Abstracts Individual Papers
Decolonizing the climate change driven energy transition: making the case for localizing and decentralizing energy governance in Africa
Joy Ibifuro Alasia (University of Vienna)
Saturday, 08:30–10:00, Room B
Session: Renewable energy – in a critical North-South Perspective
Sub-Saharan African countries rank amongst the lowest in electricity access and highest in energy poverty in the world. As a result, the region is one of the leading destinations for energy developmental aid. Owing to the nexus between fossil fuels and climate change, energy development aid mostly goes into renewables and clean cooking alternatives. In the past decade, African countries have received enormous financial and material resources aimed at improving energy access in the region. However, the influx of international contributions and foreign aid is yet to transform the energy and electricity quandary. The paper investigates this phenomenon. With the use of extensive literature review and expert interviews, the preliminary findings of this research uncover several critical dimensions which are as follows: (1) Development aid and foreign investment have not translated into energy access because newly constructed renewable energy infrastructure are modeled after colonial patterns of centralized grid systems, which are yet to transmit electricity to distant communities. (2) Foreign aid and international contributions are geared towards implementing global climate and energy conventions which favor imperialistic practices that prioritize economic and political agendas of core nations. Consequently, communities at the periphery are excluded from participating in the decision-making processes aimed at addressing their daily energy challenges. (3) Internationally funded energy projects replicate humanitarian intervention and development aid praxis, which are proven to be unproductive in transforming African problems. (4) Global energy initiatives are mostly focused on providing technical support, policy consultations, and institution building. Little attention is given to how energy services and electricity can be delivered to households and communities. Although the influx of international contributions may be necessary for addressing energy poverty in Africa, these development aid investments have been found to represent new forms of imperialism. This paper analyses these aforementioned issues; and as a way forward, I conclude by proposing novel grassroots oriented approaches through which regions and communities in Africa can independently transform their energy challenges.
Resource potentials and governance innovations. Energy transition by biomass and biogenic waste use
Stefanie Baasch (Universität Bremen) & Sybille Bauriedl (Europa-Universität Flensburg)
Saturday, 08:30–10:00, Room D
Session: Social innovations for a social ecological transformation
Biomass is hyped as the essential renewable resource to realize the great promise of the international climate agreement for decarbonizing global production and consumption patterns. The essential questions of this resource policy are: Do adequate potentials of biomass resources exist at regional, national and global scales to contribute to a substantial energy transformation by simultaneously avoiding conflicts with food production? Which modes of governance innovations are suitable for an integration of biomass and biogenic waste / by-products produced by farmers, municipalities and gardeners?
Already almost seven percent of Germany´s energy mix consists of biomass and biogenic waste on an upward trend (BMWI 2018). Regarding the European level, biomass counts for 10 percent of the overall European energy consumption (AEBIOM 2017). Compared to other renewable energy sources like wind and sun, biomass is quite steady and it offers better storage options e.g. by generating intermediate products like bio-methanol or biogas. At the same time, biomass is the most controversial discussed renewable energy source as it is in conflict with food and feed production on agricultural land and forest areas. In addition, it has widely been criticized for leading to unsustainable monoculture farming (esp. maize). Regarding rural-urban relations, biomass production and consumption is unevenly distributed: while rural areas serve as the agricultural / forestal production areas, the urban centres are the main areas of consumption.
We will discuss some aspects of the fundamental questions considering both biomass potentials and governance innovations. Referring to empirical outcomes e.g. from participative network analysis with regional stakeholders, we will identify main drivers of biomass and biogenic waste use for energy transition and governance innovations. The empirical argument results from an ongoing collaborative project of four research institutions and three municipal partners in Northern Hesse, an average mountain area in Germany, dominated by agriculture, forestry and medium sized sector. The project traces the objective to establish cooperative strategies for optimizing biomass production in locations that are less suitable for food and feed production and by using biomass / biogenic waste and biomass by-products. We will discuss our findings by using insights derived from critical evaluations of ecological modernisation theories (Newell and Paterson 2009) and by taking into account the geographical dimensions of (1) cities and their rural surroundings, of (2) inter-local as local-global material relations and of (3) scaling-practices in energy transition discourses (Bridge et al. 2013).
The presentation focusses on options of how to produce and to use biomass in energy production that avoid critical production patterns and helps to reduce the imbalance between production and consumption areas by interconnecting rural and urban stakeholders by cooperative governance innovations. Additionally, we will discuss how these interconnections could lead to both rural and urban transitions towards more sustainable production and consumption.
References
AEBIOM (2017): AEBIOM Statistical Report 2016. European Bioenergy Outlook. Online: http://www.aebiom.org/statistical-report-2016/ (20.09.2017).
BMWI-Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (2017). Erneuerbare Energien. Online: https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Dossier/erneuerbare-energien.html (09.10.2018).
Bridge, Gavin; Bouzarovski, Stefan; Bradshaw, Michael; Eyred, Nick (2013). Geographies of energy transition: Space, place and the low-carbon economy. Energy policy 53, 331-340.
Newell, P.; Paterson, M. (2009). The politics of the carbon economy, in Boykoff, M. (ed.), The Politics of Climate Change: A Survey. London: Routledge, 88-99.
Dwelling and embodied forms of knowledge about GMO soybean expansion and pesticide use increase consequences in Uruguay
Victoria Evia Bertullo (Universidad de la República, Uruguay)
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room C
Session: Agrobusiness
My work addresses the pesticide exposure social and health consequences among vulnerable social groups within the agriculture intensification context in Uruguay. Agricultural intensification has been a regional process at the Southern Cone during past 15 years which was impulsed by GMO soybean production and it is correlated with an important rise in pesticide use.
Ethnographic fieldwork has been conducted with agricultural workers, farmers and women and children in the southwest of Uruguay between September 2016 and July 2017. This is one of the main agricultural areas of the country with one of the highest agricultural pesticide intoxication rate.
From a critical medical anthropology of environmental health and political ecology perspective I analyze: how is pesticide exposure experienced in the daily life of vulnerable social groups and what are their knowledge and uncertainties about illnesses produced by it? How do they seek to prevent and treat them? Which alliances and conflicts are developed between affected population, local health services, agrybussiness sector, “experts” and the contradictory local state presence?
Even though people who work or live near the crops have to experience frequent pesticide spraying, their experience is not taken into account by the government risk assessment agency before approving a GMO event is released into the environment. The only aspect of the ‘technology package’ that is taken into consideration is the GMO technology event itself but not other aspects of the “technology package”, which implies the use of huge amounts of pesticide that comes with them.
I propose that small farmers, agricultural workers and their wives and children are informed of pesticides exposure consequences by their day to day lives in the territories they inhabit, and their dwelling and embodied forms of knowledge which arise from these. From a socio-cultural epidemiology perspective it has been possible to identified broader consequences than pesticide intoxication that also include impacts on biodiversity, water quality, affects such us fear, incertitude and social relationships conflicts and cultural bound syndromes such as “chronic bone disease” and headaches and allergies attributed to the pesticide's bad smell”.
I state that it is important to account seriously for these subaltern daily ways of knowing to open up the terms of the discussion of what is still unknown or uncertain about the GMO soybean expansion process in the Southern Cone, and which ways of knowing about it we are considering – and which ones we’re not.
Neo-Extractivism in Latin America in crisis? – Ressource-led development between global capitalist dynamics and authoritarian moves/shifts to the right
Ulrich Brand (University of Vienna), Kristina Dietz (FU Berlin) & Miriam Lang
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room D
Session: Extractivism – critical discussions
The societal, political, ecological and developmental implications of the twenty-first century commodity boom have been much debated, especially with reference to Latin America. This is hardly surprising, since the global boom of primary commodities has had a particular influence on development policies, growth rates and the intensification of resource extraction for export purposes in the region. In our contribution to the Innsbruck conference we want to make sense of the political-institutional, territorial, and socioecological dynamics and contradictions of neo-extractivism in Latin America in the last almost twenty years. Particular attention is given to the obvious crisis of neo-extractivism since 2014, the role of the state, the the increasingly authoritarian move of many governments and the recent shift to the right in both, national politics and the society. We aim to develop a better understanding of neo-extractivism as a development model. Therefore we examine the temporal-spatial interdependencies between shifting socioeconomic and technological developments, world market structures and political-institutional configurations, social relations of power, and societal nature relations in Latin America. We consider it important to analyze these processes of scale interaction in order to better understand the forces, political-economic contours, potentials and socio-political dynamics, contradictions and ambivalences that drive and characterize neo-extractivism as a development model for semi-peripheral and peripheral societies, particularly in the context of growing authoritarianism and right wing populism.
The role of indigenous populations for a sustainable future. Reflecting the world through the eyes of the Kogis, an indigenous population in Colombia
Luisa Bravo (University of Innsbruck)
Friday, 16:00–18:00, Room B
Session: Locally based initiatives for transformation
As modern society is based on the destruction of nature, there is a risk for society to falter if resources are exhausted. In recent times, Western researchers have increasingly focused on the protection of resources through sustainability. Previously, the way resources were managed by pre-modern societies was considered useless through the eyes of Western science, which led to the abandonment of old traditions. As a result, the concept of sustainability was developed by Western hegemonic culture as a strategy for the protection of nature and the environment for future generations, whereby the term "sustainable development" focuses on economic and ecological rather than social conditions. At the same time, the structure of our hegemonic culture is based on the colonial principle of exploitation of natural resources, where nature has been separated from society. Indigenous people on the contrary make no distinction between nature and society, because for them everything is a continuum in the relationship between nature, culture and society. The not more than 17 countries where two thirds of our world’s natural resources can be found are all home to indigenous populations. A significant example is the indigenous community of the Kogis. They inhabit Northern Colombia in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, which comprises almost the entire spectrum of tropical American ecosystems and includes a great number of endemic species. It was therefore declared "Man and the Biosphere Reserve" by the UNESCO in 1979. The Kogis believe in the law of "mother nature" and think of themselves as the "big wise brothers" responsible for the balance of the world. So far, scientists have focused their attention on how the Kogis manage their environment. My contribution focuses on the question of how social structure contributes to the achievement of sustainability goals. For my work, I have used the method-grounded theory with data collection by semi-structured interviews, direct observations and my personal daily experiences during my research visit to a Kogi community. The results indicate that through their traditional social structure, the Kogis lead a sustainable way of life with a direct link between the consumption and restoration of natural resources. This is because the Kogis understand that everything is interconnected and belongs to the same entity. For them, each element is part of the same matrix of everything, in which the people of today, the origin of humanity, trees, stones, animals everything comes from mother nature. Furthermore, due to their cosmology, traditions and history, the Kogis are aware of their social and individual responsibility for the management of natural resources. They are conscious of the fact that a shortage of natural resources would be a risk for future generations and the natural development of the cycle of life.
Quantifying the material stocks of the United States of America from 1870 to 2017 and analysing their connection to sustainable resource use
Quirin Dammerer (Marie Jahoda-Otto Bauer Institute)
Friday, 16:00–18:00, Room E
Session: Historic perspective on resources
A substantial amount of all extracted materials is currently used to build, use and maintain material stocks (i.e. materials with a lifetime of longer than one year) in buildings, infrastructures, machinery and durable goods (Krausmann et al., 2017). These material stocks present an apparent dilemma for societies. On the one hand, stocks transform material and energy flows into services (e.g. mobility, shelter and communication). On the other hand, material stocks often have long lifetimes, and these represent legacies for future resource flows, contributing to many socio-ecological challenges such as climate change (IPCC, 2014) and biodiversity loss (Maxwell et al., 2016). Understanding stock dynamics is thus paramount for reconciling social, ecological, political and economic sustainability.
Few studies have, however, yet attempted to understand the crucial nexuses between overall material (in-use) stocks, flows, services and their socio-ecological consequences. Existing research has mostly focussed on quantifying stocks for specific materials such as aluminum (Chen and Graedel 2012), iron (Liu and Müller, 2013) and cement (Kapur et al., 2008) or estimating stocks for regions and cities (Augiseau and Barles, 2016). Comprehensive, long-term accounts of material stocks at the national and global scale are still rare (Krausmann et al. 2017, Chen and Graedel 2015, Fishman et al. 2014).
This paper aims at further filling this research gap by investigating the long term (1870-2016) development of material stocks and resource flows in the USA, currently the biggest economy in the world and second largest emitter of worldwide GHG emissions. We use a dynamic mass-balanced input-driven stock-flow modelling approach (Wiedenhofer et al., 2018) to estimate in-use stocks, end-of-life waste and recycling flows. To do so, we use various sources (databases, literature, expert interviews) to compile an extensive dataset, which contains information on material flows, processing and manufacturing losses, lifetimes as well as down- and recycling rates. We analyse the relationship between US anthropogenic stocks and economic growth, energy consumption and CO2-emissions and discuss the effectiveness of various policy recommendations intended to shift the USA towards a higher-level of sustainability and to achieve an 80 % reduction in CO2 emissions till 2050.
References
Augiseau, V., Barles, S. (2017) “Studying construction materials flows and stock: A review”, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 123: 153-164.
Chen, W.-Q., Graedel (2012) “Dynamic analysis of aluminum stocks and flows in the United States: 1900–2009”, Ecological Economics, 81: 92-102.
Chen W-Q, Graedel TE (2015) “In-use product stocks link manufactured capital to natural capital”, PNAS, 112 (20): 6265–6270.
Fishman, T., Schandl, H., Tanikawa, H., Walker, P., Krausmann, F. (2014) “Accounting for the Material Stock of Nations”, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 18 (3): 407-420.
IPCC (2014) Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Edenhofer, O., R. Pichs-Madruga, Y. Sokona, E. Farahani, S. Kadner, K. Seyboth, A. Adler, I. Baum, S. Brunner, P. Eickemeier, B. Kriemann, J. Savolainen, S. Schlömer, C. von Stechow, T. Zwickel and J.C. Minx (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
Kapur A., Keoleian, G., Kendall A., Kesler S. E. (2008) “Dynamic Modeling of In-Use Cement Stocks in the United States”, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 12(4): 539–556.
Krausmann, F., Wiedenhofer, D., Lauk, C., Haas, W., Tanikawa, H., Fishman, T., Miatto, A., Schandl, H., Haberl, H. (2017) “Global socioeconomic material stocks rise 23-fold over the 20th century and require half of annual resource use”, PNAS, 114, 8, 1880-1885.
Liu, G., Müller, D. B. (2013) “Centennial Evolution of Aluminum In-Use Stocks on Our Aluminized Planet”, Environmental Science and Technology, 47: 4882−4888.
Maxwell, S., Fuller, R. S., Brooks, T. M., Watson, J. E. M. (2016) “Biodiversity: The ravages of guns, nets and bulldozers”, Nature, 536: 143-145, 11 August.
