Call for submissions
The call for submissions has now closed.
We encourage the submission of individual articles, paper panels, debates, art and other creative interventions in collaborations between academics, activists and artists alike. We will have 90 minute slots at all three sites, so when thinking about your submission, keep that in mind. We invite single-site panel proposals, as well as hybrid proposals, where panel participants are located at two or three of the conference centers.
The unfolding and entwined biodiversity, climate change and socio-ecological crises make the challenge of moving towards more plural and just futures more pressing than ever. Political ecology provides an important toolbox to explore the unjust and colonial power relations that condition global flows of material resources, money, ideas, people and labour. Yet, the field itself is shaped by inequalities in terms of engagement of researchers from different locations, the distribution of research resources and how different ways of knowing and being are circulated, represented and recognized. This makes the need for plural and just futures that can mediate the social-ecological crises more pressing than ever. Political ecology provides an indispensable toolbox to help achieve this ambition. By convening the POLLEN24 conference, we promote inclusive and participatory exchanges on the role of political ecology in nurturing plural and just socio-ecological futures, for speakers, researchers and activists.
POLLEN24 aims to create a platform to discuss these and other issues. It does this by trialing an entirely new conference format: a distributed, yet connected, conference with physical hubs in Peru, Tanzania and Sweden. With this cross-continental format, we seek to facilitate a more inclusive and participatory exchange on the role of political ecology in nurturing plural and just socio-ecological futures. We particularly welcome contributions that seek to establish a broader conversation with the histories and trajectories of different world regions. In this sense, we hope to foster a platform for cross-cultural dialogue and the sharing of locally grounded and theoretical insights.
Below you will find the conference center-specific calls for papers. We invite papers, academic panels, discussions, films, research project launches and other creative interventions in collaborations between academics, activists and artists for a three-day international conference to critically examine ties between epistemic injustice, colonial dispossessions and legacies, climate debts and other forms of social discrimination as well as the efforts to counter and resist them in the context of the following sub-themes.
Details for registration will follow. The fee structure will take into account regional economic conditions and seniority of participants, and payments will be handled by local organizers.
lima
Sovereignties, Territorial disputes and Environmental Challenges: Acknowledging the region's multi-ethnic and highly diverse nature, this sub-theme welcomes a comprehensive exploration of how sovereignty, territorial disputes, and environmental challenges are lived, understood, and contested. We invite contributions that address the complexities and nuances of conflicts around sovereignty, considering Latin American societies' unique perspectives and experiences: How are extractive frontiers shaping Latin American and Caribbean present and future? How can political ecology approaches help unpack the issues related to the right to decide how and where to live in the context of migration and climate change or pollution? What are the connections between environmental challenges and disputes over bodies and territories? How do intersectional and feminist lenses support examining socio-environmental challenges in the region? How do land use planning tools, territorial ordering frameworks, and environmental policies perpetuate injustices?
Discussions about the agency of humans and non-human entities as well as the regenerative practices to counter them are also welcome.
Pluriversality, Coloniality, Decoloniality, and Environmental Change: Unearthing Historical Context
This sub-theme will offer a more comprehensive exploration of how colonial legacies continue to influence contemporary environmental discourse and the potential for decolonial pathways to address these challenges. The tensions and entanglements of several comologics co-existing in the colonial matrix raised questions about how epistemic injustice, rooted in colonial structures, has contributed to global environmental change, shaping policies, narratives, material realities and power dynamics. We invite contributions from academic and academic perspectives to shed light on the enduring legacies of colonialism that continue to shape contemporary environmental challenges. How the historical process of decolonization and its relationship with epistemic injustice, unveiling how historical power imbalances have influenced the understanding of different societies about environmental issues? How could decolonial thought and action be a means to address and rectify historical injustices within environmental governance? how decolonization can play a role in shaping equitable approaches to global environmental change challenges? And, what does it mean to decolonize political ecology research and scholarship?
