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- Convenors:
-
Robert Farnan
(Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York)
Jonathan Ensor (University of York Stockholm Environment Institute)
Arabella Fraser (Open University)
Richard Friend (University of York)
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- Formats:
- Papers
- Stream:
- Global environmental justice
- Sessions:
- Friday 2 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Complementing scholarship addressing everyday development, we invite empirical, methodological, and theoretical papers that rethink climate politics, sustainable development, & participation, with a particular focus on capabilities & the limits participatory development places upon climate politics.
Long Abstract:
With the multiple crises brought about by COVID, the concerns of climate and development politics have become increasingly aligned around issues of systemic uncertainty, risk, and the politics of participation. In both fields these questions of governance resonate with notions of adaptation, mitigation, resilience, and vulnerability. Such agendas are frequently deployed by academics and practitioners as a way to frame and position the climate as an object or threat external to society - rather than as a constitutive and disruptive feature of human development processes. In practice this often leads to a disavowal of the messy power relations underlying the global sustainability project. This apolitical rendering is perhaps not surprising if we consider the liberal hegemony at the heart of adaptation orientated approaches to climate change. For some this is a contested legacy insofar as it proposes participation as the means through which to address global inequalities related to climate change. Yet developments in both fields have questioned the transformative potential of such agendas. They urge us to take seriously the political capabilities, as well as democratic deficits, constitutive of not only participation but also recognition. Complementing scholarship addressing bottom-up and everyday political development, we invite empirical, methodological, and theoretical papers that will rethink climate politics, sustainable development, and participation. Scholars and practitioners of climate change and development can draw important lessons from each other in order to critically address marginalisation and subjectivity and also reveal the longstanding conceptual and practical limits that participatory development has placed upon climate politics.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 2 July, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Using clientilism, knowledge infrastructures and political capabilities concepts, we examine politics behind protracted informal-formal transition and strategies informal settlers adopt to circumvent marginalisation amid intermittent policy interventions to address informality in urbanising Nepal.
Paper long abstract:
The Sustainable Development Goal embraces upgrading of slums and informal settlements as a major strategy to make cities and human settlements “inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Nepal focuses on informal to formal transition. In Nepal, informal settlers, their federations, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been advocating and lobbying the government for addressing the informality issues. Intermittently, the government has attempted to expedite the transitioning processes. Recently, the government has promulgated new and progressively inclusive policy documents to identify “genuine” informal settlers and develop formal mechanisms to ensure their rights and access to land, housing, livelihoods, and other basic services as mandated by the 2015 constitution. However, implementation of these policies and progress in informal to formal transition has suffered from multiple political, institutional, and practical conundrums. Moreover, the informal settlers continue depending on the informal economy, development interventions of NGOs, and advancing political relations with local to federal politicians through clientelistic relations. An example of clientelist relation is providing political support for protecting informal settlements from demolition, accessing infrastructure services, and empowering themselves to influence the transitioning processes. In this paper, tracing the trajectory, we critically examine the politics behind the paradoxical delays in informal to formal transition and strategies that informal settlers mobilise to circumvent marginalisation and improve their political capabilities in supposedly inclusive Nepal. In doing so, we use the concept of clientelism, knowledge infrastructures, and political capabilities and bring forward the perspectives of diverse actors and the factors associated with proliferating informality in urbanising Nepal.
Paper short abstract:
In Amazonas, intensive small farms can be more sustainable than commercial farms, thus reducing the pressure to clear primary forest. This requires a recognition of their expertise and knowledge together with reorientation of the programmes of a range of agricultural organisations to support them.
