Life on land – DDRN

One Century of Arctic Governance: Cooperation, Sustainability, and Emerging Geopolitical Strains

Florin-Madalin Nicu — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 14:00:01 +0000

The Arctic region has increasingly gained prominence as an area of global strategic, environmental, and socio-economic importance. Given its already fragile ecosystems, diverse Indigenous cultures, minerals, and other valuable, unexploited natural resources, the Arctic has become a central focus of international governance efforts. Arctic policy encompasses the strategies, agreements, and institutional frameworks developed by the eight Arctic states, namely Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Canada, Russia, and the United States, in collaboration with international organizations and non-governmental actors, to regulate and manage the region.

Throughout the past century, the Arctic has experienced progressive landmark treaties, national policy strategies that acted as various environmental awareness policies, scientific assessments for further conservation, and advocacy reports that have influenced the evolution of Arctic governance and the bonding role of the region to serve as a point of convergence among various great powers as well. These documents reflect shifting global priorities, including territorial administration, resource utilization, environmental preservation, and the recognition of Indigenous rights. This paper examines key policy milestones from early twentieth-century agreements to contemporary cooperative frameworks. Particular attention is given to three interconnected themes that have shaped Arctic governance: environmental protection, Indigenous rights, and economic development. Collectively, these themes demonstrate the transformation of the Arctic from a geographically remote and politically contested region into an important arena for international cooperation and sustainable governance.

Early Foundations of the Arctic Policy

The Svalbard Treaty should be regarded as one of the main attempts to establish Arctic policies, as this treaty not only changed the perception of various actors over the Svalbard region, which previously was regarded as a no man’s land, but it also attributed to Norway full control of the region with the condition of preserving the region as it is relevant for the Arctic. Initially, the Svalbard Treaty was signed by 8 most relevant countries in the region and outside of it at the given time, which include: the USA, the UK, India, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Relevant articles that enshrine the extent to which Norway is entitled to ownership, to engage in different activities, and what kind of responsibilities the state should bear throughout their proceedings, under the quality of Norway being the inheritor of these lands, are stipulated in articles 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. The article 9 and 10 can be regarded as cornerstones for turning the region into an economic, non-militarized, and environmentally protected zone meant to be accessible, firstly to all great and regional actors for cooperative purposes and then for others who would be interested in being involved. The article 10 also introduced the possibility for Russia to join at any given time after the moment of ratification, proving flexibility and integration to multilateral commitments from the signatory majority of that time.

Later, in 1970, the Arctic witnessed further individual commitments meant to protect the Arctic. The Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act represents a foundational instrument in the development of modern Arctic governance and has significantly influenced subsequent regional cooperation mechanisms, including agreements negotiated under the Arctic Council. By establishing stringent pollution prevention and regulation standards, and other norms that enforce a direct liability over the subjects to which these provisions were applicable, the Act anticipated key principles later embedded in Arctic Council frameworks, particularly the emphasis on environmental protection, emergency response coordination, and sustainable maritime activity (https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/a-12/fulltext.html).

The Act’s precautionary regulatory approach contributed to the normative development of cooperative environmental governance reflected in the 2011 Arctic Council Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue, the 2013 Agreement on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response, and the 2017 Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation. These agreements collectively reinforce state responsibility for multilateral engagement and commitment, which also included environmental risk management and cross-border emergency coordination, all of which align with the regulatory philosophy established by the Canadian legislation.

Moreover, the Act helped legitimize expanded coastal state jurisdiction in ice-covered waters, a principle later codified in international law and reinforced through Arctic Council policy coordination. As a result, the legislation served as an early model demonstrating how national environmental regulation could shape regional governance norms and facilitate multilateral cooperation in the Arctic.

By the late 1980s, shifting geopolitical conditions created new opportunities for Arctic cooperation, particularly on transboundary environmental issues. A decisive turning point occurred in 1987 when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev delivered the Murmansk Speech, proposing the Arctic as a zone of peace and advocating expanded cooperation in environmental protection and scientific research. This initiative directly encouraged Finland to promote multilateral environmental governance in the region.

These efforts culminated in the 1991 Rovaniemi Declaration and the establishment of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), adopted by the eight Arctic states. Although non-binding, the AEPS created the first structured framework for circumpolar environmental cooperation. It identified key environmental threats, emphasized shared responsibility for ecosystem protection, and formally incorporated Indigenous participation through observer and later Permanent Participant roles. The creation of specialized working groups institutionalized scientific monitoring and policy coordination, establishing operational mechanisms for regional governance.

The AEPS provided both the political momentum and institutional architecture necessary for the creation of the Arctic Council in 1996 through the Ottawa Declaration. Building on AEPS structures, the Council expanded cooperation beyond environmental protection to include sustainable development, resource management, and Indigenous knowledge integration. Collectively, these initiatives transformed ad hoc diplomatic engagement into a formalized governance system, positioning the Arctic Council as the central forum for multilateral Arctic cooperation.

Growing geopolitical tensions have strained Arctic cooperation. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, collaboration within the Arctic Council was largely suspended, weakening cooperation in all sectors, including environmental and Indigenous governance mechanisms that previously defined Arctic stability. Although limited technical cooperation has resumed, diplomatic coordination remains restricted, while increasing military activity threatens long-standing environmental monitoring and emergency response frameworks.

Recent developments within the Kingdom of Denmark and Greenland demonstrate both risks and opportunities. Denmark’s 2025 Arctic Council chairmanship stresses international law and cooperative governance, while Greenland’s updated foreign and security strategy seeks stronger Indigenous and regional representation in Arctic decision-making.

Maintaining Arctic cooperation is therefore essential. Preserving multilateral governance safeguards fragile ecosystems, supports Indigenous communities, and prevents geopolitical escalation in a region critical to global climate stability.

The weakening or potential collapse of the Arctic Council would directly affect SDGs 13, 14, 15, and 17, undermining the scientific cooperation and coordination over a wide range of activities, including climate monitoring and biodiversity protection. The Council supports projects funded by millions annually, including over 40 initiatives financed by Canada alone. The European Union has also committed significant resources, including €15 million for Arctic observation systems and broader climate research programs worth €93.5 billion.

The future effectiveness of European climate and sustainability policies may therefore depend on whether multilateral Arctic governance can adapt to geopolitical tensions while maintaining scientific and environmental collaboration. Assessing the opinion and vision of field experts is imperative to analyze how IGOs and other high-level officials should steer their policies for preventing isolation and drawbacks in the related domains of activity that have the Arctic region as the core subject of political, social, cultural, environmental, and economic interest.

Florin-Madalin Nicu is a student of the BACHELOR’S PROGRAM OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS at Eurasian National University “L.N. Gumilyov”, Kazakhstan

Whose Arctic? Indigenous Agency in Regional Policy Formation

Florin-Madalin Nicu — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:00:16 +0000

The Arctic region has increasingly gained prominence not only as an area of environmental and strategic significance but as one of the most instructive arenas for examining the limits and possibilities of inclusive international governance. At the center of this examination stands a question that is both institutional and normative: to what extent do Arctic Indigenous peoples hold genuine agency in shaping the policies that govern the region they have inhabited for millennia? This article analyzes the role of Indigenous Permanent Participants (PPs) within the Arctic Council framework, the normative foundations of their participation rights under international law, the post-2022 institutional disruptions caused by the conflict in Ukraine, and the trajectory of Indigenous Arctic governance under Denmark’s 2025–2027 Chairship.

The Permanent Participant Framework

The Arctic Council, established by the Ottawa Declaration of September 19, 1996, introduced a governance innovation that remains unique in the landscape of intergovernmental institutions: the Permanent Participant (from now on it will be abbreviated as PP) category, which accords Indigenous peoples’ organizations formal and continuous participation rights alongside the eight Arctic member states. Six organizations currently hold this status, as detailed in Table 1 in the sidebar. Together, they represent approximately 500,000 Indigenous people across the Arctic, constituting a significant share of the region’s total population of four million.

The rights conferred by PP status are substantive. The Arctic Council’s Rules of Procedure specify that PPs may address all meetings, that their consultation must precede the adoption of meeting agendas, and that they may propose cooperative activities and projects. The Ottawa Declaration stipulates that decisions are taken by consensus of the Arctic States, with full consultation and involvement of the Permanent Participants, a formulation that defines both the formal constraint on PP power and the practical leverage it generates. While PPs cannot formally block a state decision, the mandatory consultation requirement creates strong political incentives for states to accommodate PP concerns before decisions are finalized. The Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat (IPS), operational since 1994 and predating the Arctic Council itself, provides the institutional infrastructure that allows PPs to function as genuine governance actors rather than ceremonial participants, through capacity-building, logistical support, and systematic coordination among the six organizations.

The Normative Dimension: UNDRIP and FPIC

The institutional framework of the Arctic Council must be assessed against the broader normative standard established by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. UNDRIP’s most consequential provisions for Arctic governance concern Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). Article 19 requires states to consult and cooperate in good faith with Indigenous peoples through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting measures that may affect them, while Article 32 extends this requirement to projects affecting Indigenous lands, territories, and resources. The OHCHR clarifies that FPIC requires consent given voluntarily, sought sufficiently in advance, and based on complete and accessible information, a standard qualitatively distinct from consultation alone .

