Presentation short abstract

Human and more-than-human relations in the Ñuble Basin reveal how extractivism reshapes hydrosocial worlds. River-care practices and community resistance movements defend flowing waters as living beings, opening space for just and multispecies river futures.

Presentation long abstract

Water scarcity in Chile reveals deep inequalities in access, control, and governance of water, intensified by extractive regimes that degrade ecosystems and transform territories. Rather than a natural shortage, it constitutes a political and socioecological problem in which water and rivers become spaces of dispute, intervention, and resistance.

Drawing on political ecology of water and hydrosocial studies, this research examines how hydrosocial governmentality and extractivism reconfigure fluvial territories in south-central Chile through the long-standing Embalse Punilla project on the Ñuble River, designed to support export-oriented agribusiness and integrated with the HidroÑuble hydropower plant.

These reconfigurations alter hydrological regimes, expand control mechanisms, and reshape local livelihoods, driving mobility and rural out-migration that extend the boundaries of the hydrosocial territory and generate new rural–urban interdependencies. The Ñuble River—understood as a socionatural entity—is intervened in and re-signified, shaping subjectivities and experiences of (in)justice.

The Punilla case provides a situated lens to observe these dynamics alongside the resistance of riverine and mountain communities organized in movements such as Ñuble Libre, which advocate alternative ontologies, defend the river’s right to flow freely, and demand protection of the Nevados de Chillán–Laguna del Laja Biological Corridor, designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

This research adopts an ethnographic approach with relational methodologies to understand how humans and rivers co-produce territories and how processes of conflict, accommodation, and resistance take shape. By articulating hydrosocial governmentality, more-than-human subjectivities, and frameworks of water and multispecies justice, this project contributes to reimagining rivers as territories of life in the Global South.

Presentation short abstract

The poster lays out a multi-disciplinary methodological toolkit to advance research on European conservation frontiers, while also featuring a range of interactive elements aimed at fostering further analytical cross-fertilization to explore unequal ecological exchange in marginal mountain areas.

Presentation long abstract

Mountain areas across Europe are caught between green extractivism and visions of green growth by conservation, often associated with EU’s push for the green transition. While the two policies appear as polar opposites, they are both green capitalism’s attempts to solve the joint climate-biodiversity crisis without addressing its root causes. Emerging from the GreenFrontier project, the current intervention proposes the conservation frontier as portable analytic to make sense of these transformations and lays out a multi-disciplinary toolkit by bringing together methodological approaches from anthropology, environmental history and environmental politics.

Conservation frontiers are ongoing and mutating processes through which the expansion of conservation initiatives foster the incorporation of new natures into capitalist dynamics. Through interdisciplinary cross-fertilisation, the GreenFrontier project researches these frontiers as political spaces shaped by governance and power struggles and changing land-use regimes, showing how these frictions lead to various environmental injustices which result from deepening existing vulnerabilities and historical underdevelopment and marginalization.

The poster is aimed at fostering academic collaboration and novel ways of thinking together about current processes of unequal ecological exchange in Europe’s peripheries.

Presentation short abstract

This PhD project investigates how modelling practices legitimise industrial salmon farming in Lutruwita/Tasmania by tracing discourses and logics that objectify oceans, dismiss counter-movements, and reproduce inequalities in decision-making.

Presentation long abstract

This PhD research project investigates how power relations are embedded in modelling practices that shape decision support tools (DSTs) used for an expanding industrial salmon industry in Lutruwita/Tasmania. The very concept of 'decision support tool', deployed predominantly by the professional-managerial class, reflects an instrumentalist logic that reduces complex webs of life to manageable objects. Models with such world-making power then legitimise the exploitation of non-human life - salmon and the ocean alike - as resources for profit-making opportunities.

Through a case study of multiple ocean models created in southeast Lutruwita/Tasmania between the years 2000-2024, I aim to challenge the dominant belief that modelling practices are apolitical. The study combines critical discourse analysis and qualitative content analysis of documents with semi-structured interviews involving modellers and government officials.

Now entering my third year, I trace an assemblage of salmon, scientific organisations, colonial administrations, discourses, and modelling practices shaped by an ongoing struggle over histories, values, authority, and identity. I discuss how neoliberal discourse and managerial logics, intertwined with these models, reduce a complex ocean into manageable objects, and how counter-movements are framed as obstructive and dismissed.

By showing how modelling practices reproduce epistemic violence and inequalities in decision-making, this research contributes to political ecology by exposing the ideological work of technocratic tools. Ultimately, it opens up conversations in Lutruwita/Tasmania on how knowledge practices can be disentangled and re-entangled with values that nurture justice and care.

Presentation short abstract

This research explores meanings of urban rewilding and examines how practices are shaped by socio-ecological-technological systems, through a review of recent literature and walking interviews with individuals managing sites for nature recovery across London boroughs.