Wiedenhofer, D., Fishman, T., Lauk, C., Haas, W., Krausmann, F. (2018) “Integrating Material Stock Dynamics Into Economy-Wide Material Flow Accounting: Concepts, Modelling, and Global Application for 1900–2050”, Ecological Economics, 156, 121-133.
Global patterns of ecologically unequal exchange: ecological and social implications for sustainability in the 21st century
Christian Dorninger (Leuphana University of Lüneburg), Hornborg, Abson, Wehrden, Hubacek, Feller, Schaffartzik, Giljum, Engler & Wiela
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room E
Session: Global inequality
International trade and global biophysically tele-connections between countries rapidly increased over the last decades. Outsourcing of resource intense production steps has been established as a common means of overcoming resource shortages of land, materials, energy or labor, resulting from modern resource-intensive lifestyle of growing wealthy economies. Through international trade, richer nations are able to achieve a certain degree of efficiency in their economic structure and partly even an absolute decoupling between resource use and economic growth. However, these achievements are largely illusory, merely displacing ecological constraints and socio-environmental pressures to distant regions. Such exchange relations are both obscured, and to some extent justified and legitimized, by focusing only on international monetary trade flows.
Here we argue that (1) these resource-intensive lifestyles in richer nations depend on resource intensive technologies and infrastructure; (2) which are again contingent on net-inflows of different types of resources from distant areas; (3) these trade patterns arise from and simultaneously constitute global social-economic inequalities.
This contribution aims to quantitatively demonstrate the global extent of a controversial phenomenon that has been referred to as ecologically unequal exchange. Ecologically unequal exchange refers to asymmetric flows of biophysical resources (and embodied resources) from relatively poorer to richer regions. By assessing current data from environmentally-extended multi-regional input-output databases (Eora), we show how ecologically unequal exchange between nation states is a systemic and persistent feature of our globalized world economy.
This contribution demonstrates global patterns (1990-2015) of ecologically unequal exchange. Ecologically unequal exchange has potentially far-reaching implications for ecological and social sustainability and the subsequently the economic development strategies of nations. We highlight how high mass consumption in rich industrialized countries is sustained by asymmetric exchange relationships with poorer regions. The richest countries in the world tend to be net-appropriators of all four productive factors: materials, energy, land, and labor, while, at the same time, being able generate the world’s highest current account surpluses, which again allow them to appropriate resources in subsequent years, perpetuating these unequal exchange relations. This unequal trade dynamic has globally significant political, ecological and societal consequences.
Our paper presents novel findings that contribute not only to the scientific understanding of the extent, ubiquity and persistence of ecologically unequal exchange, but also points to the ecological and socio-political relevance of the concept.
Structural conditions of resource extraction: a global economic historical perspective
Andreas Exenberger (University of Innsbruck)
Friday, 16:00–18:00, Room E
Session: Historic perspective on resources
In an economic perspective, the extraction of resources is a risky model of development. Many resources do only occasionally allow positive spill‐over‐effects to initiate virtuous cycles (promoting capital formation and industrialisation), while there are a lot of dangers that a resource‐based economies will fall prey to vicious cycles (rent‐seeking, civil wars, Dutch disease). In a global historical perspective, several structural conditions can be identified, which hinder economic transformation to sustained growth or human development in many resource‐rich economies even on a national level, which does also contribute to serious obstacles for a socio‐economic transformation on the global level.
This contribution will discuss five arguments to address these obstacles of transformation. This will shed light on the structural conditions of resource extraction and hence help to better understand the actual choices available. First, the role of resources in the logic of the modern capitalist world system will be discussed to give a broad context well‐fitting the actual challenge of global socio‐ecological transformation. Secondly, we will see how this contributes to cycles of exploitation, in which the actual patterns of extraction remain largely unchanged over time, even if the political or economic context and also the medium of exploitation (i.e. the actual resource) may change considerably. Thirdly, the specific connection to conflict will be elaborated and thus the role of resources as promoters of violence. Fourthly, we will combine these insights to understand the specific logic of resources economies organized as social orders with strictly limited access to political and economic institutions. Finally, we will discuss the logic of developmental states in this context and how this contributes to the vicious and virtuous cycles of resource extraction. In conclusion, an interconnected picture of adverse structural conditions will become visible, but this will also allow to see pathways of feasible developments or at least pre‐conditions of transformation.
Large-scale entrepreneurial agriculture; the case of Uruguay
Soledad Figueredo Rolle (Universidad de la República, Uruguay)
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room C
Session: Agrobusiness
In less than twenty years, the uruguayan countryside changed, developing several processes that discontinue the traditional way of use and work in agricultural production. The farmers who dedicate to rainfed crops and that adopt the soy at the beginning of the 2000s, begins to have an entrepreneurial profile in the management of their exploitation. They won in scale of production, in economic efficiency and in productivity of the resources. At the same time, they lost in autonomy in their decisions because of their integration in global value chains, their capacity to recompense the fertility of soil, forcing to improve crop rotations. From the capitalized family farmers to the the big-international players, including the foreign actors (argentinians), intensification is increasing and its repercuts all around the global value chains and their actors. This paper examines the strategies that develop main agricultural entrepreneurs that produce soy and wheat in Uruguay, productions that generally combines with livestock production. The approach of this study is essentially sociological focusing on the analysis of the social actor’s strategies. The paper studies the main characteristics about the biggest agriculture entrepreneurs working in Uruguay. In addition to this, this analisis identificate the different dynamics of accumulation that exists inside the big players that produces agriculture in Uruguay; this generate evidence to understand in deep their different actions to affront market dynamics. The results of this papers, are based in several fieldworks made between 2017 and 2018 and secondary and statistical data that complement primary information.
Energy Transitions and Social Revolutions
Marina Fischer-Kowalski (University for Natural Resources and Life Sciences)
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room A
Session: Conceptual discussions on social-ecological transformation
The transition from a traditional agrarian to a fossil fuel based energy regime began before the industrial revolution and is still ongoing. This paper explores the relation of this transition process and social revolutions. Revolutions are not randomly scattered in space and time, nor are they confined to a certain historical epoch. As we can show, they are likelier under certain conditions, namely the early stages of the transition from an agrarian energy regime to a fossil-fuel-based energy regime. Seemingly, unique historical events like social revolutions follow a pattern linked to the specific mode societies exploit natural resources. Not just human inventiveness and technology matters, but also a gift from nature – fossil energy carriers – is found to be at the roots of the industrial transformation. Their superior energy return on investment (EROI) over traditional biomass, and their sheer quantity, permit a fundamental transformation; these benefits can only be harvested if accompanied by an equally fundamental socio-political transformation, which frequently (but not necessarily) takes the form of social revolution. Such insights link the study of politics and history to the study of social metabolism in a systematic way.
Using statistical analysis across 51 countries, we find that at the very beginning of countries’ energy transition, a critical phase can be identified, within which social revolutions are most likely to happen. This applies to the grand revolutions across the past five centuries investigated for a core set of industrial and emerging economies, as well as to supplementary samples of Latin American and post-World War II developing countries. No statistically significant relation between the historical time and the pace of transition towards modern fuels is found, which means that the energy transition does not accelerate. Among the sample of developing countries with revolutions after World War II we find an even slower pace of transition to an industrial energy regime. Apparently, transitions in primary energy source and energy abundance are not just a matter of technological change, but strongly interact with the social, institutional and political fabric of societies and the international context in which they are embedded.
This presentation is based upon shared work with E.Rovenskaya, F.Krausmann, I. Pallua and J.McNeill
Ecosystem Services as a useful approach to promote social-ecological transformation? A critical analysis at the example of the resource soil
Clemens Geitner & Elisabeth Schaber (University of Innsbruck)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room C
Session: Ecosystem Services
Human life would not be possible without soils as they contribute essentially to the provision of a merit of vital ecosystem services. The most obvious soil-based services might be food and timber production, but also local and global climate regulation, flood regulation, water purification and sustaining biodiversity strongly rely on soils.
Nevertheless, soil is a widely disregarded resource. This is especially concerning, as it is basically a non-renewable resource, as soil-formation proceeds very slowly. Therefore, a sustainable soil management is crucial. However, soils are globally facing numerous threats, e.g. sealing, erosion, compaction, depletion of organic matter, salinization or contamination, which can be the results of different natural and human drivers e.g. climate (change), morphodynamics, agricultural and silvicultural practices or population growth. Surely, the strong population growth during the past decades is a major driver for the crisis soils are facing today, as demands for goods and space increase with population.
The shift from current to a more sustainable soil management, which reduces soil threats, is an important part of a social-ecological transformation. Sustainably managed soils could provide many services while soil threats could be reduced. But the fact, that soils are very complex systems with strong differences, from the local to the ecozonal dimension, constitutes a tough challenge to sustainable soil management, as practices are not easily transferable but need local adaptation. Furthermore, some impacts of management only become visible after a considerable period of delay. It also has to be considered that the feasibility of sustainable soil management depends on political and especially economic conditions, which are, in many regions of the world, not in favour of sustainability, yet the agricultural production plays often a disproportional role in those parts of the world.
On a global scale, agriculture is responsible for the biggest share of human-induced soil threats and thus it holds obviously a great potential for improvements. More critical it can be said that a paradigm shift in agricultural is needed. This is also recognised by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), which formerly promoted industrial agriculture but now recommends small scale, resource-conserving and organic farming. On the other hand, intensive farming has a powerful lobby (e.g. herbicides, fertilizer, machinery industries), which significantly impedes sustainable soil management.
Worldwide, the Ecosystem Services approach is used to get stronger arguments against those lobbies as well as political interests that hamper sustainable development. Thereby, positive and negative externalities, i.e. uncompensated impacts of economic decisions, which are widely not incorporated in most decision-making processes, are also considered. But in order to achieve sustainable soil management by means of the Ecosystem Service approach, soils need to be integrated in a way that reflects their real importance within the service provision.
This presentation aims to stress out the high relevance of soils for our well-being, the threats they are facing and the challenges and potentials of the Ecosystem Service approach to achieve a more sustainable soil management and therefore get a step closer towards a social-ecological transformation.
Science, Technology and Innovation Policy for Social-ecological Transformation
Susanne Giesecke (Austrian Institute of Technology)
Saturday, 10:30–12:00, Room D
Session: Social-ecological transformation in urban areas
The world seems to get more complex and unpredictable. Yet universal values as they are share by the UN Sustainable Development Goals sketch a direction for policy making and for a better life for all. In the context of European STI policy making, the question is: What will be Europe’s role in the world and can European STI-policy making make a difference?
Looking at the future, the junction of the SDGs with megatrends provides a framework for identifying key transitions for the future, and challenges and opportunities associated with such transitions. Presently we seem to enter a new era of innovation policy that is directed toward transformative change, overcoming the old paradigms of "growth" and "competitiveness". Using this new framework, our paper covers future scenarios (2030) from a European project on “Beyond the Horizon”.
Looking at the transitions towards the SDGs the following general scenarios can be developed:
- Inclusiveness and fairness are key principles of transition processes and key objectives of transitions.
- Coordinated action between European, national and regional level is essential
- There are strong interconnections between the scenario areas.
- Governance is key for innovation and value creation.
- The city emerges as a key level of governance and social and economic organization.
- Experimentation, rapid prototyping and testing solutions need to become an important part of policy.
The aim of developing these scenarios is to explore strategic options for Europe in a world where there are major shifts in political and economic structures taking place. The key perspective underpinning the scenario approach is that the EU has the potential to magnify the importance of its citizens and its Member States in the world, while, as economic globalization advances, the global weight of the EU decreases. The EU will be a smaller part of the world economy, population, emissions and so on.
Ecological impacts of clear-cuts on remaining forest. A case study in the north-west Russian Federation using remote sensing supported, geo-statistical analysis
Charlotte Gohr (Philipps-Universität Marburg), Pierre Ibisch & Thomas Nauss
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room C
Session: Ecosystem Services
Earth’s forest covered surface is shaped by natural processes and is at the same time facing severe anthropogenic interference. Forest is an important resource, provides a great variety of ecosystem services and is of crucial importance in regards of climate change.
In the Russian Federation, clear cuttings, timber logging and fire are causing a massive tree cover loss. As a consequence, loss in biodiversity and ecosystem degradation can be observed (Blumroeder et al. 2018, Achard et al. 2006). Especially clear cuttings lead to a deeply fragmented forest structure, which effects most heavily the ecosystem functionality (Aksenov et al. 2002).
To get an idea about possible ecological impacts on remaining forest areas surrounded by clear-cut areas in Russia, large scale remote sensing supported geo-statistical analysis can be one approach. The study aims to show the impact of clear cutting practice on remaining forest areas and their changes in ecosystem functionality. In this study alongside QGIS and R, the Google Earth Engine web application, with it’s comprehensive data availability and online computing facilities, is used for data handling. A time series analysis of NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) and GPP (gross primary production) derived from satellite imagery will examine the influence of clear cutting practice on the remaining forest. Climate data, like precipitation, temperature and soil moisture, will be used for the analysis as well. Further, future scenarios will estimate possible trends of productivity changes in remaining forest areas. Additionally, scenarios will be examined, in which areas with different resource extraction policies is used. Ideas for transformation will be developed by showing possible alternatives for forest extraction and their impact on the forest ecosystem functionality.
Early exploitation of geo-resources – socio-economic aspects of the prehistoric alpine copper production
Gert Goldenberg (University of Innsbruck)
Friday, 16:00–18:00, Room E
Session: Historic perspective on resources
During the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (for Central Europe: 2.200 – 700 BC) copper was one of the most important products obtained from alpine geo-resources (copper ore deposits). During this period the valuable metal was in great demand, traded in a supra-regional scale and by this way distributed over large parts of Central Europe. By interpreting the results of archaeological and archaeometrical investigations it can be demonstrated that well developed and well organized economic networks were established, controlling and managing the metal market. This includes the on-site production chain of ore mining, ore beneficiation and extractive metallurgy as well as the supply systems for the specialized miner’s communities. The economic system became even more complex when tin was in demand for the production of bronze (= alloy of copper and tin). Due to different geological settings, copper and tin ore deposits occur in geographically different regions (tin in the south-west of the British Isles, in Brittany and in some Central European uplands). This fact required well organized long-distance trading networks.
In the context of this “early globalization process”, analogies to modern resource politics become apparent. Motivation, demand and solutions as well as consequences of the dynamic processes going along with the exploitation of geo-resources recur in always similar cycles of up and down / rise and fall since thousands of years. The today’s and future’s problem is not only the unprecedented dimension of a ruthless exploitation of geo-resources but also its enormous velocity, impeding any kind of sustainable resource economy. This can be explained by the rapid technological progress, the rising demand due to the global population increase and the perspective of making enormous financial profit with geo-resources. The information obtained from historical and archaeological studies can contribute to a better understanding of socio-economic long-term developments connected to the exploitation of geo-resources. This is in the spirit of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (1767 - 1835) citation: “Only the one who knows his past has a future”.