The gap between this standard and the Arctic Council’s consultation-only PP framework represents the central normative tension in Arctic Indigenous governance. In practice, however, the mandatory consultation process combined with consensus-based state decision-making approximates a de facto form of influence that provides PPs with meaningful leverage over policy outcomes, even absent formal consent rights. Several Nordic Arctic states, including Norway, Finland, and Denmark, are additionally bound by ILO Convention No. 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, which creates legally enforceable consultation obligations reinforcing and extending the PP rights within the Council framework.

Policy Influence in Practice

Each of the six PPs exercises policy influence primarily through project leadership within the Arctic Council’s working groups. The ICC co-led the PAME working group project on Meaningful Engagement of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in Marine Activities (2021–2023), producing internationally recognized guidelines for sustainable shipping. The Saami Council’s Climate Impacts on Terrestrial Environments (CITE) project, developed with the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), established a digital platform through which Sámi reindeer herders document seasonal landscape changes, integrating traditional knowledge directly into scientific climate models. RAIPON, AIA, and AAC jointly lead the Salmon Peoples of Arctic Rivers project within the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) working group, linking Indigenous subsistence practices to biodiversity monitoring across Arctic river systems. The GCI leads the ArcticFIRE wildland fire monitoring project, addressing the growing threat of climate-driven boreal fires.

These roles reflect a model of Indigenous governance influence that operates through knowledge co-production rather than formal voting rights. Arctic Council assessment reports increasingly credit Indigenous monitoring data alongside conventional scientific sources: Inuit hunters have tracked changes in sea ice thickness and movement for generations, providing data that satellites simply cannot replicate. Sámi reindeer herders have documented shifts in grazing patterns that signal broader ecological disruption long before scientific surveys catch up, making Indigenous monitoring an addition to conventional science. The Council’s Strategic Plan 2021–2030 was explicitly co-developed between Arctic States and Permanent Participants, embedding Indigenous priorities into the Council’s long-term institutional vision.

Post-2022 Disruptions and Institutional Adaptation

The conflict in Ukraine in 2022 represented the most severe test of the Arctic Council framework since its establishment. On March 3, 2022, seven of the eight Arctic states announced a temporary pause in Council meetings and activities, suspending the institutional channels through which PPs exercise their governance roles. PP responses varied significantly, as documented in Table 1. The GCI and Saami Council supported the pause while insisting on continued inclusion in resumption planning. RAIPON’s endorsement of Russian military actions created a rupture in PP unity and raised unresolved questions about the representational integrity of the PP category under conditions of state political pressure.

In August 2023, all eight states reached consensus through written procedure on modalities for resuming working-group-level activities, consulting all six PPs throughout. In February 2024, Working Group meetings resumed virtually, described by ICC Chair Sara Olsvig as a key step in maintaining the full and effective participation of Arctic Indigenous Peoples. The 14th Ministerial Meeting of May 12, 2025 confirmed the Council’s institutional resilience, producing the Romssa–Tromsø Statement which reaffirmed the individual and collective rights of Arctic Indigenous Peoples and called for strengthening the capacity and project leadership role of Permanent Participants.

Denmark’s Chairship and Future Trajectories

The Kingdom of Denmark assumed the Arctic Council Chairship on May 12, 2025, with a program placing Indigenous Peoples as the first of five thematic priorities. Greenland’s Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt serves as Chair and Greenland’s Arctic Ambassador Kenneth Høegh leads the Senior Arctic Officials process, meaning an Indigenous-majority territory is exercising the prerogatives of an Arctic Council Chair for the first time. Høegh has described the Chairship’s approach to Indigenous Knowledge as practical rather than symbolic, arguing that combining Western research and Indigenous knowledge produces a demonstrably better analytical and policy outcome.

The future effectiveness of Arctic governance will depend on whether the adaptations developed during the 2022–2025 crisis can sustain meaningful PP participation across the Council’s full mandate. The weakening of multilateral cooperation in the region has direct implications for SDGs 13, 14, 15, and 17, undermining the scientific collaboration and climate monitoring that underpin global environmental governance. Preserving robust Indigenous participation is not merely a question of rights fulfillment but a practical prerequisite for the legitimate and effective governance of one of the world’s most consequential and fragile regions.

Florin-Madalin Nicu is a student of the BACHELOR’S PROGRAM OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS at Eurasian National University “L.N. Gumilyov”, Kazakhstan

Table 1: Comparison of Permanent Participants — Status, Influence, and Post-2022 Positions

Sources: Arctic Council official pages, Ottawa Declaration, Iqaluit and Barrow Declarations, AC Rules of Procedure, and PP organizational websites. Admission years and formal rights from Arctic Council materials. https://oaarchive.arctic-council.org

What does Maize have to do with Politics? Agroecology as a Tool for Political Participation

Iraide Arcos Fabrega — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 16:13:54 +0000

In Guatemala’s Zona Reina, Q’eqchi’ peasant women are transforming maize fields into platforms for political participation. This is thanks to the initiative of the NGO PRODESSA to undertake (initiate) agroecology projects. This practice combines ecological, social, cultural and economic principles in the management of sustainable agricultural systems. Initially, agroecology projects aimed to serve as a means for achieving food sovereignty through ancestral Mayan practices. However, they have also proven to be a tool for increasing Indigenous women’s involvement and voice in decision-making spaces. Nevertheless, this is a very singular case that addresses a wider problem related to land management, structural marginalisation and gender inequalities of Indigenous women in many countries of the world.

While Indigenous women play a central role in natural resource management and community support, their participation in politics remains limited by structural discrimination affecting indigenous peoples. The inequalities regarding ethnicity and gender intersect, restricting Indigenous women’s access to resources and silencing their voices in institutions. Focusing on the specific case of Guatemala, the exclusion from politics and institutions is the reality for most indigenous women in the country. Even though the Mayan-descendant Indigenous communities represent more than 40% of the overall population, 72,9% live in poverty compared to a 46,6% of poverty rate among non-Indigenous people. This is mainly due to the historical discrimination, inequality and exclusion towards Indigenous people, which has limited the full recognition of their rights and perpetuated conditions of structural poverty. These structural inequalities hit women especially hard, with alarming levels of violence. In 2024, more than 10.000 sexual assaults were reported, and nearly 53.000 births among girls and teenagers between the ages of 10 and 19 were registered. In addition, at the start of the 21st century, around 90% of adult Indigenous women were illiterate, a stark reminder of the long-standing denial of basic rights such as education. This situation of social and political vulnerability makes communities that are more dependent on natural resources less resilient to increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as droughts or sudden torrential rains. This is the case of the Q’eqchi people, an Indigenous Mayan group primarily from the highlands of Guatemala.

Yet, agroecology is the weapon that many NGOs, communities and other stakeholders use to reverse this situation. Beyond a production technique, it is conceived as an alternative model to the current agro-industrial system. Agroecology has been used in several contexts to promote spaces of change and cooperation, and researchers have explored its social benefits. On the one hand, it has been explored how this practice promotes political activism, among other social benefits, through shared critical spaces within urban contexts in countries such as the USA and Australia. On the other hand, in rural contexts focused on the Global South, such as in Malawi, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil and the Andes or India, researchers found out that Agroecology empowers communities, improves cooperation, resilience to climate change and challenges traditional gender roles. Additionally, it generates Social Capital, which is the resources, benefits and opportunities generated by networks and interactions within the groups that share social norms and certain values. Previous studies have highlighted the potential of agroecology as a transformative social practice that strengthens community life and political engagement; few have examined its direct political impact.

This article draws on my master’s thesis research, which covers this gap in the literature. By using participatory visual research methods, such as drawing workshops and photography elicitation, I examine how agroecology influences the political participation of Indigenous women, a group that remains largely marginalised and underrepresented in existing studies.

The Particular Case of Zona Reina and its Agroecology Workshops

Zona Reina, located in the municipality of Uspantán, in the Guatemalan department of Quiché, is a remote region comprising 92 communities, most of which belong to the Q’eqchi’ Maya people. Despite its difficult access and lack of infrastructure, it is home to more than 40% of the population of the municipality of Uspantán. The region’s economic activity is mainly based on agriculture. Its semi-tropical climate favours the cultivation of maize, beans, bananas and cardamom, although recurrent droughts have severely affected agricultural production in recent decades.

Land ownership has historically been a source of conflict in Zona Reina. Historically inhabited by the Q’eqchi’ people, these lands were subject to state agricultural colonisation programmes in the 1960s, which transferred the land to external settlers. During Guatemala’s internal armed conflict (1960–1996), the region was the scene of extreme violence and forced displacement. Today, much of the territory is occupied by monoculture plantations with precarious working conditions, while indigenous communities continue to fight for their emancipation and fair representation in institutions. Nevertheless, communities do have sovereignty at a local level, as community organisation is structured around Community Deliberative Assemblies, the main instrument of local government. Authorities are democratically elected in these assemblies, which address issues such as education, resource management and municipal projects. However, women continue to be underrepresented in these decision-making spaces.

To address these inequalities, but mainly to promote food sovereignty, PRODESSA’s agroecology projects train Q’eqchi’ women in sustainable agriculture, food sovereignty and solidarity economy. Participants receive theoretical and practical training and replicate it in their communities, generating a multiplier effect that strengthens leadership and income generation. This methodology, known as “farmer to farmer”, is based on the transmission of knowledge from peer to peer, without marked hierarchical structures that perpetuate inequalities, and it is increasingly common in Latin America.

