About the conference

Politicising environment-development relations: International workshop in the heart of North West England

In the light of continuing capitalist expansion and accumulation, the drive to decouple the ‘natural’ from our understanding of ‘natural resources’ retains an urgent significance. For example, even though the extraction of minerals and hydrocarbons lies at the drive towards ‘sustainable development’, equitable and ‘fair’ outcomes for affected communities often remain an aspiration rather than a material reality. Likewise, the large-scale appropriation of land raises questions concerning the politics of property rights and justice just as the specific challenges raised by food security and conservation bring into focus the importance of power and knowledge.

Bringing together leading research from across the UK and Europe, including a keynote address from Professor Rosaleen Duffy (SOAS, University of London), these examples introduce critical themes that deal variously with the political ecology of resource extraction, biodiversity and conservation, land and water, property and justice. World-class research will be presented and discussed in order to assess the contemporary relevance of political ecology thinking for understanding environment-development relations.

Any questions, please contact the conference organizers:
John Childs (j.childs@lancaster.ac.uk) and Ben Neimark (b.neimark@lancaster.ac.uk). This conference has been generously supported by the Lancaster Environment Centre, the Faculty of Science of Technology at Lancaster University and the ESRC NWDTC ‘Development and Humanitarianism’ Pathway Fund.