The Stoney Road to Fair Gold – Challenges to Certification of small-scale Gold mining in East Africa
Jonathan Happ (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room D
Session: Value chain based approaches to resource control
Artisanal and small-scaled gold mining (ASGM) takes place in more than 70 countries, especially in developing and emerging countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Between 10 and 16 million people, of which more than one million are children, and up to 50% are woman, are working in this sector. ASGM has a significant negative impact on the environment, health and society.
In 2012, Fairtrade launched a project in East Africa to create standards for sustainable gold mining. The first cooperatives were certified in 2017. So far, however, only a symbolic amount of the precious metal has been exported.
Obstacles that have emerged include major local financing difficulties, weak local leadership, a lack of geological expertise and the effects of long rainy seasons. But even if the cooperatives can overcome these hurdles, the comparatively low profit generated by Fairtrade marketing has the potential to disappoint the participating ASGMs. Therefore, it seems crucial for the long-term success that the approaches for the renunciation of mercury and cyanide are permanently implemented. This will qualify the groups for an additional eco-premium of 15%, which could result in an actual additional profit. Furthermore, it appears necessary that within the project a greater specialisation and division of the mining, production and export sectors takes place.
The oxymoronic normativity of resources. Incommensurabilities and their role in social-ecological transformations in the soy agribusiness sector
Robert Hafner (University of Graz)
Saturday, 10:30–12:00, Room B
Session: Justice in resource access
Resources are political, they are normative and their cultivation and use are highly influenced by asymmetries of power and interests. Social-ecological transformation shares an equal amount of normative weight and interpretative wiggle room. Normative interpretations of (the relevance of) fairness and justice influence and justify respective actions. Understanding those underlying struc-tures gives major insights into how system changes can be steered.
This paper uses the Argentine soy-agribusiness as an example to show the oxymoronic relationship between discursive and action-based social-ecological transformation processes. Through the ap-plication of the environmental justice incommensurabilities framework (EJIF), the underlying struc-tures of industry stakeholders’ interests are laid bare. Here, the goal is to understanding their thought styles, their identification of social, economic and ecological (push and pull) factors for dis-cursive and action change. It becomes apparent that discursive transformations are coupled with action-oriented pragmatism.
Consequently, taking those findings into account, the EJIF is applied to activist groups in the soy agribusiness to bring together and contrast the findings to agribusiness representatives, showing that varying interpretations and weighing of fairness and justice have significant impacts on the adaptability and success of power-related strategies in the short- and medium term.
EU policy and Earth resilience: how planetary boundaries can help bring them into line
Tiina Häyhä (Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm Universit)
Saturday, 08:30–10:00, Room C
Session: Adaptation
Today, it is widely accepted that human activity has significant impacts on the Earth system. If continued, these could have serious impacts on planetary wellbeing. Far less settled are questions of how to determine individual countries’ fair contribution towards mitigating the impacts and how to account for global environmental issues in existing policy processes.
The planetary boundaries framework proposes quantitative limits to human perturbation of critical Earth system processes. The concept highlights the globally systemic interactions and impacts of the different Earth system processes.
The European Union’s 7th Environment Action Programme (EAP) sets out an EU-wide ambition of “Living well, within the limits of our planet”. The planetary boundaries framework was central to the design of the global environmental dimension of the 7th EAP. However, the operational implications of remaining within these limits have not yet been spelled out. Neither have they been integrated into policy-making at EU or member state level.
To apply the Earth system perspective into EU policy- and decision-making, the planetary boundaries need to be translated to this sub-global scale. This translation process needs to address biophysical, socio-economic and ethical aspects.
In the work, some first steps in operationalizing the planetary boundaries for the EU. We translate the planetary boundaries to the EU level using an equal-per-capita allocation approach, to exemplify what the EU’s “fair share” of the global safe operating space might look like. We further use them as benchmarks for EU’s environmental performance, both within and beyond the territory of the EU.
We conclude that operationalizing the planetary boundaries can help ensure that policy goals are coherent between scales. Furthermore, due to the multidimensional systemic character of the planetary boundaries their operationalisation can also support horizontal coherence between governance systems, sectors and policies.
Resource exploitation for the renewable energy system in Germany: Analysis of the unequal exchange between Germany and Peru via the copper commodity chain
Raphaela Hartl (Institute of Social Ecology, Vienna)
Saturday, 08:30–10:00, Room B
Session: Renewable energy – in a critical North-South Perspective
In order to transform the unsustainable fossil fuel based system, many countries in the global north are taking measures of an ‘eco-modernization’. However, especially to build new eco-modern infrastructure compounds, these industrialized economies highly depend on resource imports from the global south. But, since the socioeconomic and political conditions along transnational commodity chains differ a lot, international trade tends to bear disadvantages for resource exporting countries from an economic and ecological perspective. Further, it intensifies social inequalities. Therefore, transnational commodity flows play a crucial role in the structuring and maintaining of the capitalist world-system. This paper tries to highlight these material preconditions of eco-modernization processes and the structures and mechanisms that enable specific national development paths in wealthy northern states. On the other hand, it predetermines dependent developments in the south. Using the German energy transition (‘Energiewende’) as an example for eco-modernist development projects, this paper examines along the copper commodity chain between Peru and Germany, the interrelations between the construction of renewable energy infrastructure and the appropriation of resources. By analyzing the unequal exchange in both, the ecological and the social dimension, that takes place via bilateral trade of copper products of different manufacturing stages between the two economies from 2000 to 2017, a concrete picture of asymmetric resource flows is traced. For the ecological unequal exchange, material flow indicators of the two economies and the bilateral trade of copper products in three manufacturing stages were compared. Furthermore, the indirect flows of waste rock in the copper exports production in Peru were taken into account. For the social unequal exchange, wages and labour rights as well as other socioeconomic indicators were investigated to track the exploitation of social transfer values through the commodity chain connection between the two economies. It becomes obvious, that the German need for copper draws on the steady supply of copper resources from Peru. It is argued that the trade of mainly primary products in one direction and of finished products in the other constitutes a steady unequal exchange from an ecological-thermodynamic perspective. Furthermore, it is discussed how this commodity chain connection causes social and environmental conflicts in Peru and at the same time facilitates the accumulation of capital, in particular of eco-modern infrastructure in Germany. Differences in labour standards and in the social rights situation lead to the exploitation of precarious parts of the Peruvian society as they are connected to a relative high-income country with higher social security standards like Germany. So, in this paper, the insufficiency of sustainability strategies that miss to take into account the interrelations of the world-system becomes obvious. This leads to the conclusion that it is a substantial step to rethink international trade relations which at the moment reinforce exploitive, imperial practices.
The emergence and essence of ecological imperialism
Juan He (University of Vienna)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room E
Session: Global inequality
Ecological imperialism is the development and a new manifestation of imperialism in the world. It is the embodiment of the advanced capitalist countries pushing imperial power politics and hegemonism to the ecological field. Ecological imperialism demonstrates the environmental impacts of resource extraction, reflecting the serious imbalances and unjust international environmental governance led by capitalism in the era of globalization. From the perspective of nature and society, it only take nature as an accessory to capitalist society, and the restriction of nature on capitalist society are ignored. From the perspective of various regions in the country, there are resource extraction between rich areas and poor areas, meanwhile the exploitation of the ecological resources between Bourgeois and proletariat. From a global view, there are cases of forced exploitation leaded by developed countries against development countries.
Ecological imperialism has several distinct characteristics. One is that a country plunder the resources of other countries, and through its own actions, changes the entire ecosystem on which each country depends; the second is the massive population and labor mobility that brings resources transfer; The third is to create and utilize the ecological fragility of underdeveloped societies to strengthen the control of imperialism; the fourth is that the central state dumps ecological waste into peripheral countries; the fifth is the formation of metabolic breaks that limit the development of capitalism.
The era of peace and development does not mean the disappearance of imperialist behavior. Not only do ecological Marxist scholars put forward the theory of ecological imperialism, but also Ulrich Brand who is the representative of social ecological transformation theory also mentioned the influence of the imperial mode of living on a global scale. The prevalence of the imperial mode of living is the infiltration of ecological imperialism in the field of life. People choose a luxury lifestyle and choose the lifestyle of mass production – mass consumption and regardless of the affordability of the ecosystem, people in developing countries will suffering from it.
In essence, ecological imperialism is the expansion of capital and the exploitation resources in the world, and the nature of capital is exposed. The nature of capital expansion extends to the ecological field, and it is hoped that it will master the dominant power of ecological resources, which is actually a violation of the ecosystem law of diversity.
Cool air for hot cities - Some geographical thoughts on transforming a liability into a resource for urban climate change adaptation
Karl Michael Höferl (University of Innsbruck)
Saturday, 10:30–12:00, Room D
Session: Social-ecological transformation in urban areas
Not only since the emblematic European heat waves of 2003 has the risk of heat-related illness or death become an urgent matter on urban agendas worldwide. Additionally, anthropogenic climate change will very likely intensify these adverse effects on human health in the years to come. As a result, the cooling of cities has become a prominent building block of urban climate change adaptation strategies. Since such a cooling cannot be achieved by producing cold air “out of thin air”, we try to modify the temperature and/or humidity of the surrounding air. By doing so, we transform the liability warm air into the most vital biophysical resource for cooling cities: cold air. This liability-resource dualism of the biophysical materiality air implies a remarkable consequence: You cannot have one without the other.
Accepting this consequence raises (at least) two questions: Can existing ontological approaches, like socio-ecological interaction models, accommodate this liability-resource dualism? And what inspirations can we draw from combining a hazard-oriented with a metabolistic perspective on the urban production of cold air?
To answer these questions Fischer-Kowalski’s and Weisz’s interaction model, which is prominently featured in German geography, is chosen as ontological basis. Whether its metabolistic baseline narrative does or can incorporate the liability-resource dualism will be critically discussed. Whereupon inconsistencies can be found which question the discursive “one-size-fits-all”-use of this interaction model in German geography. Using the “efficient” production and “just” distribution of cold air as showcases, theoretical and methodological insights from combining a hazard-oriented with a metabolistic perspective will be presented. These insights suggest that despite its challenges the liability-resource dualism is not something we should dismiss or see as an academic gimmick. Embracing this duality might be the best way to combine an efficient urban production with a just, risk-minimising distribution of cold air in warming cities.
Seed sovereignty in the context of alternative food networks as approach for resource justice in Colombia
Birgit Hoinle (University of Hamburg)
Saturday, 10:30–12:00, Room F
Session: Food networks
Seeds are a fusing point of societal nature relations. As germ cells, they stand for the production and reproduction of life circles, especially in the area of food production. In different parts of the world there are increasing conflicts around the control of seeds and their technological and genetical modification. In Colombia, these conflicts arose especially during the negotiations for the Free Trade Agreements with the United States in 2012 and the European Union in 2013. In the socalled ‘Paro Agrario’ the indigenous and peasant organizations mobilized against new national policies which restrict and criminalize the traditional practices of seed exchange and the use of native seeds. This time, more and more urban groups solidarized with such rural social movements; out of these urban-rural connections grew anumber of new social innovations: alternative food networks (‘circuitos agroalimentarios alternativos’). In what way do these initiatives represent processes of socio-ecological transformation aiming towards resource justice? Discovering these linkages is the aim of this presentation.
This contribution uses viewpoints from Latin-American political ecology and decolonial perspectives (Porto-Gonçalves 2009; Leff 2013; Nogales 2017; Castro-Gómez 2018) to analyse the conflicts around seed circles in Colombia. At the heart of these conflicts is a phenomen that Gutiérrez Escobar (2015) calls ‘Seed Grabbing’ – the neocolonial appropriation of seeds as a material good as well as a symbolic good in the form of the appropriation of local knowledge forms. Against this ‘Enclosure of the Commons’ (Polanyi 1971, Federici 2011) a number of resistance movements came into being all at different scales: from local urban gardens which organize seed exchange events as well as regional food circles which promote food sovereignty (e.g. La Red Raíces) and networks engaging politically at national and continental level (e.g. Red Semillas Libres de Colombia). This presentation focuses especially on the regional scale of the metropolitan zone of Bogotá. It is based on a field research between 2014 and 2016 – a time when the creation of alternative food networks (e.g. La Agrosolidaria) took new dynamics. By analyzing the actor-networks and the agency of these initiatives to secure an open access to, and circulation of, native seeds I argue that they are contributing to a greater resource justice and a (re-)appropriation of seeds as a Commons – as both in its material and symbolic dimensions. Especially the visibilization of local knowledge forms of seed (re-)production is connected to resistances regarding the coloniality of knowledge production and circulation (Mignolo 2002). Finally, I will give an outlook what kind of limits and challenges these iniciatives are facing considering the whole political ecological context but also in what way they represent germ cells to construct more juster societal nature relations.
How much ‘C’ in CBNRM? Community-Based Natural Resource Management perceptions and impacts on Agricultural Value Chain participation of smallholder farmers in the Zambezi Region in Namibia
Carolin Hulke (University of Cologne)
Friday, 16:00–18:00, Room B
Session: Locally based initiatives for transformation
Especially in post-colonial Southern Africa, Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) is an established tool to relocation land ownership as well as the use of the land´s natural resources back to the local people. This approach is more and more promoted by top-down national and even multi-national governmental and non-governmental initiatives, leading to the question of how much ‘C’ remains in the governance of natural resources after all. In light of ongoing global influences, a Global Value Chain/Global Production Network perspective is applied to capture the strategic use of natural resources as well as the value created and distributed among the communities. Hence, the actual materialization of CBNRM benefits is contested to the perceptions of the communities. Especially the participation possibilities in accessing benefits and upgrade livelihood wellbeing are, from a Global Value Chain perspective, questionable and thus of main interest in this paper. This paper therefore aims to investigate the inclusiveness of such cooperative-like entities and assesses the participation possibilities of smallholder farmers to make use of natural resources and enhance on their livelihood wellbeing through value chain integration. We apply a bottom-up approach, drawing on stakeholder interviews and focus-group discussions with conservancy representatives and smallholder farmers conducted in CBNRM and non-CBNRM areas in northern Namibia (Zambezi Region) in September to November 2018. Firstly, we confront top-down initiatives promoting commercial agricultural value chains with the aspirations and realities of smallholders living in and outside CBNRM areas. Secondly, we assess outcomes of bottom-up livelihood strategies on smallholder communities’ wellbeing, thus revealing various gradations of participation and non-participation. Through conceptually combining CBNRM and critical approaches from Global Value Chains/Global Production Networks, insights on communities’ possibilities, perceptions, visions and impacts will be provided.