Analysing the Impact of Agroecology on Political Participation

To identify how agroecology impacts Indigenous women’s political participation, the case of Zona Reina was analysed through a qualitative study. The research was based on Social Capital Theory and Empowerment Theory. Both were used to identify mechanisms that emerged in the workshops and had a positive impact on the participation of Q’eqchi women in the community assemblies. Thus, elements such as leadership, resources, agency and cooperation were expected to emerge from agroecology workshops. The methodology consisted of a combination of semi-structured interviews and ethnographic participatory methods, in which the participants, who were merely Q’eqchi’ peasant women, generated their own data following methodological decolonisation principles. Over five weeks of fieldwork, including drawing workshops, photo elicitation, and conceptual discussions, the research revealed several mechanisms that make agroecology a powerful driver of political participation. The data also uncovered additional dynamics not previously identified in the literature that positively influence Indigenous women’s engagement.

The study finds that women’s ability to act and shape their own lives, their capabilities, is one of the strongest drivers of participation, along with access to social and economic resources. As Anita, a participant, claims: “Now that I am participating here, (agroecology projects) when I go out to the street, I think I am a brave, hard-working and experienced woman”. Cooperation, solidarity, and leadership within the women’s groups also played a vital role, strengthened by their connections with outside organisations. Finally, out of the theory, ancestral knowledge emerged as a powerful source of confidence and agency, helping women see themselves as changemakers within their communities: “… we have to value, to come back to our practices […] reject all that agro-industrial companies bring”, Ana María Santos explains.

Nonetheless, the findings also revealed certain barriers to participation, both in agroecology and in politics, which mainly involve domestic violence and paternalistic attitudes by men in the communities. Although few, these cases show how deeply rooted structures of gender inequality are in the area.

From Maize to Power: Lessons from Zona Reina

The findings of the research have multiple implications. Not only does it identify the relationship between agroecology and political participation, but it also points out the mechanisms that explain this relationship in this particular case of Guatemala. Furthermore, it reinforces the findings of previous literature on agroecology and further strengthens the applied theory, giving rise to new insights that were not previously considered. Despite the research limitations, mostly related to ethical considerations and logistical constraints, the study effectively showcases emerging models of production that stand apart from the prevailing global system.

One of the main takeaways from this study is the importance of investing resources in similar research that focuses on resilient initiatives and encourages participatory research in the global south. Firstly, it gives a voice and visibility to marginalised groups, such as indigenous women in Guatemala, who often lack formal channels for engaging in decision-making spaces. Furthermore, it highlights the value of local, resilient and sustainable practices. It offers useful guidelines for other actors, such as municipalities, NGOs or community-based organisations that wish to implement similar practices. By focusing on the local in a globalised world, this approach challenges conventional systems and explores alternative ways of living.

From the fields of maize to the local assemblies, agroecology is enabling women to claim their voice and transform their communities.

Iraide Arcos Fabrega is a Master’s student in Political Science with a minor in Environmental Governance and Behavior at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Life between Machines and Trees: Local Voices under Deforestation

Nilüfer Khudaykulov — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 07:57:18 +0000

How can a rich forest be protected from illegal logging, while safeguarding the communities who rely on it for survival? Two expert groups from Cambodia and Brazil share how memory, community knowledge and technology can shape sustainability and partnership amid the conflicting interests of resident communities and loggers.

Cambodia and Brazil are two different countries, yet their stories intersect at crucial points by the logging of their abundant forests and the presence of indigenous people living there. These forests are commonly being targeted by governments and private enterprises for commercial interests. It poses a significant threat to the environment and the livelihoods of resident indigenous people.

Prey Lang in Cambodia

Cambodia set a world record for deforestation with which 1.5 percent of the country’s forests disappeared in 2021. Additionally, the country lost 31 percent of trees in protected areas since 2000, equivalent to 2.7 million hectares.

Prey Lang is the largest forest in Cambodia and the last remaining major lowland rainforest in the Southeast Asia. It is home to 250,000 indigenous Kuy people, 530 species of plants and animals. Protecting Prey Lang is vital not only for the ecosystem, but also for Kuy people who rely primarily on the land for survival, as well as 22 threatened species registered in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Red List.

Prey Lang has incrementally been the victim of illegal logging and deforestation due to its profitable luxury woods, agricultural potential for demanded plantations such as sugar, rubber and cassava, and presence of minerals such as timber. The forest is also aspired for further mining explorations for iron and gold. Considering the profits accrued by concession companies from Prey Lang, the environmental importance of the forest and livelihood of Kuy people has been systematically overshadowed.

The Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN) took place to protect the forest from demolition with voluntary collaboration of indigenous community members. It mainly focuses on collection and dissemination of the information about illegal logging activities. PLCN has been utilizing smartphone technology with the Prey Lang App created in 2013 to collect data such as photographing and pinpointing the location of logging activities. The app also enables recording interactions with authorities, threats, and violence, as well as ascertaining climate-related figures.

The monitoring app is a geographic citizen science application that integrates with satellite GPAs and runs on smartphones. It was designed through a partnership between the University of Copenhagen (UCPH), PLCN, and local and international NGOs.

Besides restraining illegal logging in Prey Lang, the project team also induce advocacy by collection of data through the UCPH. They teach the Kuy people to use a social media platform, so that their reports can be the voice of them to draw public attention, like a citizen journalist.

Territories surrounding Trombetas River in Brazil

In this context, Brazil shares a similar pattern with Cambodia. Mining activities on the Trombetas River, mainly conducted by the fourth largest bauxite producer Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN), have adversely impacted the local quilombolas who face challenges in securing legal rights over the territories Alto Trombetas I and II. They have been neighbours of MRN and experienced firsthand the severe environmental effects of its operations for decades. The mining territories are federally conserved units by the government, which overlap with the territorial rights of quilombola communities.

The territorial conflict between quilombolas and conservation units for mining activities obstructs land titling. Furthermore, the continued distrust between the government and indigenous groups necessitates more time for the hearing process rather than for information and decision steps.

Julia Marques Dalla Costa, who served as deputy coordinator of the National Quilombola Environmental Licensing Team at The Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária – INCRA (National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform): “… it’s a process. We have to believe in the process, and we have to be very mindful with everything, every step on the way. So you became exceptional by time, you know, exempting yourself from the government or the image of the government they built over time by their traumas. Then you build the hearing again. By hearing, you try to understand. So you kind of became the common ground between them.”, she further explains how angry and frustrated quilombola people were initially.

“We are allies of the quilombolas because we are responsible for the titling of their lands. So they were like, you left us, you abandoned us. We were here for 10 years without any notice, without any resources.”, she adds what was crucial that worked for them to build the trust, through consistently being the same people that they can contact to, “we always try to keep with our word. So we have to be very cautious with what we are saying, what we are committing to”.

The indispensable pillars: collaboration and understanding

Community involvement is a highly effective strategy to cope with environmental issues. It is cost-effective, and capable of comprising a sustainable foundation for all parties involved. However, it requires multidimensional approach that incorporates social, institutional and economical aspects. When these aspects are absent, communities encounter problems that endanger their livelihoods and safety. Therefore, it is vital for both Kuy and Quilombola people that the education and peacebuilding process is handled in a multidimensional and sustainable way.

The project team in Prey Lang also facilitates peacebuilding between the community and the government through peace dialogues. They bring the communities into dialogue, both with local authority and moving forward with the national levels. They also held several forums that brought together key actors in this forest sector, including indigenous groups, NGOs, private sector representatives, and officials from the Ministry of Environment to present their priorities and the support they need. The forums were crucially important for relevant key actors to illustrate the issue and reach a common ground.

Integrating faith for biodiversity among the community was another step taken for sustainable peacebuilding and biodiversity protection. Forest is a sacred place for indigenous groups – a place for spiritual practices. Additionally, collaborating with monks and other religious leaders to hold tree ordination and tree planting eased the process for Prey Lang. “Religious leaders hold moral authority, and they are able to mobilize communities for tree planting. For example, if we have reforestations initiatives, they mobilize the community and engage with authority. Authorities are more collaborative when it comes to religious leaders so that they join the efforts. And this kind of initiative also creates more understanding and trust between the communities and authorities.” the project team member explains.

“We hope that at the end of the day, the communities, the states and those who work in the forest sector can understand each other and collaborate to protect the forest.” the team member says.

Indigenous People and Local Communities (LCIPs) hold deep ecological knowledge, and they have great wisdom in forest protection, with a long-standing tradition of passing on their knowledge from one generation to the next. For this reason, it is extremely helpful for researchers and states to integrate the science knowledge with traditional knowledge and recognise the crucial role of LCIPs in forest and biodiversity conservation.

Julia refers to Bronislaw Malinowski’s pioneering quota to approach this particular issue: “We should have the native point of view… it’s very basic but important and core lesson in anthropology that you have to connect to understand why that person or group having that position is making those statements, what is their point of view towards that problem, that institution or someone.”

“A first step for them to trust you. Imposing your own information on them, look, you feel in this way, you need this… As an outsider, you just need to bring their own knowledge, own experiences, values and feelings. Combine and prioritize their own experiences over your solutions.” Julia concludes.

Malinowski’s theory claiming to “grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world” sheds light on the path to partnership with local communities in response to the damage caused by mining companies in Prey Lang and the territories surrounding the Trombetas River over the years. It is therefore vital to empower local people, not only for their fundamental rights, but also to facilitate collaborative efforts to preserve the biodiverse landscapes that are home to hundreds of species.

