#POLLEN24 – Call for papers

We share two new Call for Papers for #POLLEN24 Lund-Sweden and Lima-Peru. More information is below.

Call for Papers – What are safeguards for? Evidence to promote a transition in safeguards from ‘doing no harm’ to ‘doing better’ for community rights

POLLEN24 – 10-12 June 2024, Lima-Peru

In recent years, there has been an increasing awareness, though not fully mainstreamed, of the imperative to recognize and respect the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendants (IP, LC, ADs) in global discussions on development and conservation within their ancestral territories. There is growing evidence that this recognition is central to the effectiveness of a range of projects, including those related to carbon markets (Schneider et al. 2019), natural protected areas (Larson et al. 2022), ecotourism, and hydrocarbon extraction.

A wide scope of safeguard standards, encompassing voluntary and mandatory measures, has been introduced to mitigate the potential impact of these projects on community rights, livelihoods, and perceptions of well-being (Lofts et al., 2021). However, these standards tend to aim at a low bar of ‘doing no harm’(or ‘doing no net harm’) to communities and tend to be fixed to national legal contexts rather than the wider scope of collective rights recognized under international agreements and declarations (e.g. the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, International Labour Organization c169) (Sarmiento Barletti et al. 2021).

Given the highly unequal history of access for IP, LC, and ADs to land and resources, political participation, and public services in the landscapes of the Global South where different actions are implemented, ‘doing no harm’ (or respecting the pre-project status quo) is insufficient (Larson et al. 2021). Interventions that do not follow stringent, transparent, and clear rights-responsive safeguards may inadvertently exacerbate historical experiences of exclusion.

This session aims to present lessons and potential ways out of this context through presentations that may address, but not be limited to, the following questions:

• How might voluntary safeguards contribute to enhancing the ambition of national legal frameworks for community rights?
• What are the limits or limitations of safeguards in promoting the recognition and respect of collective rights?
• What lessons can we take from the different sectors (e.g., hydrocarbons,  conservation areas, carbon markets) applying safeguards in their community engagement? What common pitfalls and strengths do they share across activities and landscapes?
• Is a rights-based approach under a community-based leadership compatible with safeguards? How have safeguards supported/challenged local, self-determined well-being pathways?
• What local experiences (e.g., women, youth) have been silenced in how different industries have designed safeguards?
• What different strategies have/can community organizations use to monitor compliance with safeguards or to design their own?

We invite researchers, practitioners, and activists to contribute to this session. Please send an abstract of up to 250 words along with your name, affiliation, presentation title (max. 20 words), and 3 keywords to Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti (j.sarmiento@cifor-icraf.org) and Deborah Delgado Pugley (deborah.delgado@pucp.pe) by January 10th with “CfP Pollen 2024” in the subject line.

We encourage abstracts from colleagues who will be present in Lima for the conference.

References:

Larson AM, JP Sarmiento Barletti and N Heise. 2022. A place at the table is not enough: Accountability for indigenous peoples and local communities in multi-stakeholder forums. World Development 155.

Larson, AM, et al. 2021. Hot topics in governance for forests and trees: Towards a (just) transformative research agenda. Forest Policy and Economics 131.

Lofts, K., Sarmiento Barletti, J. P., & Larson, A. M. (2021). Lessons towards rights-responsive REDD+ safeguards from a literature review.

Sarmiento Barletti JP, AM Larson, K Lofts and A Frechette. 2021. Safeguards at a glance: Supporting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in REDD+ and other forest-based initiatives. Bogor: CIFOR-ICRAF.

Schneider, L., & La Hoz Theuer, S. (2019). Environmental integrity of international carbon market mechanisms under the Paris Agreement. Climate Policy, 19(3), 386-400.

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Call for Papers – Co-creating diverse knowledges through decolonial and feminist political ecology and science and technology studies

POLLEN24 – 10-12 June 2024, Lund- Sweden

Organised by: Juliana Porsani (Linköping University), Tatiana Sokolova and Bartira Fortes (Södertörn University)

Despite a growing body of co-production and decolonial methodologies, little attention has been devoted to complex and non-dualistic positionalities of researchers as they engage with non- (often anti-)Western-centric epistemologies. Theoretical work addressing the problematic of the politics of knowledge in post-colonial contexts and the contexts of marginalisation is comprised, among others, of the works of decolonial and feminist scholars (Tuhiwai-Smith, Harding, Longino, Alcoff, Oreskes), including those inspired by Paulo Freire (bell hooks) and science and technology studies (Haraway), and more recently scholars bridging the decolonial and STS strands (Subramaniam, Khandekar). However, critical methodological reflections on the practicalities of working between and across epistemologies remains scarce.

This session seeks to explore the various methodologies of engaging, from various positionalities, with non-academic actors: local communities, Indigenous peoples, artists, social movements, and other-than-human entities – in the co-production of research. We invite presentations of experiences and reflections attentive to the challenges of epistemic power as they play out in the context of sustainability transitions and transformations, post-colonialism, and decoloniality.  We especially welcome scholars working with decolonial, feminist and STS perspectives, political ecology and political ontology.  

Please submit proposals no later than 12 January 2023, to allow for final submission to the conference organisers by 15 January. Please send a 250-300 word proposal, with title, contact information, and three keywords as a Word attachment to tatiana.sokolova@sh.se