International Workshop "The Political Ecology of Agrofuels"

The workshop "The Political Ecology of Agrofuels" took place under the direction of Dr. Kristina Dietz and Maria Backhouse at the Freie Universität Berlin from October, 11 to 12 of 2012. Young academics from different academic backgrounds and countries presented their current research on agrofuels to about 50 participants. The focus laid on the dynamics of agrofuels production and policies, social-ecological consequences and conflicts, labor disputes, discourse and lobby strategies, the role of agrofuels as part of a "green economy", as well as, Political Ecology as a critical perspective within social-ecological research.

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You can find a detailed summary of the workshop here (pdf).

List of Speakers

• Markus Wissen: The Political Ecology of Agrofuels – a Conceptual Introduction
• Christina Plank und Anke Schaffartzik: Causing Ignition: Biofuels and Social-Ecological Conflicts
• Victoria Marín-Burgos: Social-ecological Conflicts and Biofuel Crops: The Case of Oil Palm Expansion in Colombia
• Carol Hunsberger: A Political Ecology of Jatropha in Kenya
• Oliver Pye: Scaling Up: Space and Labour in Palm Oil’s Political Ecology
• Aaron Leopold: Global Crises, National Policies, Local Impacts: Addressing the Complexity of Competing National and Sectoral Understandings of the Food vs. Fuel Crisis
• Kim Bizzarri: The Ecology of Technocracy and the Survival of the Resourceful. Exploring patterns and strategies of intra-elite communication within Brussels’ disembedded political hamlet and assessing the influence of Brazilian interests in manufacturing a consensus around European biofuels policy