HELSUS Global South Encounters

Introduction for the webinar (pdf)

When: 28.04.2023, 9:15-10:15 (Helsinki time, UTC +2) / 9:15-10:15 (Kyiv, UTC +2)

Abstract:

In this talk, Olena Dronova will reflect on contemporary Ukrainian scholarly worlds in transition: from place and landscape norms and stereotypes to worlds of “Ad Hoc” conflict geographies everywhere.

A year of life in conditions of rocket attacks and air raids, in the cold and without electricity with a heavy heart for Ukrainian soldiers at the front and our children. It was a year that Ukrainians received as a result of the direct invasion of russia on February 24, 2022. It provided geographers the opportunity to clearly understand that the norms and standards of quiet living are "one world" we can study, but geographers also need to study "abnormal worlds", worlds such as wars, natural disasters, economic collapses and pandemics like COVID-19. Our “normal world” has changed significantly, and today’s “abnormalities” are becoming the norm for each of us.

Geographic themes like border and boundaries, communities, networks, quality of life, environmental change, and geopolitics are acceptable to study in any “normal” world or one undergoing major change as a result of conflict. This talk discusses the Kyiv research Comparing residents’ perceptions of quality of life in three Kyiv neighbourhoods https://urbaniizziv.uirs.si/Portals/urbaniizziv/Clanki/2022/urbani-izziv-en-2022-33-02-04.pdf “as a normal world” before the invasion as well as the current war in Ukraine as a result of russian aggression. It is a strange combination but we all currently live in a very strange world. So, the presentation combines a standard scholarly Inquiry and then examines the current situation and what scholars might study in detail. The presentation addresses these “two sides:” of looking at events and the worlds of Ukrainians.

Bio:

Dr Olena Dronova is an Associate Professor of Economic and Social Geography Department of Geographical Faculty of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine. Simultaneously, she works as a Senior Researcher of the Department of Sustainable Development and Environmental Assessment in the Institute of Geography of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine on the part-time basis. She is a member of the editorial board of the Environmental Hazards: Human and Policy Dimensions, an international journal (Taylor and Francis), a member of the Geographical Society of Ukraine, and a member of the NGO All-Ukrainian Ecological League. Her research interests include sustainable development, environmental problems and protection, urban geography and urban ecology as well as new urbanism and approaches constructing cities that are friendly for people. She is author and co-author of over then 80 scientific publications, including 13 monographs and 4 handbooks.

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June 2023: Thuli Mphambukeli / The political economy of energy provisioning and profiteering nexus in South Africa: The case of Emalahleni – the coal city / Witbank, South Africa

Introduction to the webinar (pdf)

When: 09.06.2023, 11:00-12:00 (Helsinki, UTC +3) / 10:00-11:00 AM (Johannesburg, UTC +2)

Abstract:

The Emalahleni Local Municipality, famously known as Witbank, the Coal City, is one of the largest coal producers and exporters of coal in the world and South Africa’s main energy-producing area. However, despite the Municipality being the custodian of the natural environment, its control over mining activities is constrained by many factors, including coal swapping. As inequality remains inevitable in our modern society between people with higher socioeconomic status and people living below the poverty line who struggle to make ends meet. This paper argues that, in terms of load shedding and climate change, the exchange of good coal for bad coal through illegal coal yards and the usage of this coal for energy production has injected more woes than wealth, vis-à-vis its negative impact on the lives of the local communities, particularly the people who live in poverty, of whom the majority are black Africans. Indeed, the colour of poverty in South Africa, and possibly elsewhere, are African black people. This paper seeks to explore the political economy of the energy provisioning and profiteering nexus in Emalahleni, the Coal City in South Africa. It draws its theoretical framing from an economic concept known as the “tragedy of the commons”, accumulation by dispossession and infrastructural violence. Home to over a hundred coal mines, Emalahleni continues to experience infrastructural violence and accumulation by dispossession where energy provisioning and profiteering are at war with each other. As rich companies profiteer, on the one hand, the poor local communities bear the brunt because residents must fight for their health as coal mining takes its toll on people’s health and livelihoods. On the other hand, the government is overwhelmed with the scale and demands of energy provisioning in South Africa and elsewhere. A systematic literature review incorporating case studies was employed as a methodology. The study was motivated by the fact that the country is experiencing excessive load shedding and environmental degradation, yet other people are benefiting from the crises. The study highlights the gap and a missing link in the provision of energy and health issues associated with coal mining. It paves the way for sustainable use of resources and gives recommendations on both the energy and health policy in South Africa.

Bio:

Thulisile Ncamsile Mphambukeli is a National Research Foundation (NRF)-rated international scholar and currently a Head of Department and Associate Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She obtained the degree of Bachelor of Community and Development Studies, the degree Master of Town and Regional Planning at The University of KwaZulu-Natal, a degree of bachelor's in theology at Faith Bible College, and a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from UFS. She was a Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences Italy (hosted at the University of Konstanz, Germany); an Alumni of the Brown International Advanced Research Institute, Brown University, USA; an Alumni of the Public Affairs Research Institute, The University of Witwatersrand as well as the University of the Free State Rector’s Prestige Scholar.

She is a recipient of many research grants and awards such as the BRICS Think Tank Academic Forum Grant, NRF Knowledge Interchange and Collaboration (KIC) Individual Travel Grant, South Africa, the Herrenhausen Conference Travel Grant, Hanover, Germany, BRICS Think Tank Academic Forum Seed Funding, South Africa and African Peacebuilding Network (APN) Individual Research Grantee, 2018. The African Pathways Programme (APP)/BRICS Teaching and Research Mobility Grantee. She is a member of the South African BRICS Think Tank.

