Hi YESSers,
In case you're interested in a postdoc in climate justice (particularly the
justice of rural transformations in Scottish Highlands), check out the position
below with prof. Adrian Martin at University of East Anglia and a nice team of
international interdisciplinary researchers.
Cheers Z.
From: Adrian Martin (DEV - Staff) <Adrian.Martin@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2020 6:34 PM
To: Adrian Martin (DEV - Staff) <Adrian.Martin@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Post doc position, rural climate justice
Dear friends,
Please forward this to anyone who might be interested in a 0.6fte position
researching climate justice for 2.5 years. Application deadline is 4th January
https://myview.uea.ac.uk/webrecruitment/pages/vacancy.jsf?latest=01007581
This is for a new project - 'Just-Scapes' funded by JPI climate as part of the
Solstice programme. It is a partnership between UK, French and Czech
researchers. The researcher would be involved in all aspects of the project
(abstract below) but with special responsibility for a case study of a proposed
'rewilding' landscape in the Scottish Highlands. Anyone interested is welcome
to get in touch with me.
Very best wishes and have a wonderful Christmas break everyone!
Adrian
Just-Scapes Abstract
Climate change is forcing European countries to implement transformative
changes to multiple sectors. Whilst energy and industrial
production systems have dominated these agendas, there are also growing calls
for transformations in rural areas, including potentially
profound repurposing of rural landscapes. Academic research has mainly focused
on the biophysical potential for such repurposing,
including actions such as afforestation and livestock removal, to mitigate and
adapt to climate change. We now need to complement this
technical assessment with research into the societal dimensions of rural
transformations: to identify potential social inequalities, to
understand how we can support ownership and legitimacy of rural transformation
agendas and to explore ways of overcoming societal
indifference and resistance.
The Just-Scapes project will explore the meaning and practice of "just
transformation" in the face of climate change. We define this as wide scale
and deep-rooted social-ecological change that combines environmental goals
(including decarbonisation and protection of
biodiversity) with social justice goals. Justice goals relate not only to the
distribution of the effects of climate change but also to the effects
of climate policy responses. This attention to social justice involves
challenging inequalities across categories such as race, gender, wealth,
belief system and generations, and adhering to the UN's 2030 Agenda to 'leave
no one behind'. The idea of 'just transformation' views
social justice as a goal in its own right, but also as instrumental to
overcoming 'justice barriers' to the visioning and implementation of
transformational change. Such barriers are increasingly evident across Europe,
with some climate policies viewed as socially regressive,
disproportionately impacting on low income and rural households (for example
the Gilets Jaunes movement in France).
The Just-Scapes project uses interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary methods,
combining novel humanities and social-science approaches and
environmental expertise from geography, psychology, political science, futures
studies and creative writing. This enables us to a) explore
how European rural citizens perceive the justices and injustices arising from
potential climate-induced land-use transformations and b)
conceptualise and advance justice-oriented transformations to sustainability in
practice. Through three case studies, in the Czech Republic,
France and the UK, we aim to find out how different stakeholders conceive of
climate justice, how these plural conceptions are contested
within particular places, what normative concerns act as barriers to shared
vision, and what shared norms provide opportunities for
collective action. Specifically, we focus on transformations away from
deer-dominated moorland landscapes in Scotland, landscapes
dominated by fragile commercial conifer monocultures in the Czech Republic and
landscapes of grasslands for extensive livestock farming in
France. Just-Scapes proposes to empirically investigate the plurality of
justice beliefs across these landscapes, to use this knowledge to
inform deliberation of shared norms and visions, and to co-produce landscape
level manifestos for 'just transformations' towards low
carbon, resilient and socially progressive rural landscapes.
The deliberative process will be embedded in transdisciplinary and
multi-stakeholder 'Just Transformation Labs' that are linked into 'real'
ongoing policy consultations within the landscape and wider regions. Findings
from the project will benefit these case study locations but
will also provide understanding and methodologies for wider application for
proposed rural land-use climate actions. The team will use its
links to academic networks and science-policy platforms to also promote
scientific and societal impacts at national and international levels.