Nilüfer Khudaykulov is a MSc student in International Politics and Governance at Roskilde University and a DDRN intern

Sustainability Without Lab Coats: Citizen Science in Service of the SDGs

Christos Vlasakidis — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 09:27:47 +0000

Enlisting the Public

The universality of the themes covered by the SDGs speaks to the fact that there is not only space, but also interest, for the public to participate in the work towards the SDGs; contributions “through the involvement of everybody, not just the usual suspects like the government organisations or the research bodies”, as put by Dr. Mohammad Gharesifard, assistent professor of Citizen Science at the University of Groningen.

Citizen Science (CS), a mode of public engagement where members of the public actively participate in the research process, has been gathering momentum in recent decades, as a promising approach towards democratising science; an inclusive way to escape from the elitism of which science is so often accused. Due to their empowering potential, multiple CS projects have sprung up, such as the Ground Truth 2.0 project, in which Dr. Gharesifard was directly involved. The project, which operated in six different countries, aimed at establishing ‘citizen observatories’; networks of stakeholders (including members of the community) using technology and sharing information to monitor their environment. The project constitutes just one of the many examples of citizen science.

Such initiatives equip interested members of the public with tools and knowledge to play their part in (natural/social) science research, for instance by collecting data. The themes of such projects also tend to revolve around issues that affect the citizens, ranging from tracking biodiversity, and monitoring air and water quality, to public involvement in setting the agenda for urban development projects. Looking at the foci of CS projects, one notices that they are not simply topics of abstract research; they tend to be pertinent issues related to the environment around the participating citizens. The link between the themes of CS projects and sustainable development issues is strong, and these themes often overlap with those of the SDGs.

Grassroots Data

In the spirit of substantive action and evidence-based practice, numerous indicators exist for each of the 17 SDGs to monitor progress and evaluate the work towards achieving them. A substantial and consistent flow of data is, naturally, necessary for making informed assessments towards these indicators.

But generating and collecting such a large set of data is not easy, especially when this monumental task is formally allocated exclusively to certain organisations. Organisations such as governments and national statistics offices are relied upon to be the sole ‘pump’ through which the necessary stream of data flows. This is a substantial demand, and these sources are proving to be insufficient.

Their inadequacy seems to necessitate that new, non-traditional data sources be utilised, as argued in a study on the interface of CS and the SDGs, and CS initiatives perfectly fit that niche. In the words of Dr. Gharesifard, “with citizen science you actually have a complementary source of information to measure the SDGs. So that is one of the beauties of citizen science; in parts where we have a lack of data, we can perhaps cover it.”

However, this raises an important consideration: How to strike the right balance between taking advantage of CS data towards the SDGs, while keeping the official bodies accountable for fulfilling their obligation of effective and accurate tracking of the progress towards the SDGs.

Currently, CS projects are already contributing to some of those goals, with the potential to contribute to even more. In total, such initiatives can contribute to up to one third of all the different indicators that are used to demonstrate progress towards the various SDGs, as per a 2020 paper mapping CS contributions. These contributions are heavily put in service of ‘monitoring’ the SDGs – checking the progress against the different indicators – but the potential for contribution extends to achieving them as well: “We can discuss the SDGs and citizen science in this dichotomy of monitoring and achieving”, says Dr. Gharesifard.

Crossing Continents

While the citizens involved are often local to the area, the relevance of the issues they tackle can be global. And even if the individual cases are area-specific, the objective of citizen science – the involvement of the public – can find its place across borders. It is no surprise then that many CS projects involve collaborations between multiple countries across continents.

Ground Truth 2.0 was such an example; a 3-year project running from 2016 to 2019 that set up and studied six citizen observatories, including two in Africa (Kenya and Zambia). “The idea was to really co-create these citizen observatories; not to go there with a tool that is already developed, but with a blank canvas, if you will, and start with bringing all the stakeholders around the table to first discuss the issues and only then come up with tools or solutions for how to tackle these issues with public participation through citizen science”, says Dr. Gharesifard, who was involved in the project, specifically referring to the Kenyan case.

However, the canvas with which the team arrived in Kenya was not completely blank. Since the area where the observatory was to be set up was near the Maasai Mara National Reserve, Dr. Gharesifard and the team thought “ok, perfect case for biodiversity monitoring. We go there and we develop an app, perhaps, that tourists can use when they go on these safaris to basically count animals […] so we can have a better count of the state of biodiversity in this reserve”.

They started by organising a session bringing stakeholders together; representatives from the county and the national government, the University of Maasai Mara, and local citizens. A diverse sample of stakeholders, but not representative since, as Dr. Gharesifard admits: “We couldn’t engage everybody, only those who could speak English, so it was not really a representative sample. But we tried to engage a very diverse group and we did our best.”

“The session started and we tabled the idea” he recounts. “The county government was actually very much in favour of the idea, they really liked it. But the local people actually started telling us that this is not the full picture. They explained that, although conservation of the animals in the national reserve is an important focus, it ties to more pertinent issues; some of these animals, such as lions and leopards, can often wander off the reserve and attack grazing herds, on which many members of the community depend for their livelihoods. The message was clear: ´the more important thing for us is our livelihoods and not counting animals´.”

With the priorities of the citizens clearer, the theme of the project changed and evolved to include the information that the community was actually interested in. Dr. Gharesifard explains that they had to “refocus the idea on basically a balance between conservation and livelihood management”. “So, besides what type of animals you see [and] whether you see a case of conflict that you can report”, he continues, “they could share various information about water sources that they could take the cattle to, or perhaps better pastures outside of the conserved areas. And also things like prices for cattle etc.”

Finally, he adds one further major change to their initial idea: They completely dropped the idea of focusing on the engagement of tourists “because we realised that there are more important stakeholders to engage at the moment”. The next step was to develop the necessary tools to carry out the project. The team, researchers and citizens, started to work on co-creating an app where people could submit and share all this information.

The combination of crowdsourcing information that interests the local community, along with the fact that they all have access to this repository, allows such projects to contribute to goals of sustainability: Information on clean sources of water ties to SDG 6, monitoring animal conflicts ties with SDG 15, and so on. “In that sense, it [the project] could really promote sustainability through practice and through providing tools.” A very interesting outcome of the citizen monitoring of the conflicts between the animals of the reserve and their herd animals, is that it could also assist in safeguarding the security of their livelihood by providing evidence in support of claims for compensation; “this is a big issue, the local government is hesitant with paying compensation in these types of conflicts.”

Shaky Sustainability

It sounds ideal: Science being done in service of the public, while including them in all stages of the design, aligning with their priorities, and all that while also contributing to, and gathering data in service of, global goals of sustainability. But, of course, it is not that simple.

Citizen science projects are often touted as cost-effective sources of data. This notion is challenged in a study, co-authored by Dr. Gharesifard and based on the Ground Truth 2.0 project, where the authors conclude that “the cost of obtaining citizen science data is not as low as frequently stated in literature.” He adds that “you spend a lot of money and time on meeting each other, creating things together, thinking together, but after that when you have this and everybody trusts it and they start using it, then the cost goes down.”

But even these comparatively small maintenance costs can often be prohibitive for the sustainability of the project, with a common issue amongst CS initiatives being that they do not survive in the long term. Dr. Gharesifard expands on this topic by explaining that the issue is not the size of the funding per se, but rather its longevity: “A problem that we have faced a lot in citizen science projects is that there is a source of money, and with this source you can do a lot of things, but after the funding is finished the researcher is on his or her own way […] I think it’s a big flaw in the way that we fund this type of projects”.

He further adds that “you can do capacity building, you can try to train people also on doing these things, but still, this needs to be built into the design of the project, and beyond that, it would need to be built into the current ways of funding projects.”

A project may start with a lump sum large enough for its operation, but as soon as the funding is over, the financial responsibility is suddenly shifted onto the local stakeholders, making it difficult to keep up. A scheme whereby a portion of the funding is reserved for long-term maintenance and running of the project may be what is needed to ensure its sustainability; allowing projects to mature, so that they can eventually be run exclusively on local funds.

Context Matters

But overall, the most important aspect, which is at the heart of citizen science, is inclusion; hearing the voices of those whose lives are intimately intertwined with the issues at hand, and doing so in a genuine way. It is easy for a group of researchers – or an affluent country leading a CS project, for that matter – to approach with the assumption that they are leading. The importance of keeping this potential imbalance in mind is further underscored by Dr. Gharesifard when he says that “power dynamics [are] very important. Quite often we assume that when you bring people to the table they have the same type of authority or power and that’s almost never the case.”

He further elaborates on this in his 2019 paper, also drawing from the Ground Truth 2.0 project, about how ‘Context Matters’. As he later remarked, “There are countless ways of engaging citizens in citizen science projects […] it needs to match the budget, it needs to match the aim, it needs to match the time-frame, the available resources, and other realities on the ground. The context.”

After all, isn’t context what it ultimately is about? Local citizens getting involved, setting the agenda, having a voice, lest the context is ignored. In the words of Dr. Gharesifard, “Context matters; it really is an issue of thinking carefully on what makes sense and what is possible”, and getting the context right is the first step to defining a problem and coming up with a realistic response; a sustainable solution.

Christos Vlasakidis is a M.Sc. student, Science Education and Communication, University of Groningen, Netherlands, and DDRN university intern.

