Project Leader : Hari Dhungana (SIAS)
Partners and Collaborators: University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
Duration: 2013-2015 (Starting from Dec 2013)
Brief description of project: The research responds to the unprecedented emergence of global environmental norms, particularly those intended to reconcile natural resource management with poverty alleviation in a just manner. The research will examine the effects of global environmental norms on poverty alleviation in the Global South through explorations of forests and water with particular attention to the links made between local claims and global norms by higher-level mobilization.
The research will proceed by way of four comparative case studies from Nepal, Sudan and Uganda. Each case study explores the effects of a particular external intervention related to the management of forests or water. The first two case studies are situated in Lamjung district in Nepal, analyzing indigenous people’s successful mobilization and resistance to hydropower projects as well as their participation in a REDD+ pilot project. The Merowe hydro-electric dam in Sudan is the third case study, exemplifying a case where local people have been dispossessed from land despite support from exiled community members and international activists. The fourth case comes from Uganda, where the Trees for Global Benefit project has not led to any significant mobilization despite the presence of significant injustices and direct relevance of global norms on socially just carbon forestry projects.