Presentation long abstract

‘Urban rewilding’ is attracting the attention of interdisciplinary researchers, environmental organisations and the public, as ecosystem-focused approaches to nature recovery are being recommended in response to environmental and biodiversity change. Despite this growing interest, there are few resources synthesising insights on meanings of the concept provided by recently published sources, and there is limited case study research exploring how it is being approached in practice. This poster presents findings from a hybrid systematic-narrative review of recent academic and grey literature focused on urban rewilding, using reflexive thematic analysis to highlight its current conceptions. I find that they include those focused on reintroducing native species, promoting human-nature coexistence and its consideration as a nature-based solution to improve degraded ecosystems. Building on these findings, I also present initial findings from a second stage of research involving walking interviews with individuals managing local nature sites across London boroughs. This explores how urban rewilding approaches and associated meanings are shaped by the unique socio-ecological-technological systems in which they are implemented. These studies broadly aim to improve knowledge exchange on urban rewilding to inform future best practices.

Presentation short abstract

I propose to mobilize hydraulic infrastructure as a conceptual lens to productively explore re/configuration dynamics within hydrosocial spaces. This I exemplify by tracing the Turkey-Northern Cyprus Water Pipeline, attending to the infrastructuring of northern Cyprus and the island's division.

Presentation long abstract

Aside from facilitating flows of H₂O, hydraulic infrastructure as reflective of power structures emerges as a shaping force and central node within hydrosocial spaces. The intricate means of how hydraulic infrastructures re/configures hydrosocial relations throughout its lifecycle remain, however, conceptually blurry and in demand of closer examination.

I propose to explore this matter from within, by examining occurring dynamics through the infrastructure in mobilizing hydraulic infrastructure as a perspective. Attending to its hybrid nature – its material, relational and imaginative forms – directs the gaze through the mosaic of different infrastructural de/stabilizations while pointing to epistemological entry points for closer empirical examination. In mapping those, I disentangle how hydraulic infrastructure acts to transform relations between space, people, and materiality throughout its biography, thereby also highlighting the importance of explicitly considering different temporalities in the study of hydraulic infrastructure.

Empirically tracing the Turkey-Northern Cyprus Water Pipeline in its multisitedness while being attentive to its un/settling momentum, I exemplify what insights can be generated when seeing through a pipeline. Anchoring each infrastructure vignette at a different stage within the pipeline’s lifecycle, I show how the undersea freshwater flows rework relations across scales, actors, and temporal spans. Relating these dynamics to the island’s division while positioning the water transfer project within its geohistorical context, I bring to the fore the intersecting temporalities of the water pipeline with those of northern Cyprus as a de facto state, thereby illuminating the intricate ways of the pipeline’s infrastructuring of the Cyprus conflict.

Presentation short abstract

The project juxtaposes landscapes facing climate uncertainty—specifically those experiencing extremes of water scarcity or abundance. Fieldwork has been conducted across both the Global South and Global North, including the Darién rainforest of Panama, the Atacama Desert in Chile.

Presentation long abstract

This poster presents practice-based PhD research that investigates the relationship between contemporary perceptions of landscape and the visual arts, positioning art as a critical tool for engaging audiences and communities in dialogue around pressing environmental and cultural questions. Field work in Latin America took place and then work in the Southwest and East of the UK. These locations serve as comparative reference points—through which environmental, cultural, and geopolitical dynamics are explored. By studying regions that have already adapted to hydrological extremes—flood and drought—UK sites can be recontextualized in terms of resilience and adaptive potential. While the physical scale of comparison differs (e.g., the distances between Chile and Panama vs. UK East and West), the global implications of climate change justify these parallels. The research also acknowledges that the Global South faces a disproportionate impact, despite the Global North being largely responsible for historic emissions and environmental degradation.

The primary research objective(s) are to explore how sculptural practice can engage with and illuminate critical questions about experiences of landscape within the urgent context of the global climate crisis. To assess how the production/dissemination of artworks can unearth locally distinctive knowledge, highlighting places that have adapted to water extremes as models for visualizing hopeful futures.

Presentation short abstract

Through the life trajectories of three women in small-scale fisheries and scallop aquaculture, we analyze women’s agency and involvement in the Peruvian blue economy, constrained by gender norms, male dominance, and the insecurity of (in)formal labor.

Presentation long abstract

Peru’s maritime waters and their natural resources have long been appropriated as part of the country’s economic development. While several historical analyses have covered the management and use of marine resources, few have focused on gender relations in these processes. In order to help fill this gap, we use an ethnographic approach, through the qualitative analysis of interviews carried out between 2021 and 2022 with three women involved in Peru’s artisanal small‐scale fisheries and scallop aquaculture industry. Through their life trajectories, we discuss how these women became key actors within the Peruvian blue economy and the role that concrete and situated gender relations played in that process. We present a critical analysis of women’s agency and involvement in the blue economy and how the economic opportunities offered are constrained by gender norms, male dominance, and the precarious nature of (in)formal labor. We suggest a need to shift from a focus on blue growth to a more inclusive concept of blue justice that deals with structural inequalities ingrained in current modes of extractivism and aims to secure fair opportunities for all genders in marine‐related activities.

Presentation short abstract

This poster presents insights from an ongoing survey exploring how rising far-right and authoritarian dynamics affect sustainability scientists - their work, well-being, and capacity to engage in transformative research.

