Sustainability: People, Power and Planet Nexus

1. Understanding the Relationship Between Sustainability and Ecofeminism in an Indian Context

Lavanya Suresh

Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, India

This article looks closely at the relationship between gender and environment in the context of sustainability. It has been seen that without the inclusion of feminist concerns for gender equality, most environment public policy approaches will be incomplete and may even threaten to intensify women’s subordination. This is illustrated in this article through a case study from Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu, India, wherein local organizations that operate successfully for environmental sustainability and women’s financial inclusion do not achieve gender equality due to the chokehold of patriarchy. The article is theoretically situated in Bina Agarwal’s idea that differences in attitudes to conservation between genders can stem primarily from the gendered division of economic resources, and the gendered division of labor. The article concludes that the relationship between women and nature in the Global South is a political issue that is fraught with power relations that operate at different scales and through different modalities.

2. West Africa Agricultural Productivity Project (WAPP) for Sustainable Agricultural Development: I.A.R&T Adopted Village Case Study

Lucia Ogunsumi, Gbenga Egbetokun, AnjolaOluwa Fadairo, and Sikiruru Ajijola

Institute of Agricultural Research and Training, Obafemi Awolowo, Ibadan, Nigeria

Improved Agriculture has been a very important necessity for effective agricultural productivity among smallholder farmers. Institute of Agricultural Research and Training ( I.A.R&T) has gotten ample breakthroughs over the period of time. The adopted villages’ farmers are smallholder farmers that are poor and require supports for continual production and improved wellbeing.
West African Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP) is a Project funded by World Bank where small holder farmers are supported in order to achieve sustainable agricultural production in West African Countries where Nigeria is one. The project encourages Research Institutes to adopt two (2) villages of not farther than 20 kilometres away to showcase research breakthroughs at the door steps of smallholder famers in an affordable and attractive way. Consequently regular extension activities advisory services, farmer’s exchange visits, trainings, construction of cassava processing unit among others were provided.
Demonstration plots were established for crops (cassava and maize) and livestock (broiler and layer birds).
The results obtained include formation of former’s group including women and youth forum, completion and commissioning of cassava processing, borehole facility and biogas which facilitated dissemination of value addition technologies consequently resulted into overall increased productivity, improved livelihoods and better socio-economic status.

3. Common Good – Distributive justice and Accessibility in Urban Commoning

Zarinah Agnew

District Commons, USA

The term communities of fate refers to a “temporary form of existence, born of duress and social emergency, which cuts across familiar divisions to elicit something socially consequential”, whereas the term ‘communities of choice’ refers to be those borne of intentionality. Here I discuss the ways in which urban commons-based projects reveal the asymmetries in who gets access to commons based pooled resources and social relations. I describe some attempts to redistribute these resources, as well as shift cultural narratives around who the ‘we’ is that we are building with. Using Foucault’s phrasing – ‘creating windows where there were once walls’, this talk describes approaches to and learnings from explorations into approaching emotional wellness, autonomy, liberation, trust, kinship among other social phenomena as common pool resources in a federation of urban communities. From these efforts at shifting the imagined community unusual tensions emerge. In this presentation, I discuss these community projects through the lens of exit, voice, loyalty and neglect, to ask – which of these prefigurations might actually be a form of exit-to-repeat, and which have truly transformative potential, and how we might hope to know the difference. I argue that without such discussions, commons based projects that are not borne out of extreme necessity, run the risk of sanctioned enclosure of common goods and social phenomena for the wealthy, at the expense of the marginalized – a key aspect of SDGs pertaining to reduced inequalities, access to justice for all & sustainable cities and communities for all.

4. The power of the ancestral philosophy of Alli kawsay (Buen Vivir) in the indigenous movements of Colombia – Ecuador vs. the exclusion by the big mining development, contribution to the Rights of Mother Nature from the global south in middle of climate change

Eduardo Erazo Acosta

University Nariño, Colombia

The purpose of this research is to present the urgency of listening to indigenous epistemologies of Sumak Kawsay (in kichwa language: Buen vivir-Good Living) and also to accompany the care/defense of the biodiversity-rich indigenous territories of the Andean region. As a research question: How is the anthropocene affecting the indigenous territories and with it the threats of the epistemologies of the Sumak Kawsay/Buen vivir?
This ethnographic research has been carried in the last 7 years, in Republics of Colombia and Ecuador, in Indigenous Regional Council of Cauca CRIC, and The Indigenous Confederation of Ecuador CONAIE. Theoretical references: epistemology of indigenous communities, indigenous intellectuals.
The anthropocene affects considerably the species of flora and fauna, the glaciers, water reserves, páramos understood as places where the water is born for the species. With it the territories Pan Amazonas region of native communities are strongly affected in their cosmovision to know.
Due to its high impact in high mountain areas, climate change affects the melting of glaciers, strong droughts, seasonal changes for food production, water shortages and with this the displacement of animals and indigenous people and with it affects their traditions and cosmovisions due to geographical relocation and spatial – socio-cultural changes.
Ethnographic work is used: interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis. Key to comment how from the epistemologies, their spirituality’s, indigenous cosmovision, the elders (grandparents and grandmothers) announce that if there is no respect for the species on earth comes catastrophe, which from modern science is already evident.
Results: This is considered from the Decolonial theory as an alternative to developm

5. People, Power, and Planet Nexus

Parita Shah

Department of Geography, Environmental and Population Studies, University of Nairobi, Kenya

The world grapples towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The Sustainability concept has been based on ecosystems – where people and planet are involved. This concept has missed a major component, which is power. People and power are the main links towards sustaining planetary health. This paper focuses on how people in developing countries are placed under the evolving game of power relationships in the context of achieving the SDGs. The SDGs in consideration are no poverty (No.1), climate action (No. 13), life below water (No. 14), life on land (No. 15), peace, justice and strong institutions (No. 16) and partnerships for the goals (No. 17). In many parts of the developing countries, the indigenous and poor communities end up suffering as they do not have any connections to powerful people to help them grapple out of poverty and retain sustainable justice. However, as they are at the mercy of evolving power wrangles, they are often pushed to the edge from their homelands where they have been staying for centuries in the name of sustainability. This makes them poorer as they lose their natural wealth, and this worsens their sustainability concept. This calls in for justice through human rights activists – again a power relations nexus to help the people grapple with their own well-being, inside evolving power games and the planet. The paper considers desktop studies with special emphasis towards the developing countries where sustainability needs to consider the people, power and planet nexus with justice in form of human rights. The recommendations are that the three Ps – people, power and planet need to be linked together towards achieving justifiable sustainability in the developing countries.
Key words: nexus people planet power SDGs sustainability