Episoder
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An apparent "success story" of Amazonian forest conservation motivates a 6-years investigation of the land sparing hypothesis. Dr. Gregory Thaler's new book, Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World, reveals a tragic belief that agricultural intensification will solve our problems of enduring extraction of the world's biodiversity.
Episode Links
Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World: Conservation and Displacement in the Global Tropics. Yale University Press Roser, Max. 2024. Why Is Improving Agricultural Productivity Crucial to Ending Global Hunger and Protecting the Worldâs Wildlife? Our World in Data. Phalan BT. 2018 What Have We Learned from the Land Sparing-sharing Model? Sustainability. 10(6):1760. Scientists calling the apparent Brazilian halting of deforestation "one of the great conservation successes of the twenty-first century," in Nature Food For an excellent review of the Land Sparing / Land Sharing debate see: Claire Kremen, Ilke Geladi (2024). Land-Sparing and Sharing: Identifying Areas of Consensus, Remaining Debate and Alternatives, Editor(s): Samuel M. Scheiner, Encyclopedia of Biodiversity (Third Edition), Academic Press, 435-451, ISBN 9780323984348. OR Land Spares Feel Their Oats, Land Food nexus Ritchie, Hannah. 2021. Palm Oil. Our World in Data. An example of the "active land sparing argument." The green revolution: Patel, R. (2013). The long green revolution. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(1), 1-63. An argument for the "forest transition model" as it applies to Brazilian forests.Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adamâs newsletter: Land Food Nexus.
Send feedback or questions to [email protected] or https://bsky.app/profile/adamcalo.bsky.social
Music by Blue Dot Sessions: âKilkerrinâ by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).
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The Netherlands is a world leader in the industrial model of agriculture with speculation-driven land prices to match. Dido van Oosten of Stitchting Kapitaloceen presents a strategy for unravelling entrenched land relations from within a place where property is sacred.
Episode Links
Nicholas Blomley: Performing Property: Making the World MietshÀuser Syndikat De Warmonderhof training program Land van Ons Vrijcoop collective housing project
Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adamâs newsletter: Land Food Nexus.Send feedback or questions to [email protected] or https://bsky.app/profile/adamcalo.bsky.social
Music by Blue Dot Sessions: âKilkerrinâ by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).
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Manglende episoder?
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Recognizing how systems of private property control new visions of land use is one thing. Working on a political process of land reform is another. Bonnie VandeSteeg of the People's Land Policy discusses the recent program outlined in: Towards a Manifesto for Land Justice.
Episode Links
Land for What? Land for Whom? by Dr Bonnie VandeSteeg Towards a Manifesto for Land Justice A People's food policy from the Land Worker's Alliance Scottish Land Commission Liverpool Land Commission Southwark Land Commission Land for the Many, 2019, UK Labour Right to Roam Campaign Dartmoor Wild Camping court case Climate Litigation Example Access and Property: A Question of Power and Authority. Sikor and Lund 2009 Three Acres and a Cow The Diggers
Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adamâs newsletter: Land Food Nexus.Send feedback or questions to [email protected] or https://bsky.app/profile/adamcalo.bsky.social
Music by Blue Dot Sessions: âKilkerrinâ by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue). -
A recent wave of sustainability claims confidently dictate how, for what, and where we ought to use land for climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation. Nikki Yoxall, a self proclaimed regenerative landscape manager walks through her thinking on land use decision making and responds to these critiques.
Episode Links
Food without agriculture, Nature Sustainability Guthman on the problems with localism DeLind on the problems with localism Phil Loring â deeper meaning of regen ag Understanding Ag team in the US Paige Stanleyâs rangelands research Pasture for Life Remembering David Stanley Carbon Cowboys Network Samantha Mosier article on evidence of benefits of Adaptive Multi-Paddock Grazing Soilmentor Highlands Rewilding Hannah Ritchie introducing her new book An environmentalist gets lunch â Hannah Ritchie The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People, George Monbiot EU project on livestock futuresLandscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adamâs newsletter: Land Food Nexus.