Resourcing a high-mountain hut sustainably
Jutta Kister (University of Innsbruck)
Friday, 16:00–18:00, Room B
Session: Locally based initiatives for transformation
Operating a hut for alpinists in the sensitive high-mountain ecosystem raises societal expectations on operating the infrastructure in a social-ecological way. In order to take responsibility for the sensitive environment, alpinists are experiencing recreation in, for the local valley as well as within the global warming discourse; it is helpful to draw a comprehensive and precise picture of the current situation in terms of sustainability. The sustainability analysis as a tangible outcome lays ground for sustainability implementation. It will be an important instrument for the governance towards sustainability and go along with a broader socio-ecological transformation strategy of the Alpine Club.
The project aims to develop a monitoring system that is able to reveal the efforts made in order to operate in a more sustainable way and show deficits at the same time more precisely. In the end, it should support operators of high-mountain huts to improve their businesses to reduce resource use and to run the hut in a more sustainable way. Besides the operators, also the mountaineers as guests and the Alpine Club as institution are addressed to revise and rethink their practises.
Therefore, the transdisciplinary project is focussing on both sustainability analysis and implementation. In order to optimize sustainability implementation, the ongoing process includes participation of practise partners already in the early stage of establishing sustainability indicators, as indicators must be oriented on the experimental object. The indicators must fulfil four main functions: (1) information function, (2) orientation function, (3) governance function and (4) communication function. The analysis setup will include three spacial spheres: the hut as materialized infrastructure; the operation of the hut, including resource supply and disposal; and the influence of alpinists on the hut`s surrounding and their mobility on the sustainability of the mountaineering activity. This paper aims to focus on the analysis of resource supply and disposal and present it within the comprehensive aims of the transdisciplinary project that highlights the relevance of real-world sustainability problems to the research field.
Governing climate change adaptation. A case from Kiribati
Silja Klepp (Kiel University)
Saturday, 08:30–10:00, Room C
Session: Adaptation
‘Adaptation’ – and linked to this the concepts of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘resilience’ – is currently the main notion mediating ideas on anthropogenic climate change and society. It has the power to set political agendas and policies and to reframe development programmes on different scales – from global to local. Nevertheless, most of the discussions concerning ‘adaptation’ are effectively framed in an apolitical manner. This means that the political implications behind climate change adaptation are not explicitly addressed, and so remain invisible. Why is this so? And what do we learn if we focus our analysis on the political aspects, on changing power relations, growing vulnerabilities, and different kinds of injustices linked to climate change adaptation? I will use the example of Kiribati (Oceania) where adaptation narratives are especially powerful to illustrate and discuss how the people of Kiribati (the I-Kiribati) receive, appropriate, and transform adaptation measures. And how is Kiribati changed by climate change adaptation which seems to be a new imperative in international cooperation and in north-south relations?
Resource conflicts and contested knowledge production in European water politics
Bettina Köhler (University of Vienna)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room A
Session: Political Ecology
Water has long been debated as a terrain of socio-ecological conflicts, which can be traced all along the entire hydrosocial cycle. While in terms of quantity water-related resource conflicts related to raw materials or land use play a growing role, the issue of urban water supply remains a key arena for struggles around socio-ecologically transformative pathways. From a political ecology perspective recent struggles around water and public services link the socio-ecological process also to questions of democratising societal relations with nature. During the privatisation wave of the 1990s especially cities of the global south served as laboratories for neoliberal restructuring of water services, however also cities in the global north became an important arena, with different trajectories in different countries. Meanwhile, empirical evidences of problematic effects of straightforward privatisations of entire water supply systems are increasingly well documented and acknowledged and, following a “crisis of privatisation”, a growing number of recommunalisation cases is gaining momentum. However, at the same time and against such empirical evidences, policies which counter the very conditions for providing public services are continuously promoted by political actors at different spatial scales. The paper takes the case of European regulatory frameworks and traces recent developments, which affect the room for manoeuvre for local democratic decision making on public services. In this respect recent policies in the context of the European single market and with regard to international trade policies are investigated. From there different arenas of struggle are discussed in terms of politics of scale and with regard to the contested knowledge production involved. Finally, recent struggles in the European context will be contextualised with regard to experiences of a growing global water justice movement.
After the Land Rush? Non-inclusive land development, extractivism and environmental justice
Sören Köpke (University of Kassel)
Saturday, 10:30–12:00, Room B
Session: Justice in resource access
It has been ten years since the upsurge in farmland investments in the Global South has made headlines. Sparked by food price volatility and financial crises, the land investment rush has raised interest of academics, journalists and advocacy activists. A great number of cases have been investigated and brought to public attention. Research has since highlighted the multi-faceted nature of land investments and the diversity of actors and target regions. The boom cooled down in subsequent years and several large-scale projects were abandoned, often as a consequence of public protest. Yet large-scale acquisitions of land in the global South – for agricultural purposes, but also for mining, conservation and infrastructure construction – remain an important and contested phenomenon, fuelled by persistent demand for certain commodities and investor priorities. After ten years, it is time to re-evaluate claims and facts on the “Global Land Rush” in a meaningful way, and to scrutinize received wisdoms on the issue.
One central finding is that focussing on deals on arable land alone misses half of the story; extractive industries are as much involved in land acquisitions as agribusiness investors. Tourism, biodiversity and conservation, and water resources are also drivers of land acquisitions and enclosures. Sometimes, these types of land investments will overlap. A second finding is the diversity of actors; land investments are not solely a Chinese or Gulf Country practice, nor do they necessarily have a North-South dimension. Actors are multi-national companies, but also individuals or government-owned entities.
Thirdly, climatic events and other environmental factors influence transactions and operations, but political contexts matter most to investors. Finally, environmental justice struggles against investments have different rationales and manifestations. They may take on the form of localized land or water conflicts, but may also involve labour struggles, or become politicized in the scope of national conflicts between political actors. A political economy of land conflicts underscores the non-inclusive development outcomes of investment drives and researches the international connections affecting local dynamics.
After providing a bird’s-eye view on the topic, I take Madagascar as a single case study to highlight the main findings. Madagascar was initially seen as key case, and land investment conflicts were even implicated in the 2009 coup d’état that toppled the government. A decade later, we can see that foreign direct investment in natural resources, the emergence of environmental justice struggles, and the overall development of the country have unfolded in unexpected ways.
The politics of neutrality in environmental organizations facing mining projects in New Caledonia
Matthias Kowasch (University College of Teacher Education Styria) & Julien Merlin
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room B
Session: Resource conflicts II
Resource exploitation is closely connected to non-sustainability, not only because the mining of fossil fuels leads to significant CO2 emissions, but because mineral resources do not regenerate over timescales that are meaningful to humans (Kowasch, 2018). Bebbington et al. (2008) note that mineral-dependent states whose economic activity rely on one sector elicit socio-political relationships that undermine sustainable development. Numerous negative features deriving from mining projects includ long term environmental damages, widening disparities and social upheavals.
The French overseas territory New Caledonia, a global biodiversity hotspot, is a special case in studies of how local populations react to the threats and opportunities provided by mining operations (Horowitz et al., 2018). Until 2010, a single nickel smelter could process the nickel ores. Due to persistently high nickel prices on the world market, two new processing plants were built in the last decade. While the Goro Nickel project operated by the Brazilian group Vale was completed in 2010, the first nickel smelting in the “factory of the North”, operated by KNS (Koniambo Nickel SAS), was realized in 2013. The Koniambo project has anchored a revival of urban and industrial development in the North and should provide the basis for political emancipation from France (Néaoutyine, 2006). The most severe environmental impacts of both projects are the discharge of wastewater containing heavy metals into the Caledonian lagoon, the digging of a channel to the new Vavouto port and CO2 emissions from energy power plants that supply the smelters.
In the face of the new mining projects, environmental organizations have been created to monitor environmental impacts, especially on biodiversity, to inform the local population and to elaborate solutions against environmental degradation. While the organization “Œil”, based in the South, is an independent entity financed by public services and the mining industry, the environmental committee “CEK” in the North was founded as an integrated entity of KNS. The neutrality of both environmental organizations was always a debate within local communities and the entities themselves.
In this presentation, we discuss the politics of neutrality of environmental organizations (co-) financed by mining companies. We ask which role they can play to provide a more “sustainable mining development”. To understand the conflicts that remain and emerge, an actor-oriented approach tracing interests and actions helps to unravel the complex motivations and political games in the New Caledonian nickel sector. Based on multiple periods of fieldwork with qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys, we will analyse the environmental politics of the two mining projects Koniambo and Goro Nickel.
Food regimes, global trade flows and natural resource use 1850–2016
Fridolin Krausmann (University for Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, BOKU) & Ernst Langthaler
Saturday, 10:30–12:00, Room F
Session: Food networks
The concept of food regimes is has gained high significance in the field of political economy. It investigates the role of global food trade in the evolution of the capitalist world economy and offers a structured perspective to the understanding of the role of agriculture and food in capital accumulation across time and space. Environmental aspects related to food regimes, so far, have received little attention. Here we take an environmental history and agro-ecological perspective and focus on the role of natural resource issues for food regime emergence and crisis. We quantify the size of physical trade with main agricultural commodities between continents from 1850-2016 and ask how the observed trade patterns relate to issues of resource use, in particular, to land use, soil fertility and the energetic basis of agriculture. Our results show the tremendous growth in the volume of agricultural trade, global exports rising from a few million tons per year in the mid-19th century to over one billion tonnes at the beginning of the 21st century. Rather than directed modernization we observe shifts in unequal relations of power, physical exchange and environmental pressure between changing centers and peripheries. The periods of growth in trade match with the periodization of food regimes in the literature, while during the transition from one regime to another trade flows stagnate and also production growth slows down. The shifts from one regime to another are closely related to changes in societies energy metabolism, in the resource base of agricultural production and also to agro-ecological crisis. Our analysis emphasizes that food regimes not only reflect changes in power relations in the world system, but also changes in societies natural relations. We draw conclusions on the characteristics of the current, neoliberal food regime.
“More Exports, More Jobs?” - The Impacts of Nicaragua’s Cigar Export Industry on Jobs and Livelihoods
Julia Lackner (Institute of Social Ecology)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room D
Session: Value chain based approaches to resource control
The exploitation of abundant labor force and natural resources for economic growth and for poverty alleviation in developing countries is propagated in mainstream economic theories and the institutions that adhere to them. It is assumed, that agro-industrial businesses, paired with foreign direct investment, will create job opportunities and growth for the local economy.
I have investigated the increasing harvest of tobacco and manufacture of cigars since the emergence of the cigar export industry in the 1990s in Nicaragua. The corresponding changes in the biophysical flows of tobacco extraction and export coincide with a changing national and local labor market.
In my analysis, I consider the national scale and further conduct an in-depth case study (observation and guided interviews) in the city of Estelí, the capital of cigar production in Nicaragua. I focus on the local perception of jobs in the tobacco industry and of the labor market. The benefits of export-oriented production which mainstream economic institutions promise form a contrasting perspective. While job opportunities certainly were created in Estelí through the increased export of cigars, the wages and working conditions, the formality of employment and further opportunities for the workers lead me to question how beneficial this ‘development’ pathway is to the local community.
Study of School of Social Ecological Transformation in UK
Xuejiao Li (University of Oxford)
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room A
Session: Conceptual discussions on social-ecological transformation
Global climate concerns nature conservation and the well-being of human beings. Because of human activities, climate change that should have had occurred in the past few centuries has been compressed for decades or even shorter time. It is foreseeable that the global climate change which runs through the whole process of human history will affect the fate of the whole life community in the future. Given certain reactions to the ecological crisis as part of the multiple crisis of capitalism (like the so-called energy transition in Germany), a new mode of development might emerge which can be called green capitalism. But we can know that as the new tendency of green capitalism, “green economy” or “Green New Deal” were paying more attention on the “growth”, rather than “green”. So alternatives are proposed and carried out by social movements, alternative entrepreneurs, progressive state officials, leftist political parties, critical intellectuals and changing everyday practices. They become more and more visible. As a country with a profound socialist tradition and rich experience in environmental governance, Britain has made tremendous contributions in the field of environmental politics, which is mainly reflected in new social movements (Feminism, Racism and Ecology) and theoretical trends begin to extend to the field of day-to-day life, and the development of the “red-green” movement and the Green left-wing parties have entered a new stage, which are not only reflected in the fact that the development of socialism worldwide is becoming "greening" or "Ecologicalizing" but also the element of social justice has been involved in the green movements, forming the trend and movement of "red-green alliance". Besides this, they paid more attention on finding the transformation path and entered in to “transformation ”era.
Gender Relations and Resource Conflicts: Women’s struggles in the Global South for social ecological transformation
Christine Löw (Rhine Waal University) & Tanja Scheiterbauer (Goethe University Frankfurt)
Saturday, 10:30–12:00, Room B
Session: Justice in resource access
Gender is an important category to understand the use, the access to, the control over and the extraction of natural resources in different contexts. This can be seen when gender specific regulations on tenure or usage rights for land, forests, water or energy cause social inequalities that effect in particular rural and indigenous women in agriculture. Women in rural settings are the primary providers of water, food and energy at the household and community levels. But they often lack power to influence decision-making about the ways natural resources are used. Therefore, it is important to understand the systematic intersections between gender relations, international resource politics and social-ecological transformation - even more in times when excessive resource extraction and use exacerbates already existing exclusions, exploitation and marginalization.
In mainstream research on natural resources and gender, women have been integrated mainly as “agents of change” and “resource saving” because of their assumed caring nature and closer positioning to nature. Our paper explicitly wants to counter this point of view. Instead we are arguing that research on resources for social ecological transformation must take an intersectional gender perspective into account. Such an approach implies that the material, social and symbolic relationship of women with nature is structured through the gendered division of labor and an unequal distribution of property and power between females and males, but also through class and race/cast. Thus, natural resources such as land, forests, water and energy are not just given passive physical entities that are affected by patriarchal resource extraction but have already been constructed as ‘naturecultures’ (Haraway) through unequal gender, class, race and caste relations. Due to this gendered structure of societal nature relations it is mostly tribal or peasant women that are participating in local resistance and are fighting against projects of resource extraction and use. It is within these struggles, often led by women, that new visions and utopias for just and sustainable resource politics are collectively developed, organized and lived.
Starting from this background we will analyze how extraction, distribution and use of natural resources is systematically linked to gender justice, resource justice and economic justice. Referring to empirical research about current struggles of women for land and water in Morocco and for forests and land in India our contribution aims at showing that the contemporary social-ecological crisis can only be understood thoroughly if international resource politics are conceptualized from the very beginning as structured through gender, class and race/caste relations.