Missing the Long Term Perspective on Development

Asger Roejle Christensen — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 14:12:36 +0000

Advisors have been replaced by consultants. Broader projects have partially been replaced by narrower ones with singular purposes. This has had both positive and negative impact on the development research that takes place, says a Danish veteran.

Once upon a time, in Nepal in the early 2000s, there was a Danish community of aid professionals, project advisors, NGO volunteers, and UN employees.

”At one point, we were eighteen Danish advisors in the country,” Torsten Rødel Berg remembers. At the time, he was already an experienced advisor, having worked in irrigation and rural energy projects in the Mid-Western hills outside the capital, Kathmandu. Now, a quarter of a century later, he is back in Denmark as senior research coordinator at the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University.

”In today’s world, personally, I miss the long-term opportunity we had then to follow development processes in the same area for fifteen years. It was fabulous to look back and see that important changes had actually happened, partly as a result of our work. We stayed for a long time, and we did our job thoroughly.

Of course, many mistakes were also made, but much development was created, and much new understanding and knowledge was achieved. We shouldn’t forget that.”

Torsten Rødel Berg graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia in Britain in 1987, and got his master’s degree from Roskilde University (RUC). In the following two decades, he and his family lived in different Asian countries, where he was working as an advisor at a series of aid projects. His expertise lies within rural development, natural resources, and agriculture.

”In Nepal, we assisted in the rehabilitation of small-scale community-based irrigation systems. I was the ‘expert’ on the socio-economic part, and we did not only focus on irrigation in the technical sense. We used the whole palette. It sounds almost anachronistic nowadays, but we organized mothers’ groups in order to better handle the social changes that happened; we established credit groups; we had volunteers from Danish Action Aid (Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke, ed.) who contributed with what they were clever at; we had UN volunteers who contributed with agronomic expertise. Altogether, it was an effort which was indeed very holistic and long term.”

It all happened in the 1990s when Nepal became gradually more democratic and civil society groups began to play a major role in society. ”Suddenly, there was a democratic space for change, and the effort we were part of actually achieved results to a remarkable degree.”

After returning to Denmark early in the new century, Torsten Rødel Berg wrote his PhD thesis on hill irrigation in Nepal. ”Part of my research was to identify the impact of the project as a whole. I had baseline data from the beginning – and collected data again fifteen years later. I was able to compare, over time, the indicators for productivity, land use change, water management and migration.”

Torsten Rødel Berg nowadays coordinates development research projects in the Global South at the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University and looks at the development projects in front of him with a researcher’s eyes. He suggests that achieving and tracing the effects of interventions is more difficult under today’s conditions.

”There are fewer advisors, the time frames appear shorter and the efforts less intensive. Advisers disappeared, not so much because of bad results, but rather because of a shifting focus towards programmes and budget support. However, the advisors – some came from the North, others were local – were involved for several years and were the true anchors at the projects, some of which were actually quite big. Now, these on-the-ground people tend to be replaced by consultants, and sometimes researchers, who come and go. The success of this approach depends on the context of the country.”

Networks in Ghana

The Department of Agroecology, at Foulum outside Viborg, has established itself in recent years as a very active center for development research in the Global South, in recent years especially so in Ghana. Over the years, the network has benefited from funding for many projects from FFU (the Danida research fund) and from multilateral sources. Torsten Rødel Berg has been involved in several of these applications and projects.

”Some projects are genuinely ’South-driven’,” he explains. ”Our recent Danida-funded cocoa project together with the Kwame Nkrumah University in Ghana is based on an idea from the local researchers – to have more resilient cocoa production, specifically by understanding the function of shade trees – and our colleagues in Ghana, very skilled and dedicated people, really have taken ownership of the whole process.

They arrived in Denmark very well prepared, and we sat down for three weeks to write the application together. It ended up as a very successful project. But for many projects, still, the major initiative comes in reality from the North, as our researchers have better conditions for attracting funding, including institutional capacity to create combined incentive and administrative systems.”

Torsten Rødel Berg underlines that the research capacity in the South, as in Ghana, has been strengthened in recent years. Such strengthening has been the goal of Danida’s so-called BSU-programs, Building Stronger Universities, in which the department also participates (together with Copenhagen University, and the private companies Access2Innovation and Gregart Consult). Through participation in the program, Global South universities have strengthened their research administration and capacity for applying for funding from the North.

By building projects on top of other projects, researchers at the Department of Agroecology in Aarhus have been ”able to contribute to some strong networks in Ghana,” as Torsten Rødel Berg puts it; including long-term, thematically coherent projects with focus on climate change adaptation in the crop cultivation and irrigation areas.

This coherence has helped offset the tendency towards the short-term time frames that is frequently seen in development projects. Hopefully, according to him, it will also help in gauging the effects of collaboration through the patterns of change that will emerge over time.

Fieldwork and Big Data – Researching the Maasai Mara Savannah in Kenya

Asger Roejle Christensen — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 12:27:42 +0000

Researchers from Aarhus University are involved in finding sustainable ways for wildlife and indigenous lifestyles to survive in the Maasai Mara savannah in Kenya. Traditional fieldwork among the population is one way to do it, working with big data from satellite surveillance is another way.

In Masai Mara, a broad savannah turned national park in South Western Kenya, local landowners have built a great number of fences recently, dividing the area into smaller plots. These fences have serious consequences for the wild animals of the savannah and for the lifestyle of the Maasai people living there as well.

Professor Jens-Christian Svenning is a Danish biologist from Aarhus University. He has studied biodiversity in tropical areas for several decades, and for the last ten years he has frequently done fieldwork in Maasai Mara. Only when he and a group of colleagues from the South and North surveyed the fence-building trend with the help of free surveillance data from satellites, did it become possible to describe how dramatic and damaging the changes were. The message got through to the political leaders in the capital city, Nairobi, and they recently began trying to stop the trend. Aid money from the U.S. is now given with the precise purpose of removing some of these fences again.

”It’s enormously important to keep the global perspective and use the big data we have. But at the same time it’s important to study focus areas in which we, in a detailed way, describe what is going on. Both are important for academics like us in our efforts to understand reality. But it is also important for local people in Maasai Mara. Their destiny is not only decided by local decisions, but also by global trends like climate change, developments in global trade etc.”, Jens-Christian Svenning explains.

Originally, as a young biologist, he worked mostly with basic research. His PhD-thesis about palm trees in the jungle of Ecuador was almost entirely basic research.

”But today we have a biodiversity crisis. We have a climate crisis, which we don’t take seriously enough. We have a lot of people aiming at getting a reasonable life on this planet. I have to say that today maybe only half of my time goes to basic research and the other half goes to applied research”.

Jens-Christian Svenning underlines that the initiative to begin surveying the fences in Maasai Mara by satellite came from his group’s South partners from Nairobi University and local NGOs with whom they have already had a series of very concrete collaborative research projects through more than ten years.

An initiative for sustainability

It all began when a Danish Zoo working closely together with the Maasai ethnic group’s organization for livestock management, asked Aarhus University to enter a collaboration in defining how to develop Maasai Mara in a sustainable way, keeping it as a functional ecosystem for both traditional pastoralism and its spectacular wildlife.

”They felt there was a need for applied and problem-solving research to inform management towards greater sustainability. For the sake of biodiversity – and for the sake of the local Maasai communities. We decided to join the project out of pure interest. In the beginning we had no funding”, Jens-Christian Svenning says. “To be effective and have good governance, we jointly set up the Maasai Mara Science & Development Initiative (MMSDI) as our platform for this collaboration between stakeholder organizations and the involved universities from Kenya and Denmark”, he adds.

Now a broader, international ”research hub” has been set up which integrates the diverse research institutions from several countries that are active in Maasai Mara. Local NGOs, local universities and the regional government are involved.

“We (MMSDI) took part in the initiative when the research hub started along with other international researchers, but the main coordinators are Kenyans employed by a local NGO. They are in the lead when it comes to coordination, and they propose what new areas need to be the object of research. Where can we, as researchers, contribute?”.

“Our satellite surveillance project started there as part of our MMSDI work. Traditionally, the land is under joint ownership, but twenty years ago a part of the area was defined as a national park, and the rest was privatized as individual properties. Therefore, some of the land owners began building fences in order to control their land lots, e.g., keeping the sparse grazing for their own cattle. This issue was raised as a key problem by our local collaborators.” In Jens-Christian Svenning’s words, fencing gives a ”fragmentation and division” which is very bad for wild animals by making migration impossible as well as for traditional pastoralism, which also depends on being able to move animals across the landscape.

”We contributed with the satellite-based analysis which showed that the trend has strongly accelerated within the last few years. Satellite-based surveillance programs such as from the European Space Agency gives data down to a resolution of ten meters, updated as frequently as every fourteen days everywhere on the globe”, Jens-Christian Svenning explains.

”We had the technical equipment, and we knew the methods. Of course we did it in close cooperation with our Kenyan colleagues and local stakeholders. With this tool and proper training, anybody will be able to survey Maasai Mara in detail in the future, if they have the capacity. But that capacity is constituted by experience and methodology. The computers must of course have a certain size, but apart from that you don’t need expensive equipment”.

