Seminar: “Comparative political ecology of forestry and mining in South America, India and the Arctic”, by Markus Kröger

Title: “Comparative political ecology of forestry and mining in South America, India and the Arctic”

Speaker: Markus Kröger, University of Helsinki

Date: Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Time: 12.30h

Place: Room z-022-023 ICTA-UAB

In this session, which will combine a presentation and a workshop, visiting researcher Markus Kröger will share some analytical and methodological approaches for assessing investment politics across different extractive sectors and regions. He will open up his findings on how different resistance strategies can influence the expansion pace and style of resource extractive investments. He will also explain how different political contexts, geographical features and other contingencies influence the dynamics of contention and investment outcomes, based on his multi-sited political ethnography. He also presents his immediate research interests, including the comparative political ecology of deforestation and its causalities. There is also space for a discussion on the EJAtlas and its application potentials. He will also present the upcoming conference on Global Extractivisms and Alternatives (EXALT initative), to be held in 20-23 October 2020 in Helsinki. The aim of this session is to share and discuss collectively, and it is open to activists, students and researchers at all levels.

Markus Kröger is currently a visiting researcher with the ENVJUSTICE project at ICTA-UAB. His current research projects explore the political economies of deforestation in Latin America and Finland, and agroforestry transformations in Brazil. He has collaborated before with the EJOLT project in studying global tree plantation conflicts. His books address how and when resistance discontinues extractivist projects: Contentious Agency and Natural Resource Politics (2013) focuses on global forestry, and the forthcoming Iron Will: Global Extractivism and Mining Resistance in Brazil and India (2020) focuses on the political economy of iron ore and steel. Markus has degrees in World Politics, Latin American Studies, and International Business, and works currently as an Associate Professor and Academy Research Fellow in Development Studies at the University of Helsinki.