Our guiding research questions are:
- How do these women’s movements resist the processes of financialization and commodification of natural resources and agriculture?
- How are unequal gender, class and race/caste relations and unfair resource politics articulated in women’s resistance movements?
- How are natural resources politicized and articulated?
- What kind of alternative visions of socio-ecological transformation do women’s movements in the Global South live and develop?
Mapping European and forest related policies supporting social innovation for rural settings
Alice Ludvig, Gerhard Weiss, Simo Sarkki, Maria Nijnik & Ivana Živojinović (University of Natural Resouces and Life Sciences, Vienna, BOKU)
Saturday, 08:30–10:00, Room D
Session: Social innovations for a social ecological transformation
The term “social innovation” (SI) is currently applied to denote a broad range of activities connected to explicit goals and supposedly designed to address inherent societal problems. These problems are rooted in current economic and ecological crises, such as poverty, unemployment, forced migration, brain drain, social inequality or environmental destruction. This article focuses on the EU and national policies that have the potential to support Social Innovation in rural areas and maps possible future policy efforts in this regard. However, many of the policies that we find to have potential for possible effective social innovation support do not have much in common concerning their targets. In consequence, the article outlines a threefold typology for categorizing the different policy targets that have impacts on social innovation in rural areas: (i) policies targeting vulnerable social groups, (ii) policies targeting societal challenges at large and (iii) policies targeting the participatory inclusion of civil society. In addition we outline enabling and hindering policy factors for social innovation and we apply the threefold typology to the example of forest policy. The conceptual framework in combination with the forest policy objectives we identify provides a useful basis for further research in this area.
The illicit gold and diamond rush in Kalimantan
Martin C. lukas (University of Bremen)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room B
Session: Resource conflicts II
A massive gold and diamond rush, triggered by political-economic change, market developments, and technological innovation, has drastically transformed riverine landscapes, induced migration, and provided substantial wealth in parts of Kalimantan. Artisanal gold and diamond mining has grown into a major economic sector over the past three decades, fuelled economic developments, and provided livelihoods to tens of thousands of people, but is largely considered illegal. I will provide insight into the illicit flows of gold, diamonds, money, jewellery, mercury, and information, and the hidden networks of political-economic power directing them. These flows and networks are spatially and hierarchically aligned to the dendritic river network and occasionally reshaped by technological change, raids, and migration. Power built on the flows of gold and diamonds, hidden flows of money, and entrenched ideologies impede a change of the formal status quo and prevent the gold rush and its effects from being governable.
The physical economy of France (1830–2015)
Nelo Magalhães (Paris-Diderot, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, François Jarrige, Thomas Le Roux, Gaëtan Levillain, Margot Lyautey, Guillaume Noblet & Christophe Bonneuil
Friday, 16:00–18:00, Room E
Session: Historic perspective on resources
The notion of a (socio-) metabolic transition has been used to describe fundamental changes in socioeconomic energy and material use during industrialization. For the last 200 years, France developed from a largely agrarian economy to one of the world's leading industrial nations.
This article investigates changes in France's metabolism during industrialization on the basis of a material flow account (MFA) for the period from 1815 to 2015.
As other studies based on material flow account, it presents data for material extraction, imports and exports, and domestic consumption (DMC) by major material group and explores the relations among population growth, economic development, and material (and energy) use.
We provide a global history reading of our data that confirms a shift from renewable biomass toward mineral and fossil resources and the ecologically unequal exchange thesis for France.
We suggest the following periodization: 1815-1860; 1860-1930; 1945-1973 and 1980-2015.
The first period presents an economy dominated largely by biomass - it is only around 1860 that coal would become the dominant primary energy.
The MFA analysis confirms the classic vision of French industrialization, which has been progressive and has long been based on wood and renewable energies.
As early as the 1860s, France was profitably inserted into a world-system dominated by Britain and shaped by the export of coal and humans.
France is the only major economic power in the nineteenth century to face material deficits in all sectors: coal and wood, cereals, textile fibers, etc.
The years 1860-1930 show the transition to industrial metabolism characterized by a growing consumption of abiotics resources.
This period marks the peak of the dependence of the French economy on coal, as well as a reorientation of trade to its colonies (especially Algeria).
The Fordist period (1945-1973) represents, among others, a sharp rise in GDP and an even greater increase in oil imports.
Just as it had benefited from English coal in the 19th century, France is part of a special world ecology dominated by the USA (\textit{Pax Americana}) where high quality energy is inexpensive and abundant. The intensive accumulation regime with mass consumption highlighted by the Regulation Approach thus also means sharp increase in oil and concrete consumption (meaning a stronger path-dependency of material consumption). As a consequence of the transformations of agricultural sector by oil, France becomes net exporter of biomass for the first time in the 1960s (in 2015, it is still the only main material category to present such a behavior).
The surge in material use came to an abrupt halt with the first oil crisis, however.
The last period shows an increasing internationalization (trade dependency is defined as net trade per DMC) and "nuclearization" (visible by the relative decline of oil in the DMC) of the French economy.
By outsourcing a number of extractive industries (which allows to hide the indirect material flows of trade), and reaching a certain level of material saturation (in particular for the "non-metallic minerals" category), the DMC per capita indicates a slight decrease.
Impacts of Metal Extraction and Refining on Local Freshwater Resources – A Methodological Approach to Assess the Criticality of the Water-Resource-Nexus from a Global Perspective
Simon Meissner (University of Augsburg)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room B
Session: Resource conflicts II
Driven by growing demand and technological development, consumption of natural resources has been increasing rapidly within the last decades and is still expected to grow in the future. As a result of thight market situations, there is also raising concern about limited resource availability and more frequent supply shortages for the economy. Hence, criticality assessment methods have recently been developed aiming at screening global commodity markets in order to identify potential supply risks of raw materials such as metals and minerals for high technology industries, e.g. producing and providing modern energy technologies for the transition of fossile to renewable energy systems.
But the global expansion of resource extraction, particularly metals relevant for most technological applications, has also significant impacts on the environment such as hydrological systems which are essential for providing considerable amounts of fresh water feeding fundamental human and environmental needs. Especially ore mining and refining of metals consume large quantities of water. On a global and even national scale, however, consumption of freshwater for mining and refining activities accounts only for a small portion of the overall water use. But on local level there are significant impacts on fresh water resources. Notably in relatively dry, mining intensive countries mine water usage is responsible for affecting both the quantity and quality of fresh water availabililty, which are of great importance to domestic and industrial water supply as well as sustaining ecosystems and environmental services.
Thus, latest criticality assessment methods of raw materials have been extended by environmental criteria to determine ecological impacts of mining acitivities such as water consumption. Due to reasons of practicality most methods are based on Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) considering the fresh water consumption of mining and refining processes in relation to average national water scarcity indices, mostly ignoring spacial differences in water demand and supply on local level. Additionally, nearly almost there is only a sectoral view given on the water usage of individually selected raw materials metals, e.g. iron, copper or gold without assessing their combined water impacts. In order to provide more precise information about the impacts of the global resource extraction on local fresh water supply and availability a GIS based model was developed by the author containing detailed data on water use from Life-Cycle Inventory Analysis of mining and refining activities combined with water risk assessment – both downscaled on local as well as water basin and subbasin level. This approach helps providing more comprehensive, cross-sectoral information of the relationship between water consumption in the mining sector and potential water conflicts on smaller scales, also considering cumulative impacts of raw materials mostly extracted and refined within particular regions. Predictions on climate change affecting future water availability in mining regions can also be considered, eastimating upcoming water shortages and potential conflicts.
This study indicates that current criticality assessment methods can be significantly optimised to identify environmental, economic and social water conflicts as as a result of water mining consumption in the present and the future. Furthermore, the study provides more precise information to decision makers in business and politics and thereby helps to achieve more transparency in both global commodity chains and the extraction of raw materials in the increasing awareness of a water-resource-nexus.
Autarky as (Resource-)Strategy?
Serge Leopold Middendorf (University of Augsburg)
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room A
Session: Conceptual discussions on social-ecological transformation
As the call for this conference states, there is an emerging agreement on the need of fundamental transformation(s) considering the socio-ecological crises on the background of acceleration of processes and (neo-)extractivist tendencies on a planetary scale. In my presentation I want to ask the question how far contemporary Resource Strategies are dealing with the causes of these problems or in how far they are capable of addressing them. I want to argue, that especially in the Anthropocene, the central question seems to be the old and timeless question of “Good Life”. But outside of philosophical debates this question, like many “existential” questions, seems not to be tackled (see Ott 1997). In order to address this question from a geographical point of view I want to use an artifice from critical science by not asking the question on “Good Life” directly but asking questions like: What are the prerequisites for “Good Life”? What enables, hinders or prevents “Good Life”? What is “wrong” in the current situation and what is therefore lacking / needed?
My answer to this question(s) is: Autarky. That is why with my presentation I want to a contribution from a Critical Political Ecological point of view.
But what do I understand by Autarky and why do we need it? Autarky is a dazzling and sometimes problematic term. Lying at the core of its understanding however are concepts that are nowadays scattered and fragmented across “classical” Resource Strategies and sustainability discourses, that have been there for over 2500 years. Back then, philosophers discovered that both the (Self-)Understanding of Nature and the own (Self-)Realization are crucial to guaranteeing the survival of Nature and thus humankind. As an “Interface Science”, geography is predestined to contribute to this debates. I want to give an overview and try to sketch out some few central points of my understanding of Autarky to lay the foundation for (moral) philosophical debates from within and beyond geography.
But Autarky does not provide recommended actions or quantitative goals. Questions on Carrying Capacity and Management are postponed in favor of radical and fundamental debates on ecologic problems and “sustainable lifestyle” as well as human-nature-relations in the narrow sense. In doing so, I do not want to focus solely on human-environmental interactions but strongly emphasize the importance of human-human-relations.
With this I also want to provide answers on the benefit of this rather abstract point of view. By disentangling and redefining the term “Autarky” a way to facilitate decisions by providing a “guiding line” shall be provided. Autarky is thus more like a “point of view” than it is a “manual”, more “compass” than “map”, less “theory” than it is “concept” or – in a nutshell – it is a “perspective”. The indeed ambivalent character of Autarky between “desirable” and “feasible” shall not be covered up or hidden away but included into the concept as a constitutive element.
Contesting Development: Emerging Forms of Resistance Against the Extractivist Model in South-central Mexico and their Transformative Potential
Lorena Olarte (University of Vienna)
Friday, 16:00–18:00, Room B
Session: Locally based initiatives for transformation
Mexico is the first exporter of silver in the world and one of the ten main economies that produce gold, copper, lead, and zinc. However, studies have indicated that the extractivist industry in the mining sector accounts for less than one percent of the GDP, collects less than 0.3% of tax revenue, reports scarce economic benefit to the local communities and is linked to numerous violations to human rights. Regardless these consequences, the Mexican government, and the private sector continue to promote an overall extractivist model as a source of employment and economic development by maintaining more than 24,000 valid concessions under unclear terms and pursuing the construction of new oil refineries. The proposed article seeks to shed light on the contradictions of this model while exploring preliminary findings on a case study in the north-eastern Sierra of Puebla, in south-central Mexico, where recent mega-development projects have found a response constituted by an unprecedented organized movement for the “defense of life and the territory”. Led by indigenous peoples (pueblos de la Tierra), such forms of resistance are analyzed in the light of power relations and disputed territories by using a political ecology perspective. In addition, the new concept of Vida Digna (Yeknemilis in náhuatl) is introduced as an unfolding alternative that questions the current discourse of development and the well-being approach (bienestar). By combining these perspectives and vis-à-vis the recently elected government, this paper will contribute to the discussion of the challenges that these socio-environmental conflicts pose to the transformative process claimed in Mexico. The paper provides a background for a further analysis and suggests that for this transformation to commence, there is an initial need to address the structural obstacles embedded in the current resource politics as well as to acknowledge the experiences of the already affected peoples, rather than focusing on a neo-extractivist model encouraged by unsustainable economic growth.
Resource rich countries and capital accumulation in Latin America: an approximation from the Uruguayan case
Gabriel Oyhantçabal Benelli (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room C
Session: Agrobusiness
This article studies ground rent and capital accumulation in Uruguay between 1955 and 2015 in line with recent literature for Latin America drawing upon Iñigo Carrera’s contributions. I propose that ground rent cycles determine capital accumulation and also that it’s appropriation (rent grabbing) is highly related with socio-ecological conflicts.
Explaining the particularities of Latin American societies in the world has been one of the recurring topics in regional and international social sciences. Underdevelopment, divergence, dependency, unequal exchange, third world, resource curse are categories of widespread use not only at the scientific level with which they seek to account for a supposed “lack”, “incapacity”, “curse” or “limitation” of these societies to achieve the standards of the so-called developed world. The subject is not new or exclusive in studies of this part of the world, however Latin America has been a fertile field to develop research in this field. Its’ main exponents date from the mid-twentieth century, in the so-called structuralist and dependency schools.
However, these perspectives do not exhaust the repertoire of approaches that seek to explain Latin American societies. At least since the 1960s different authors have pointed out that the particularity of these “resource rich” countries lies in the production for the world market of commodities which bears ground rent. As a consequence of this specialization, which goes back to the colonial period, these countries appropriate a mass of extraordinary surplus value, called ground rent by classical economists, whose cycles become highly linked to economic and socio-political cycles.
In the case of Uruguay, during the 60s not few authors have placed that agrarian ground rent flows are key for the national economic and political cycles. However, in the later national literature this determination lost centrality. This article approaches ground rent cycles in Uruguay between 1955 and 2015. It present a brief theoretical discussion, the methodology used to estimate ground rent, and the first original agrarian ground rent estimation during the last 60 years. We distinguish between ground rent appropriated by landowners and by other subjects different than landowners due to the effect of agrarian export taxes, overvaluation of the Uruguayan peso, the cheapening of agricultural commodities for domestic consumption, and the regulation of land lease prices and of agricultural commodities prices for domestic consumption. Finally, we analyze the relative magnitude of ground rent in the national mass of surplus value appropriated in the whole economy.
