Public Symposium: Social Justice and Ecosystem Services, 1st November 2012

The Global Environmental Justice Group at the University of East Anglia will hold a public symposium on the linkages between social justice and ecosystem services.

Where: Wellcome Collection, Franks Room - 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE

When: 1st November 2012, 9.00 am - 9.00 pm

The symposium seeks to establish important new middle ground in the longstanding struggle between conservationists and their critics over the relations between ecosystem services and social justice. Focus will be given to the analyses of ecosystem-service based governance interventions, such as Payments for Ecosystem Services and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, while examining achievements as well as limitations in terms of realising justice. Conceptual discussions will show how the ecosystem services framework opens up new opportunities for social justice and simultaneously closes down other possibilities by promoting particular social values and understandings of nature society relations and human wellbeing. 

The symposium concludes with a panel debate on how just ecosystem management can be implemented in practice. Speakers from government, non-governmental organisations (including Forest Peoples Programme) and the global South will identify concrete guidance for the design of socially just interventions, among others considering rights-based approaches and social safeguards. 

Documents

Programme Download

Promotional Flyer Download

The symposium is part of the project ‘Just Ecosystem Management’ (NE/I003282/1) supported from the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation Programme (ESPA). The ESPA Programme is funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).