She has published extensively in local and international journals. In May 2019, she was invited by the Perry World House and the Centre for the Studies of Ethnicity, Race, and Immigration (CSERI) at the University of Pennsylvania to participate in the Precarious Statuses of Migrants workshop. She also presented her recent paper at the Urban Inequalities: Ethnographic Insights, in Corinth, Greece in June 2019. In August 2019, she co-edited a Special Issue in the African Renaissance Journal. She is a Review Editor for Governance and Cities for the Frontiers in Sustainable Cities Journal and Co-editor of the Journal of BRICS Studies. She serves on various editorial boards both in South Africa and Internationally.

Her research interests include social justice in planning, climate change and agriculture; coloniality and informality; human security and humanitarian response; integrated transport planning and spatialisation of blackness; urban anthropology. She recently published on urban insecurity and social justice in post-colonies, financing regenerative agricultural practices, planning for sustainable quality infrastructure, applied systems analysis and apartheid. Her recent publications include Out of the Regime Complex: Practical Options for Enhancing Cooperation in Climate Change and New Frontiers in BRICS; an Editorial: Urban (in) Security and Social Justice in Post-colonies; and Planning for Effective and Sustainable Water Access and Provision in QwaQwa Through the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

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July 2023: Michael Klare / Resource Conflict in a Time of Great Power Competition

When: 24.07.2023, 18:00-19:00 (Helsinki, UTC +3)/ 11:00-12:00 (New York, UTC -4)

Abstract:

For most of the industrial era, conflict over vital resources, especially energy, water, and critical minerals, has been driven by military need (e.g., petroleum for ships and planes, uranium for bombs) or industrial need (e.g., energy and minerals for manufacturing). These needs are what sparked recurring interventions by the Western powers in the Persian Gulf region. While these motives for resource conflict persist, another key motive has arisen: the competitive drive among the major powers, notably China, Russia and the US, to dominate the future geopolitical chessboard by achieving superiority in the dominant technologies of the future, notably AI, computing, and green energy. This in turn, requires control over the essential resource components of green technologies- especially lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements. Like oil, uranium, and many other minerals, these substances are not widely distributed on the planet but are concentrated in a few, often remote or conflict-prone areas. Hence, we are witnessing a geopolitical struggle over these newly critical materials.

Bio:

Michael Klare, Five College professor emeritus of peace and world security studies, holds a B.A. and M.A. from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of the Union Institute. He has written widely on U.S. military policy, international peace and security affairs, the global arms trade, and global resource politics.

His books include American Arms Supermarket (1984), Low-Intensity Warfare (1988), Peace and World Security Studies: A Curriculum Guide (Fifth Edition, 1989; Sixth Edition, 1994), World Security: Challenges for a New Century (First Edition, 1991; Second Edition, 1994; Third Edition, 1998), Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws (1995), Light Weapons and Civil Conflict (1999), Resource Wars (2001), Blood and Oil (2004), and The Race for What's Left (2012). His articles have appeared in many journals, including Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Current History, Foreign Affairs, Harper's, The Nation, Scientific American, and Technology Review.

Klare serves on the board of the Arms Control Association and advises other organizations in the field.

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For enquiries contact Franklin Obeng-Odoom, Associate Professor of Sustainability Science with Global Development Studies and the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, both at the University of Helsinki in Finland. He can be contacted via franklin.obeng-odoom@helsinki.fi.

September 2023: D. A. A. Samsura / Balikpapan: Urban planning and development in anticipation of the post-oil industry era and as a buffer zone for the new Capital City of Indonesia

When: 13.09.2023, 17:00-18:00 (Helsinki, UTC +3)/ 22:00-23:00 (Balikpapan, UTC +8)/ 16:00-17:00 (Nijmegen, UTC +2)

Abstract:

Balikpapan has grown to become a very important city in the Kalimantan island as well as Indonesia due to its oil industry. However, with the decline in oil production and the global decrease in oil prices, the city has attempted to diversify its industrial and service activity economy. This paper assesses three key factors underlying this transformation: public policies and regulations concerning urban areas and infrastructure development within the Indonesian planning and land management system, as well as knowledge creation and utilisation to support the development of the city. Future opportunities and challenges the city may face are also discussed including the possible impact of the development of the new Indonesian Capital City which will be located close to the city and makes Balikpapan an important buffer zone for the new Capital City.

Bio:

Ary Samsura is an assistant professor at the Department of Geography, Planning, and Environment - Institute for Management Research of the Radboud University, the Netherlands. He is an expert in game-theoretical modelling and experimental approach to spatial planning. His research is focused on decision-making in the spatial planning process that involved different stakeholders with conflicting interests, objectives, and positions both from the public and private sectors. He is also interested in issues related to urban planning, land management, local climate mitigation and adaptation, sustainable development management, and collaborative planning. Most of his works have a global orientation, with ongoing research in Indonesia, Vietnam, China and European countries. He also supervises PhD candidates from China, Indonesia, and Vietnam on research related to collaborative issues especially related to sustainable urban development.

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Chaitawat Boonjubun is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. His research interests focus on cities, development, migration, and social and public policy in connection with land, housing, and poverty.

October 2023: Arbella Bet-Shlimon / City of Black Gold: Oil, Ethnicity, and the Making of Modern Kirkuk

When: 02.10.2023, 16:00-17:00 (Helsinki, UTC +3)/ 16:00-17:00 (Kirkuk, UTC +3)/ 9:00-10:00 (Washington, UTC -7)

Abstract:

Kirkuk is Iraq’s most multilingual city, for millennia home to a diverse population. It was also where, in 1927, a foreign company first struck oil in Iraq. Kirkuk soon became the heart of Iraq’s booming petroleum industry. Over the decades that followed, numerous forces shaped the identities of Kirkuk’s citizens, forming the foundation of an ethnic conflict. In this lecture, I detail how the ethnicities of Kurds, Turkmens, and Arabs in Kirkuk were formed throughout a century of nation building under colonialism, urban development, and political mobilization. Ultimately, I argue that contentious politics in disputed areas are not primordial traits of those regions, but are a modern phenomenon tightly bound to the society and economics of urban life.