Presentation long abstract

This poster presents the results of an international questionnaire conducted within the Pathways Deep Dive: Ecological Crises and Political Tensions project. This in-depth exploration seeks to understand how socio- and geopolitical tensions - including the rise of ‘far-right’ and ‘authoritarian’ movements, disinformation, and institutional weakening - are shaping the practices, priorities, and problems of researchers in sustainability science across diverse research communities and geographic contexts. Indeed, before imagining new alternatives, we must first understand the lived experiences of researchers working within these contested environments. Beyond impacts, the survey explores researchers’ understanding of the connections between authoritarian, populist, and far-right discourses and ecological issues, as well as the coping strategies they employ and the forms of support they would find most helpful. Such spaces for introspection are critical in a setting where the contribution of research to a desirable future risks being undermined by political dynamics.

To contribute to a critical understanding of these dynamics, we aim to identify both shared challenges and emerging strategies of resilience and resistance. Preliminary responses suggest that while many scientists report growing hostility toward environmental agendas and knowledge, they also highlight the growth of solidarity networks, interdisciplinary collaboration, and critical reflexivity as counterforces. The poster invites discussion on how aligned researchers can navigate and respond to these political pressures without compromising their ethical and transformative commitments. The poster reflects on what political ecology and related critical fields can contribute to this task and defend spaces for pluralism, democracy, and ecological justice amid intensifying far-right ecologies.

Presentation short abstract

This poster reconceptualises displacement as a multiscalar socioecological regime governing mobility, emplacement, and precarity. Drawing on political ecology and affective governance, fieldwork shows how queer, migrantised, and racialised people are rendered perpetually displaceable.

Presentation long abstract

This poster reframes displacement through an interdisciplinary lens, arguing that it is not a discrete event but a multiscalar regime of governance that hinders place-making and just transitions. Rather than labelling individuals as “displaced”, I conceptualize people as displaceable within intersecting social, political, and ecological power relations. Drawing on power-geometry, biopolitics, debility, and affective governmentality, displacement is theorised as a productive force that spatially and affectively governs bodies, shaping how people inhabit and move through urban spaces. I examine technologies of displacement as socioecological practices that manufacture precarity and produce zones of erasure within the city. This approach highlights how structural conditions, such as infrastructural neglect and urban undervaluation produce ongoing precarities rather than singular events of displacement. The analysis centres on queer, migrantised, and racialised people whose performances of heteronormativity, citizenship, or ethnonational belonging fall outside dominant expectations, rendering them persistently at risk of disemplacement.

Grounded in nearly a year of fieldwork in Athens, Greece, this poster presents empirical examples of neighborhoods and communities experiencing continuous displaceability without crossing into the formal categories of “displaced persons”. By combining theoretical frameworks with fieldwork data, the project illustrates how displacement operates as a diffuse and productive apparatus of power.

Presentation short abstract

This study examines Richard Powers’ novel "The Overstory" through a Black geographies lens to examine how the book fails to attend to dynamics of race and Blackness in the EJ movement and ignores the importance of Black environmental labor and landlessness in the conversations about land justice.

Presentation long abstract

Richard Powers’ "The Overstory" follows nine characters through their intersecting journeys with environmental justice; they forge connections to trees and dedicate their lives to fighting deforestation in the context of their unique lived histories. Considered by some a modern Anthropocene novel of environmental justice, "The Overstory" has attracted some critical analysis of its contribution to the EJ movement. Papers have examined the book from an Ecocritical perspective (Safina, 2021; Shakir, 2024; Thomas, 2024), reading material by addressing the impactful and connected interactions between human and natural worlds. However, the literature has not conflated race and Blackness with environmental justice movements in "The Overstory". The book has no Black characters and fails to acknowledge Black communities’ role in the origin of the EJ movement (McGurty, 2007). Given this exclusion, I ask how Powers represents the racial dynamics of the EJ movement, how the white characters navigate their EJ worlds in the absence of Blackness, and how "The Overstory" may have changed if Blackness was part of the story. To fill this gap, I conduct a literary analysis of "The Overstory" centering a Black geographies lens (McKittrick & Woods, 2007), attending to how Black senses of place have always influenced EJ yet are continually excluded from its narrative. I argue that Powers fails to attend to notions of Black environmental labor, plantation logics, and landlessness in his portrayal of twentieth-century EJ, and that the inclusion of Blackness would alter the way characters in the novel relate to land, environment, and community justice.

Presentation short abstract

Energy production (30%), mineral extraction (18.4%), and biomass-land loss (17.9%) are the primary drivers of conflicts affecting Indigenous Peoples (IP) in coastal zones. Constitutional recognition of IP rights correlates with more energy-related conflicts but a slightly higher rate of resolution

Presentation long abstract

Socioenvironmental conflicts are increasing in coastal areas across the world, with significant impacts on coastal environments and people. Owing to their location at the meeting of the land and the sea, coastal regions are experiencing growing population, development, tourism pressure, and industrial pressures, including ports, roads and wind farms. There is also growing evidence that Indigenous Peoples are disproportionately impacted due to their historical and structural marginalization, leaving enduring legacies of cultural loss, social inequity, and ecological degradation. Yet, the specific impacts of extractive and industrial activities on coastal Indigenous communities and their livelihoods, remain understudied. We present an analysis of 401 socio-environmental conflicts involving at least 275 Indigenous ethnic groups, extracted from the EJAtlas. Our findings reveal that the prevalence and intensity of conflicts are geographically uneven and primarily driven by impact sectors such as energy production, mining, biomass extraction, and commodity agriculture. The environmental consequences include biodiversity loss, degradation of landscapes and seascapes, and adverse social outcomes include effects on Indigenous Peoples’ wellbeing and mental health. Notably, 83 cases involved the destruction of or displacement from ancestral lands or sacred sites. Our analysis also highlights how the impacts of conflicts differed substantially by sector and the level of rights recognition in countries where conflicts occurred. In conclusion, we highlight the need to address coastal conflicts and mitigate their impacts on Indigenous Peoples. Recognizing, respecting and protecting Indigenous rights and values is critical to chart pathways toward more just and sustainable development in coastal areas worldwide

