimonial co-opted structure have hindered greater impacts on development regardless the type of initiative.  Moreover, the initiatives were not successful diminishing coca production either. The join strategy of strong military counterinsurgency and U.S. war on drugs has been a continued and progressive process of disempowering civil society and exacerbation of root and proximate causes of conflict in both cases. The United Nations climate change negotiations can be described as deadlocked.

Bio: Soledad is an economist dedicated to research on violence, peace and conflict. She finished her MA in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Uppsala (Sweden), the thesis focuses on the relation between the approach for implementation of peacebuilding and the outcome in terms of grassroots conflict resolution, giving leverage to the concept of local ownership. She also holds a Master's thesis in economics from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Colombia on the relations between the capitalist development model as the structural cause of internal force displacement in Colombia. She worked for five years as a researcher in Colombia at CERAC (Conflict Analysis Resource Center) in conflict analysis and in the design of methodologies for measuring conflict, political and drug related violence; and with the Historical Memory Group, in the analysis of the political economy of the conflict and the study of an emblematic case of civil resistance from the economic development perspective. Currently, she is a research assistant for the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS) of the GIGA (German Institute of Global and Area Studies). 

The Transformation of International Climate Politics.
Civil society as driving force?

Philip Bedall (together with Achim Brunnengräber)

The United Nations climate change negotiations can be described as deadlocked. From international politics no great step forward are expected. Also the European Union and the national states are not giving new momentum for climate protection as above all in times of crisis the priorities are others. In this times, civil society actors are often celebrated as the ones giving momenta for a necessary change of politics. But also their strategies and possibilities need to be examined carefully. The contribution wants to provide a critical analysis of the development of NGOs' and social movements' commitment in international climate politics.

Bio: Philip Bedall, Environmental Scientist (diploma), is a PhD candidate in Politics at Kassel University. His research interests revolve around climate politics – with a particular emphasis on NGOs and social movements – and theories of discourse and hegemony. He is involved in social movements for global justice.

 *** THIS PAPER HAS BEEN CANCELLED ***

Climate change – locally interpreted and adapted:
Influences of the international climate change discourse and development cooperation on local transition processes 

Anja Weber 

Summary

Since the last status reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of 2001 and 2007 anthropological climate change has been more intensively discussed while increasingly influencing development policy and cooperation. Thereby, the consequences that are expected to arise from climatic changes do not only impede sustainable development, but are likely to aggravate the efforts to reduce global poverty. In addition to cross-sectional integration of climate protection (mitigation) and adaptation, these issues are progressively being implemented in local-level projects with the aim to reduce vulnerability and to strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity.

Specific development projects as well as the existing international climate discourse cause local transformations –either as a direct and mainly practice-oriented result of the project work or as an indirect impact, reflected for example by changes of local perceptions and cultural views. Within this process, the climate discourse is communicated through diverse channels. Consequently, it is interpreted and processed from a cultural perspective reflected in the transformation of adaptation modes and strategies.

The impacts of the current climate discourse and the existing development projects dealing with these issues on local levels are the focus of the study.

Based on an empirical ethnographical field study in the Peruvian Andes, the research project investigates the cultural integration and reinterpretation of national and international climate information and its implications on local adaptation and transition processes. This should lead to a better understanding of the dynamics of the international climate discourse and its connection to development cooperation. Furthermore, the study identifies the variety of information channels in use as well as their interpretation and integration at the local level. By linking local, national and international levels, the research project illustrates the existing problems and gaps inherent to the communication and effectiveness of intentions that exist between the international climate discourse, the implementation of climate related projects and the local realities and processes. The study concludes by presenting solutions to help to rectify them.

Research Project

Adaptation to climate change is "highly local", like Agrawal (2010: 173) pointedly named the role and importance of local societies and cultures in the context of climatic changes. Because "in addition to the [...] physical transformations of the earth's environment, contemporary global climate change has cultural implications" (Crate 2011: 178). Herewith, global climate change has not only cultural implications, but the existing cultural framings determine as well the responses of the population and their ways to deal with the changes (Carey 2010). Furthermore, humans do not respond based on pure rational decisions or just based on their knowledge on, for example, environmental processes (Voss 2010). Decisions and actions are as well always based on the (cultural) worldview as well as social relations, influenced by power relations and economic factors (Cannon/Müller-Mahn 2010; Carey 2010).

