12/2020

A new paper on how urban transformation driven by China’s Belt & Road Initiative (the so-called “New Silk Road”) simultaneously deepens urban marginality and social inequality in three cities across the Global South and North, Colombo (Sri Lanka), London (UK) & Piraeus (Greece), and opens up the potential for new spatial resistances has been published in Antipode – A Radical Journal of Geography by Elia Apostolopoulou, check it out:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/anti.12699

2/2017.

Call for book chapters

We are preparing an edited book in connection with the ‘Rights to Nature: Tracing alternative political ecologies against the neoliberal environmental agenda’ Conference that was organized at the University of Cambridge last June (https://conservationandtransformation.com/conference-rights-to-nature/). This book will report work that explores different forms of contesting neoliberalism within the broad field of political ecology.

We would like to invite people working in the broad field of political ecology to send us an expression of interest if you would like to take part to this publication. If you decide to participate, please notice that your book chapter must be ready before the end of May 2017 and it should be a no more than 5,000 words (including bibliography- Harvard style).

While we are open to any theoretical approach, field and case study, it is important to address in your chapter AT LEAST one of the following two issues:

1) Cases of contestation by social/environmental movements (either related to your research if you are a scholar or to your own experience if you are an activist or of course both since many of us do not fall strictly under one of these two ‘categories’),

or/and

2) The social relevance of your research for environmental struggles (why activists and social movements should care about your work?)]

We d like to emphasise that we really want this book to be accessible to any audience and contribute (as much as possible) to bridging the activist-scholar gap. Our explicit goal is to produce a publication which will succeed in transcending the confines of academia. Therefore, if you are a scholar we kindly ask you to avoid using jargon, to try to make as explicit as possible the social and political relevance of your work and to attempt to write your thoughts without having in mind the usual limitations of the peer reviewed process. If you are an activist, we invite you to describe your experience in a way that will open a dialogue with other activists and scholars.

Finally, we would like to ask you to circulate this call to activists or scholars that may be interested in contributing.

Please do not hesitate to ask us any question. Send any queries to:

Elia Apostolopoulou (elia.apostolopoulou@gmail.com)
Jose Cortes-Vazquez (jacorvaz@gmail.com)

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9/2016.

We have both finished our Marie Curie projects now and will be soon embarking on new projects. But our joint work will continue through the project ‘Tracing alternative political ecologies against the neoliberal environmental agenda through the study of environmental movements’, funded with a British Academy Small Grant (2017/18). We will continue using this website to disseminate our work tho! So keep an eye on future events and announcements!

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7/2016.

We are delighted to announce that our joint work will now continue thanks to one British Academy Small Grant that we have obtained to develop the one-year project ‘Tracing alternative political ecologies against the neoliberal environmental agenda through the study of environmental movements’

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5/2015.

The project CONSERVATION + TRANSFORMATION was presented at the Little Sydney Conference: Protecting Nature in Europe (Austria, 28-31 May). This was an opportunity to show our joint efforts to disseminate our work among policy-makers, conservation professionals and enthusiasts. The e-poster presented can be accessed here

3/2015.

We have been very fortunate to obtain the GEOFORUM 2015 workshop grant! This will provide us the funding to organise a conference in 2016 with academics and activists working on the field of environmental policies and neoliberal strategies in Europe! More information in forthcoming months!

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2014.

The dialectics of green and un-green grabbing: Unraveling the environmental contradictions of capitalism

“Green-grabbing”, in which environmental arguments support expropriation of land and resources, is a recognized element in neoliberal conservation. However, capitalism’s strategic interest in promoting the neoliberalization of conservation is accompanied by attempts to exploit hitherto protected natures without any pretence at “greenness”. In a recent paper in Antipode we explore the dialectics between “green” and “un-green” grabbing as neoliberal strategies in the reconstruction of nature conservation policies after the 2008 financial “crash” in Greece and the UK. We argue that in both countries, accelerated neoliberalization is manifested in diverse ways, including initiatives to roll back conservation regulation, market-based approaches to “saving” nature and the privatization of public nature assets.

The intensification of “green” and “un-green” grabbing reflects capitalism’s strategic interest in both promoting and obstructing nature conservation, ultimately leaving for “protected natures” two choices: either to be further degraded to boost growth or to be “saved” through their deeper inclusion as commodities visible to the market.