Use and Management Soils Plans in Uruguay
Daiana Peloche (Universidad de la República, Uruguay) & Pedro Arbeletche
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room C
Session: Agrobusiness
The expansion and concentration of agricultural production in the country and the 140-fold increase in the area of soybeans, as well as the arrival of new actors, have generated a series of consequences in the different dimensions of sustainability. In the environmental dimension, soil erosion is one of the main problems. In response, the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries (MGAP), under the Soils Law No. 18,564, requires the submission of a Soil Use and Management Plan (PUMS). This regulation has elements of environmental sustainability and, within it is a "control and command" mechanism. The objective of this work is to know and understand the strategies carried out by farmers to face the regulations of the Land Use Plan. The methodological strategy consisted in interviewing twenty-five farmers from the west coast of Uruguay who dedicated themselves to the production of rainfed cereals and oilseeds and carry out a typology of producers. Regarding the perception of regulations, it is considered positive as a measure to stop erosion problems. Despite this, the tenants mentioned that it can affect their profitability in the short term given the low flexibility of the business and the high price of rents in kg of soybeans. On the other hand, companies with greater economic scale were able to concentrate their activity in more suitable areas to cultivate, in areas where the law did not allow them to carry out continuous agriculture, they only rented the agricultural phase, separating from the business in the next phase. Although there were no differences in land use and management practices among the different types of producers, differences could be found in the use of land between zones and in opinion or position with respect to regulations. In addition, the limitation of the regulation of the agreement to the opinion of the farmers could be related to the theoretical conception of the same, where the differences between the agents are not taken into account, the same for those involved and high control costs that they can generate problems for the fulfillment of it.
REDD+ in the context of industrializing land use: political-institutional and biophysical contradictions of forest transitions in Southeast Asia
Melanie Pichler (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna) & Simone Gingrich
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room C
Session: Ecosystem Services
Reforestation policies such as REDD+ constitute an important element of global climate-change mitigation strategies, especially in the Global South. Whereas several case studies have shown the exclusionary effects of some of these “green grabbing” processes, comparative analyses integrating social and biophysical dimensions of reforestation processes are scarce. This study selects five countries in Southeast Asia that have seen actual national reforestation in recent years (i.e., Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Laos) and analyses some of the institutional, political-economic and biophysical characteristics that have accompanied the shift towards increasing national forest cover (known as “forest transitions”). A quantitative assessment of national land-use change reveals that the segregation of agricultural and forest land appears to be a prerequisite for the forest transitions. This segregation enables the transformation towards industrial forms of both agriculture and forestry that compromise some of the social and environmental benefits of reforestation processes. In an interdisciplinary, socio-ecological approach, we identify both political-institutional and biophysical processes accompanying this segregation. Major political-institutional dynamics include the territorialisation and enclosure of land, the criminalization of shifting cultivation, and the support of (export-oriented) agriculture and logging) that exacerbate conflicts between corporate actors and indigenous people and ethnic minorities at the “commodity frontiers”. Major biophysical dynamics include the intensification of agriculture through yield increases, the expansion of cash crops, increasing fossil energy-dependent inputs, and biomass exports. Our findings challenge the sustainability of existing reforestation programs in Southeast Asia (an in the Global South more generally) that focus too narrowly on replanting trees and neglect the wider industrialization processes in the region with their unequal social and environmental outcomes.
We don’t need no resource extraction. A critical review of the current dynamics in Ghana’s bauxite sector and Chinese Investments
Sebastian Purwins (University Augsburg)
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room D
Session: Extractivism – critical discussions
The Call for the 2nd Austrian Conference on International Resource Politics mentions, that “the current economic model and its forms of excessive resource extraction and use exacerbate ecological problems and conflicts, generates political instability and increases social inequalities. There is emerging agreement in science, politics and society that a fundamental transformation is needed.” However, in many parts of the world the reality appears to be different. In order to create jobs and welfare for the people, the Republic of Ghana seeks to stimulate industrialization by the development of an integrated Bauxite-Aluminum-Industry. China is massively investing in the project that aims to add value to Ghana’s Bauxite exports, by processing Bauxite in Ghana and then selling Aluminium to the world market. However, one major bauxite deposits is located at the Atewa Range. Part of the Range has been declared a forest reserve, including about 17,400 hectares of upland evergreen forest, rare for Ghana. Meanwhile the Ghanaian Government justifies the exploitation of bauxite with the ambitions ‘to move Ghana beyond aid’, promising rapid industrialization and reducing the country’s dependence on cocoa exports. The exploitation of bauxite is being stylized as a remedy to drive Ghana's economic development, as a self-evident endeavour without an alternative. Even the protesting NGOs, who want to disband mining from the Atewa forest, do not protest against exploitation in general, but against mining in the forest. In order to guarantee the success of this project, a National Development Bill and an Authority has been institutionalized and the so far only existing aluminum smelter remains state-owned.
In the first part, I want to outline, how the Ghanaian government justifies bauxite exploitation in the forest area, by doing a policy analysis.
However, while Ghana both integrated into the global capitalist economy and serve the purpose of global capitalist accumulation, it is captured in existing and emerging asymmetries. Therefor in a second part, by referring to the ‘uneven and combined development’ concept, the impact of China on Ghana’s Bauxite Sector and the need for further research will be pointed out, especially since Ghana is becoming recently part of the Belt and Road Initiative. The ‘uneven and combined development’ theory argues that continuous primitive accumulation in the extractive industry is imperialist exploitation. However, this aspects will also be critically reflected against the background of the development of an integrated Bauxite-Aluminum-Industry.
Diverse economies in postcolonial settings: difference, power relations and mining in Bolivia and Ecuador
Isabella M. Radhuber (University of Vienna)
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room D
Session: Extractivism – critical discussions
Bolivian and Ecuadorian indigenous-peasant movements have sought to strengthen plural economies – meaning diverse economic activities and forms of organizations -since the 1990s. Their political projects evolved under the banner of “plurinationality”, and aimed at recognising different forms of living in social, political, economic and legal terms. Indigenous peoples behind these projects self-identify as “nations” and aspire to be recognised as such within one common and more complexly organised nation state. Amidst a profound political change born out of a crisis of neoliberalism, both countries’ indigenous movements achieved surprising political clout. They presented their plurinational state proposals to the Constitutional Assemblies in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Subsequently, both Constitutions recognised plurinational states in their respective first articles. The indigenous movements’ proposals for plural economies were incorporated in these Constitutions. However, their concrete implementation suffered severe backlashes, which is most visible when resource extraction projects are implemented in detriment of other economic forms.
Resource extraction mainly destined to raw material export—an accumulation regime referred to as resource “extractivism”—has shown severe social impacts for diverse populations and limited plural economies. This led to increasing protests alongside Latin America’s latest commodity boom that started in the 1990s and culminated with the prices slump in 2014. There was a “continent-wide push to open up frontiers for extracting hydrocarbons, mining, producing biofuels, harvesting timber, and investing in agroindustry” (Bebbington, 2009: 13). Commodity prices almost tripled from 2003 to 2012, causing an unprecedented improvement in the terms of trade for commodity exporters. Research has revealed how resource extractivism has impacted the environment and has had negative impacts on people’s livelihoods. Detractors of extractivism point out that this accumulation regime inhibits participative processes as well as the provision of public information about extractive projects; it commonly neglects worker´s rights; and it increasingly silences, defames or persecutes groups who oppose extraction.
This paper analyses peasant-indigenous’ movements’ proposals for the organisation of diverse economies, in order to find out: How has the expansion of resource extractivism affected the implementation of plural economies? Combining literature on postcolonial plurality and diverse economies underpins this article’s focus on power relations within diverse economies. It focuses on how economic difference is being articulated in a context of wide-ranging plurality . The analysis has two empirical objectives. The first is to document how indigenous-peasant movements promoted economic difference within a plurinational paradigm. The second is to demonstrate how power relations unfold along economic difference that is between different economic activities associated with more or less powerful groups and interests; and how these power relations ultimately end up consolidating the marginal position of traditional (often indigenous) economies. This will contribute to the debate on diverse economies from a postcolonial perspective.
Comprehensive raw material assessment for batteries and fuel cells
Benjamin Reuter & Aline Hendrich (thinkstep AG)
Saturday, 08:30–10:00, Room B
Session: Renewable energy – in a critical North-South Perspective
Battery electric and fuel cell electric vehicles (BEV and FCEV) are both considered as highly promising technologies for decreasing the environmental impact of the transport sector. This can be achieved through an increasing share of renewables in the mobility sector, thereby in turn decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. However, both technologies require certain raw materials, which are often referred to as “critical materials”. Both applications are likely to increase these materials’ global demand significantly, thus giving raise to concern.
In order to better evaluate the current and future supply situation of the raw materials required for BEV and FCEV, the State Agency for New Mobility Solutions and Automotive Baden-Württemberg (e-mobil BW) commissioned a comprehensive study on the raw material situation for the mentioned vehicle technologies. This study is currently conducted by thinkstep. This raw material assessment covers a very large variety of relevant aspects, such as resource availability, the global distribution of deposits and production activities, the composition of costs of supplying these raw materials, the potential role of future recycling, the GHG emissions from raw material production and potential future improvements, as well as social problems along the supply chain. All these aspects are described and analysed in detail for the raw materials of both applications, i.e. batteries and fuel cells in automotive applications and potential advantages and disadvantages are addressed.
In a first step, the concept of critical raw materials is used for identifying the most relevant raw materials in both applications. This method characterises a raw material according to two parameters: the risk of a material supply shortage on one hand, and the severity of such shortage on the other hand. In this initial screening, the risk of a supply shortage was assessed based on a selection of indicators according to the VDI 4800 Standard (Association of German Engineers) on resource efficiency. The quantification of the second parameter, namely the severity of a material supply shortage (and equally the vulnerability of the battery and fuel cell technology with respect to such a shortage), was based on interviews with experts from industry and academia.
Based on the different results of the project, both technologies are assessed thoroughly from a raw material perspective. As a conclusion of the assessment, recommendations for different stakeholder groups, e.g. producers and users of these raw materials, policy-makers, the recycling industry and the general public, are developed and disseminated in order to promote positive social-ecological change.
Cartographies and “scars” in the territory. Looking to the past of mining projects in order to understand the socio-environmental present
Facundo Rojas (Universidad Nacional de Cuyo), Lucrecia Wagner (CONICET) & Fernando Ruiz Peyré (University of Innsbruck)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room B
Session: Resource conflicts II
The current discussions on the installation of big mining projects and hydraulic fracture in Argentina are associated with the imaginaries of something called “development”. In our research, we focus on failed extractive projects and compare experiences in western Argentina. We deal with the landscapes, footprints, scars and rubble of the mining and oil territories in the eastern slope of the Andes from the perspective of environmental history. We aim to analyse the territory production of abandoned or re-functionalized infrastructures from the standpoint of landscape geographies and political ecology.
Famatina and Capillitas, in the provinces of La Rioja and Catamarca, are linked to strong frustrations and unfulfilled promises, still visible today in physical milestones. In the case of Malargüe, in the south of Mendoza, the population still shows hope for this type of projects (mining and oil), reacting in a different way to the failures of the past. Abandoned and ruined infrastructures are in any case associated with future discourses and practices that continuously reorganize landscapes and territories. The current patterns of destruction/production are resignified, always returning to the landmarks and scars of territory and memory.
The provinces of La Rioja and Catamarca are traditionally peripheral and without any important industry. In the late 19th century, mining was the activity that would bring about modern changes. This sector was expected to become the regional engine of growth, and even to strengthen the weak mining identity of these valleys. On the other hand, in the beginning of the 20th century, the south of Mendoza became a frontier of expansion for mining activities and oil exploitation. The Second World War gave strategic importance to the region and the products exploited there (mainly oil and coal). However, the illusion of “progress” was soon over, as were most of the projects.
Based on documentary sources (from the 19th and 20th centuries) and interviews with different social and political actors of the current socio-environmental conflicts, we tackle the three mentioned cases in west Argentina. In all cases, the effect (material and symbolic) of ancient mining and oil landscapes is still powerful, but are perceived by the population in different ways – supporting or rejecting these activities in the present. The aim is to investigate and compare different case studies in order to confront significant experiences from the past with current mining or oil projects (but now, using modern technologies). This shall contribute to a better understanding of social-ecological conflicts in the present.
Cementing growth and inequality: Colonization through infrastructures
Anke Schaffartzik (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room E
Session: Global inequality
More than 12 tons of material resources are currently being globally extracted per person and year: biomass from agriculture and forestry, fossil fuels, metals, and other minerals through mining. The average national consumption of these materials differs by an order of magnitude and may be lower than 5 or higher than 50 tons per capita. The overall impacts of this international material inequality are disastrous: Wealth and waste and overproduction and –consumption require continuous expansion of the resource frontier while dispossession, restricted resource access, and material poverty make it impossible to meet basic human needs.
The blueprint for growth-led industrialization was (inadvertently) drawn up in the world’s wealthiest countries and others have been enticed to or coerced into following their lead. Since early in the 21st century, China’s material growth, for example, has shaped global acceleration of resource use. Not only the growth of emerging economies but also the stagnation of apparent material consumption in the mature industrialized countries requires unlimited appropriation of resources and labor, both domestically and internationally. Within the physical confines of our planet, such a ‘development’ trajectory can never become universal. Instead, other world regions, countries, and segments of the population are required to function as (potential) resource providers.
While this diagnosis is the result of the quantitative and statistical analyses of international material flow patterns, emerging socio-ecological research demonstrates how important material stocks are in determining these flows. Stocks are the material expression of society-nature relations with international differences in stocks affecting the observed material inequalities. Buildings, roads and tracks, factories and machinery, and durable consumer products are made from materials and require further material inputs for their use and maintenance. In many ways, they are also the tools through which the materials required for societal reproduction are extracted or transformed. However, the transformation of the environment and colonization that these stocks represent is not only essential in meeting material or metabolic but also the politico-economic ‘needs’ of a society. Whether and where roads and airports, or schools and hospitals, or mines and factories are built profoundly affects economic development, social inequalities, power relations, and control over territories and population, for example. The proliferation of infrastructures may be a decisive obstacle to socio-ecological transformations.
More than a forest – multiple uses, trade-offs and future perspectives
Christian Schleyer, Jutta Kister & Michael Klingler (University of Innsbruck)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room C
Session: Ecosystem Services
Forests provide a broad range of ecosystem services including provisioning services like timber, regulating services like climate regulation and erosion and water protection, and cultural services like recreation and aesthetic value. In many cultural landscapes in Europe where forested areas can be found next to agricultural plots, and settlements, there are heterogeneous visions with respect to forest management – and thus on which forest ecosystem services (FES) should be fostered, or not – among the stakeholders involved. Some stakeholders like National Park administrations or environmentalists champion the preservation of forest areas and the conservation of, in particular, regulating and cultural ecosystem services provided by them. This often implies stricter and more restrictive management practices and sometimes even restricted or no access to the protected forests. Other stakeholder groups like forest owners or forest companies are practising more or less intensive forms of forest management or usage. Usually, they are extracting resources such as wood or timber from the forest for economic reasons; or use areas neighbouring forests for agricultural purposes. These profit-oriented, extractive practices in or close to forests are - if not carried out in sustainable manner – in many ways conflicting with the aims of preserving forests and/or concrete FES of other stakeholders. However, also non-extractive activities like hiking or mountain biking may be in conflict with forest conservationists.