Bio: Arbella Bet-Shlimon* is associate professor of history at the University of Washington (Seattle, WA, USA). In her research and teaching, she focuses on twentieth-century Iraq and the Persian Gulf region, as well as Middle Eastern urban history. She is the author of City of Black Gold: Oil, Ethnicity, and the Making of Modern Kirkuk (Stanford University Press, 2019).
* pronounced bet-SHLEE-mun

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October 2023: Stefan Peters / Opportunities and Challenges of the Just Energy Transition for Latin America

When: 31.10.2023, 15:00-16:00 (Helsinki, UTC +3)/ 14:00-15:00 (Berlin, UTC +2)/ 09:00-10:00 (Buenos Aires, UTC -3)

Abstract:

Latin America is historically a natural resource-dependent region. This includes the extraction and export of fossil fuels, minerals and cash crops. However, in recent times, the region has been considered a strategic partner for the energy transition in the global north. This is both due to its potential for renewable energy (wind, solar) for generating green hydrogen but also because of its abundance in critical minerals for the energy transition (copper, lithium, cobalt, rare earths etc.). Focussing on Argentina and Colombia, the talk will reflect on the opportunities and challenges of the energy transition for Latin America. It will especially highlight the risks of a reloaded (green) extractivism and discuss alternatives towards a just energy transformation.

Bio: Stefan Peters, is professor for Peace Studies at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen (Germany) and Director of the Colombian-German Peace Institute/Instituto Colombo-Alemán para la Paz (CAPAZ) in Bogotá. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Kassel University and worked extensively on Natural-Resource Based Development Models, Rentier Theory, Social Inequalities and Socio-Environmental Conflicts.

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Chair of Event: Roberto Ariel Abeldano Zuniga

December 2023: Jim Krane / Energy Kingdoms: Oil and Political Survival in the Persian Gulf

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/energy-kingdoms/9780231179300

When: 13.12.2023, 18:00-19:00 (Helsinki, UTC +3)/ 10:00-11:00 (Houston, UTC -6)/ 20:00-21:00 (Dubai, UTC +4)

Abstract:

After the discovery of oil in the 1930s, the Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Bahrain—went from being among the world’s poorest and most isolated places to some of its most ostentatiously wealthy. To maintain support, the ruling sheikhs provide their subjects with boundless cheap energy, unwittingly leading to some of the highest consumption rates on earth. Today, as summertime temperatures set new records, the Gulf’s rulers find themselves caught in a dilemma: can they curb their profligacy without jeopardizing the survival of some of the world’s last absolute monarchies?

In his talk, Jim Krane takes listeners inside these monarchies to consider their conundrum. He traces the history of the Gulf states’ energy use and policies, looking in particular at how energy subsidies have distorted demand. Oil exports are the lifeblood of their political-economic systems—and the basis of their strategic importance—but domestic consumption has begun eating into exports while climate change threatens to render their desert region uninhabitable. At risk are the sheikhdoms’ way of life, their relations with their Western protectors, and their political stability in a chaotic region. Backed by rich fieldwork and deep knowledge of the region, Krane expertly lays out the hard choices that Gulf leaders face to keep their states viable.

Bio:
Jim Krane is the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. He holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University and is the author of City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism (2009). A former journalist, he was a correspondent for the Associated Press and has written for publications including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times.

For more information, see

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The theme for the 2022 Global South Encounters was Ecological Imperialism.

In 2022, the HELSUS Global South Encounters (GSEs), a series of webinars intended to sharpen critical research in sustainability science, tried to address questions about ecological imperialism. Recognising the complexities and peculiarities of the Global South, these seminars engaged mainstream sustainability science in order to transcend it, among others by decolonising nature, economy, society and methodologies. The encounters also provided a space to meet authors of major books on sustainability in the Global South. The speakers for the 2022 GSEs on Ecological Imperialism were as diverse as the case they seek to make.

Colonial extraction and unbearable Climate impacts in Africa

When: Monday 28th of March at 10-11 UTC +3

Abstract:

The business of oil extraction in Africa has been operated as a mix of corporate greed and state backed repression. There has been no free, prior, and informed consent of the people before extractive activities are commenced and there is none when the corporations wish to divest. These relations of production have remained largely the same from pre-colonial to colonial and present neo-colonial times [1]. Efforts to placate and assuage the massive harms inflicted on the Niger Delta has been carried out through various placebos including oil company driven Memoranda of Understanding with communities, and various government interventions through agencies such as Niger Delta Development Board (NDDB) established in 1961, the Niger Delta Basin and Rural Development Authority (NDBRDA) established in 1976, the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) established in 1992, the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) in 1995, Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) established in 2000 and the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs created in 2008 [2]. These bandages have only sought to cover up festering wounds, without dealing with the fundamental ailments that over six decades of disastrous exploitation has wrought. And they have mostly failed. With over 1,481 wells, 275 flow stations, over 7,000 kilometres length of oil/gas pipelines and over 120 gas flare furnaces, the Niger Delta is an ecological bomb and one of the most polluted places in the world. Nnimmo Bassey called on the people of the region to rise and demand ecological justice. While the Niger Delta is a fitting metaphor for ecocide, extractive activities in other countries including gold and oil in Ghana; gas in Mozambique; coal, gold, and other minerals in South Africa; crude oil in South Sudan, and in Angola all follow the same pattern. To cap these, the exploited and vulnerable communities in these countries are exposed to climate change impacts which bring in insecurity and lock in. inequalities.