Presentation short abstract

Los desastres nunca han sido puramente naturales. La cultura, material e inmaterial, es un pilar fundamental para establecer dicha categoría. Los desastres socioambientales, entonces, se presentan como una situación perfecta para analizar las bases sociales y culturales de las sociedades afectadas.

Presentation long abstract

Los seres humanos somos producto de innumerables procesos migratorios que se han visto propulsados por diferentes motivaciones tales como guerras, territorialidad, crimen organizado, violencia, escasez o inviabilidad del territorio, entre otras múltiples causas. Con este trabajo se pretende recoger una de esas motivaciones para los procesos migratorios desplazada en sí misma por otras más interesantes desde el punto de vista económico, geopolítico o mediático. Estas son las propias condiciones atmosféricas y terrestres que caracterizan el planeta que habitamos, es decir, el clima.

Dentro del contexto actual, donde las migraciones climáticas son un fenómeno a la alza, es fundamental adquirir una perspectiva interdisciplinar e interseccional. Esto quiere decir que, en el momento actual, observar, estudiar y analizar las migraciones desde la academia como un fenómeno único y aislado en sí mismo no es ni eficiente ni fiel a la realidad.

Se realizará un recorrido por la literatura antropológica relativa a las migraciones climáticas y el género para conocer cómo se está investigando la relación entre estos dos factores dentro de la disciplina. Podemos preguntarnos cuestiones como ¿Qué se entiende dentro de la literatura antropológica como “migración climática”? ¿Cómo se está investigando la relación entre el género y las migraciones climáticas dentro de la disciplina? ¿Qué enfoques predominan? ¿Cuál es el rol que puede jugar la comunidad antropológica en la cuestión climática? ¿Podemos estudiar estos fenómenos desde la antropología de los desastres naturales o el riesgo? Y si es así, ¿nos daría un enfoque oportuno o válido para abordar la cuestión?

Presentation short abstract

This study reconstructs the environmental history of the caldenal woodlands in central Argentina by analyzing the historical, socioeconomic, technological, and legal factors driving land-use change, revealing the dynamics behind landscape transformation and guiding conservation efforts.

Presentation long abstract

The woodlands dominated by Neltuma caldenia (caldén) in the province of San Luis, central Argentina, have witnessed ongoing tension between productive expansion and environmental preservation. As a result, these remaining woodlands are now immersed in an agricultural matrix, forming a landscape that reflects a long-standing but under-documented territorial process. This study analyzes the historical, socioeconomic, technological, and legal factors associated with the transformation of the caldenal woodlands from historical and subjectivity-based perspectives. To address this aim, we conducted an exhaustive literature review, interviewed local actors, and analyzed historical and current cartography. For earlier periods, no satellite records exist; however, narratives from 19th-century explorers indicate that woodlands were already being used for railway construction following the arrival of the railroad to San Luis in 1875, providing wood for tracks and fuel for locomotives. Later, over the 20th century, our cartographic analysis shows that agricultural land increased by about 83%, replacing natural vegetation. This phenomenon could be associated with transformations in the agrarian structure (where interviewees mentioned that deforestation was considered an improvement) and the adoption of no-till technologies. Although woodland protection laws were implemented during the same period, their effectiveness was limited. Thus, the environmental history of the caldenal spans from the traditional use of woodlands by Indigenous peoples to the consolidation of a production model that links global logics with local dynamics, now increasingly shaped by “green” economies. Historicizing socio-environmental processes and actor–nature relations provide insights for territorial planning that values the caldenal’s ecological, cultural, and historical significance.

Presentation short abstract

This poster explores Brown’s original concept of the ‘chimynthropic assemblage’, which traces the posthuman political ecologies emerging from the entanglements of fungicides, resistant fungi, and England’s agro-industrial systems.

Presentation long abstract

Antifungal-resistant fungi are a window into the complexities of the chemical anthropocene. Resistant fungi are strange, beautiful and disquieting – at once creating and resisting an agricultural system built on agrochemical reliance. This poster explores Brown’s original concept of the ‘chimynthropic assemblage’, which traces the posthuman political ecologies emerging from the entanglements of fungicides, resistant fungi, and England’s agro-industrial systems. Alongside analysing how fungicide resistance is conceptualised by agricultural stakeholders across industry dynamics and values, the chimynthropic assemblage foregrounds fungi as agents whose responses to chemical saturation reveal the limits of anthropocentrism. Attending to fungi’s adaptive strategies makes visible the more-than-human dynamics shaping agricultural futures, while illuminating the ethical, ecological and political stakes of ignoring them. Indeed, responding to POLLEN 2026’s call, this poster argues that listening to fungal resistance opens a space for counter-hegemonic agricultural narratives, with possibilities for reorienting agriculture toward resilience and care. This poster represents part of a PhD thesis in progress, and draws from interviews with English farmers, agronomists, policy-makers, regulatory advisors, agrochemical employees, and mycologists, alongside multispecies ethnographic fieldwork undertaken on a biodynamic farm. The images included on this poster are sketches taken at the fieldwork site, as part of a multispecies methodological approach that uses illustration to think through more-than-human encounters.