Send feedback or questions to [email protected] or https://bsky.app/profile/adamcalo.bsky.social
Music by Blue Dot Sessions: âKilkerrinâ by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue). -
Normally, land owners get a powerful say in the direction of land use. But what if we could design policies such that public values of land use directed who gets to own the land?
PhD student and farmer Roz Corbett travels to France to find out.
Episode Links
Public consultation on the Proposed Land Ownership and Public Interest (Scotland) Bill (closes 12th September 2023)
Scotlandâs Rural Land Market insights (Scottish Land Commission)
Tim Lang, Feeding Britain
Terre des Liens
How the authorisation system works and itâs impact on land market competition
Summary article on the development of the new Land law in France
Amelia Veitch
Speculation in French agricultural land markets and the impact on SAFER decisions on land allocations
Article exploring the impact on proactive local authority support for agroecological installations
Resistance to mega basins 1
Resistance to mega basins 2
Agroecological Transitions for Territorial Food Systems Project
Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode and extended shownotes can be found on Adamâs newsletter: Land Food Nexus. Send feedback or questions to [email protected].
This podcast was a team effort of Tanguy Martin from Terre de Liens, Amelia Veitch from the Laboratoire dâAnthropologie Politique (LAP-EHESS) and the University of Lausanne, HĂ©lĂšne Bechet and Alice Martin-Prevel from Terre de Liens, and Claire Lamine from INRAE for her involvement and support through the ATTER project. Georgie Styles provided production and audio mastering support.
With thanks to the ATTER project for funding this podcast.
Music by Blue Dot Sessions: âKilkerrinâ by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).
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Reforming property for sustainability requires both innovation in the law as well as in how we relate to land. Legal geography is a conceptual project that describes how law and space interact. Frankie McCarthy (lawyer) and Nicholas Blomley (geographer) discuss property through the legal geography lens.
Episode Links
Frankie McCarthy
Nicholas Blomley
Remember property? Progress in Human Geography
A Statement of Progressive Property
State v Shack case
Performing Property: Making The World. Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence
The Mystery of Capital. Hernando de Soto
Why Are We Allowing the Private Sector to Take Over Our Public Works? The New York Times. Brett Christophers
Blomley on housing justice
Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adamâs newsletter: Land Food Nexus. Send feedback or questions to [email protected]. Music by Blue Dot Sessions: âKilkerrinâ by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).
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Brexit produced a once a generation chance to create a wholesale reform of agricultural subsidies. Kai Heron works through what the England's new farm subsidy plan reveals about the politics of food system transformation.
Episode Links
Kai Heron on Twitter You canât eat profits: A democratic vision for Englandâs tormented farmlands. The New Statesman. By Kai Heron, Alex Heffron and Rob Booth Climate Leninism and Revolutionary Transition. Spectre Journal. Kai Heron and Jodi Dean ELMS description from DEFRA Indonesian farm workers in the UK and debt bondage History of the World in Seven Cheap Things WWF FOI on UKâs climate targets Eric Ross, The Malthus Factor US food policy and Haitian rice Women: The Last Colony: Maria Mies, Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Claudia von Werlhof The Classical Agrarian Question: Myth, Reality and Relevance Today: Sam Moyo On carbon markets and their overhype: The Value of a Whale, Buller Sustain on ELMs Climate apartheid Mark Fisher Capitalist Realism Rosa Luxemburg Reform or Revolution Nancy Fraser on Polanyi Maria Mies on subsistence Public Common Partnerships, Commonwealth Kai on the banana discourse Right to Roam campaign EnglandLandscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adamâs newsletter: Land Food Nexus
Send feedback or questions to [email protected]
Music by Blue Dot Sessions: âKilkerrinâ by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).
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Episode Description
Rescinding the practice of human-exceptionalism may be required to treat animals and other non-human species with more grace. But it might also be required to re-orient how we understand how the non-human world operates and thus the decisions we make that may disrupt the order of the multi-species communities we are all part of. Dr. Emma Gardner proposes an "ecological permission structure", or a parallel planning process that takes into account the needs and desires of multi-species communities.