1 Nnimmo Bassey (March 2022). Oil, Rot and Divestment. https://nnimmobassey.africa/2022/03/12/oil-rot-and-divestment/

2 Olusegun Adeyeri (June 2012). Nigerian State and the management of oil minority conflicts in the Niger Delta: A retrospective view. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265999605_Nigerian_State_and_the_management_of_oil_minority_conflicts_in_the_Niger_Delta_A_retrospective_view

Bio:

Nnimmo Bassey is an architect and director of the ecological think-tank, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) based in Nigeria and member of the steering committee of Oilwatch International – a network resisting the expansion of fossil fuels extraction in the Global South. He chaired of Friends of the Earth International (2008-2012). He was a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award also known as the “Alternative Noble Prize.” In 2012 he received the Rafto Human Rights Award. He also received an honorary doctorate from the University of York, UK, in 2019.

Bassey’s books include To Cook a Continent - Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa and Oil Politics – Echoes of Ecological War.

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Coal, Ecological Imperialism, and Climate Justice Movements in central India: Insights for global activism

When: Friday 29th April at 10-11 UTC +3

Abstract:

In the context of climate change and measures to reduce carbon emissions, the dominant global framing of ecologically and economically unequal exchange has turned on the dichotomy between historically responsible for carbon emissions – the global North – versus rapidly growing economies historically deprived by colonisation and now asserting a fair share of atmospheric carbon space – the global South. In the case of India that typifies this Southern context, this carbon assertion underpins a nationalistic and moralistic conceptualisation of climate justice articulation, towards national commitments for emissions under the UN convention framework. India’s international position of ecological and economic justice is contradicted by intra-country injustices against intersectionally marginalised groups through postcolonial development. Activist-scholars conceptualise ecological injustice for communities as the struggle for access to a shrinking pool of natural resources by nature-dependent subsistence communities.

This talk discusses the paradox of unequal ecological exchange in the Global South through the case of disenfranchisement of Indigenous Adivasi communities in central India for industrialisation, even as India frames justice as a right to develop in international politics. Indigenous Adivasi communities have faced the brunt of post independence development; although they represent only 8% of the population, they constituted 40% of project affected and land-displaced populations from large scale industrial projects. Sidelining of Adivasi rights and aspirations for cultural economies have been ongoing features in the socio-political landscape of India’s industrial development. Thickly forested central India, home to the highest concentration of forest livelihoods dependent Adivasi Indigenous people, has been a centrepiece in coal production that has fuelled development. Changes to the political economy since the 2000s through neoliberalisation concentrated power and capital in the hands of industrial and political elites; deepening existing patterns of unequal ecological exchange between development-disenfranchised communities and sections of society who benefited from this development. A drastic increase and privatisation in coal production in central India came into direct conflict with India’s intention to redress historic forest dispossession of Adivasis through the Forest Rights Act (2006). The bill of Forest Rights holds the potential to substantially alter living conditions of forest-dependent communities but its potential has been undermined by poor implementation and violations.

Resistances by communities in central India against coal mining, for sovereignty, rights and alternative ecological development, upend the paradigm of postcolonial developmental equity in the global stage without taking away from the historic and continuing need to address Global North-South inequity. Their narratives and politics can help to frame a global justice that asks questions around what constitutes ecological equity across multiple scales – across the local, national and global - both against the context of a persistent North-South divide, exacerbating planetary crisis, and addressing long-term ecological imperialism.

Bio:

Dr. Ruchira Talukdar’s research focuses on the comparative aspects of environmental and climate justice activism between the global South and the global North. She has written extensively on comparing coal conflicts and protest movements in India and Australia, with an emphasis on the intersections between grassroots and Indigenous people’s movements and mainstream environmental activism. She has worked within the environment movement in India in Greenpeace, and Australia in Greenpeace, Australian Conservation Foundation, and Friends of the Earth Australia, for a decade and a half. She has co-founded Sapna South Asian Climate Solidarity, an Australia-based South Asian environmental network, to link South Asian migrant experiences of environment and climate change in Australia and South Asia, and mentor the next generation of South Asian climate activists in Australia. She regularly writes for publications in India and Australia on environmental and Indigenous movements and resistance.

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Climate Racism

When: Monday 30th of May at 14-15 UTC +3

Abstract:

Black and Indigenous people in the United States have already begun to disproportionately suffer from the detrimental effects of climate change. Understanding this phenomenon and how to address these disproportionate climate vulnerabilities can most potently be done through the lenses of stratification economics. It helps to appreciate the persistent ‘racial wealth gap’ not only as a reflection of the US’s racist history, especially the legacies and lasting effects of slavery and settler-colonialism, but also a projection of how Black people become particularly susceptible to the climate crises. This presentation discusses an article that offers theoretical outlines to explain and, potentially resolve, ecological imperialism in the United States.

Bio:

Anaïs Goubert has a B.A. in Quantitative Economics with a Mathematics Secondary Field (New College of Florida), formerly with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, USA. Economics PhD program, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Author, Rent Control in New Jersey: Do municipality-specific rent control ordinances keep rent prices low? (2021)

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Ecological Imperialism and Indigenous People

When: Thursday 30.6. at 10-11 UTC +3

Abstract:

Ecological imperialism has created property law and economic systems that function to dispossess Indigenous peoples from their traditional lands, territories and resources. An application of Henry George’s perspectives on economic efficiency and individual liberties distinctively suggest that related exchanges affecting Indigenous traditional areas are potentially inefficient and unjust if they fail to incorporate Indigenous perspectives of traditional wealth and connections to traditional space. In such circumstances, any loss of traditional lands and resources would be potentially economically inefficient as it may be more harmful (and less valuable) to the Indigenous community concerned. Equally, this loss would deny the liberty of members of the community to associate and determine the use of their lands and resources in accordance with their own priorities.

To an extent, this view is harmonious with the current international framework on Indigenous peoples’ rights. Accordingly, participatory legal protections that integrate: (i) Georgist conceptions of economic efficiency and individual liberties; and (ii) international Indigenous rights standards of free, prior and informed consent and consultation are suggested to alleviate unjust exchanges of Indigenous traditional areas, and in tandem, the broader contemporary effects of ecological imperialism. Despite the challenges in attaining the universal acceptance and implementation of this proposed alternative, its further investigation is nonetheless potentially beneficial.