Presentation short abstract

Land-use patterns between the Indian and Bangladeshi Sundarbans show significant differences: India’s Kumirmari area maintains paddy fields behind functioning polder systems, whereas Bangladesh’s Protapnagar shows rampant expansion of shrimp aquaculture due to weak water-control infrastructure.

Presentation long abstract

Satellite image analysis reveals a significant contrast in land-use patterns between the Indian and Bangladeshi Sundarbans. While the Indian side is dominated by paddy fields, the Bangladeshi side shows a much more extensive expansion of shrimp aquaculture. This observation raises an important research question: How has the land been exploited, and what political and local decision-making processes have driven the rapid expansion of shrimp farming in the Bangladeshi Sundarbans?

Our findings indicate that a well-functioning polder system exists in Kumirmari (India), whereas such infrastructure is largely absent in Protapnagar (Bangladesh). The lack of proper water control, combined with restricted land access, has facilitated widespread land grabbing for shrimp farming, contributing to the marginalisation of small-scale farmers. These farmers traditionally cultivated rice, but due to the low elevation of the land, post-disaster waterlogging makes it easy to convert rice fields into shrimp ponds—yet extremely difficult to revert them to rice cultivation.

This situation has been exploited by large shrimp business owners, worsening environmental degradation. Shrimp aquaculture has increased soil salinity, prolonged waterlogging, and significantly reduced the arability of agricultural land. Furthermore, shrimp farming is labour-extensive, requiring minimal manpower, which has reduced employment opportunities for surrounding communities. While landowners benefit from higher revenues, local farming households face growing inequities and are often forced to abandon their traditional livelihoods.

Presentation short abstract

The study investigates how the grand narratives of EU-funded programs influence and shape the positioning of climate scientists’ self-narratives in bridging the gap between knowledge and action to inform adaptive decision-making.

Presentation long abstract

Grand narratives are overarching stories that best explain the past, motivate the present and imagine the future. Under the assumption that individual scientific actions are situated within a larger socio-political context that continuously interacts with grand narratives, convictions about what is deemed actionable are socially embedded and normatively charged. Committing to a research career path requires a consistent narrative identity shaped by personal experience and institutional context. Re-interpretating our role as part of grand narratives through time invokes not just the moral codes and value frameworks to appeal to, but what visions of the future spark commitment despite fundamental uncertainty.

In this study, we intended to demonstrate the (mis)alignment of self-narratives with grand narratives. The project calls for proposals are issued under Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, both essential in driving innovative research and addressing societal challenges. We analysed the project calls for convictions towards technology, socio-politics, values, knowledge, and action. The self-narratives were interpreted from interview fragments with individual climate scientists participating in a research and innovation project. A large language model has been used to mark narrative segments, which are then categorised to compare personal with grand narratives. The preliminary results showed how such grand narratives interacted with climate scientist's constructions of past experiences and expectation-building to affect decision-making.

Presentation short abstract

The study examines a water conflict in Thuringia, Germany, where changes in dam management intensified droughts and triggered a multidimensional conflict. First insights reveal a trend toward depoliticization and limited policital deliveration.

Presentation long abstract

Although water in Germany has long been perceived as an abundant and free resource, reports of shortages and emerging conflicts are becoming increasingly significant. In contrast to the rich body of political-ecological research on water struggles in the Global South, the German case has received far less scholarly attention. The aim of the poster is to bring existing research in political ecology into dialogue with the conflicts now unfolding within highly bureaucratized contexts of the Global North in order to broaden and refine the conceptual tools of the field. This poster therefore presents insights into a water conflict in Thuringia, Germany, where recent changes in dam management have amplified river droughts and triggered disputes over distributive justice, water rights, and the legitimacy of administrative decisions.

The case demonstrates how normative debates over water allocation were strategically reframed as disputes over scientific and technical facts – an act of depoliticization that obscured underlying inequalities and limited democratic deliberation. By examining how bureaucratic procedures, and infrastructural path-dependencies shape socio-ecological conflicts, the study highlights dimensions of environmental governance.

The poster aims to place conflicts in Germany alongside those in the Global South, enabling mutual theoretical enrichment. The case illustrates how political ecology’s core questions travel and transform in different institutional settings. At the same time, studying conflicts in highly regulated contexts can sharpen political ecology’s understanding of administration, technocracy, and the subtle mechanisms through which inequality is (re)produced.

The poster thus invites a comparative conversation on resource governance across diverse socio-ecological contexts.

Presentation short abstract

Research with key stakeholders reveals how to overcome biomedical dominance, lack of green space, and a shortage of therapists to integrate Nature-Based Therapies (NBTs) into Peru's health system. The strategy: local evidence, multi-sector alliances and revisiting indigenous knowledge.