Before this background of heterogeneous interests, governance innovations are desperately needed that aim at developing and implementing management practices for sustainable forestry and take efforts to balance environmental issues, biodiversity conservation, and economic viability of forest-related local enterprises and craftsmanship.
In this contribution, we investigate approaches for designing and implementing governance innovation in the mountainous and densely-forested areas of Eisenwurzen (Austria) expected to better capture the value of forests and concrete FES; we also elaborate on the underlying conflicts and trade-offs: While wood is a major focus of the stakeholders representing primarily extractive uses, biodiversity conservation, erosion and water protection, and climate regulation are also important FES ranking high on the agendas of stakeholders like the National Park administration and the regional forest department. The governance innovations form part of a network of an innovative collaboration of stakeholders from forestry, public administration, regional planning, tourism, and traditional craftsmanship aiming at improving the sustainable use of forest- and wood-related resources with improved and sustainable benefits for the Eisenwurzen region and the people living and working there. In particular, regional value chains for timber and forest-products are to be created in order to secure local artisanship and create future-oriented sustainable solutions for forest management.
Political Ecology of Post-Socialism
Matthias Schmidt (Universität Augsburg)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room A
Session: Political Ecology
The consequences and effects of the socialist experiment are still felt today, a quarter century after the system change in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The political, economic and social transformation processes which occurred in this period have only partially led to a convergence with the West. The former socialist societies show, to this day, striking differences and specific paths, which is why “postsocialism” as an explanatory category is still of relevance. Although political ecology was established decades ago, its research activities touching various fields and resulting in numerous studies conducted in rural and urban contexts around the world, there are hardly any political-ecological studies that deal with the post-socialist reality of Eurasia. A central field of political ecology stems from questions about the relationships between political and socioeconomic transformation processes, on the one hand, and poverty, vulnerability and environmental change, on the other. Such problems occur in a particularly striking manner in the former “Second World” countries. Here, the spatial and temporal multiscalar approach of political ecology appears well suited to analyse the transformations of human-environment relationships. Political-ecological studies in the post-socialist sphere must take into account some special features, such as the legacy of socialist modernization, the disastrous environmental damages of the planned economy or the reconfiguration of institutions. This paper discusses the conceptual particularities and challenges for a political ecology of post-socialism.
Commons as twofold resources for a radical transformation?
Luki Sarah Schmitz (Goethe University Frankfurt)
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room A
Session: Conceptual discussions on social-ecological transformation
Different kinds of crises seem to have become somewhat normal. This leads to the conclusion that crises are an integral part of capitalist structures. Resignation, loss of agency and mistrust in democratic structures are the consequences on the one hand. But at the same time, we observe divers ideas and concrete approaches for broader and fundamental changes.
Political demands include degrowth, solidary economy, grassroots democracies or socio-ecological transformation. One approach that follows these ideas is Commons. There are a range of definitions and different understandings of the term ‘Commons’. Commons can be described as an approach of alternative economy in which private ownership is dissolved, and goods are used and administered in community ownership, with need satisfaction as its primary goal. Commons favor self-governance over hierarchical management, sustainability over economic growth, access over property.
From my point of view, this implies a twofold understanding of Commons a resource. First, Commons can be defined as material and immaterial resources that are pooled and everyone have access to them. By this, Commons seem to be a sustainable, ecological and social form of resource extraction and resource use. Beyond that, Commons can also be the base for new kinds of production, for example, Commons based Peer Production. Second, Commons are often defined as triad: A resource (which can be material or immaterial), the people who use this resource (Commoners/ Community), and the negotiation process on how these resources are to be used, especially the appropriation rules (Commons)“ (Exner/ Kratzwald 2012, 23). This definition shows that in addition to the understanding of Commons as an alternative form of property and economy, a social dimension is implied as well. It becomes visible that Commons as a resource can transport discourses and view on social structures and ways of life.
Commons not only imply the transformation of private property into community ownership, but also aspects of usage rules, solidary relationships and common goals. But is that enough for a fundamental social transformation? Or will Commons remain as globally spread small and escapistic projects? In my dissertation project at the Goethe University Frankfurt, I examine the question if Commons can be understood as emancipatory approaches or if there is the possibility of neo-liberal co-optation. The thesis, which I would like to discuss at the conference, is that within the debate on Commons two aspects are often not sufficiently considered: First human labor as a resource and second, the importance of immaterial resources needed for social reproduction. I would therefore like to focus on the question: How can all forms of work become commons? Based on analyzed narratives from the debate on Commons, I would like to show if and which concepts are visible and can give an answer to the identified gap.
Food Waste Prevention in the European Union: An Analysis of the EU Platform on Food Losses and Waste
Magdalena Tanzer (Justus Liebig University Giessen)
Saturday, 10:30–12:00, Room F
Session: Food networks
The issue of food waste represents one of the biggest challenges for a sustainable transformation. Since the production of food is resource-intensive, food waste implies a waste of resources during processes of production, storage, transportation and waste management. This in turn causes heavy environmental damages such as greenhouse gas emissions, soil erosion, deforestation and the pollution of water and air. In addition to the enormous economic and ecological costs, the discarding of edible food is a threat to food security in a world with a growing population. In the Global North, food waste mainly takes place at the consumer level. Political institutions such as the EU play an important role to tackle this issue.
The EU is committed to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were adopted in 2015 by the UN as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. SDG 12, which aims at responsible consumption and production, includes the target of halving global food waste. Following the call of the Circular Economy, the European Commission established the EU Platform on Food Losses and Waste in 2016 to bring together actors from public entities and private sector organizations.
The paper aims to analyze and evaluate the Platform’s impact on food waste prevention. To this end, it first sheds light on the multifaceted causes and consequences of food waste and asks about options for political regulation with a special focus on the EU. Applying a qualitative content analysis of EU documents, the paper secondly analyzes the EU Platform on Food Losses and Waste. In this context, questions of the Platform’s structure, mission and members are emphasized. The empirical analysis is based on the assumption that the EU can only meet its commitment to SDG 12 if actors from politics, business and civil society work hand in hand. Finally, the paper evaluates the Platform’s role in the policy cycle with the aim of preventing resources from being extracted in vain.
Planned retreat as a response to changing climate conditions: actors-network-conflicts in Austrian flood risk management policy
Thomas Thaler (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences)
Saturday, 08:30–10:00, Room C
Session: Adaptation
The frequency and severity of extreme weather events are expected to increase due to climate change. These developments and challenges have focused the attention of policy makers on the question of how to manage natural hazards. Yet, one of the most effective long term measures, the planned retreat of individuals, has been largely ignored as a possible adaptation option towards changing climate conditions. Planned retreat foresees the permanent removal of households from hazard-prone areas. However, this policy is highly contested (legally, socially and economically) within society, because of high social and economic costs for individuals and communities. The aim of this paper is to investigate current challenges of relocation programs for communities in flood risk management. The provincial government of Upper Austria has already conducted planned relocation of private households along the Danube River and is currently administering large-scale relocations in the Eferding basin. The paper tracks actors and discourses in situ over a timespan of several years, to examine the long-term effects of relocations on the individual quality of life and social cohesion, and how the positive and negative transitional factors in the study region may be transferred to or avoided in other Austrian regions. Therefore, we conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders connected to proposed transformative strategies in the selected case studies. Residents who are affected by relocations are confronted with radical changes of their livelihood: overcoming emotional attachment to the place left behind and adapting to a new residency, as well as coping with financial burden and re-building a neighbourly social network. Relocation zones imply a range of spatial consequences: resolving land-use conflicts (e.g., agriculture vs. ecological use), redeveloping network infrastructure (e.g., water and energy supply, sewage disposal, roads), or dealing with sites of historical, cultural or religious importance. Heated public discourse may reflect controversial stakeholder negotiations between governance levels, civic protest and focused media attention. Social justice aspects not only address the distribution and fairness of compensation payments to relocating households (distributive justice), but also the process how a certain distribution was achieved (procedural justice). Decisions by policymakers, landowners and residents build on moral and ethical standards, equality of opportunity (e.g., access to information, policy representation/participation, social capital), vested interests, as well as attribution of blame and liability. Most institutional actors engaged in the debate from the viewpoint of administrators and engineers and were predominantly concerned about implementing the relocation programme in a technically and legally correct way. The paper addresses the questions of how actors, networks and conflicts influence social-ecological crises related to natural resources and limited their transformation.
Towards an Extractive Bioeconomy? Argentina´s old and new orientations concerning agriculture
Anne Tittor (Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room A
Session: Political Ecology
In recent decades, the need for answers to climate change and for overcoming fossil economies and extractivism has become obvious for many political actors. Different proposals for post-fossil transformations of productive systems have been made. In this context, many countries have released bioeconomy strategies or introduced bioeconomy-related policies, claiming that bioeconomy means a radical change of production, consumption, processing, storage, recycling and disposal of resources.
At the same time, a strong orientation towards biomass has problematic implications. In recent academic debates extractivism is no longer only associated with mining, but with a certain form of agriculture as well, for which the massive expansion of soybean cultivation is a classic example. Argentina´s agriculture has experienced far-reaching structural change in recent decades, and is now strongly oriented towards the production of soybean for export, a product that is highly competitive on the world market and brings fresh money to the country. Nevertheless, awareness of the economic, social and environmental risks linked to the strong specialization on soybean is growing.
The proposed paper analyses how Argentina – a country which considers itself a Latin American pioneer concerning the bioeconomy debate – has adopted the debate and what kind of policies are developed under this framing. Against this background, the contribution presents an analysis of the Argentinean bioeconomy debate and policy: What kind of problem does the bioeconomy debate address and what kind of solution do the related policies offer? In what way does the bioeconomy in Argentina modify the problems created by the specialization on soybean monoculture? Does it transcend or reproduce an extractivist logic? How does the current framework of bioeconomy relate to other ideas of socio-environmental transformation, such as the SDGs, agroecology and food sovereignty, or other radical proposals for change in current modes of production and living?
The contribution draws on material from bioeconomy-related conferences, policy documents and the statements of the Argentinean delegation at the 2018 Global Bioeconomy Summit in Berlin, as well as expert interviews with key actors conducted during field research in May and June 2018 in Buenos Aires and Cordoba.
Financialising soft commodity value chains? The role of commodity trading houses for upgrading potentials
Bernhard Tröster (ÖFSE)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room D
Session: Value chain based approaches to resource control
Global commodity markets have continued to experience extensive price volatility as well as profound changes regarding their structure and regulatory framework post-super cycle. These developments are essentially linked to commodity trading firms (CTFs) as one of the central - but often publicly absent - actors in global commodity sectors. In particular, the interconnection of physical commodity transactions with financial activities on commodity derivatives markets has become a source of competitive advantages of large CTFs, which handle the large majority of globally traded soft commodities. In contrast, smallholders in the Global South, which produce the large majority of these commodities, face substantial risks from price volatility, limiting the upgrading possibilities in these producer countries. In this paper, we analyze the multiple roles and strategies of CTFs in physical and financial commodity markets in context of the financialization of commodity derivative markets and ongoing regulatory changes, and their impact on the organization and governance of global commodity chains, focusing on coffee, cocoa and cotton. We investigate the variations among different types of CTFs (multi/single commodity, ownership, location) and among the three commodities with regard to industrial organization, derivative market strategies and commodity chain relations to derive distributional implications on commodity producer countries, particularly with respect to price levels and stability, and opportunities for upgrading and value addition.
Between neo-colonialism and sustainability: the dilemma of transnational biomass certification for the emerging bioeconomy
Thomas Vogelpohl (FernUniversität in Hagen)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room D
Session: Value chain based approaches to resource control
The ‘bioeconomy’ is nowadays widely proclaimed by governments and corporations around the world as a new paradigm for a sustainable economy. Essentially, it denotes the replacement of fossil resources with biogenic ones in all production processes and products. However, in order for the bioeconomy to be sustainable, regulatory arrangements have to installed that assure that these biogenic resources are sourced in a sustainable way. Conveniently, there is already a plethora of private biomass sustainability certification initiatives that could be built on. A special case in this context is the EU biofuels policy, which regulates the sustainability of biofuels consumed in the EU via a hybrid, public-private governance arrangement that relies on private certification schemes. This way of safeguarding the sustainability of biofuels, however, is increasingly met with criticism recently. For example, plans of the European Parliament to exclude palm oil-based biofuels from the European market due to its questionable sustainability have provoked furious reactions on the part of the of the palm oil-producing countries in Southeast Asia that accused the EU of “colonial attitudes” and a discriminatory “crop apartheid” policy under the guise of sustainability.
Moreover, this conflict over palm oil certification is just the latest of a recent development. Private transnational sustainability certification initiatives in several biomass sectors like soy, fruits, aquaculture or fisheries – mostly initiated by NGOs and corporations from the Global North – are increasingly met with resistance from actors from the resource-producing countries – mainly in South East Asia, Africa and South America, but also in North America or Europe. Issues brought up in this context concern the lack of legitimacy and respect for national regulatory sovereignty and development priorities, and the extra-territorial character of transnational certification. Consequently, governmental and corporate actors from resource-producing countries have developed national sustainability standards that now at least partly compete with private transnational ones. At the same time, however, these alternative standards mostly do not live up to ambitious standards and can therefore hardly guarantee the sustainable production of the respective feedstock or product.
Against this background, this contribution seeks to investigate this apparent dilemma of biomass certification by taking stock of existing private transnational sustainability certification initiatives and national responses to them in several sectors of the bioeconomy in order to discover general patterns and dynamics of transnational biomass sustainability certification. This analysis is based on a review of existing empirical studies on these issues as well as on conceptual literature on transnational hybrid governance, which equips the conceptual tools to analyze the different aspects and developments across the individual sectors. Results show that, while private sustainability certification schemes are challenged in all sectors, complex relations between transnational and domestic sustainability governance emerge that do not always take an antagonistic shape, but also exist in parallel or even complement each other and involve various configurations of public and private actors. Based on this analysis, we ultimately discuss potential ways out of this dilemma, regarding both the improvement of biomass certification as well as policy instruments beyond certification.
Regulation of social-ecological relations with public policies in South Colombia
Ann-Kathrin Volmer (University of Münster)
Friday, 10:30–12:30, Room A
Session: Political Ecology
The Macizo Colombiano in the south-eastern parts of Colombia is a highly contested area. Every description of the region highlights its importance regarding water, mostly related to the significance of the region’s biodiversity or its declaration as UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1979. Described as the “fluvial star“ of Colombia or its “water factory”, the Macizo Colombiano is also rich in minerals of interest, especially gold. Against this background, I shall analyze the ambivalent strategies of regulation of social-ecological relations mostly between government and social movements regarding the use of resources and land. Therefore, I will focus on a policy program the national government launched in February 2018. It contains “political guidelines and strategies for a sustainable development of Macizo Colombiano”. Following regulation theory of social environmental conditions (Brand & Wissen 2011), this contribution discusses these policy guidelines, recognizing the development process of this document and contextualizing it in the greater panorama of Colombian politics. Based on concepts of Political Ecology, I will analyze the results of interviews and field work in Colombia between 2016 and 2018.
