Research Gert Van Hecken

Abstract

The prevailing food production paradigm is both unsustainable and unjust, which has prompted the spotlight on alternatives like Indigenous and Agroecological Production Systems. Yet, these long-standing practices, often employed by marginalized communities, risk being co-opted or instrumentalized by market forces, rather than effecting transformative change. Nevertheless, certain actors persist in preserving and transmitting Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and AgroEcological Knowledge (AEK), acknowledging their inherent political significance. This resistance isn't confined to specific regions but manifests globally. Through a comparative analysis, this study aims to delve into the grassroots social mechanisms that facilitate the circulation of these knowledges. By comparing agroecology in Flanders with indigenous communities in the Peruvian Andes, the research seeks to highlight shared challenges and dynamics. Employing the everyday resistance framework, the study examines subtle yet impactful acts that sustain these systems in daily life. Embracing a decolonial and feminist intersectional lens, the project employs ethnographic tools, with a participatory action research approach. From these case studies, the research will contribute providing valuable policy recommendations for enhancing these initiatives.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hecken Gert
• Fellow: Cordero Fernandez Maria Jose

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Over several phases and centering around memory, resistances, and imaginaries — this project intends to examine the erasures undertaken by settler-colonialism and the subsequent practices of resistance to that erasure, by exploring ways of relating to and cultivating the land through generative acts of resistance rooted in issues of seeds, soil and popular pedagogies. The main objective is to interlace the reactivation of collective memories with multiple forms of storytelling and critical remembrance drawing from notions of the undercommons and fugitivity, collaborative grassroots filmmaking methodologies and practices of critical fabulation, to inform artistic gestures and conversations envisioning post-colonial and land-centered imaginaries. As a starting point, this project experiments with developing decolonial aesthetics and forms grounded in lived realities. It also looks into facilitating moments of encounter and congregation in and with the landscape through walking, alongside exploring filmmaking and walking as subversive forms of re-relating to the land and of re-worlding? Structured around the Palestinian agricultural calendar, the project unfolds through different strands; a speculative documentary located primarily in Om Sleiman Community Farm capturing histories and moments shaping current sociopolitical and ecological movements; a participative digital sound archive encompassing personal cartographies and sounds of a fading landscape; a series of guided pedagogical walks, and finally collaborative multi-lingual journal.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hecken Gert

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In 2018, mass protests in Nicaragua were met with repression and lethal violence by the Ortega government. To many, this resembled the darkest hours of the Somoza dictatorship (1936-1979), comparing or equating both regimes with each other and the struggles against them. This PhD project examines the role of memory and space in cross-generational resistance to autocracy in Nicaragua. Scholars in the fields of autocratization have conducted little systematic research on cross-generational aspects within long-term resistance to system(s) of autocracy, nor on the consequences these may bring forth regarding activists' political outlooks and/or strategies. To fill this gap, this project will engage with and expand upon Cultural Studies and Memory Studies to unravel the role of memory and space in the (dis)continuities in the resistance to two consecutive but distinct autocratic state projects. This project will draw upon the experiences and political outlooks of two generations of Nicaraguan activists and the consequences that elapsed time has upon these. To collect these accounts, it will deploy a combination of ethnographic research tools and historical data collection. From this case study, a critical theoretical framework will emerge that addresses the issue of cross-generational resistance to autocracy, whilst de-centering and de-privileging the state as primary site for political analysis.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hecken Gert

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Through ICP Connect IOB aims to reinforce its longer-term strategy of engaging its partners in the South in co-creating joint teaching initiatives, and to evolve from a Northern-based to a networked, diversified, multi-epistemic, 'decolonial' knowledge co-creation and policy dialogue institute. The globalisation and development proposal draws upon the lessons learned and the pathways opened during the VLIR ICP IF highly-innovative pilot experience in Central America, and aims to deepen and broaden an international network of partners offering a global Master programme of Globalisation and Development, including a digital/blended pilot, built on joint academic capacity and shared research and societal outreach activities. This network will be powered by Communities of Practice, which are intersectional education-research-outreach platforms where multiple visions and knowledges are continuously discussed, and transformative alternatives are cogenerated.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hecken Gert