Episode Notes
Dr. Emma Gardner
The Animals of Farthing Wood
Watership Down
Raymond Williams, Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays
Safina, C. (2015). Beyond words: What animals think and feel.
Toad Patrol
Andrew Balmford's summary of land sparing
Land sparers feel their oats
Gardner, E., Sheppard, A., & Bullock, J. (2022). Why biodiversity net gain requires an ecological permission system. Town and Country Planning Association Journal, 391-402.
Freedom of Movement: how do animals get around in our modern world? [Online Event]
Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adamâs newsletter: Land Food Nexus. Send feedback or questions to [email protected]. Music by Blue Dot Sessions: âKilkerrinâ by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).
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A question of how to advance upon the ecosystem services concept leads to lessons learned about how to work collaboratively across disciplines.
Episode Links
Lessonâs Learned Writing (a blog by Beth Cole Is interdisciplinarity a mashup? Beth Cole social media The Landscapes Decisions ProgramMusic: Kilkerrin by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue), Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
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An article in Scientific American bringing a science and technology studies lens to Genetically Modified Organisms, provoked louder than normal responses from the pro biotech crowd. What can we learn from the exchange? Dr Andrew Flachs, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University, studied the role of seeds on farmer livelihoods in rural India as part of his book, Cultivating Knowledge. We discuss the arguments of the article and its malcontents to try and reach a broader understanding of what this debate is really about.
Episode Links
Andrew Flachs personal website. On Twitter Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability, and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India, By Andrew Flachs. How Biotech Crops Can Crash and Still Never Fail, by Aniket Aga and Maywa Montenegro de Wit, Scientific American. Is Biotechnology Just New Colonialism? Talking Biotech Podcast, Dr. Kevin Folta. 'Woke' Scientific American Goes Anti-GMO, American Council on Science and Health, Cameron English. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Sandra Harding. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Jason Moore and Raj Patel. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital, Jason Moore Works of Sidney Mintz. R. Vasaviâs work on the Green Revolution: Harbingers of Rain: Land and life in South Asia. Shadow Space: Suicides and the Predicament of Rural India. Paul Robbinsâ contributions to the Intended Consequences Rock, J. (2019). âWe are not starving:â challenging genetically modified seeds and development in Ghana. Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment, 41(1), 15-23. Dowd-Uribe, B. (2014). Engineering yields and inequality? How institutions and agro-ecology shape Bt cotton outcomes in Burkina Faso. Geoforum, 53, 161-171. Andrew Flachs and Paul Richards on the role of performance on agricultural systems. Indian millet hunger reduction program. Learning to Love G.M.O.s, by Jennifer Kahn, The New York Times Montenegro de Wit, M., Kapuscinski, A. R., & Fitting, E. (2020). Democratizing CRISPR? Stories, practices, and politics of science and governance on the agricultural gene editing frontier. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 8. Genetically Modified Democracy, by Aniket Aga. Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resilience and the Black Freedom Movement Researchers can restore the American chestnut through genetic engineering. But at what cost? The CounterLandscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adamâs newsletter: Land Food Nexus. Send feedback or questions to [email protected]. Music by Blue Dot Sessions: âKilkerrinâ by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).
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Jyoti Fernandes, farmer of Five Penny Farms and Policy Coordinator with the UK based Landworkersâ Alliance, discusses what agroecology means to her and the efforts to shape food policy in the United Kingdom. We also discuss the risk of agroecology being co-opted and the current boycott of the UN Food Systems Summit.
Episode Links
Five Penny Farms, Dorset Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa Scientists Boycott the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit Jyoti testifying at the EU Parliament in 2015 Raj Patel on Normal Borlaug | Interview in PBS American Experience Is Agroecology Being Co-opted by Big Ag? | Civil Eats Article Farm Protests in India Are Writing the Green Revolutionâs Obituary | Scientific American Article The Land Workersâ Alliance The Dimbleby Report | Part One of the National Food Strategy European Coordination Via Campesina Reframing the land-sparing/land-sharing debate for biodiversity conservation | Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Nature Friendly Farming Network Pasture Fed Livestock Association SUSTAIN Alliance for better food and farming Agriculture Act 2020Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adamâs newsletter: Land Food Nexus. Send feedback or questions to [email protected]. Music by Blue Dot Sessions: âKilkerrinâ by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).