Shrinking Civil Space and Environmental Advocacy
Environmental crises and (de)localization of grassroots movements are opening new debates about the risks of environmental defenders and violent landscapes in the region. In environmental and political crises, how do political ecology approaches contribute to elucidating the phenomenon of shrinking civil space? What are the convergences and contradictions of global and local environmental narratives in fragile democracies? What are the implications for deliberation, activism, and advocacy spaces in intertwined crisis and extractivism? How do these shrinking civil spaces pose a menace to "environmental defenders" and other actors? How can transnational solidarity strengthen local environmental advocacy? How can we envision strategies for safeguarding spaces of deliberation, activism, advocacy, and dialogue in an era of growing constraints while also considering the role and impact of radicalism in shaping climate change, conservation, and other environmental narratives?
dodoma
Political ecologies of epistemic (in)justices and epistemic freedom: exploring tensions over coloniality of knowledge production in human-environment interactions, spaces for delinking from the dominance of Western epistemes, and strategic openings for integrating non-Western epistemologies and ontologies in the human-environment interactions research, discourses and practices and for advancing epistemic freedom. How should political ecology and political ecology researchers address historical epistemic injustices in the discipline? As socio-ecological crises intensify, what roles should political ecology play in exploring, suggesting and creating pluriversal and just futures?
Political ecologies of climate coloniality:
Exploring the intensification and implications of the efforts to reduce carbon emissions, enhancing resource use efficiency and addressing climate change through Northern-driven agendas such as blue economies, green economies and renewable energies in relations to flows of materials, idea, money and labour between global Majority and global Minority countries, peoples and resources. How should countries in the global Majority hold accountable the major carbon emitters? What measures do and should global Majority countries and peoples take to fight against the extreme uneven and inequitable impacts of climate change? What new labour relations and standards are emerging (who develops them) and with what implications for inclusive futures? How do we avoid new forms of green colonialism and continued ecologically unequal exchange in the solutions to climate change.
Political ecologies of nature-based solutions
Examining the implications of the Global Biodiversity Framework’s ”30x30” target and countries’ committments to global forest landscape restoration agendas, and complexities and changing dynamics in the contemporary handling of protected areas and their effectiveness for biodiversity conservation. How can these be realised while maintaining ecologically sane and socially just futures in the targetted countries, which are mostly in the global Majority? Whose voice and knolwedge matter in deciding indicators and the measures of effectivness? What can we learn from cosmologies and ontologies that do not seek to comodify nature or work through the anthropocentric lens of nature for human benefit? How is protection of more-than-human life taking place outside the narrow confines of protected areas? What alternative methodologies are emerging to counter universal standards for facilitating context- and place-specific indicators and measures of protected areas effectiveness?
lund
Political ecologies of interconnected crises. Compounding climate extremes and a multitude of socio-environmental and political crises interact and amplify each other. This raises the demands on critical scholarship to help explore the various background conditions that underlie and reproduce the entwined crises and injustices. The uneven ability to respond, adapt to and/or resist environmental change connects the struggles of local communities to global sites of power and influence. This, in turn, results in distinct patterns of access and control over technology and resource flows, governmentality, neo-colonialism, identity creation and ’green’ violence.
We invite contributes examining these issues. What political ecologies are created as crises take on a plurality of forms, both in terms of its impacts, and its proposed solutions? What old injustices are perpetuated and what new ones are emerging at the frontiers of green capitalism? How is the notion of crises itself employed discursively to legitimize and control these practices as well as resist them?
Decolonizing knowledges.
Decolonizing knowledges is about undoing epistemic domination and creating space for a broader range of perspectives, values and voices. This may start with questioning the kinds of knowledges that tend to dominate. Who gets to produce dominant narratives, and what determines why certain forms of knowledge become amplified while others are silenced? What perspectives on gender, race, nature and justice are marginalized in environmental assessments and governance?
We invite contributions that examine and scrutinize unjust forms of representation and hegemonic epistemologies in knowledge production related to political ecology issues, including critical self-reflections on the field of political ecology itself.
Pluralizing desireable futures requires research and praxis covering a variety of theories, approaches and case studies, as well as transparent and respectful exchange between them. We invite contributions that illustrate such praxis. How do political ecologists turn critique into engaged practices and co-learning? How do we undo the ties between epistemic injustices, colonialism, racism, sexism and other forms of social discrimination that underpin academia? What can we learn from engagement with environmental humanities, arts, as well as social and environmental movements? How do we promote and protect values of care within and beyond political ecology? What are the pluriversal alternatives and prefigurative politics generating just futures?