Special attention is being paid to the social-ecological conflicts occurring between government and social movements. The national government follows two different strategies regarding nature and economy: The Nacional Development Plan on the one hand describes Macizo Colombiano as a strategic ecosystem. On the other hand, it builds future national development on investing in mining and energy plants. Those projects are also being implemented in the Macizo Colombiano, because of its water and gold resources. The habitants of the Macizo Colombiano region are mainly small-scale peasants and fight for their access to water and land. They organize in social movements and protest (illegal) mining and infrastructure projects, which ignore the interests of the local habitants.
Policies are one possibility of regulating socio-ecological conflicts. The results of this paper show a comparison between the policy guidelines and the demands and problems articulated by members of the social movements. The contextualization of these results with the broader geopolitical situation of Colombia, its colonial past, the socio-historic relations of the Macizo Colombiano area and the global post-Rio-programs, helps to gain a deeper understanding of the marginalization of the region’s habitants and shows why these policies do not solve the conflicts taking place in the Macizo Colombiano.
Mining, Rural Livelihoods and Food Security: A Disaggregated Analysis of Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa
Tim Wegenast (University of Konstanz)
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room B
Session: Resource conflicts I
The potential impacts of extractive industries on local food security are difficult to predict. On the one hand, resource extraction may generate more employment opportunities and provide farmers with better market access. On the other hand, mineral production may contribute to the marginalization of poor smallholders and increase food insecurity by encouraging land grabs, creating new pressures on environmentally sensitive areas and promoting structural labor market shifts. Although the link between mining and food security has been increasingly discussed by the qualitative literature, it has not been analyzed in a quantitative comparative way thus far. Relying on geocoded survey data and novel information on the control rights of gold, diamond and copper mines in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, this paper is the first attempt to systematically test the effect of mining activities on local populations’ access to food. Thereby, it maintains that it is crucial to consider different governance structures, political contexts and gender-specific effects when analyzing the impact of extractive industries on food availability. Preliminary results from logistic as well as fixed effects linear models using districts and individual mines as levels of analysis show that mining operations decrease food security among women in a substantial way. At the same time, they show no significant or even a positive effect on men’s access to food. As women are rarely employed within industrial mining and their traditional roles are closely intertwined with subsistence farming in many rural societies, they seem particularly vulnerable to mining-induced dispossession, environmental destruction and the boom and bust character of extractive industries. In addition, the empirical analysis reveals that particularly multinational mining companies are linked to increased food insecurity, while domestic firms are not. Finally, the detrimental effect of mining activities on food security are confined to Sub-Saharan Africa and are not applicable to Latin America.
The Neglected Contradictions of Resource Sector Reforms in Former War-Economies: A Critical Review of Liberian Resource Governance Reforms
Sascha Werthes (Trier University) & Jan Grabek (Peace Academy Rhineland-Palatine)
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room D
Session: Extractivism – critical discussions
In peace and conflict studies the term ‚natural resources‘ is primarily used with reference to minerals, oil, forests, (fertile) land, and water that occur in nature and can be exploited for economic gain or are strongly related and essential to (traditional) livelihoods of millions of people. That is, these resources represent an important source of subsistence, wealth and power. Accordingly, when poorly managed, distributed or controlled in an unfair or unequal manner, natural resources can also be a major driver of (human) insecurity, instability, or conflict. Concrete and manifest conflicts may arise (1) over resource ownership, (2) over resource access; (3) over decision-making associated with resource management; and (4) over distribution of resource revenues as well as other benefits and burdens. As “conflict resources” they are characterized as “natural resources whose systematic exploitation and trade in a context of conflict contribute to, benefit from, or result in the commission of serious violations of human rights, violations of international humanitarian law or violations amounting to crimes under international law” (Global Witness).
That said, failure in public administration in natural resource sectors can be linked to human insecurity and civil conflict. In recent years, acknowledgment of this security-natural resource management nexus has sparked an increase of reform measures in post-conflict peacebuilding settings and on development agendas. For example, Liberia’s ‘conflict resources’ timber and diamonds have motivated the international community to enact temporary trade bans and international trade regulation efforts. Liberia’s long post-conflict peacebuilding record also allows for the identification of a variety of reform acts in the resource management of that country.
While the devastating effects of “bad” natural resource governance on human security are a major motivator for these transformative efforts, studies evaluating the success of reform strategies predominantly focus on the administrative macro-level, neglecting their impact on the individual and collective (human) security of communities affected by resource extraction and related conflicts. Based on field research in Liberia the paper proposed here argues that current approaches of resource sector reforms in post-conflict societies like Liberia fail to a substantial degree to achieve their goal of enhancing human security for respective communities linked to modes of resource extraction. Using human security as an analytical framework to assess the outcome and consequences of public and private reforms in the resource management of former so-called war-economies we conclude that current reform strategies do not mitigate nor eliminate determinants and drivers for so-called ‘resource wars’. In fact, despite these reforms as part of peacebuilding efforts the transition processes of these post-conflict societies is flawed and might even generate and reanimate political instability and increased levels of human insecurity it aimed to overcome.
Oil and gas pipelines in Siberia and indigenous peoples: ten years later
Natalia Yakovleva (Newcastle University London) & Tuyara Gavrilyeva
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room B
Session: Resource conflicts I
In 2008, I first started conducting a study on the effects of Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline construction in Southern Yakutia on the territories of traditional natural resource use of indigenous peoples' groups, Evenki in Aldan district. The construction of this oil pipeline has caused significant regional debate involving environmental and indigenous peoples' organisations. The state permitted industrial activities on the territories of traditional natural resource use and pipeline construction company compensated selected indigenous peoples' groups for impact. In 2010, regional parliament in Yakutia has introduced a law requiring industrial projects to go through social impact assessment on indigenous peoples (e.g. Ethnological Expert Review), the first legislation of its kind on the territory of Russia. The law requires industrial developers to pay out compensations to indigenous peoples' groups. Since the introduction of this law, several industrial projects went through Ethnological Expert Review in Yakutia, including a new gas pipeline running along Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean, affecting the same indigenous peoples' groups in Southern Yakutia. These groups have been paid out compensations again, however, the visit in summer 2018 reveals that traditional activities of indigenous peoples' groups are in decline. This paper reviews evolution of the relationships between industry and indigenous peoples in Yakutia, examining aspects of activism, legislation, compensation methodology and land relations.
Mining Peasant’s Livelihood Trajectories: Understanding the symbiosis between agriculture and artisanal mining in Burkina Faso
Jessica Zanetti (Universität Basel) & Fritz Brugger
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room B
Session: Resource conflicts I
This study contributes to the debate over the effect that the small-scale gold mining (ASGM) boom in Sub-Sahara Africa has on livelihoods, agriculture and rural development. More specifically, it sheds light on how farmers-turned-miners allocate labour and capital between the two activities and how these respective livelihood strategies affect their capability to make a living. Based on field research in the provinces Bam and Yatenga in Burkina Faso we find distinct patterns of farmer-turned-miner livelihood strategies. They depend mainly on the characteristics and life-cycle of the mines. On mining sites which experience a bust after the initial discovery boom (‘descending sites’), 80% keep farming as main activity during the rainy season and complement it with mining during the dry season. In contrast, on ‘permanent’ sites with a reasonable level of production over a longer period, only 40% combine farming and mining themselves but three out of four miners do send remittances home to support their farming family members. Thus, some household’s farm income increases due to the investment (they ‘step up’), while other’s choose to ‘step out’ of agriculture by shifting their priorities to ASGM. Particularly at descending sites one can also find those who struggle to combine farming and mining in a beneficial way. They do not succeed in accumulating assets (‘hang in’) or even are forced to ‘muddle through’ as their assets diminish. While the ASGM boom led to a social restructuring with the establishment of a small ASGM elite, the vast majority applies a diversification strategy whereby farming and mining are complementing rather than competing activities. The assumption that there is a de-agrarianization process happening is not supported.
Resource sustainability: the fifth dimension of sustainable development for Resource-based cities in China
Yanli Zhang (Vienna University of Technology)
Saturday, 10:30–12:00, Room D
Session: Social-ecological transformation in urban areas
The four dimensions of sustainability (environmental sustainability, social sustainability, economical sustainability, and institutional sustainability) and the systematic concept of sustainability are highlighted as the theoretical base in many research and projects in terms of city sustainability. In the recent decade, sustainable development of Resource-based cities (RBCs) is a hot but hard topic in China. RBCs, which greatly depend on resources and whose economy is highly relevant to mining activities, have more interaction with resources than the general cities. Learning from the western experience is a popular approach for the sustainable development of many RBCs in China. However, applying of theories, principles, and approaches of sustainable development from the North to the South, which is mainly from developed countries to developing countries, like from Europe to China, is also a big challenge because of the differences in development stages, institutional systems, and historical and cultural aspects. Therefore a logical theoretical framework based on the dimensions of sustainable development and systematic concept of sustainability is crucial for supporting the learning from western experience and developing sustainability transformation strategies for RBCs in China. In order to reach this theoretical base, the development paths and mechanisms of RBCs in Europe and China are compared from the four dimensions of sustainable development, and an analysis about the relation of mineral resource and RBCs in China from six aspects - resource reservation, resource exploitation, resource utilization, resource recycling, resource-relevant policies, laws and plans is carried out. The comparison is supported by literature review, which covers historical papers published as early as 1930s in Europe, and reports, policies, and papers, which are announced or published in the recent two decades in China. The analysis is conducted by a generalized literature review of RBC-relevant papers and data analysis of RBCs in China. Based on the comparison and analysis, resource sustainability is proposed to be the fifth dimension for the sustainable development of RBCs in China. Further, a sustainable development model with five dimensions for RBCs in China is developed. This model aims at assisting decision makers and planners in better understanding of the resource-city relation from the local, regional, and national levels, learning from western sustainable development experiences, and developing efficient strategies for transforming RBCs to sustainable cities.
Institutional structures for social innovation in rural development: gaps and potentials – the case of Serbia
Ivana Živojinovic (University of Natural Resouces and Life Sciences, Vienna, BOKU), Karl Hogl & Alice Ludvig
Saturday, 08:30–10:00, Room D
Session: Social innovations for a social ecological transformation
Social innovations have been labelled as answer to current social-ecological and economic crisis in the sense of bottom-up initiatives for transformational social change. They emerged in the second half of the twentieth century as a ‘political’ reaction to the hegemonic discourses on technological innovation and government-supported social reform (Godin, 2012). Social innovations cannot occur and take place in a vacuum, but need to be embedded in a bottom-linked governance structures in order to have lasting effects. For being embedded, social innovations need to be recognised and promoted by institutional structures through sound and productive regulatory frameworks and governance arrangements (Paidakaki, et al. 2018).
Social innovations are highly relevant for transforming rural areas, as they can foster sustainable rural development, and consequently contribute to the ambition of building smart, sustainable and inclusive economies (Lindberg, 2017). Potential of social innovation in rural areas is seen as well in reducing increased social inequalities, but also in terms of reducing disproportionate resource use. Change of current modes of production and living is thus necessary especially for rural areas, which asks for development of new arrangements and cooperation modes fitting to specific areas and local problems. One of the potential solutions there are social innovations, apart from pure technological or managerial once.
For understanding the potential role of social innovations for transforming rural areas, it is important to understand existing institutional structures for social innovations, implications of and for relevant policy programs and instruments as well as the roles of various actors in these frameworks. On the case example of Serbia, we aim to analyse the national institutional framework conditions for social innovations, in order to understand how existing institutional structures embed socially innovative initiatives so far and what are the gaps and potentials within this institutional framework.
For this purpose, an analysis of national policy framework conditions for social innovation in Serbia is conducted. The contribution rests on a comprehensive content analysis of policy documents from various policy fields influencing rural development and the analysis of in-depth interviews with actors involved in social innovations. Preliminary results indicate that there is growing interest in social innovation and social entrepreneurship in Serbia, despite a rather limited institutional support and a widespread low or vague understanding of the concept of social innovation. This growing interest is mainly articulated by civil society organisations and representatives of social enterprises. They strive to influence further the development of this field. A major factor that drives the increasing interest in the potentials and the implementation of social innovations is the perspective and process towards the accession to the European Union and the increasing inflows of European and international funds. Significant amounts of these funds are tied to the promotion of social innovations. There have been several attempts for more concrete regulation from the state institutions, but several drafts have failed to be adopted so far, leaving a major void in the Serbian governance structure on social innovation.
References:
Godin, B. (2012) Social Innovation: Utopias of Innovation from c.1830 to the Present. Project on the Intellectual History of Innovation Working Paper No. 11. (available at: https://blog.zhdk.ch/projektemacherei/files/2016/10/Social-Innovation-Utopias-of-Innovation-from-c.1830-to-the-Present-.pdf, assessed on 30 October 2018)
Lindberg, M. (2017) Promoting and sustaining rural social innovation. European Public & Social Innovation Review (EPSIR) 2(2), p. 30-41. ISSN 2529-9824
Paidakaki, A., Moulaert, F., Van den Broeck, P. (2018) Exploring the politico-institutional dimension of social innovation to repoliticize urban governance arrangements. Social innovation in urban and regional development 47, p 11-21. doi: 10.1553/ISR_FB047s11
One dead sea is enough: the correlation between energy infrastructure and environmental security within the Caspian Sea region
Letizia Zuliani (University of Bologna)
Friday, 08:00–10:00, Room B
Session: Resource conflicts I
The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed basin on the planet: rich of natural resources, it has always played an important geopolitical role in the region. The countries concerned, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have for decades run for the control of the region and of natural resources, exploiting the sea and transforming the Caspian into a determinant actor in the energy politics framework. However, the all energy infrastructure has been undermining the natural regime of the sea: environmental issues are more and more evident including pollution of the sea, sea-level fluctuations and seismic events. The aim of this paper is to assess the impact oil and gas infrastructure at the environmental level: after having introduced the geographical and geopolitical situation and given an energy overview of the five countries, the study goes on to identify the main environmental threats and their relationship with energy infrastructure implemented, including risks related to this one. The research is supported by a focus on the Azerbaijan case study. Secondly, the study aims at considering the implications of the legal status of the Caspian Sea regarding the international environmental law, thus evaluating the Tehran Convention in protecting and safeguarding the environment within the region.