• UABDivulga
04/2011

UAB will prepare an inventory of the world's ecological conflicts

Projecte EJOLT
As the use of material and energy grows globally, so do conflicts on the extraction of natural resources and the handling of residues. The UAB Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) will spend the next four years coordinating the EJOLT project, with the participation of 23 organisations which will be designing new databases, maps and environmental indicators related to the ecological conflicts existing throughout the world. The ultimate objective of the project is to transform these conflicts into forces which can be steered towards environmental sustainability.

The EJOLT project is part of the Seventh Framework Programme and has received 3.8 million Euros in funding. Participating in the project are 23 academic and civil organisations from different sectors ranging from environmental law and health to political ecology and ecological economics, with a wide experience in activism and the study of environmental conflicts.  
 
The aim is to promote mutual learning and collaboration in nuclear energy issues, in conflicts on coal and oil extraction, land grabbing, mining and vessel dismantling. The proliferation of environmental conflicts will be studied, as well as the legal mechanisms available to confront these injustices.
 
 Project members, under the coordination of UAB professor Joan Martínez Alier, will be examining the causes of the increase of these types of conflicts and searching for ways of turning them into forces working in favour of environmental sustainability.
 
The result of the project will include an online map of environmental conflicts and success cases, as well as material aimed at increasing legal action capacities of Environmental Justice Organisations and the proposal of political solutions.

Joan Martínez Alier
Area d'Història i d'Institucions econòmiques
 
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