ICTA-UAB to host the workshop "Conservation, Climate Change And Decolonisation - Exploring New Frontiers In Conservation Social Science"

First, conservation is integrally bound up in the function and reproduction of capitalism, in the form of carbon/biodiversity offsets, (eco-)tourism in and around protected areas, and the broader commodification of ecosystem services. In fact, conservation is often misrecognised to be separate, even a refuge, from capitalism. If conservation (and climate change) policies are tied to an agenda of economic growth and development, they contribute to depoliticise and foreclose discussion on the nature of the social and economic forces causing biodiversity loss and climate change and hinder implementation of effective solutions to deal with these problems. Second, in search of solutions to anthropogenic climate change, transitions to low carbon societies can also entail dramatic re-organisations of conservation estate and policy – and therefore also society – whilst climate change itself might require changing conservation policy to cope with the habitat change it causes, changing current geographies of conservation. A third challenge is that conservation social science, although not as much as mainstream conservation science, primarily reproduces research practices and paradigms that have been developed in the West, which result in specific forms of knowledge, social organization and ways of apprehending the world.

The purpose of this 2-day workshop, organized by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and the University of Sheffield Institute for International Development (SIID) is to bring together conservation and climate change social scientists from all ages and from across the world to share their most recent research tackling at least one of the three challenges highlighted above. The workshop will combine participants’ short presentations with networking activities and focus group discussions to plan diverse interventions in these debates including academic publications, more popular writings, new projects and further networking opportunities.

If interested in participating, please send a 250 words article abstract by the 31/08, to esteve.corbera@uab.cat and d.brockington@sheffield.ac.uk. Accepted participants will be notified by 15/09.

Keynote speakers

• Sarah Bracking (King’s College London, UK)
• Ashwini Chhatre (Indian School of Business, India)
• Catherine Corson (Mount Holyoke College, USA)
• Rosaleen Duffy (University of Sheffield, UK)

 
Organisers

• Esteve Corbera, Sara Maestre-Andrés, Giorgos Kallis and Sergio Villamayor (ICTA-UAB)
• Dan Brockington and Rose Pritchard (University of Sheffield)
   

International promoters

Elia Apostolopoulou and Bill Adams (UK), Jonathan Barton (Chile), Tor A. Benjaminsen (Norway), Jessica Dempsey (Canada), Leticia Durand and Fernanda Figueroa (Mexico), Rob Fletcher (The Netherlands), Jens F. Lund (Denmark), Christine Noe (Tanzania), Tracey Osborne and Paul Robbins (USA), Nitin Rai (India), Andreas Scheba (South Africa), Gert Van Hecken (Belgium), Maria Alejandra Velez (Colombia).