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Too much expert-led decision making has long been shown to deliver perverse outcomes for the environment and society. What if a more earnest collaboration with artists and the arts is the secret ingredient to unlocking a more egalitarian science and society relationship? Independent sculptor, dry stone waller, and landscape partnership innovator Ewan Allinson, discusses the role of the arts in landscape decision making.
Episode Links
The Hefted to Hill project, as part of the Northern Heartlands Landscape Partnership Hill-Farming, Knowledge and Power, Medium article by Ewan Allinson Community Empowerment and Landscape Report by Chris Dalglish Marcel Duchamp, Fountain 1917 Valuing Arts and Arts Research Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire Agnes Denes, Wheatfield, 1982 Alan Sonfist, Time Landscape, 1965 John Glover landscape paintings Poetry by Wordsworth Guide to the Lakes by William Wordsworth AALERT 4DM (Arts and Artists and Environmental Research Today for Decision Making Network) Art is Not an Island Film, created for AALERT 4DM. Produced by Ewan Allinson and filmed and edited by Maria Rud with oversight by Eirini Saratsi. Taigh-Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre North Uist Uplands Alliance Artist-Scholar David Haley -
The past decades have seen the rise to dominance of the ecosystem services framework, a worldview and scientific practice that sees the processes of the biosphere through a lens of how they prop up human activities. Within academic circles, the concept is hotly contested. Some see valuing nature with the language of neoclassical economics as the only way to motivate governments and corporate actors into doing responsible environmental action. Others see concepts of ecosystem services and natural capital as the inevitable deepening of predatory capitalist relations extending into new environmental domains. Dr Janet Fisher, an environmental social scientist at the University of Edinburgh, joins the podcast to discuss the newly published Dasgupta Report, an independent review of the relationship between the economy and biodiversity commissioned by the UK Treasury. The report made headlines when it asserted that we should treat nature like an asset and manage it like any other financial portfolio. We discuss how the report is evidence of a rise to dominance of applying economic thinking into the domain of ecology and environmental conservation and what that means for scholars working on landscape science.
Links to items mentioned in the episodeThe Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
Dempsey, J., & Suarez, D. C. (2016). Arrested development? The promises and paradoxes of âselling nature to save itâ. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 106(3), 653-671.
The Future of Conservation Project
Westman, W. E. (1977). How much are nature's services worth?. Science, 197(4307), 960-964.
Ehrlich, P. R. (1968). The population bomb. New York, 72-80.
Mark Carney, UN special envoy for climateâs plan for a $100 billion carbon market
The Natural Capital Projectâs InVEST software
Kareiva, P., & Marvier, M. (2012). What is conservation science?. BioScience, 62(11), 962-969.
Final Report - The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review
The relationship between ecosystem services and human-wellbeing from the MEA.
Norgaard, R. B. (2010). Ecosystem services: From eye-opening metaphor to complexity blinder. Ecological economics, 69(6), 1219-1227.
Fletcher, R., & BĂŒscher, B. (2017). The PES conceit: revisiting the relationship between payments for environmental services and neoliberal conservation. Ecological Economics, 132, 224-231.
and response:
Van Hecken, G., Kolinjivadi, V., Windey, C., McElwee, P., Shapiro-Garza, E., Huybrechs, F., & Bastiaensen, J. (2018). Silencing agency in payments for ecosystem services (PES) by essentializing a neoliberal âmonsterâinto being: a response to Fletcher & BĂŒscher's âPES conceitâ. Ecological Economics, 144, 314-318.
And rejoinder!