Presentation long abstract

What if forests and gardens could be part of the medical prescription in Peru? This study explores a radically simple idea: bringing nature into the healthcare system. By listening to doctors, policymakers, therapists, and indigenous leaders, we map the path for Nature-Based Therapies (NBTs) to move from the fringes to a real option for Peruvians. We found a fascinating tension between traditional biomedicine (focused on pills) and ancient indigenous knowledge that already understands nature's healing power.

The hurdles are significant: a lack of accessible green spaces, few trained therapists, and laws that don't recognize these practices. But the opportunities are greater: a culture deeply connected to the land, growing climate awareness, and policies starting to value intercultural approaches.

The solution isn't a single fix, but a collaborative revolution: generating local evidence, building alliances between universities and communities, and starting from the ground up—turning hospital gardens into the first laboratories of natural healing. This is more than a health project; it's a step towards a fairer system where the well-being of people and the planet go hand in hand.

Presentation short abstract

Based on my ongoing PhD project, this poster-presentation explores how people living in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods in Gothenburg, Sweden, conceptualize and experience climate (in)justice. It therein seeks to contribute to diversifying critical debates on urban climate justice.

Presentation long abstract

As cities struggle with growing inequalities and implementing climate action locally, there is growing scholarly interest in urban climate justice. Researchers and activists have stressed that climate change impacts and related policy measures will hit certain groups in cities more than others and might reinforce existing inequities. Meanwhile, both planning and knowledge production have been dominated by scientific and technocratic ‘experts’, triggering calls to engage particularly with marginalized and vulnerable groups. Addressing this need from a critical feminist perspective, my ongoing PhD project aims to gain better understanding of how people living in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods in Gothenburg, Sweden, conceptualize and experience climate (in)justice. Through narrative interviews with individuals, and group discussions, I collaboratively explore participants’ ‘senses of justice’ regarding climate change in the city. After initial inductive analysis, my presentation will inquire how these emic understandings relate to dominant Western-philosophical thought on climate justice, and local climate governance. Considering the sometimes-evasive meaning of ‘recognition’ justice and potential risks of paternalistic interpretations, it seems particularly relevant to examine what affected populations themselves demand concerning political and cultural recognition to address underlying structural inequalities. I will further discuss how disadvantaged groups relate to questions of representation both within and beyond participatory governance, possibly touching upon tensions between procedural justice and the ‘tyranny of participation’. By centering hitherto neglected voices in epistemic processes, my work contributes to diversifying critical debates on urban climate justice, as I embrace a political ecological praxis seeking to coproduce knowledge with disadvantaged groups, and for better policy-making.

Presentation short abstract

The poster reflects on the political stance of researchers, particularly how frameworks, methods, and participant choices shape the stories we tell about people–nature relationships. It draws on work in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, to support more inclusive conservation.

Presentation long abstract

Amid accelerating biodiversity loss and declining human well-being, people relate to nature in highly diverse ways. Evidence-based narratives that guide conservation policy and practice depend on researchers recognizing how nature contributes to human well-being and the plural values people ascribe to it. Yet, the stories we as researchers tell about people–nature relationships are conditioned by the methodological choices that structure our work. Decisions about how we study these relationships—the dimensions and frameworks we select, the methods we use for data collection and analysis, and the participants we include or exclude—shape what becomes visible, whose perspectives are centred, and which forms of knowledge remain obscured.

Drawing on a study with four social actor groups in the social–ecological system of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, it reflects on how research design can broaden or narrow understandings of the spectrum of people–nature relationships. Through this reflection, the poster highlights risks such as the omission of important knowledge, the reproduction of stereotypes, and the unintentional reinforcement of dominant conservation narratives.

Methodological choices do not necessarily lead to “wrong” stories, but they risk generating incomplete ones. By foregrounding the political nature of research choices, the poster encourages conservation researchers to more deliberately consider how their frameworks, methods, and sampling decisions influence the narratives that inform policy and practice. In doing so, it aims to support more inclusive and place-based conservation approaches that better reflect the plurality of people–nature relationships both between and within social actor groups.

Presentation short abstract

In the wake of shellfish population collapse, landscapes and legal geographies shape approaches to restoration in two U.S. estuaries. I argue that their seemingly opposite approaches and outcomes break down binaries in resistance and power and share the result of resource enclosure.

Presentation long abstract

How do communities restore ecosystems in the aftermath of collapse? How do their landscapes and legal geographies shape restoration goal setting and approaches, and how does the act of restoration and its physical outcomes reciprocally shape legalities and landscapes? These questions are continuously playing out in estuaries across the United States. Wild oyster populations have declined between 85% to 99% worldwide (Beck et al. 2011), and have almost disappeared from both the Peconic estuary of New York state and Elkhorn Slough, California’s second largest estuary. In the U.S., marine property laws vary by state and shape how communities respond to collapse. I apply de Certeau’s framework of strategies and tactics in everyday life to interrogate who stakeholders are in oyster and ecosystem restoration and how they identify themselves to argue that binary conceptualizations of power break down in the aftermath of collapse. Similarly, I juxtapose the property and access frameworks in the Peconic estuary and Elkhorn Slough to argue that binary understandings of seemingly opposite restoration outcomes, such as a marine protected area in Elkhorn Slough, or transition to commercial marine farming on the Peconic, obscure a shared conceptualization of oysters as forms of natural infrastructure and animal laborers within their otherwise opposing marine property frameworks. Ultimately, I argue that ecosystem restoration may seem to take opposing forms, but that those seemingly contradictory legal structures are both forms of enclosure and resource dispossession, whether by privatizing marine space for mariculture, or through the establishment of marine protected areas.