”Without any doubt, we played a major role via our expertise in this field. However, we also invested in capacity building e.g., via training courses and via our general collaboration, and I see much potential for local stakeholders and universities to leverage remote sensing as a powerful tool for monitoring and research in the future”. Overall, remote sensing as a research tool has important potential for Global South researchers, as key data sources are free and they allow for big-picture, fast data on key issues such as environmental degradation and climate change impacts.

”How much this potential will be realized of course depends on developments much beyond our project, notably national and international investment in relevant education and training in remote sensing. Even if you work with capacity building in a local project, it won’t have much impact if the need for learning these techniques are not taken up on the national level. We are able to contribute a little, but we cannot solve the problem”.

”This said, I would also highlight that I see research collaboration and exchange visits as a powerful way to enhance capacity building, from learning concrete skills to broader themes related to how to structure research groups to foster ambitious, creative science”.

”Notably, I personally see the relatively non-hierarchical system in Denmark as a key strength in promoting the development of new ideas. It helps us a lot and I think it can offer inspiration for researchers from around the world”, Jens-Christian Svenning says.

Jens-Christian Svenning underlines that he and AU researchers are also themselves contributing via research beyond remote sensing, notably interdisciplinary fieldwork among and with the Maasai people. An important part of the project has been a large sociological survey about local peoples’ wishes to nature management of the area, depending on whether they are farmers, landowners, tourism workers or other professions. Here, researchers from South and North went into the field together to distribute question forms and convince people to participate. ”There was also a lot of capacity building in that”.

Botanical roots

Jens-Christian Svenning comes from a research community at the current Department of Biology at Aarhus University with a long tradition for working in the Global South, especially in tropical areas.

For instance, there is a very old collaboration between botanists in Aarhus on the one side and colleagues in Thailand and Ecuador on the other side. That was in itself an ”enormous capacity building”, Jens-Christian Svenning says, long before that expression first became a buzzword – and later a contested issue.

”If you visit the department of biology at the university in Quito, you will find that many of the researchers have done their PhD in Aarhus”.

”My current research group, ’Section for Ecoinformatics and Biodiversity’, has its roots in the old botanical institute’s systematic work with species in Ecuador, Thailand and other tropical countries. We have always worked in the Global South, both in South-East Asia, Africa and South America. It was one of the reasons that I applied to study here”.

“I still see Global South research as an extremely relevant focus area; it’s where very much of the planet’s biodiversity is concentrated; it’s where most people live and most population growth occurs; and it’s where human-driven climate change will lead to most extreme warming, with potentially disastrous consequences”, explains Jens-Christian Svenning. “The dynamics in this region is essential for the Earth’s future as a biodiversity-rich, liveable planet, albeit of course strongly coupled and influenced by dynamics in the Global North, not least our resource use. At the same time, there is huge potential to develop solutions and foster positive development via collaborative research. Finally, I also want to highlight that working with the Global South offers many important opportunities to take a fresh look at how things work in our own countries and what we could do better – for example, I always find it inspirational to see how the people in Maasai Mara work to realize human-wildlife coexistence to a level much beyond what we have achieved in Denmark”.

Danish Development Research Must Pay Attention to the Tech-Field

Asger Roejle Christensen — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 14:14:43 +0000

New technologies open the way for new possible approaches to developing the Global South – and new methods for researching this development. A Danish anthropologist has become a professor at the IT University in Copenhagen. One of his aims is to get development researchers and tech researchers to talk to each other.

”When I think about the many ways in which technology creeps into our daily communication and other routines, the many ways it sets new standards for how everything is functioning in societies around the world, I fear that the established community of critical development researchers in Denmark hasn’t really paid enough attention to how much changes in the Global South are influenced by tech, and doesn’t consider it as important as it is.”

Professor Steffen Dalsgaard from the IT University in Copenhagen is worried that “while ICT4D and similar concepts are eagerly pursued by development practitioners, with a few exceptions I fear that the more critical Danish Development Research is falling behind in the tech-field. At least, that is the impression I get. I don’t see many initiatives in that area”.

This warning is not coming from a native hardcore technologist. Steffen Dalsgaard is actually educated as an anthropologist from Aarhus University. He arrived with an anthropologist’s perspective when he was employed by the IT University ten years ago, and so he considers himself a ”bridge-builder.”

”Building bridges between the tech-world and the development world is extremely important at this juncture”, he says.

”The danger is that we will have a group of development researchers in the future who don’t know enough about what is going on within tech-research, but also another group of tech-researchers who believe they are inventing technical fixes that can make the world a better place but without any understanding of the societies in which these fixes shall function.”

”We need to meet and talk, and at the moment we don’t have any obvious forum, any obvious network, where this conversation takes place. It’s a position that needs to be cultivated.”

As Steffen Dalsgaard sees it, technological advances play an increasingly important role for development in the Global South – and they play an increasingly important role in research into these developments as well.

”Not only social media, the internet or mobile phones, which we all know about by now, but more recent technologies such as drones, distributed ledger technologies and artificial intelligence (AI, ed.) will, in the future, be important factors in deciding which development projects are realistic and which are not. And this is just to mention the most visible technologies that grab the headlines. We also have to remember the specific software infrastructures that both enable, but also limit, certain forms of organizations, initiatives and outcomes. These new technologies will also be important tools in the methodologies of development research in the future.”

Drones in the forest

Steffen Dalsgaard is currently involved in a research project in the Amazon in Brazil supported by The Independent Research Fund Denmark, in which the possibilities of using new technologies in inventing new ways of getting value out of the forests are being explored. The project puts focus on the forests as they are – and thereby saves them from being cut down.

He mentions, as one example, the Brazilian initiative ‘Amazon 4.0’ that wants to make use of drones to transport things in and out of forests instead of building new roads that totally undermine life in the forest. The same initiative believes that biomimetic research (building materials that mimic biological processes) can lead to the invention of new and more sustainable products from the forest flora such as new fragrances for the cosmetics market, new pharmaceuticals, or new types of enzymes. The idea is that indigenous groups living in the forest should be taught to develop and make use of such new inventions without having to change their ways of life fundamentally.

”In Brazil, we have found a growing landscape of clever tech-developers who are eager to do something good for the Amazon, but they typically lack appreciation of how their technologically driven interventions will influence the lives of people who actually live in the forest and earn their living from the forests’ resources”, Steffen Dalsgaard explains.

Basically, something has become possible now which wasn’t possible before these new inventions were available. These possibilities should be explored in a far more targeted way in an effort to avoid trees being cut down. Trees are important for all of us in our fight against global warming.

”We want to avoid that people in the forest see their main interest in just selling their trees to the timber company that offers the best price”, Steffen Dalsgaard says.

A modern anthropological approach

Originally, as a young anthropologist, Steffen Dalsgaard went to Papua New Guinea (PNG), visited by quite a number of classical anthropologists in the past. He wrote his master’s thesis about the importance of craftsmanship in shaping local identity in these societies. And he wrote his PhD about the meaning of the concept of a modern state for local people when they live in a fragmented society of small villages with 800 different languages.

Today, he is using a different and more ”modern” anthropological approach in his research.

”I am no longer interested in sitting in a village for a year to observe, as many classical anthropological studies did. I look at these societies as networks with different actors, working for or against each other, but also with some common interests. A dynamic, network-oriented anthropology with a focus on the frictions between different societal groups.”

Already when he was still doing his fieldwork in PNG, Steffen Dalsgaard developed an interest in the importance of digitalization for the development of societies in the South as well as the North. He therefore applied for a postdoc-position at the IT University and one year later became associate professor in the field of ‘Social Aspects of Innovation and Digitalization.’ In 2021, he was appointed full professor in “the Anthropology of Digital Technology.”

At the moment, he and his research group are taking the first step in a large comparative study to understand how technologies are connected to attitudes towards the environment and climate in a number of different countries around the globe where the consequences of climate change are severely impacting local peoples’ lives.

”We are observing the relationship between technology and climate, not through Silicon Valley’s glasses, which a lot of people do, but through identifying the impacts of digitalization on a number of decentralized environments”, he explains.

Brazil is focused on because of the depletion of its forests. Other areas in the study include Kenya, Bangladesh, China and Iceland. Iceland is an example of a peripheral society in the Global North in which IT development plays a major role.

Steffen Dalsgaard and his colleagues are currently trying to build up the necessary research networks in these countries.

”We look at the IT-sector’s role in the creation of solutions to concrete climatic problems which these areas are facing in terms of droughts, floods and melting glaciers. How do small-scale IT-enterprises target technology-driven solutions to these specific problems?”

Researchers in these fields coming from the Global South are extremely competent. ”But still, when you cooperate between South and North, there are inequalities in relation to resources and funding which we cannot ignore”, Steffen Dalsgaard admits.

”I have been looking for ways to legitimize that we are there by finding ways to give something back – by pointing at possible constructive solutions to their problems. But remember that our current funding from the DFF and the European Research Council is primarily funding for basic research. It’s in everyone’s interest that the results of the projects will be beneficial for as many people as possible, but our main objective is to find new knowledge and publish that new knowledge for scientific communities. We want to understand the world and its current challenges better than before.”

In spite of that, the research team will prepare websites in Portuguese and Chinese in order to continuously communicate the results of their research locally in a non-academic form.