Fletcher, R., & BĂŒscher, B. (2019). Neoliberalism in Denial in Actor-oriented PES Research? A Rejoinder to Van Hecken et al.(2018) and a Call for Justice. Ecological Economics, 156, 420-423.
The UKâs Environmental land management schemes: overview
Assetization :Turning Things into Assets in Technoscientific Capitalism
Fletcher R., (2021) âReview of Partha Dasgupta. 2021. The economics of biodiversity: the Dasgupta review.â, Journal of Political Ecology 28(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2289
Additional research provided by Scott Herrett for this episode.
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The second episode of Landscapes features an interview with Dr Kirsteen Shields, Lecturer in International Law and Food Security at the Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Security at the University of Edinburgh.
Kirsteen was the first person to introduce me to the Land Reform debate happening in Scotland and has played a role in informing high level thinking on the Acts themselves. Particularly, we talk about the fundamental balancing act between rights to property and rights to pretty much everything else.
Episode LinksHuman Rights and the Work of the Scottish Land Commission, a discussion paper by Dr Kirsteen Shields
An article from the Guardian in 2020 about the House of Commons debates on free school meals over holiday periods
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Notions of Land Reform, especially when looking historically, bring forth images of mass upheaval and unrest associated with nationalization and redistribution of resourcesâas it should. Yet, as the favored option to shift land use, where property entitlements are left unchallenged, continues to deliver watered down results, it seems to me itâs worth willing to experiment with reshaping the concept of property, while still respecting deeply entrenched social and legal norms of property.
There may be no better case to critically think this through than by looking at whatâs happening in Scotland, where a set of fairly recent Land Reform Acts have come into force. And I canât think of a better person to discuss this with in detail than Malcolm Combe, a senior lecturer in Scots private law at the University of Strathclyde. Malcolm has long been writing on Scottish Land reform, including a new book, "Land Reform in Scotland" edited with Jayne Glass and Annie Tindley. In this episode, we`ll talk about the Scottish Land Reform Acts, but also why they may have been started, and how they operate in the law.
We end up focusing on a really interesting case of these new legal entitlements in actionâwhen a local church was put up for sale in a place called Portobello, just outside Edinburgh, the local community attempted to use the new powers available to try and bring the asset into their control.
Episode LinksLovett, J. A., & Combe, M. M. (2019). The Parable of Portobello: Lessons and Questions from the First Urban Acquisition Under the Scottish Community Right-to-Buy Regime. Mont. L. Rev., 80, 211.
BBC Documentary Series on the potential for a community buy out at the Bays of Harris
Land Reform in Scotland: History, Law and Policy
The Morven Woods buyout story
*Since recording of interview, Andy Wightman no longer serves as MSP for the Scottish Green Party
This episode of Landscapes is supported by the UKRI Landscapes Decisions Programme
Get in touch at https://adamcalo.substack.com/about
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As part of the work Iâm doing with the Landscape Decisions Programme (https://landscapedecisions.org/), Iâm producing a series of interview style podcasts about land.
The motivation of the Landscapes podcast is a trend I have been observing where scientific explorations of root causes of social and environmental problems end up focusing on land, landscapes, and land governance. This occurs in a variety of domains ⊠those concerned with affordable housing end up looking at land taxation policy, food system scholars point out the crucial role of farmland tenure, and climate scientists target property rights as a key âlock-inâ that prevents deep mitigation or adaptation. This type of thinking, the scaling up of research questions to landscape level, is what the Landscapes podcast will explore.
The first âseasonâ of episodes will focus on learning from researchers from the humanities, law, social and biophysical sciences about how their thinking on how to study and intervene on landscapes. This might be considered the âtheoryâ season, where Iâll try to tease out key logics underpinning land use and land use change.
The second season will concern the stories from differing forms of contested landscapes in flux, in threat, and in reform.
Landscapes aims to share stories about how re-imagining land is a precursor to delivering the types of social and ecological change required to address the most pressing problems of our time.
Full show notes, relevant links and transcripts can be found on the podcast website or at https://adamcalo.substack.com
I hope you enjoy listening to the podcast, Iâd love to hear your feedback.