Paper long abstract:
For agriculture to be sustainable, it should have no adverse impact on the environment, be suitable for the farmer and improve productivity and resilience over time (Pretty 2018). In Amazonas, Brasil much primary forest has been cleared over several decades and it is essential to secure livelihoods and limit further biodiversity loss. Small farmers are major producers of premium Amazon specific crops such as cupuracu and acai which have great potential for increased production and expanded markets and they could achieve more sustainable & productive agroforestry on small plots than large extensive farms manage and without further land clearance. For example, 'Balde Cheio' (Full Bucket) is a dairy system adapted from commercial agriculture which demonstrated that with good management and minimal inputs, ten cows could be kept productively on one hectare. However,the majority of settlement farmers lack access to technical advice and support as this is heavily targetted towards commercial farms. Given recent high levels of burning, it is imperative to model sustainable solutions to prevent further forest loss.
Many challenges remain to ensure effective participation and voice for small farmers including addressing the unequal power between communities – who are experts in their own domain – and agricultural professionals/experts across the social interface. Technology can be shaped by both expert ‘technicos’ and local actors but only if the gap created by the social interface is successfully negotiated. This research examines the situation of small farmers in Presidente Figueiredo and potential ways to overcome the constraints of their situation.
Paper short abstract:
Community participation in resettlement programmes has been widely adopted. However, evidence shows that the elites control the process and make decisions on behalf of the marginalised. This result to either refusal or minimal adaptation of the resettlement programmes.
Paper long abstract:
The use of bottom up approaches in development programmes has been widely adopted in order to encourage community participation. In particular, this scholarship has been recommended in environmentally induced resettlement. However, the level of community participation in resettlement can be contested. Although different stakeholders have been facilitating consultation meetings prior to resettlement, however, evidence has shown that the elites dominate the decision-making processes. As a result, the elites have the ability either to advocate for resettlement or otherwise based on their interests.
Evidence from the environmentally induced resettlement in Malawi shows the complexities that emerges despite employing bottom up approaches due to the dominance of the elites especially the traditional leaders in the decision-making process. Using both household survey and participatory approaches, it was learnt that traditional leaders were fully informed of the resettlement processes as well as involved in the negotiation of land for resettle. On the other hand, the majority of the community reported that they weren’t consulted to understand their decisions on how, when and where to resettle.
In the long run, this participatory approach that characterises development programmes as participatory whilst involving only the elite people in the community contributed to the different movement dynamics by the resettlers. Thus, the resettlers resorted to moving back and forth to the new settlement, refusing to resettle or returning after being resettled. Therefore, looking at these complexities, the study proposed that the participatory processes needs to be holistic by including even the marginalised people in the community.
Paper short abstract:
Aiming to answer why there are “gaps” between policy and practice of DRR governance exist in Nepal, this study reveals 'real risk governance' and allows an understanding of the role played by policy in shaping, enabling or hindering risk reduction at the local level.
Paper long abstract:
Nepal, being a country always exposed to multi-hazards risks, has been implementing several risk governance policy mechanisms ranging from local specific to aligning international agreements. The institutional structures for risk governance, which are robust legally, have also spread at scales from federal to the community levels (i.e., “thick” policies). Additionally, leaders, bureaucrats and implementing institutions (normatively) agree on the importance of implementing disaster risk reduction or DRR focused activities in their constituencies. But policies are not being materialized in practices as stipulated (i.e., “thin” implementation). Consequently, their implementation has just ritualized in practice sans achieving anticipated outputs. Why such “gaps” between policy and practice exist and what are the “root causes” of their persistence have not been adequately analysed yet. This study, focusing on the Kathmandu Valley and based on interviews with bureaucrats, experts, key informants, practitioners (I/NGOs), local actors and review of policy documents, and getting insights from critical social theories, attempts to answer these questions. Preliminary findings suggest that the gaps and root causes, which hinder achieving policy goals, have to be analysed in two strata. Firstly, the proximate causes of gaps include the lack of financial resources and knowledge infrastructure at scales. An assessment of root causes, however, requires taking the experience of those engaged in on-the-ground development projects as an analytical starting point. Taking this approach reveals 'real risk governance' and allows an understanding of the role played by policy is shaping, enabling or hindering risk reduction at the local level.