ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

The world is in the midst of a sea change in approaches to development. The rise of nationalist politics in the U.S., U.K. and Europe have questioned commitments to global governance at the same time that China has emerged as a champion of globalization, a turn of geo-political events that would have been unfathomable ten years ago. Through its own multi-lateral institutions, China is setting a new agenda for development from Europe to Oceania. China’s approach differs from Anglo/Euro/American approaches to “law and development” (LD). Whereas LD orthodoxy has sought to improve legal institutions in poor states, Chinese do not foster rule of law abroad. Instead, Chinese view law as one set of rules, among others, to facilitate economic transactions and not to foster democratization. This distinction has sparked a global debate about the so-called “China model” as an alternative to LD. Yet there is little empirical data with which to assess the means and ends of China’s expanded footprint, a question with long-term implications for much of the developing world. This project addresses that problem by proposing that even if Chinese cross-border development does not operate through transparent rules, it nonetheless has its own notion of order. The project adopts a multi-sited, mixed method, and interdisciplinary approach—at the intersection of comparative law, developmental studies, and legal anthropology—to understand the nature of China’s order. The project has two objectives: 1. To establish the conceptual bases for the study of China’s approach to law and development by developing the first systematic study of the impacts of Chinese investment on the legal systems of developing economies. 2. To experiment with a comparative research design to theorize how China’s approach suggests a type of order that extends through a conjuncture of regional and local processes and manifests itself differently in diverse contexts.

1 499 381 €

Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31

Designating Protected Areas (PAs) is the most important policy tool for biodiversity conservation. Over 100 new PAs have been established in the past 36 months in European Union territory. However, effective management of PAs is often obstructed by conflicts mainly associated with the social impacts (SIs) imposed on local communities by their establishment. Despite the importance of these SIs there are certain aspects in this field that remain significantly under-researched. There is now an increasing need to incorporate SI assessments in decision making processes by providing a clear framework explaining how perceptions of these impacts are created and predicting their change in the future. This will support the achievement of international goals for biodiversity conservation and adaptation to climate change as well as better accounting for social justice issues for communities dependent on protected natural resources. The aim of FIDELIO is to develop for the first time a new paradigm in order to understand how perceptions of SIs are formulated taking into consideration the dimensions of space and time. FIDELIO will assist in increasing public engagement and the incorporation of local opinions in decision-making. It will also facilitate the process of policy development and a reduction in conflicts between different stakeholders in PAs. FIDELIO will last 5 years and its research objectives will be explored through the application of a mixed-methods approach including the implementation of two rounds of social surveys in 4 PAs across Europe and the testing of the framework in 15 additional PAs. This is an extremely timely project considering the steady increase of new PAs and the re-designation of current ones. FIDELIO will contribute to the better understanding of SIs and facilitate predictions for their change in the future, while assisting in maximizing social benefits for local communities arising from the designation of a PA.

1 495 786 €

Start date: 2019-02-01, End date: 2024-01-31

Volcanoes can be cultural symbols, a source of fear, of fascination and of scientific study and a practical problem for civil protection: they involve complex social, cultural and political dynamics, and often have multi-scalar, trans-border impacts. Yet the management of volcanic risk tends to be strongly dependent on uncertain information from physical scientists about volcanic activity, with social scientific studies concentrating on social vulnerability and communication, and there is a relative dearth of studies that address the cultural and (geo)political contexts of scientific knowledge production in particular places. Geographers have explored the role of “geographical imaginations” in scientific discourses in other fields such as climate change: people, including scientists, imagine the social and physical landscapes around them. This project seeks to combine science studies, human geography and disaster risk reduction to provide a holistic approach to volcanic risk, and inform ongoing discussions about scientific advice in disasters more broadly, through a consideration of the geographical imaginations of scientists and populations. It focuses on understanding volcanic and disaster risk as a consequence of complex interactions and relationships between landscape, community, science and politics that blur the boundaries between society and nature. It combines methods from the social and physical sciences in Latin America and East Africa to investigate: (i) the ways in which scientists and people who live on volcanoes interpret and live with their environment; (ii) the interaction of national authorities with these modes of living, and how national borders affect them; (iii) the power dynamics of warnings within these contexts and across them; (iv) the implications of this approach for disaster risk reduction more broadly. Outcomes will include two books, several sets of scientific papers and three international meetings.

1 437 933 €

Start date: 2019-07-01, End date: 2024-06-30

The challenge of LO-ACT is to enable low carbon urban development in medium and small cities in rapidly urbanising areas in East, Central and West Africa, South Asia and South East Asia. The majority of emissions in the next century will be emitted by infrastructures that are yet to be built, particularly in rapidly urbanising areas where infrastructure is lacking. Population forecasts suggest that most population growth will take place in small and medium cities. Yet, to date, research on climate action has focused on showcasing strongly branded, successful initiatives in global cities. The low carbon transition depends on myriad of actions in ordinary cities, that is, cities outside global networks of climate innovation and leadership. LO-ACT will address this critical gap by delivering the first multi-dimensional, large scale assessment of low carbon action in ordinary cities. It will contribute a new framework to understand global environmental politics and urban governance. First, LO-ACT will analyse the imaginaries of local action that have shaped global environmental politics over 30 years (Objective 1). The work programme will also analyse the mobility of low carbon urban policies in transport, energy, and housing across different urban contexts (Objective 2). LO-ACT will deliver a comparative analysis of urban trajectories in 113 ordinary cities, and five in-depth ethnographic case studies (Objective 3). Finally, it will provide a critical assessment of governance theory and a revised framework to acknowledge the messy and ordinary contexts of urban action (Objective 4). LO-ACT will bring together an interdisciplinary, international team of researchers, an international network of academic advisors, and four regional hubs that will support context-specific data collection and analysis. The research will contribute to the fields of human geography, urban studies, environmental politics, sustainability transitions and science and technology studies.

1 393 979 €

Start date: 2019-02-01, End date: 2024-01-31