Compared to the predicted climate change impacts and the urgency to act, only few concrete actions followed the climate negotiations and academic discourses during the past two decades. In many cases, even available funding for adaptation measures has not been fully used (GIZ 2011). The so far rather poor results of the operations of the international community, such as within ongoing projects on adaptation to climate-related negative impacts or on reducing vulnerability towards a changing climate, are as well results of a poor communication (Tarnoczi 2011)–the transfer of knowledge from science and international politics to the national or local levels and vice versa are malfunctioning. Raygorodetsky explains this deficiency by the fact that local, traditional or indigenous knowledge is hardly mentioned in the global discourse (Raygorodetsky 2011).1

The research project is based on three research questions...

1. Through which channels is climate information communicated–from the international climate discourse up to the local level–and how does the respective information and therewith the climate discourse change on their ways?
   
2. Which local knowledge exists and how is it affecting the way of how climate information is being adopted and integrated?
   
3. At what point and how is climate information integrated into the existing local knowledge systems and worldview, how is this knowledge applied and what kind of adaptation and transformation processes follow?
   

The field study2 will be carried out in the department of Cusco –one of the six most vulnerable regions towards climate change identified by the Peruvian government (based on definitions of the IPCC). The department of Cusco belongs therefore to the regions where national and international projects with the aim to reduce vulnerability or to strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity have been and are being implemented. Within the research three main areas will be further investigated: (A) Local culture and world view3, (B) Climate information channels4, (C) Locally implemented climate projects5. 

1 Cited Literature: Agrawal, A. (2010). Local Institutions and Adaptation to Climate Change. In: Mearns, R.; Norton, A. (Eds.). Social Dimensions of Climate Change – Equity and Vulnerability in a Warming World. The World Bank. Washington, DC, USA. 173-197. Cannon, T., & Müller-Mahn, D. (2010). Vulnerability, resilience and development discourses in context of climate change.
Natural Hazards, 55(3), 621-635. Carey, M. (2010). In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers – Climate Change and Andean Society. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. Crate, S. A. (2011). Climate and Culture: Anthropology in the Era of Contemporary Climate Change. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40(1), 175-194. GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH). (2011). Adaptation to Climate Change – New Findings, Methods and Solutions. Risk Management. Eschborn, Germany. Raygorodetsky, G. (2011). Why traditional knowledge holds the key to climate change. http://unu.edu/articles/global-change-sustainable-development/why-traditional-knowledge-holds-the-key-to-climate-change (15.12.2011). Tarnoczi, T. (2011). Transformative learning and adaptation to climate change in the Canadian Prairie agro-ecosystem. Change, 16, 387-406. Voss, M. (2010). Einleitung: Perspektiven sozialwissenschaftlicher Klimawandelforschung. In Voss, M. (Ed.), Der Klimawandel– Sozialwissenschaftliche Perspektiven. Wiesbaden, Germany. 9-40.
2 Further information on methods: The empirical field research in Peru will mainly be based on a combination of qualitative ethnographic methods. The methods allow on the one hand to capture local views through an emic description and further to determine cultural specifics in local contexts, such as the local perceptions of climate information, as well as the cultural interpretation and integration of the communicated information into the local structures. Participant observation, informal interviews and "free talks" are of considerable importance, since they allow discovering topics, concepts and social relations that are usually not being discussed in short interview situations. The results will be incorporated into semi- structured interviews and further offer an expanded framework for the interpretation of the interview results. Further, interviews with experts are crucial to investigate beyond the local level, especially in regard to political and scientific institutions in Lima. The purpose is to get to know the existing climate information channels as well as the different types of information that are passed on through the diverse channels. The interpretations of the international climate discourse from the Peruvian point of view are very important. In addition, expert interviews with climate scientists who are involved in the international climate negotiations will be carried out in Germany to capture the prevailing intentions and interpretations.
3 What are the concepts of nature and environment prevailing in the local culture? Which patterns of interpretation for climate and a changing climate exist? What is the local problem perception towards a changing climate? Which transformations are caused within the society and their perception by the incoming climate information?
4 From the global level to the national and local levels, how and through which channels are climate information communicated? What kind of information is culturally reinterpreted and integrated into local structures and how? What are the influences and transformations that can be observed during this process?
5 What kind of climate information is communicated in locally implemented problem-specific projects and how? What role does the local or traditional knowledge play in the implementation of adaptation measures? How does the new obtained knowledge influence local adaptation and livelihoods strategies? What conclusions can be drawn from the gained knowledge of the existing climate communication and cultural reinterpretations for the global climate discourse, and for projects on climate change adaptation?