ICTA-UAB project to assess citizens’ resistance to environmental injustices
The project has been selected by the International Social Science Council (ISSC) out of a hundred of international proposals and will receive €850,000 in three years.
The Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) will develop one of the three “Transformative Knowledge Networks” as part of the innovative Transformations to Sustainability Programme of the International Social Science Council (ISSC) that aims to harness the potential of social science to face some of the most urgent challenges of global change.
ICTA-UAB’s project “Academic-Activist Co-Produced Knowledge for Environmental Justice”, will receive a grant of €850,000 over three years to assess the “processes of knowledge production and resistance formation against “extractivism” and towards sustainability from the ground up", with the assumption that therein lies the greatest potential for transformative action to confront today’s environmental and social crises.
The new project broadens the pathbreaking work on mapping global ecological conflicts of the EJAtlas, the atlas of environmental justice (which began in the EJOLT project, 2011-15). Researchers will extend the study of environmental conflicts to new geographical areas, with particular focus on Middle East countries. The project will examine the transformative potential of community responses to extractive activities that cause wide-ranging and serious social and environmental impacts and injustices. The aim is to empower civil society and to show how alternative visions and possibilities may be born from resistance.
The new project, coordinated by Dr Leah Temper with the collaboration of Daniela Del Bene, Joan Martinez-Alier and Mariana Walter, will engage partners from institutions in the UK, Lebanon, Turkey, Bolivia and other countries. The co-coordinator is Ashish Kothari, of Pune, India, a founder-member of Kalpavriksh, an environmental research and action group.
The Transformations to Sustainability Programme of the International Council for Social Sciences selected only three projects out of 99 applications.