Bio:

Joffre Balce is the Secretary of the Association for Good Government, Sydney, Australia and holds an M. Sc. from the University of Asia and the Pacific, Manila, Philippines. He specialises in development economics and cooperative enterprise.

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Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen is Associate professor in Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies at the university of Helsinki. Her research interests include Amazonian long term human-environment relationality, Indigenous politics, mobility, biocultural heritage, Indigenous youth, and research ethics.

Development and Environment

When: Friday 29.7.2022 at 14-15 UTC +3

Abstract:

This paper explores the complex relationships between global ecological crises and ecological imperialism through world-systems analysis. In a hierarchical capitalist world-system, neoliberal globalization has granted global capital seemingly unfettered exploitation of nature across the planet. For the impoverished and marginalized in the Global South, this globalization is experienced as a form of contemporary ecological imperialism where the resources of the Global South are funneled to nation states in the Global North in the form of consumer goods and ‘ecologically unequal exchange,’ while profits are siphoned off by transnational corporations. This ecological imperialism persists, but it is largely overlooked in current debates about environmentalism in the 21st century.

Bio:

Dr. Mariko Frame is Assistant Professor of Economics at Merrimack College, Department of Economics, USA. She is the author of Ecological Imperialism, Development, and the Capitalist-World System: Cases from Africa and Asia (2022). Routledge, London

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Sustainability Transitions in the Southeast Asian Palm Oil Sector

When: 23 August, 11am Helsinki/4pm Kuala Lumpur

Abstract: Palm oil is the most widely used vegetable oil in the world. Indonesia and Malaysia are the world's largest producers of palm oil, and the commodity is viewed as an important engine of growth and modernisation for these countries. However, this crop has been linked to various socio-environmental problems. This talk traces the sustainability transitions in the Southeast Asian palm oil sector, comparing the influence of global (deforestation, human rights) as opposed to localised (regional haze, land grabs) socio-environmental concerns on this trajectory. It argues that market access has been an important determinant of this sector's sustainability transition, clashing with historical narratives of natural resource-based development in the face of ecological imperialism.

Bio:

Dr Helena Varkkey is an Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at the Department of International and Strategic Studies, Universiti Malaya. Her areas of expertise include transboundary haze governance in Southeast Asia and global palm oil politics. Her monograph on “The Haze Problem in Southeast Asia: Palm Oil and Politics” was published by Routledge in 2016.

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Is collective titling enough to protect forests? Evidence from Afro-descendant communities in the Colombian Pacific region

When: 28 October, 4PM Helsinki time

Abstract:

During the mid-1990s, one of the most ambitious land reforms in recent decades took place in Colombia. The reform recognized collective land rights of almost 6 million hectares to Afro-Colombian communities, with the dual goals of improving livelihoods and preserving valuable ecosystems. We estimate the impact of this collective land titling program on forest cover using panel data and a difference-indifference empirical strategy. We find that overall, collective titling significantly reduces deforestation rates, but the effect varies substantially by sub-region. Our qualitative analysis suggests that this might be the result of local community based organization defining the rules for community use of natural resources and the expulsion of private companies dedicated to timber exploitation and oil palm plantations. We conclude that under the adequate conditions, collective titling can lead to forest conservation.

Bio:

María Alejandra Vélez is the Director of the Center for Studies on Security and Drugs (CESED), Associate professor at the Faculty of Economics, Universidad de los Andes, founding member of the Center for the Sustainable Development Goals for Latin America and the Caribbean (CODS) and senior research fellow at EfD initiative. She is an economist from Universidad de los Andes and Ph.D. in Economics of Natural Resources from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She was an Associate Professor in the area of Socio-Environmental Sustainability at the School of Management, Universidad de los Andes (2008-2019), post-doctoral researcher at CRED (Center for Research on Environmental Decisions) at Columbia University, NYC (2006 -2008) and visiting professor at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Duke University, Durham, NC (2013). Her research focuses on governance and institutional design for natural resource management in rural communities of the global south. She is currently studying the design of payment for environmental services programs, the impact of collective property in Afro-Colombian communities in the Pacific Coast of Colombia and the dynamics of expansion of illicit crops in Colombia.

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Equity and Justice in Climate Action

When: 29th of November 4PM Helsinki time

Where: Recording available on Unitube.

Abstract:

Today, many countries and entities have committed to implementing emission reduction targets to meet the global temperature goal outlined in the Paris Agreement. For example, non-state actors, particularly corporations and business have made emission reduction plans under net zero commitments, with a focus being on high emission sectors such as the power, aviation, and steel manufacturing sectors . Countries in both the Global South and the Global North have also made commitments through their long-term low carbon emission development plans.

The past 5 years have seen net zero become a dominant framework for defining global climate action that contributes towards the achievement of the Paris Agreement temperature goal. State and non-state actors have, therefore, been encouraged to set net zero targets, develop transition plans and implement them based on criteria set by sectoral or regional standard setting bodies. These actors are, therefore, encouraged to identify pathways for emission reduction that result in global net zero emissions. In doing so, global stakeholders believe that this will create sufficient critical mass to generate action on emission reductions across sectors and regions that limits runaway global warming and climate change. However, the success of net zero in facilitating global climate action depends on whether (or not) and how its definition and operationalisation integrates equity and justice.

In this talk, Jessica Omukuti will reflect on what equity and justice mean within the context of net zero. She will also highlight how net zero can be made to be more equitable and just by focusing on the need to prioritise those who are most affected by climate change. She will also present several case examples from different contexts, countries and regions to illustrate the absence of equity and justice in net zero, but also potential solutions for the integration of these principles into net zero commitments and their implementation.