The Chinese Factor: Chinese Migration for Artisanal Small-scale Gold Mining in Ghana

Joel Agbesinyale — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 11:18:39 +0000

Ghana is ranked amongst the top five producers of gold in Africa. Research revealed that an estimated number of 50,000 Chinese individuals migrated from China to Ghana between 2008 and 2013 to engage in artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASM) activities. ASM refers to the extraction of gold deposits using basic man-made/local tools, materials, and traditional techniques which require intense human labour. In Ghana, foreign involvement in any form of ASM activity is illegal. Nevertheless, Chinese miners in Ghana buy or rent rural farmlands close to rivers and import machinery (‘‘Chan fans’’ and excavators) to extract gold. Since most of these mining activities are unregistered, they are equally considered illegal. The local name for such illegal ASM activities in Ghana is known as ‘‘galamsey’’. Interestingly, these ASM activities (galamsey) contributed to over 35 per cent of Ghana’s total gold production in 2014. Without a doubt, the influx of Chinese miners in Ghana’s ASM’s sector has accrued some advantages and disadvantages both for Ghana and China.

Nicholas Loubere, a senior lecturer at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden, focuses on contemporary China and its global manifestations. Currently, his primary strand of research explores Chinese migration to Ghana for informal, small-scale gold mining. He focuses on socio-economic transformations in Ghana and China, processes and patterns of migration, and the flow of resources. Nicholas Loubere has critically studied this phenomenon in the Chinese context by conducting fieldwork in the Shanglin County, a nationally designated ‘‘poverty-stricken county’’ in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China. It has been established that most Chinese migrant miners in Ghana come from this county. However, Nicholas is yet to study this phenomenon in the Ghanaian context. Just last year, he secured funding from Riksbanken Jubileumsfond, a member of the Network of European Foundations for Innovative Cooperation (NEF), to undertake a three-year project which examines Chinese informal/semi-informal mining practices during three resource booms: the 19thCentury gold rush in Victoria, Australia; the contemporary Ghanaian gold rush; and the recent bitcoin cryptocurrency boom focusing on cryptocurrency miners in Sweden and the USA. A thorough analysis of these three cases shall emphasize the under-researched aspects of the historical emergence of Global China by highlighting the dynamics sustaining informal capitalist extraction between the physical and digital realms. This is considered an important area of study for understanding socio-economic, political, and ecological transformations in the 21st century. Additionally, this shall allow him the opportunity to explicitly examine the phenomenon of Chinese migration to Ghana for informal, small-scale gold mining in the Ghanaian context as he plans to conduct fieldwork in Ghana.

In an interview with Nicholas, I questioned his perspectives, motivations, and experiences during fieldwork in China and his working approach towards the future of his research area. This article explores the informal nature of small-scale gold mining in Ghana from a Chinese point of view and further discusses the processes and patterns of Chinese migration particularly to Ghana. Additionally, Nicholas and I critically reflect on and discuss the impact of Chinese migration to Ghana for ASM activities in China.

The informal nature of small-scale gold mining

Nicholas articulated his thoughts on small-scale gold mining in his capacity as a research expert in Chinese informal/semi-informal mining practices. ‘‘When I think about small-scale gold mining, the first thing that comes to my mind is informality’’, he remarked. Nicholas highlighted the informal nature of Chinese migration to Ghana for ASM activities as the most striking and captivating aspect of his research. He attributed this ‘‘informality’’ to how small organic grassroot groups (organised and homogenous groups) of local Chinese miners from the Shanglin county primarily migrate/travel to Ghana based on mere narratives (word of mouth) of other ‘‘successful’’ miners who have explored the ASM landscape of Ghana. Miners are usually men in groups of 5 to 15, between the ages of 20 and 60, who have no or limited connections with the government or state-owned companies in China.

The Chinese miner’s migration pattern

Small-scale gold mining is and has always been an informal mode of livelihood for indigenes of the Shanglin county in China. River mining and other forms of gold mining methods have been in existence in the county for over 100 years until regulations and restrictions were imposed on such activities in the 80s because of their destructive effect on the environment. Due to the restrictions, local miners from the county migrated towards the north of China, close to the Mongolian and Russian borders to continue mining until they were also regulated out of that space. Since then, characterised by a bottom-up entrepreneurial activity, Chinese miners migrated to Ghana, other parts of Africa, and the world to engage in mining activities, both small-scale and large-scale.

Nicholas said, ‘‘Ghana is not the only place where miners from the Shanglin county have been to, but it is probably where the most have been to’’. This may be attributed to the Ghanaian gold rush at the time. Hence, these restrictions and regulations have been one of the driving factors of Chinese migration to Ghana for ASM activities. Additionally, most households in the county have access to very small portions of farmland, making it difficult to depend solely on agriculture. Therefore, each household has a member migrating out to earn some extra income to support their livelihood.

Impact of ASM activities in Ghana on China

Inequality within the Shanglin county has been quite significant. This could be attributed to the ‘‘high risk, high reward’’ characteristic of migrating to Ghana for ASM purposes. For example, miners who were very successful in Ghana accumulated unimaginable wealth and resettled back in the county with their families as compared to other miners who were unsuccessful due to unforeseen circumstances such as crackdowns by the Ghanaian government. Successful miners often invest in urban properties, purchase luxury vehicles, and enrol their children in good schools enabling them to secure good jobs rather than engage in similar dangerous migration patterns in the future. ‘‘Families that migrated for mining at inopportune moments like right before crackdowns, sunk savings, or even took out loans to buy equipment to get to Ghana. It is a high risk, high reward’’, Nicholas revealed. Normally, miners who made losses in Ghana are predominantly from poorer households. The majority return to their families and dependents with overwhelming debts and empty pockets, literally. Hence, some dependents or family members continue this migration cycle in order to pay off debts.

Despite the rise of inequality, there has been significant economic development within the county. Due to the increasing rate of migration for gold mining, avenues for the development and production of mining equipment (dredging technology) have been established in the county. The production of such machinery has secured employment and income for many of the locals. ‘‘I have been to the factories where they are building the mining equipment. They have their own technology that they have developed. It is not hugely complex technology, so they are building a lot of them and shipping them around the world’’, Nicholas shared. These machines are mostly sold to local miners and increasingly to international customers who have experienced the technology through engagements with Chinese miners. Currently, there are two factories in the county that employ many of the locals, enabling them to make ends meet.

Another major impact of ASM migration is on ‘‘family life’’, Nicholas expressed: ‘‘I remember the main people I spoke to in the county were mostly women, either wives or mothers of miners. Even some wives had children that husbands had never seen’’. As mentioned earlier, men, predominantly between the ages of 20 and 60, migrate to Ghana leaving behind their families (wives and children). As a result, the orientation and structure of an ideal family is heavily affected. Some migrant miners choose to settle or ‘‘lay-low’’ in precarious conditions for a while to recoup their lost investments due to some unforeseen circumstances (government crackdowns) rather than returning to their families in China with nothing to show for their exploits.

Reflections on Chinese migration to Ghana for ASM

Nicholas shared some insightful and interesting thoughts about this phenomenon. ‘‘I think the most striking thing about the Chinese migration pattern to Ghana for small-scale gold mining is the power of it, and how one small place in China that no one has ever heard of – not even all Chinese people have heard of this county – can just organically migrate across the world and shift the entire political and ecological landscape. I think it is very powerful and it really highlights the interconnectedness of people. However, there have been significant environmental problems that have emerged from this. It is very disruptive in many ways, but I think we should not only focus on the negatives. These patterns of migration have facilitated interconnections between people in Ghana and miners from China’’, Nicholas expressed.

He further suggested that the socio-economic interconnections that develop at the very local level both in Ghana and China is under-researched and requires in-depth research from different perspectives and disciplines. He explained, ‘‘for instance, you have Chinese miners coming in with a lot of capital. But then, you also have other actors coming in, some other Chinese, some Indians, middlemen transferring money from one place to another, you have got brothel owners, and gunrunners all in the same local space with a lot of activities going on. People do not pay attention to these, but I think it plays a very big part of the story’’. ‘‘So, I recommend a more detailed research/investigation of the local experiences and activities within this integration’’, he concluded.

Joel Agbesinyale is a Master student at Development Studies, Lund University, Sweden

Global Warming: Heat Waves Test Human Endurance in South Asia

Namrata Acharya — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 12:24:57 +0000

The summer of 2022 will be remembered as a brutal season in the history of climate change. Heatwaves killed at least 90 people in India and Pakistan, as the temperature soared as high as 46-48 degrees centigrade. Europe saw heatwaves fueling fires that raged across Portugal, Spain, and parts of France. In China, a severe drought led to crop loss shrinking of the river Yangtze, also known as the life-giving river of the country.

Extreme heatwaves have a crippling impact on mankind across the globe. However, they affect nations differently. While low-income countries have historically contributed little to greenhouse gas emissions, they bear the most adverse consequences of rising temperatures as they are situated in some of the hottest parts of the Earth, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Based on a study by Burke, Hsiang, and Miguel (2015), the IMF notes that in countries with a relatively hot climate, a 1°C increase in temperature with an average annual temperature of 25°C, the per capita output reduces by up to 1.5 percent, a loss that persists for at least 7 years. Close to 60 percent of the world’s population currently resides in countries where an increase in temperature would likely lead to such pernicious effects, it says.

While reducing carbon emissions is the only real solution to stall heatwaves, enduring them requires much planning. Heat Action Plan is now part of urban planning in major cities across the world.

The South Asian Heatwave

For countries like India and Pakistan, where a large part of the population subsists on manual labour, this year’s heat waves were a test of human endurance.