Presentation short abstract

This study uses LC-MS to examine how intensive versus organic, diverse agroforestry practices in Puerto Rico shape the secondary metabolites of Coffea arabica, and how these chemical shifts affect agroecosystem resilience and economic sovereignty.

Presentation long abstract

Plant secondary metabolites (PSMs) provide a unique and underutilized lens for understanding agroecological systems and their socioeconomic and environmental outcomes. Hegemonic evaluation of agricultural systems normatively prioritizes metrics such as yield above all else; however, PSMs are fundamental to crop resilience and overall ecosystem function. This is particularly important in coffee production, where more than 70% of the global supply comes from smallholder farmers. Cultivation strategies that affect the complex chemistry underpinning healthy agroecosystems must therefore be assessed to identify practices that support economic sovereignty. In Puerto Rico, where land and labor are limited, and smallholders face strong pressure to industrialize, this issue is especially relevant. Although coffee has traditionally been cultivated in diverse, shaded agroforestry systems, growers are increasingly encouraged to adopt sun-grown monocultures with intensive synthetic agrochemical use to boost short-term yields. Yet canopy cover and agrochemical inputs have been shown to significantly affect PSM expression, with species-specific effects that cascade across trophic levels, and carry important implications for ecosystem health and farm profitability. To investigate these dynamics, we collected leaf tissue samples from sun and shade plots on both conventional and organic coffee farms in Puerto Rico. Samples included undamaged leaves, leaves damaged by Coffee Leaf Miner (Leucoptera coffeella), and leaves subjected to artificial wounding. We analyzed the quantity and diversity of secondary metabolites using targeted and untargeted LC-MS. We also gathered semi-quantitative data on chewing herbivore damage, Coffee Leaf Miner incidence (mines), Coffee Rust disease (Hemileia vastatrix), and other fungal diseases to support our analysis.

Presentation short abstract

Disentangling U.S. Academic Environmental Research from Corporate and Colonial Interests and Opportunities for Graduate Labor Intervention

Presentation long abstract

Environmental science and engineering research (ESER) at academic institutions in the United States often claim to provide technological and scientific solutions to ongoing climate, water, and energy issues, both nationally and abroad. However, environmental research is limited in its ability to contribute to a just transition. The University is welded to and upholds colonial and capitalist structures, and therefore lacks the infrastructure to disrupt environmental injustice and oppose environmental degradation. To increase the utility of ESER in the movement for a just transition, we must disentangle the research from the University’s oppressive frameworks. One such example is disassociating research from the profits of war (ex: funding for the US Department of Defense for Drinking water research). I aim to analyze the current system of ESER, and propose reforms such as funding-schemes, research priorities, and research methods, to reorient ESER toward a collaborative and anti-colonial model.

Graduate labor movements have a long history of disrupting relationships of universities to war and fossil fuels through calls for divestment. Graduate labor powers environmental research, and there may be opportunities for graduate labor to push for further reconstruction (or deconstruction) of the University. I will evaluate graduate labor campaigns and identify the opportunities graduate labor may have to intervene in ESER through archival research, interviews with graduate labor organizers and environmental researchers, and critical reflections on my personal experience. Environmental graduate researchers at US universities are uniquely situated to transform ESER into a form useful for a just transition.

Presentation short abstract

Transboundary olive mill wastewater pollution persists in Wadi Zomer, Palestine, not due to technical limits but conflicting knowledge, power asymmetries and fragmented Hydro-Social Territories. The research shows that without a shared understanding of the problem, no lasting solutions occur.

Presentation long abstract

Decades of economic restrictions have marked the wastewater sector in the West Bank with insufficient treatment capacities and unsafe disposal practices. Transboundary pollution from illegally dumped, untreated olive mill wastewater (OMWW) in the Wadi Zomer area constitutes a persistent socio-ecological problem. High in acidic compounds, OMWW threatens groundwater and ecosystems – including downstream Alexander River, beyond Israel’s separation fence. Despite extensive donor-driven interventions, no long-term solution has been implemented, resulting in environmental degradation, financial penalties charged to the Palestinian Authority, and growing tensions among actors engaging with OMWW across a fragmented political landscape.

To understand why the problem endures, this research applies the framework of Hydro-Social Territories (HST) and socio-technical methodology. Through 42 qualitative interviews, field observations and critical mapping, the study analyses how key actors construct different imaginaries around OMWW. Disentangled into social, natural and technical spheres, these imaginaries define what actors perceive as problematic, what knowledge/truths they consider valid, and which boundaries (institutional, geopolitical, technical) shape their capacity to act.

Results show that OMWW management is less constrained by technology than by conflicting knowledge regimes, unclear responsibilities, asymmetrical power and dominant narratives that marginalize certain actors. These fragmented HSTs hinder local collaboration and obscure crucial elements of sustainable solutions.

Findings highlight that policy and scientific interventions must recognize competing territorial imaginaries and foster inclusive knowledge production. Without a shared understanding of the problem, long-term solutions cannot be found. Acknowledging actors’ diverse HST is therefore essential for socially legitimate and environmentally effective management of transboundary OMWW in Wadi Zomer.