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Education Project

Abstract

Context: The conversion of natural ecosystems for agricultural land use and minerals' extraction is one of the main drivers of global biodiversity loss. At the same time, deforestation and forest degradation in the tropics is the second largest source of global greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. Despite the scientific evidence about agriculture and mining as major threats to biodiversity and the global climate, the frontiers of global value chains continue to be expanded into tropical forests, causing deforestation, forest degradation and biodiversity loss. The planetary organization of value chains is part of the problem: it intensifies the need for meat and minerals, increases the distance between the locations of extraction and production, and places of processing and final consumption. This telecoupling disconnects spaces of consumption with the local socio-ecological impacts of production. In the last years, consumers, governments and companies based in the EU are increasingly looking for solutions to address environmental and social externalities of imported commodities such as meat and minerals. This renewed sensitivity has led to new regulations (e.g., the EU FLEGT), but also transnational corporations to adopt best practices guidelines and certification schemes (e.g., Fairmined). Main objectives and methodology: EPICC applies a polycentric governance and environmental justice approach to investigate four selected commodity chains (cattle, palm oil, gold and tin) that 'feed' the European market. EPICC seeks to map the governance and power links that connect the multiple territories of production and transformation and their plural legal systems with the European regulatory, political and socio-economic space. By doing so, EPICC identifies and analyzes leverage points (chokeholds) and blind spots, and sheds light on the micro and macro conditions that may facilitate the mitigation of environmental and social impacts that occur at the selected locations of production (in Brazil, Colombia and Indonesia). Potential impact: EPICC will contribute to the production of new bottom-up and co-constructed multidisciplinary scientific knowledge about the interactions between transnational commodity chains reaching the EU, climate change, social and biological diversity loss and territorial ecological injustices. It will challenge the geographical and disciplinary sylos in which loss of social and environmental diversity and climate change are often put. It will study them through the lenses of the complex set of material and immaterial relationships that exist between the local and the global economy, their institutions, actors and interactions (including through the regulations, legislations and private interventions that are undertaken by the EU and EU actors such as NGOs, civil society organizations and THE private actors) It will enrich mainstream governance studies with a political ecology, ecological justice and transnational value chains perspective. It will bring to light the interconnectivity of decision making, from global to local, so that policies and interventions at all levels of the chain are defined by a locally rooted, ecologically just, complex and multi-disciplinary understanding that what happens on the ground is connected with the network of private actors, institutions and power dynamics that shape, govern and operate within the value chains.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Ferrando Tomaso
• Co-promoter: Kolinjivadi Vijay Krishnan
• Co-promoter: Van Hecken Gert

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Context: The conversion of natural ecosystems for agricultural land use and minerals' extraction is one of the main drivers of global biodiversity loss. At the same time, deforestation and forest degradation in the tropics is the second largest source of global greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. Despite the scientific evidence about agriculture and mining as major threats to biodiversity and the global climate, the frontiers of global value chains continue to be expanded into tropical forests, causing deforestation, forest degradation and biodiversity loss.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Ferrando Tomaso
• Co-promoter: Kolinjivadi Vijay Krishnan
• Co-promoter: Van Hecken Gert

Research team(s)

• Law and Development

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Taking dreams seriously, this project aims to articulate alternative ways of 'understanding the world' in conflict-affected environments. Knowledges produced about peace interventions have long been articulated around responses to root causes and symptoms of violence. Increasingly conflict studies acknowledge limitations of peace interventions due to their western-centric logics. Conflict-ridden South Kivu is an emblematic example in which extensive peace interventions had limited success in sustaining peace. Interrogating and nuancing Western articulations, the project will document different ways of experiencing violence and understanding the cosmos (the world). Re-assessing the dreamlife responds to the urgent need to appreciate alternative ways of knowing violence and managing peacebuilding that do not align with dominant peacebuilding approaches. Across time and regions, dreams have been associated with activities such as journeys the mind takes out of the body, communications with the dead, malign desires from a third party, dialogues with the subconscious, and neurological phenomena. The well-known but often neglected fluid, sensorial, bodily, spiritual dimensions of dreams will be mobilized to discuss underlying pluriversalism. Building on feminist and decolonial scholarship, the project is motivated by decolonial aspirations, and is dedicated to theoretical and empirical examinations of pluriversal - rather than universal – cosmovisions of dreams and violence.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Groof Matthias
• Promoter: Titeca Kristof
• Co-promoter: Van Hecken Gert
• Fellow: Jamar Astrid

Research team(s)

• Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center (ViDi)
• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

