Sustainable integration? Nexus thinking and the foreclosure of progressive eco-politics

by Joe Williams The water-energy-food nexus has become a powerful framework for sustainable development that seeks to integrate the management of resource sectors for increased efficiency. However, its current mobilisation is fundamentally de-politicising, overlooking the contradictions and injustices of resource governance The water, energy and food sectors are, of course, deeply connected. Agriculture accounts for …

Confronting authoritarian populism: challenges for agrarian studies

by Ian Scoones Four points for scholarly research in rural contexts, in order to better understand the political reconfigurations and the socio-cultural dynamics linked to new forms of authoritarian populism Last week I was in Russia at the fascinating fifth BRICS Initiative in Critical Agrarian Studies conference. Throughout the event we heard about the emergence of particular styles of authoritarian populist …

The Trump moment in environmental conservation

By Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher* If environmental conservation doesn’t face the current political movement by becoming much more radical there will soon be precious little biodiversity to conserve. Global conservation is at a crossroads. Indeed: it has been for quite some time already. And now we have Donald Trump as U.S. President. Clearly, this …

Agroecología: ¿institucionalizando la alternativa?

By Inés Morales Bernardos, Jon Sanz Landaluze y Marian Simón Rojo* La irrupción de las candidaturas populares, alimentadas por gentes de los movimientos sociales, ha abierto en el movimiento agroecológico nuevas perspectivas de interacción con las instituciones. No veremos una revuelta del pan en nuestras calles. Ser parte, incluso como convidado modesto, del “club de …

An archive of motion: how objects find their meaning

By Marc Herbst* A reflection on how meaning is organised in relation to objects gathered at recent climate events. Or, how things stay in motion until the system changes. Ultimately, it was because the interior of the Paris COP21 Summit’s conference hall looked similar to the train I’d arrived on that it took quite a …

Building alternative economies of food in a context of institutional violence

During a fieldwork interview with two new farmers engaged in agroecological production and alternative food networks in Bizkaia, a province of Euskadi (Basque Country), one said something like "all our young people are in jail". This was a striking comment, but not necessarily a surprising one. While walking through the territory of Euskadi it was common to …