Presentation short abstract

Garden Me Tender speculates on a legal institute as a performative act through which spontaneous plants could claim land. In a space co-constituted by plants, urban ruins, and environmental sensors, their “passive” persistence is documented through AI-generated images based on collected data.

Presentation long abstract

Garden Me Tender is a speculative investigation into how land ownership might be reimagined through the performative act of usucaption—a legal institute in which continuous possession over time constitutes the acquisition of property. The project focuses on marginal, residual terrains co-inhabited by spontaneous vegetation, post-industrial ruins, and environmental sensing technologies, exploring the forms of non-human agency present.

Environmental data—light, humidity, temperature—collected in specific locations are captured by sensors embedded in the landscape and translated into numerical scales derived from Ellenberg ecological indicators. These values are then used as prompts for an AI model (Stable Diffusion) retrained on the Czech floristic and vegetation database Pladias.cz. The resulting images depict fictional plant forms that could grow under specific conditions, thus documenting, through the performative act of the sensor, the “passive” act of persistence.

By intertwining legal frameworks, technological mediation, and artistic practice, Garden Me Tender reframes questions of property beyond anthropocentric constructs. In this poster version, the focus is on presenting the network of actors within this more-than-human ecosystem.

Presentation short abstract

Explores how rural youth in Maranhão navigate declining babaçu-based livelihoods. Using feminist, decolonial, and agrarian political ecology, it examines aspirations, constraints, and the future of agroecological transitions across Indigenous and Quilombola territories.

Presentation long abstract

Babaçu-based livelihoods in Maranhão embody long-standing agroecological practices grounded in women’s knowledge, care, and political praxis. Yet these practices face a profound continuity crisis: most young people do not engage in babaçu extraction, even in communities where it remains culturally significant. While existing studies acknowledge generational decline, little is known about how rural youth understand and navigate these transformations.

This research examines youth perspectives on the future of babaçu livelihoods across an Indigenous territory and adjacent Quilombola communities in a region marked by land conflict, agribusiness expansion, and everyday insecurity. Drawing on engaged ethnography, informal conversations, document analysis, and ongoing semi-structured interviews, the study investigates how aspirations, gendered expectations, mobility, and territorial identity shape youth decisions to stay, leave, or reconfigure their relationship with babaçu. A multi-sited, feminist, decolonial, and agrarian political ecology approach illuminates how structural pressures, intergenerational tensions, and historical inequalities intersect with young people’s lived experiences.

By centering youth voices, the study offers new insights into the socio-political conditions that enable or hinder agroecological transformations. The findings highlight not only the constraints youth face but also their visions for dignified, meaningful rural futures. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for designing policies and community initiatives that support intergenerational continuity and expand pathways for territorial agroecology in Maranhão.

Presentation short abstract

From Instrumental Rationality to Reflective Governance: Participatory Dilemmas in the Energy Transition

Presentation long abstract

The poster is based on several previous studies on the narratives about the energy transition in the Basque Country (Garcia et al, 2025) and the limitations of instrument proposed by the regional government for the spatial planning of renewable energies (Urkidi and Gurrutxaga, 2024), as well as on a new research project for the participatory design of a supra-municipal energy plan (Campos, 2025). The energy transition in the Basque Country is marked by conflicting narratives about the essence, scale, socio-economic framework, and governance of the transition. In this context and amid several conflicts over large-scale renewable energy installations, the Basque Government proposed a spatial planning instrument with serious participatory deficiencies, following an instrumental rationale that did not allow for the transformation of the proposal or for a reflective governance. Given these circumstances, local energy plans seem to offer an opportunity to deepen energy democracy. However, the different approaches to the design of the participatory process (citizen councils, future workshops, participatory integrated assessment, etc.) entail different decision-making capacities, exclusions, and deliberative depth. This poster seeks to reflect on the complexity of public participation in energy planning in conflict scenarios.

Presentation short abstract

This thesis explores energy poverty governance in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, through a feminist political ecology and commoning perspective. It argues that intersectional and commoning approaches hold the potential to move towards socio-ecologically just energy futures.

Presentation long abstract

Energy poverty has gained increasing attention across research and practice over the past decade but remains a persistent issue in countries of the global North. It is often addressed in depoliticised, individualised ways, which obscure the structural inequalities that underpin it. While numerous scholars have highlighted the power asymmetries embedded in energy systems and their transitions toward low-carbon futures, limited attention has been paid to the governance of energy poverty from a critical, intersectional perspective. This thesis aims to fill this gap by analysing at the governance of energy poverty in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, from a feminist political ecology and commoning perspective. The objectives of this research practice are twofold. First, I reveal how energy poverty is dominantly governed through the operation of gendered, classed and racialised relations of power that emerge in logics, infrastructural and institutional configurations and access to governance measures addressing energy poverty. I highlight the lived experiences of energy poverty unfolding under dominant governance arrangements. Second, I shed light on how activists of the campaign RWE & CO. enteignen approach energy poverty through commoning practices. I argue that commoning approaches to energy poverty hold the potential to move towards more socio-ecologically just energy futures. The research at hand shows that energy poverty governance must be politicised and energy poverty addressed collectively to avoid the reproduction of the very inequalities that governance measures ought to address.