From wild trees to world crop commodities, from forest destroyers to forest saviors: cacao and oil palm have a special place in histories of global socio-environmental connections. Responding to threats posed by the expansion of commodity agriculture to climate and biodiversity, policy-makers now seek solutions in these tree-crops themselves. They are deemed to be able to integrate multiple ecosystem services with commodity production to improve communities' livelihoods. This project engages with the analytical challenge of an improved understanding of the complex relationships between the material specificities of cacao and oil palm, and the human meanings and values that make them drivers of both extinction and hope. Through the innovative conceptual approach of multifrictional crops, this research follows cacao and oil palm from Congolese forests to Dutch and Belgian cities and ports. It looks at how various forms of environmental governance and knowledge, everyday practices, and multispecies relations come in tension to shape the social-ecological lives of these crops, and those of the people and landscapes who grow them. Comparing a nonnative to a native crop in the Congo Basin allows to explore the importance of cultural-environmental histories and of place-based knowledge to (agro)biodiversity. As such, it will critically broaden conceptions of sustainability and justice to ask how ethical human-nonhuman encounters can be built so as to produce just outcomes.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hecken Gert
• Fellow: Windey Catherine

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Over the past 15 years, payments for ecosystem services (PES) have become a leading tool to advance both conservation and sustainable livelihood transitions by offering economic incentives to protect soils, water, sequester carbon, and protect biodiversity. While premised as a market-based transaction, PES design and implementation is shaped by diverging value frameworks predicated on the intersection between contextually-specific socio-cultural relations, historical asymmetric relations of power in the governance of land and resources, emergent ecological processes, and ongoing economic land-use drivers. This research project will be the first attempt to systematically compile all peer-reviewed literature on PES research, resulting in the "ePEStemology" database to identify plural epistemologies in assessing PES success or failure. It will complement this database with in-depth case studies in Québec (Canada) and Nicaragua (building on the long-term development cooperation of the Flemish host institution) as two differing agrarian contexts experimenting with PES for more than 10 years. Research will be grounded in a transformative paradigm prioritizing social and environmental justice by holding scholars, practitioners, and research participants accountable to how knowledge is co-generated. The project also aims to initiate a global consortium, building off the database to foster transdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration on existing conservation projects around the world.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hecken Gert

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In response to growing concern on the detrimental impacts that modern society is having on the earth's life support systems, scholars have begun adopting the 'Anthropocene' concept referring to the geological epoch of humanity's physical imprint on the planet. In response, policy-makers have sought to transition to a 'green economy' in which environmental problems are addressed through economic growth based around technological improvements in material and energy efficiency and the internalization of environmental values through market-based solutions. However, social scientists have been quick to point out the historically uneven political and economic systems, along classed, racialized, and gendered lines, which shape how the Anthropocene gets reproduced in practice. By adopting the recent conceptualization of the 'Plantationocene', this research explores the way 'green economy' strategies, such as carbon and biodiversity offsetting and ecotourism, are still informed by the disciplining power of historical plantation logics, rooted in efficiency, calculability, predictability, and controllability. Through the use of multi-disciplinary methods and two case studies in Indonesia and India, this study aims to advance crucial insights on how plantation logics are reinforced or defied through these strategies in responding to dynamic and uncertain socio-ecological conditions. As such, this research lies at the heart of clarifying important debates within sustainability science. GENERAL - 1

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hecken Gert
• Co-promoter: Bastiaensen Johan
• Fellow: Kolinjivadi Vijay Krishnan

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) has become a dominant paradigm in environmental and climate policies. The approach encourages land users to generate benefits of nature (ecosystem services) on their land through conditional payments from interested consumers (e.g. energy-intensive companies paying for forest conservation). Global climate finance instruments such as voluntary/compulsory carbon markets, the UN programme for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation & Forest Degradation (REDD+), and biodiversity offsetting mechanisms reflect PES' popularity among donors. While appealing, PES also elicits criticism. Practices often impose global neoliberal governance on territories, dispossess land users, retrench existing inequalities, spawn resource struggles and prioritize carbon outputs over biodiversity. Tensions between PES' win-win promises and 'green grabbing' concerns, combined with mounting evidence of ecosystem collapse, begs for critical attention to how global concerns entwine with localized knowledges. Comparing of PES sites in Nicaragua and Guatemala, we study how PES shapes and is shaped by contested understandings of place, power and difference (class, gender, racial/ethnic. This research breaks open bounded or abstracted understanding of both PES and local ecological knowledge, offers insights into how historical geographies condition and rework global policies, and makes visible the multi-scaled processes through which alternatives emerge and gain traction.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hecken Gert

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Peru is the sixth largest producer of gold in the world (USGS 2017). At least 15% of Peruvian gold is produced through small-scale, informal operations – more than half of which are in located in the region of Puno. Mining is undoubtedly one of the most important livelihood activities in the region; yet it comes at a considerable socio-economic and socio-environmental cost. This project aims to address these issues by developing knowledge that will promote a more sustainable, more inclusive and socially just ASGM sector. We will achieve this aim by delivering on two objectives. Firstly, we will improve the co-creation of critical knowledge about the process of gold production, both in terms of how the activity is embedded in local communities (by focussing on 'workforce') and its impact on the surround environment (by focussing on 'water'). Knowledge will be co-created by academic and non-academic stakeholders so as to ensure that the work has practical as well as academic value. Secondly, we will develop a mechanism to ensure knowledge is effectively shared among all relevant stakeholders.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Geenen Sara
• Co-promoter: Vangehuchten Lieve
• Co-promoter: Van Hecken Gert