In India, it was the hottest summer in 122 years, the time ever since weather data recording started, according to a study by the World Weather Attribution (WWA), a collaboration between climate scientists at Imperial College London, UK, and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, among several other universities. The project, which brought researchers from 20 universities and research institutions brings forth some stark facts reminding us that climate change is real and its impacts are deadly.

It was a ‘rare’ event, with the probability of occurrence once in a hundred years, given the present climate warming of 1.2 degrees centigrade is constant, the WWA said.

The probability of such an event could become once in 50 years, or even once in ten years, when the earth’s temperature is warmer by about 2 degrees centigrade, Krishna AchutaRao, Professor and Head, Centre for Atmospheric Sciences Affiliate Faculty, School of Public Policy, IIT, Delhi, told DDRN in a telephonic interview.

“With further warming of the planet by 0.8 degrees Celsius, thus bringing the global warming levels to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, such temperatures can be expected to occur more frequently, once every ten years,” Mariam Zachariah, Research Associate at the Grantham Institute, Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London, told DDRN over an email interview.

Heatwaves in the subcontinent are increasingly becoming frequent, even as the one this year surpassed all records. Over 6,100 people have died in India due to heat waves in India alone over the span of nine years (2010-18), according to data from IndiaSpend.

“The 2022 temperatures are a precursor of hotter summers in the future. As the globe continues to warm and the climate shifts to warmer regimes, we can expect hotter days to become more frequent, and temperatures that would have been unusual in the past to become common,” said Zachariah.

Two phenomenon makes this year’s heatwave in South Asia, like many other parts of the world, especially stark—the spatial extent and duration of the heatwave.

“It started in March and persisted in April. These months typically do not stay this warm over such a vast region in India and Pakistan. There were individual stations that hit a temperature of 46-48 degrees Celsius. But it wasn’t those individual records that mattered. The fact that the temperature was above 40 degrees Celsius for such a long period of time is a matter of concern. Low temperatures were also around 30 degrees Celsius,” said AchutaRao.

Socio-Economic Cost

This year’s heatwave resulted in a nearly 20 percent reduction in India’s expected wheat production, according to early estimates by the Indian government. This forced the Indian government to put a ban on wheat exports, aggravating the existing food grain shortage amidst the war in Ukraine. Within India, the consequences of a short crop had a marked impact on the small and marginal farmers, who account for more than 70 percent of India’s farming community.

“About 60 percent of India’s workforce is in agriculture, and if people are not able to work in fields, we have a direct consequence of that on the food security. But that’s a huge economic loss, not only in terms of food security but also in how farming is done in India. We have small farm holdings, and if farmers lose 20 percent of their yield, it has a huge impact on them,” said AchutaRao.

There are other dimensions of the socio-economic impact of the heatwave as well. India’s power consumption broke all records in the month of June, leading to blackouts and disruption of industrial production. A large number of people in India and Pakistan are employed in the construction sector requiring heavy manual labour. In India, the construction sector is the third-largest employer outside agriculture, employing a workforce of 46 million people, according to data from the Center for Policy Research (CPR).

“In South Asia, not only the temperature goes but also the humidity goes up. So, when you have this combination, it gets very difficult for the human body to cool off. Decades of rising temperature and humidity are pushing people toward the edge of what human beings can survive. For people involved in manual labor like construction and road work, the bad weather has an impact on health and productivity. The impact of a heatwave is not only limited to individuals but ranges from industries to agriculture,” said AchutaRao.

“South Asia is certainly more vulnerable to climate change than some of the more developed countries, on account of the dependence of a large proportion of the population in this part of the world on agriculture and manual labour for their livelihood…Apart from temperatures, the effect of climate change is reported in rainfall distributions, resulting in more heavy rainfall episodes and prolonged droughts, which also impact the agrarian community,” said Zachariah.

Air Pollution Adding to the Problem

While climate change is a global concern, the pollution levels in South Asia add to the problem.

Data from World Air Quality Report, 2021 says that Central and South Asia is home to 46 of the world’s 50 most polluted cities. India and Pakistan generally experience the worst air quality in this region, with 48 percent and 67 percent respectively of cities having PM2.5 concentrations greater than ten times acceptable according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Research on the effect of a combination of air pollution and heat by Grigorieva and Lukyanets says that increments in PM2.5 and PM10, O3, CO, and NO2 concentrations during periods of high temperature are dramatically associated with higher admissions to hospital in patients with comorbidities.

In most climate studies, aerosols in air pollution are assumed to be a cooling agent as they have sulfates that reflect the radiation of the sun back into space. However, in the case of most cities in South Asia, the environment has aerosols with carbon, which act as heat absorbents, Arpita Mondal, Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering and interdisciplinary programme (IDP) in Climate Studies, IIT Bombay, told DDRN over a telephonic interview.

“What is unique in South Asia is that we have a lot of absorbing aerosols, which is a result of biomass burning– a big issue in North India. Because we have aerosols with carbon, they are contributing to heating rather than cooling. We have done studies where we have shown that periods of high heat coincide with high heat absorbing aerosols,” said Mondal.

Collective Action

Combating heatwaves requires collective action, though much of which hinges on developed nations, which have been major contributors to global emissions. Nearly 79 percent of emissions between 1850 and 2011 are contributed by the developed nations, according to data from the Center for Global Development.

“Advanced and emerging market economies have contributed the lion’s share to actual and projected warming. Hence, helping low-income countries cope with its consequences is both a moral duty and sound global economic policy that helps offset countries’ failures to fully internalize the costs of greenhouse gas emissions,” says IMF.

“The problem with heatwaves, unlike air pollution, is that it is not the consequence of a region-specific problem. It is the net result of what every country in the world is emitting. If we historically look at emission levels, we see the developed world has contributed most to the emissions. Whatever global warming we see today is to a large extent the impact of industrialisation in the developed world. Everyone who is emitting is adding to the problem,” said AchutaRao.

One of the possible ways to deal with the problem is rolling out heat action plans. New York, Toronto, Paris, and Madrid are some among the many cities that have been successful in this endeavour, according to the Review of the Heat Action Plan, 2021 by the Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe).

In the Indian context, the heat action plan of Ahmedabad, a city in Gujarat in India is seen as a success story. After a massive heatwave in 2010, a heat action plan was rolled out by the city in 2013. In 2015 when there was another heatwave, the city could deal with the problem effectively, reducing the number of potential casualties and economic losses. The plan included increased preparedness, information sharing, and response coordination to reduce the health impacts of extreme heat on vulnerable populations. Some of the direct measures to tackle the heatwave included the identification of color signals ahead of heatwaves, a public warning system, and increased preparedness of hospitals to treat the cases of heat strokes.

However, overall, South Asia lacks planning for heatwave management. Research by Sharma et al., on consequences and adaptation strategies for heatwaves, points out that, only a few South Asian countries have functional heatwave management plans, with the community and residential preparedness missing. It recommends adaptation strategies such as blue-green spaces, indoor passive cooling, infrastructural adjustments, and heat action plans, to mitigate the impact of heat waves.

As climate change turns out to be a reality, heat waves are likely to be recurrent events. Extreme climates, especially heatwaves, will have a direct and indirect effect on all countries, be it in terms of food security, economic losses, or the basic survival of human beings. While measures like heat action plans and increased preparedness might be ways to deal with heat waves, these would only be temporary fixes to a problem that is likely to aggravate year after year. Emission cut is the only permanent solution to the problem.

Namrata Acharya is a journalist with bylines in Al Jazeera, South China Morning Post Zenger News, Mongabay, The Wire, The Juggernaut, KR- Asia and more.

Dr Mariam Zachariah, Research Associate at the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London.

Zachaiah works on near-real time attribution of extreme events, attempting to discern whether and to what extent does human-induced climate change may have influenced its characteristics. Much of her work is carried out as part of World Weather Attribution, Vulnerability and Exposure (V&E) and social sciences to carry out rapid attribution assessments in the immediate days following an impactful extreme event. Prior to joining the Grantham Institute in February 2022, she was a PhD scholar at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), in India. In recognizing the heavy dependence of the Indian economy on agriculture, which in turn, is vulnerable to climate elements, her doctoral research centered on discerning the role of droughts and extreme temperature on agricultural yields in India, with a particular focus on major agrarian regions in the country.

Arpita Mondal. Associate Professor, Dept of Civil Engineering and IDP in Climate Studies, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Bombay

Arpita’s research has been focused on hydroclimatic extremes such as heat waves, heavy rain, floods, droughts, climate change, detection and dttribution and statistical spatio-temporal modeling of extremes, among other subjects. She was also a part of WWA study on heatwave in South Asia. She is also the Associate Editor of AGU’s journal Earth’s Future.

Dr. Krishna AchutaRa, Professor and Head, Centre for Atmospheric Sciences. Affiliate Faculty, School of Public Policy. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi.

Krishna AchutaRao has been with the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, IIT Delhi since 2007. His research has focused on using climate models to understand how earth’s climate is affected by natural, anthropogenic factors as well as how it will impact natural and human systems. He was also a part of the study by World Weather Attribution (WWA) on heatwaves in South Asia, a collaboration between climate scientists at Imperial College London, UK, with global universities. He has also been associated with various assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2001 and is a lead author on the Sixth Assessment Report Working Group-I. He also serves as a member of the CLIVAR Scientific Steering Group as well as on numerous national and international research advisory and review panels.