Bio:

Dr Jessica Omukuti is a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford on Inclusive Net Zero, working with the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society (InSIS) in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography. Jessica has also been appointed as the Oxford Net Zero Research Fellow at St John’s College, Oxford.

She leads Oxford Net Zero’s engagements with stakeholders in the Global South to outline pathways to inclusive net zero strategies, policies and actions.

Jessica has extensive research and practitioner experience, having led research on climate finance, climate justice and equity climate finance and governance of climate change adaptation. She has also managed development and resilience

programming in the Global South. She has previously worked with international finance institutions such as the Green Climate Fund and international NGOs such as Mercy Corps and CARE International and has developed a regional expertise from work in Sub-Saharan Africa. Jessica has a PhD in climate justice and equity in climate finance from the University of Reading.

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Franklin Obeng-Odoom is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science with Global Development Studies and the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, both at the University of Helsinki in Finland. He can be contacted via franklin.obeng-odoom@helsinki.fi.

Book Discussion: Farming as Financial Asset: Global Finance and the Making of Institutional Landscapes

When: 15th of December 1:00 PM Helsinki time

11:00 PM Ghana / 12:00 PM Germany / 10:00 PM Australia / 11:00 PM Britain / 6:00 AM USA, Massachusetts

For the rest of the world, check your time here.

Where: Recording available on Unitube

At this book discussion, author and Prof. dr. Stefan Ouma (University of Bayreuth) will be presenting his book Farming as Financial Asset: Global Finance and the Making of Institutional Landscapes. After his talk there will be a panel discussion.

Abstract:

Since the global financial crisis, the world has seen a stark rise in financial investment in farming and agricultural production. Indeed, finance has been identified as one of the main causes of the so-called "global land rush". In a world with a growing population that needs to be fed, the financial returns from agriculture are sold as safe bets. The debate that this has prompted has been frequently alarmist, with financiers blamed for rising land prices, corporate enclosures, the dispossession of smallholder farmers and the expansion of large-scale industrial agriculture.

“Farming as Financial Asset” speaks to these concerns via an ethnographic journey through the agri-focused asset management industry. His penetrating analysis of case studies taken from New Zealand and Tanzania allows him to put global finance "in place", bringing into view the flesh-and-blood institutions, globe-spanning social relations, everyday practices and place-based value struggles that are often absent in broad-brushed narratives on the "financialization of agriculture". The book closes with a key question for the Anthropocene: which form of finance for which kind of food future?

About the author: Stefan Ouma is Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Bayreuth. Before that, he worked as Doc and Post-Doc at Goethe University, Frankfurt.
His research interests lie in a theoretically and empirically informed economic geography of globalization and development, drawing primarily on insights from heterodox economics, political ecology, and post- and decolonial work. His overriding research goal is to rematerialize “the economy” in times of seemingly unbounded economic relations and to open it up for political debate regarding the more sustainable and just pathways and forms of economy-making. He as a member of the Editorial Collective of Antipode, a leading critical geography Journal.

Panelists:

Mariko Frame, Merrimack College, USA

Anna Sturman, University of Sydney, Australia

Joseph Awetori Yaro, University of Ghana, Ghana

Chair of Event and Contact for Enquiries

Book Discussion: Coal and Energy in Emalahleni, South Africa: Considering a Just transition

When: Wednesday 15th December at 12.00-13.00

Abstract:

In this talk, Professor Marais will discuss his latest edited book, entitled Coal and Energy in Emalahleni, South Africa: Considering a Just Transition (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) which investigates the complexity that a transition will bring to a place that has historically depended on coal.

Bio:

Dr. Lochner Marais is Professor of Development Studies at the Centre for Development Support at the University of the Free State (UFS). His research interests include housing policy, small cities in towns (mining and renewable towns and cities) and public health focusing on children. In addition to concentrating on each of these themes separately, he focuses on integrating them. Marais has authored, co-authored and compiled more than 200 research reports, including more than 150 refereed articles in peer-reviewed journals or books. He has also co-edited seven books. Over the past ten years, he has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on several international research grants. He has a specific passion for creating and managing interdisciplinary projects.

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Landscape of Displacement: Mega-Plantations in Southeast Asia

When: Wed 8.12.2021 at 13.00-14.00, Helsinki (check the time zone), via Zoom

Speaker:

Professor Noboru Ishikawa, Kyoto University, Japan.

Discussant:

Dr. Helena Binti Muhamad Varkkey, University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Abstract:

One significant feature of the Anthropocene, the geological epoch under discussion, is the repeated transportation of plants from different locations and their subsequent successful cultivation in other locations in the equatorial zone. After 1492, signaling the start of the so-called Columbian Exchange, plant commodities – such as rubber, sugarcane, coffee, and banana harvested and processed by the hands of enslaved and indentured labor – brought enormous fortunes to a global plantocracy and capitalism more generally. Focusing on maritime Southeast Asia as a case in point, I explore the displacement of plants and peoples of the Global South, both massively relocated, uprooted, and mobilized for mega-production systems. Special attention is given to key dimensions of oil palm plantation in Malaysian Borneo such as the scale of expansion, multifaceted modes of production, forced juxtaposition of landscapes, habitat fragmentation, socio-economic dispossession, environmental despoliation, and emerging urban-rural continuum.

Bio:

Noboru Ishikawa (Ph.D. in Anthropology, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York) is a professor of anthropology at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. He has conducted fieldwork in Sarawak (Malaysia) and West Kalimantan (Indonesia) over the past three decades, exploring issues such as the construction of national space in the borderland, highland–lowland relations, the stateless in Southeast Asian histories, plantation system, commodification of natural resources, and relations between nature and non-nature in the Anthropocene.