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The project addresses the global-local institutional dynamics that generate the socially and environmentally unsustainable cattle development pathway. In Latin America, this pathway is the main driver of deforestation, contributing to climate change, the destruction of critical biodiversity stocks and the dispossession of indigenous people. The research specifically focusses on the agricultural frontier around the Bosawas Nature Reserve in Northern Nicaragua and consists of an action-research process in cooperation with the microfinance organization Fondo de Desarrollo Local and the environmental NGO Centro Humboldt. The project analyzes the potential of a 'Green Microfinance Plus' program (loans + technical assistance + Payments for Ecosystem Services), and connects to broader reflections in local deliberative fora promoted by the project and a citizen science approach to local climate data generation and use. In terms of research methodology, a multidisciplinary mixed methods set-up combines inputs from development sociology and economics with the Agrarian Systems approach, and makes use of an original simulation game informed by local data. The research aims to co-identify in-roads for policies of 'institutional entrepreneurship', offering opportunities to affect relevant institutional processes to transform today's detrimental pathway in the direction of more sustainable, equitable and climate-sensible agriculture, less dependent on deforestation and cheap land. The objective is to develop scientific outputs and policy proposals (in particular also for environmentally responsible rural finance) that contribute to change towards sustainability in the Nicaraguan agricultural frontier and beyond.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Bastiaensen Johan
• Co-promoter: Van Hecken Gert

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) has become a dominant paradigm in international environmental and climate policies. The approach looks appealing: land users, often poorly motivated to protect nature and the benefits we obtain from it (the so-called 'ecosystem services'), may be incited to do so through conditional payments from interested consumers/buyers (e.g. carbon-constrained electricity companies paying for forest conservation). PES schemes also tend to be hailed as attractive tools for rural poverty alleviation in the Global South. The idea of conditional 'green' payments is clearly reflected in international climate finance instruments such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol, voluntary and compulsory carbon markets, and the UN global programme for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+, included in the 2015 Paris Climate Accord). All of these can be conceptualised as global PES mechanisms. Despite their increasing popularity among donors and governments, evidence regarding the environmental and social outcomes of PES projects is not unequivocal. Indeed, PES remains weakly theorized in socio-economic and political terms, resulting in a superficial understanding of how power relations and cultural diversity shape the social-ecological outcomes of these projects. Through the comparative analysis of at least two cases in Nicaragua and Guatemala, this research will further develop a novel methodology to address important analytical and empirical gaps in current PES scholarship. It also aims to study in greater depth how PES instruments succeed or fail to reshape nature-society relations and how they change resource use behaviour in socially and culturally diverse contexts. In this way, this research offers crucial policy-relevant insights into the ways in which global-to-local interactions reshape PES interventions, allowing to better fit local notions of value, justice and equity, while contributing to global ecological goals.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Hecken Gert
• Fellow: Rodríguez Fabilena René Ricardo

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

During the last decade, the conservation tool of 'Payments for Ecosystem Services' (PES) has attracted growing attention in both academic and policy circles. The approach looks appealing: land users, often poorly motivated to protect nature on their land, may be encouraged to do so through direct and conditional payments from interested consumers/buyers (e.g. local urban water users paying upstream farmers for land conservation). PES mechanisms are also increasingly seen as promising tools for rural poverty alleviation in developing countries. PES schemes are, however, not uncontested. Despite the growing literature on PES, there is still a theoretical and empirical knowledge gap on the socio-environmental and political-economic consequences of PES schemes and on the way payment incentives influence individual and collective decisions on land use and sustained pro-environment behaviour. Through comparative case studies in Nicaragua, the research project contributes to a more comprehensive and holistic agenda on the appropriateness and socio-ecological consequences of PES schemes.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Bastiaensen Johan
• Fellow: Van Hecken Gert

Research team(s)

• Development processes, actors and policies

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Water systems in Central America suffer from increasing pressure caused by the absence of integral water management and weak public institutions. In the context of a number of pilot projects in the region, the project will investigate if and to what extent the new concept of "Payment for Environmental Services" offers perspectives to improve upon the current situation by introducing market principles.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Bastiaensen Johan
• Fellow: Van Hecken Gert

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

• Research Project