His publications include: Anthropogenic Tropical Forests: Human-Nature Interfaces on the Plantation Frontier (2020 Springer), Between Frontiers: Nation and Identity in a Southeast Asian Borderland (2010 NUS Press; 2010 Ohio University Press; 2010 NIAS Press), Transborder Governance of Forests, Rivers and Seas (2010 Routledge), Flows and Movements in Southeast Asia: New Approaches to Transnationalism (2011 Kyoto University Press), and Dislocating Nation-States: Globalization in Asia and Africa (2005 Kyoto University Press; Trans Pacific Press 2005).

Chair of the Event and Contact for Enquiries

Professor Maria Brockhaus

Pluriverse, Education and Territorial Justice

When: Thu 28.10.2021 at 16:15-17:15, Helsinki (check the time zone), via Zoom

Abstract:

The comprehensive development project manifested in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) proposes an overall engagement on “quality education for all” and supports social justice by promoting equal access to education for the most deprived groups. However, the SDG4 on quality education does not acknowledge diversity in ways of being (ontologies) and knowing (epistemologies) around the world and the need to support alternative ways to learn and produce knowledge. The role of education to achieve social and environmental justice is not new. At the institutional and international level, the debate around education has become central in the post-2015 development agenda, and within the territorial turn, education engenders and sustains projects with the potential to resist structural socio-environmental injustices and move toward more regenerative futures.

In this seminar, the panelists discuss how territorial justice and education offer paths toward the pluriverse by touching upon knowledge, politics and pedagogical visions, ecocultural identities, humilocene, socio-environmental consciousness, place-based education and community experiential calendars. The seminar connects with the Academy of Finland’s DEVELOP programme project “Goal 4+: Including Eco-cultural Pluralism in Quality Education in Ecuadorian Amazonia“.

Speakers:

Paola Minoia is a Senior Lecturer in Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki, and an Associate Professor in Political and Economic Geography at the University of Turin. Her research interests intersect the fields of political ecology and development studies with a focus on territoriality, state- and minoritized groups relations, socio-environmental justice, eco-cultural knowledges and the pluriverse. She is the Principal Investigator in the project Ecocultural pluralism in the Ecuadorian Amazonia (funded by the Academy of Finland 2018-2022) and a WG leader in the EU/COST Network Decolonising Development: Research, Teaching and Practice (2020-2024).

José Castro-Sotomayor PhD. is an Assistant Professor at California State University Channel Islands, U.S.A. He investigates ecocultural modes of human and more-than-human communication and how they influence our relationships with the Earth’s vitality. His work focuses on transversal forms of communication, agency, and dissent that inform participatory models for environmental peacebuilding and decision and policymaking. He is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (2020), a transdisciplinary volume seeking to foster a radical epistemology by investigating ways ecocultural identities are being, and can be, thought, felt, performed, and experienced within wider sociopolitical structures in ways relevant to regenerative Earth futures. Originally from Ecuador, he worked as an independent consultant for environmental NGOs in Ecuador and Colombia.

Tuija Veintie is a postdoctoral researcher in Global Development Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. Her current research focuses on the integration of ecological and Indigenous knowledge in intercultural bilingual upper secondary education in Ecuador. Her study is part of a research project ‘Goal 4+: Including Eco-cultural Pluralism in Quality Education in Ecuadorian Amazonia’. Veintie has a multidisciplinary background in education, anthropology, and Latin American studies. She received her PhD degree in Educational Sciences from the University of Helsinki in 2018. Her research interests include social justice and diversity issues, epistemic power hierarchies, intercultural and Indigenous education as well as minority and Indigenous peoples’ rights.

Johanna Hohenthal is a postdoctoral researcher in Global Development Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. She has worked in a research project ‘Goal 4+: Including Eco-cultural Pluralism in Quality Education in Ecuadorian Amazonia’ that studies intercultural bilingual education and eco-cultural knowledges of the Amazonian Indigenous groups. Her interests focus on the accessibility of intercultural bilingual education and its relation to Indigenous territoriality and place-based learning as well as on participatory research methods. She received a PhD degree in Geography in 2018. Her doctoral research focused on water resource governance and local ecological knowledge in the Taita Hills, Kenya.

Chair of Event and Contact for Enquiries

Chaitawat Boonjubun is a postdoctoral researcher at Global Development Studies, the Faculty of Social Sciences, the University of Helsinki, Finland. His research interests focus on understanding the social, political, economic, and cultural determinants of sustainable urban land use, the discourses and practices of urban regeneration, the politics of public lands, urban informality, religious land, and inequalities in cities. He can be contacted via chaitawat.boonjubun@helsinki.fi.

Global Green New Deal: The Case of China

When: 30.6.2021 at 16:15 Helsinki (check the time zone)

Abstract:

The Global Green New Deal (Global GND) literature has largely viewed finance and technology transfers as the most effective solution to address the imbalance between the Global North and Global South.Yet the internal socioeconomic structures within countries in the Global Southand the likely barriers they could createfor the transition towards a green economy are largely under-analyzed. This presentation highlights that,without addressing the structural issues such as informalitythat are prevalent in the Global South, the potential benefits of a Global GND are less likely to be fully realizedon a global scale. The discussion will mainly draw on the example of China, the country that assumes the seemingly contradictory role of the largest investor of renewable energy and the largest carbon emitter at the same time. Finally, the presentation callsfor a more organic integration of a Global South perspective in the studies of a Global GND.

Bio:

Ying Chen is Assistant Professor of Economics at the New School and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her work mainly explores the contradictions within capitalism and how they unfold across time and space. Topics she has studied include economic development, labor, and climate change, with a special focus on the global south. She has published in journals including Environment and Development Economics, Economics and Labor Relations Review, Journal of Labor and Society, Review of Radical Political Economics, and the International Review of Applied Economics.

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Alternative Models of Development: Becoming the Change We want to see in the world

When: 22.4.2021 at 13:00 Helsinki (check the time zone)

Slide presentation

Abstract:

A materialistic approach to life locates problems in external reality, and attempts to find technological, political, or economic solutions. This represents a misdiagnosis which makes cures impossible to find. The anthropocene was brought about by the spiritual stunting now widespread across the globe due to our common materialistic education. Solutions lie in re-educating ourselves, to enable ourselves, and all of humanity, to achieve the potential for excellence which lies within our souls.

Bio:

Dr. Asad Zaman is currently serving as external advisor on the Monetary Policy Committee of the State Bank of Pakistan, and as Director of Social Sciences on the Al-Nafi online educational platform. He received his BS Math from MIT in 1974, MS Stat, and Ph.D. Econ from Stanford Univ in 1976 and 1978 respectively. He has taught at Economics Departments of highly ranked international universities like Columbia, U. Penn., Cal. Tech. and Johns Hopkins as well as Bilkent University, Ankara and Lahore University of Management Sciences. His econometrics textbook Statistical Foundations of Econometric Techniques is widely used as a reference in graduate econometrics courses, internationally. He is managing editor of International Econometric Reviews and Pakistan Development Review. He has more than 100 publications, in top ranked journals like Annals of Statistics, Journal of Econometrics, Econometric Theory, and Journal of Labor Economics. He has published widely in Islamic Economics, and is a leading authority in the field.

Other lectures of Dr. Asad Zaman: Spirituality and Development: part 2, development, Spirituality and Develpment

Chair of Event and Contact for Enquiries

Chair Franklin Obeng-Odoom is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science with Global Development Studies and the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, both at the University of Helsinki in Finland. He can be contacted via franklin.obeng-odoom@helsinki.fi

Australian Wildfires: Climate Emergency signals need to Decolonise

When: 24.3.2021, 3pm (Helsinki, Finland)/9am (New York, USA)

Abstract:

The Australian wildfires have been particularly severe but as with many things that are seen to be a part of Australian experience, the problem is transnational. And it will be increasingly a world-wide problem with the impacts of climate change. While Australia is a dry continent the world is becoming more dry over time. Climate change is now inexorably affecting the whole of the planet and the raging wildfires threaten to engulf areas of the world that have never experienced them before. Australian Aboriginal practices of burning country are important for preventing “hot” out of control wildfires and they also promise to restore the land to its former level of moisture retention. Controlled fire as a means of land management in Australia is mirrored in other Indigenous land management practices in the Americas, Africa and in Asia.

In this session Victoria Grieve-Williams outlines the extent of the crisis in Australia and the world that has come about through settler colonials overriding the land management practices of Indigenous peoples. she references the work of George Main who writes of the need to regenerate Aboriginal Australia’s landscapes through understanding the land management practices of the original people, her work on the impact of the plough on land degradation, as well as that of the journalist Nance Haxton who has recently interviewed Aboriginal people about the use of fire in land management.

The extent of this crisis is such that every region of the Earth needs to be thinking deeply and planning for the future – how to prevent wildfires from destroying the planet and humanity.

Bio:

Professor Victoria Grieve-Williams is Warraimaay - an Aboriginal Australian – and historian who has published on Aboriginal family history, slavery, activism and the history wars in Australia. She works in interdisciplinary ways to progress the development of Indigenous knowledges, positioning Aboriginal spirituality /philosophy as the baseline for this development, with a focus on establishing the values and ethics inherent in what it means to be human in a changing world. In this connection she is highly engaged with the impacts of climate change on the natural world and the place of humans in it as we move further into the Anthropocene.

She has published critiques of public policy for Aboriginal people, identifying homo sacer in Aboriginal camps and amongst displaced Aboriginal people and has thus argued for Aboriginal Sovereignty in a newly constituted Republic. Victoria is in the process of establishing a Healing Histories Foundation in which she will apply the Aboriginal principles of healing the wounds of history through "truth telling" from research and reuniting families separated by the vagaries of war.

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Nature in the City

When: 24th of February 2021

Abstract:

In a rapidly urbanizing India, what is the future of nature conservation? How does the march of development impact the conflict between nature and people in India’s cities? Exploring these questions, Harini Nagendra will briefly examine the past, present, and future of nature in Bengaluru, one of India’s largest and fastest growing cities.

Once known as the Garden City of India, Bengaluru’s tree-lined avenues, historic parks, and expansive water bodies have witnessed immense degradation and destruction in recent years, but have also shown remarkable tenacity for survival. This talk highlights Bengaluru’s journey from the early settlements in the 6th century CE to the 21st century city, and demonstrates how nature has looked and behaved, and has been perceived in Bengaluru’s home gardens, slums, streets, parks, sacred spaces, and lakes. An analysis of the changing role and state of nature in the midst of urban sprawl, and integrating research with stories of people and places, I present, in this talk, an overview of my book with the same title, listed by the science journal Nature as one of the five best science picks of the week in its issue of July 28 2016. This is a talk about a city where nature thrives and strives.

Bio:

Harini Nagendra is Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University. An ecologist, she uses methods from the natural and social sciences - satellite remote sensing, biodiversity studies, archival research, GIS, institutional analysis, and community interviews, to examine the sustainability of forests and cities in the global South. She completed her PhD from the Centre for Ecological Sciences in the Indian Institute of Science in 1998. Since then, she has conducted research and taught at multiple institutions, and was most recently a Hubert H Humphrey Distinguished Visiting Professor at Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota in 2013. She is a recipient of numerous awards for her research, including a 2017 Web of Science 2017 India Research Excellence Award as the most cited Indian researcher in the category of Interdisciplinary Research; a 2013 Elinor Ostrom Senior Scholar award for her research and practice on issues of the urban commons, and a 2009 Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (with Elinor Ostrom).

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Just Sustainabilities in Policy, Planning and Practice

When: 27th of January, at 4 to 5 p.m. (Finnish time zone, UTC +2, Eastern time zone UTC -5)