Located in the heart of International Geneva, CIES regularly hosts workshops and conferences that bring together researchers and policy makers. For more detailed information, you can link to our website and publications in the report and access the full list of CIES activities in the appendix. In 2021, we continued our work on existing research projects and expanded our area of expertise in the "Resources and Development" research program by launching 3 new projects: Synthetic Lives: The Future of Mining (Filipe Calvao, ERC Starting, EUR 1.5 million) , Anthroposouth: Latin American Oil Revolutions in the Development Century (Antoine Acker, SNF Eccelenzia, CHF 1.8 million), Green Dealings: Negotiating lithium between South America and Europe for batteries that drive a just transition (Marc Hufty, SNIS, CHF 266,000).
Name: Nicholas Brown Tyack, PhD Candidate in Development Economics PhD Thesis: "Genetic Resources and Agricultural Productivity in the Developing World" (To access the PhD thesis, please contact Dr Tyack, nicholas. tyack@usask.ca The CIES faculty has contributed to the training and teaching of students through the interdisciplinary track on Environment, Resources and Sustainability in the Interdisciplinary Master Programs (Master in International Relations and Master in Development Studies) The list of courses from the CIES faculty that are regularly taught in the MINT programs can be found in Appendix 2.
Four new projects started in 2021 – “Synthetic Lives: The Futures of Mining”; "Accounting for Nature: Agriculture and Mitigation in the Age of Global Climate Change"; “Green Acts. South America-Europe Lithium Negotiation for Batteries Fueling a Just Energy Transition”; and "Anthroposouth: Latin American Oil Revolutions in the Age of Development".
ACCOUNTING FOR NATURE: AGRICULTURE & MITIGATION IN THE ERA OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
RELATED NEWS, EVENTS, PUBLICATIONS
GREEN DEALINGS? NEGOTIATING LITHIUM BETWEEN SOUTH AMERICA &
EUROPE FOR BATTERIES THAT FUEL A JUST TRANSITION
ANTHROPOSOUTH: LATIN AMERICAN OIL REVOLUTIONS IN THE DEVELOPMENT CENTURY
Through the example of Latin American oil, the main purpose of "Anthroposouth" is to highlight the mechanisms that led postcolonial (ie, formerly colonized and/or imperially dominated) worlds to adopt fossil economic models. How did patterns of fossil dependence emerge and evolve in a peripheral world region like Latin America, and how does this qualify Latin American connections to a global historical trend of energy development, mineral resource depletion, and ultimately climate change. How can historians study and learn from the agency, expectations, and hopes of actors in the Global South regarding energy issues without making them responsible for pollution processes where their historically cumulative share is statistically small.
Research output
In 2021, CIES researchers produced a total of 79 publications
Published 30 academic articles in scientifically refereed journals
13 CIES publications in the Research Papers, Policy Briefs and Research Briefs series were authored or co-authored by CIES staff
The distinction between what is natural and what is man-made, which has informed conservation for centuries, has been blurred. What happens if synthetic biology is also used in conservation to control invasive species, fight wildlife diseases, or even bring extinct species back from the dead.
Books, edited volumes and contributed chapters
Books
Book chapters
Articles published in scientifically refereed journals
The book describes the social and cultural repertoires with which Southeast Asian peasants in the 1930s struggled to weather the waves and torrents of political and economic change in order to stay afloat. In the years since its publication, the book has made quite a splash despite its seemingly narrow focus. On this basis, Shaila Seshia Galvin attempts to grapple with his intellectual energy to understand something of how the moral economy of the peasant became and remains a touchstone within and beyond the interdisciplinary field of Asian studies (in The Journal of Asian Studies, vol.
Commercialization of agriculture, which consists of an increasing proportion of crops grown for sale rather than for own consumption, is often thought to be detrimental to women. Looking at the case of Cambodia, this article finds that commercialization of agriculture led women to participate in wage labor out of necessity, giving them some autonomy. At the same time, women continue to depend on men's income to prepare meals, while they have lost free access to food from nature.
Clean energy technologies, such as solar, wind, marine or geothermal technologies, are often seen by investors as riskier than fossil fuel technologies – mainly because they are less mature and more dependent on variable policy support. By linking data on companies' balance sheets and patenting activities, this study confirms that companies that innovate in renewable energy—even large and established energy—are more financially constrained than firms that innovate in fossil fuels.
Research papers, policy papers and other publications
Featured CIES Policy Brief
Featured CIES Research Briefs
This policy brief summarizes the key findings of the research project on 'Effectiveness of Partnerships for Advancing the Sustainable Development Goals' and identifies a range of pathways that can be used to gain a broad understanding of the effectiveness of partnerships.
Datasets
Events
In 2021, despite the sanitary measures due to COVID-19, CIES was able to (co)organise a total of 20 events
The Geneva Dialogues on Global Environmental Problems
Academic and policy conferences, symposiums and workshops
Featured workshop
Featured events
CIES Lunch / Interdisciplinary seminars
Hollway, James, Associate Professor of International Relations and Political Science, Graduate Institute. Current Science and Politics of Amazonian Change: Tipping Points, Planetary Arson, and Bad Politics. Hecht, Susanna, Director of the UCLA Center for Brazilian Studies and Professor of International History and Politics in the Institute for Graduate Studies.
Acker, Antoine, Swiss National Science Foundation Eccellenza Professor in History and International Politics at the Graduate Institute. Maitre-Ekern, Eléonore, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oslo and CIES Visiting Fellow at the Graduate Institute. Mulatu, Abay, Associate Professor at Coventry University and CIES Incoming Visiting Fellow at the Graduate Institute.
Professional training
Public impact
CIES audience in 2021
3854 mailing list subscribers + 146
1477 Linkedin followers + 859
154 Twitter followers
COP26
Ecology and Economy Science Panel for the Amazon
Partnerships and relation with international Geneva
28Petrol
OECDExtended Energy Commission
Partnerships for Sustainability
Clean Energy and the Hybridization of Global Governance
Staffing of the centre
Annexes
- CIES faculty’s courses in the interdisciplinary MINT programmes
- Ongoing research projects
- Research project proposals submitted in 2021
- Projects completed in 2021
- Articles published in scientifically refereed journals
- In-press publications
- Research papers, policy papers and other publications
- Papers presented at conferences by CIES researchers
- Events
- Public impact
Research on climate change and the bread demand in the USSR, 1960-1990s, at the conference series of the Center-Franco Russe Moscow "Russian Anthropocene", 23 April 2021. Working paper "'A Woman is a Woman' - Gender, presented, science and the Soviet Union”, at the “Governing Science and Technology. Mining of Indigenous Territories: Consensus, Tensions and Ambivalences in the Salar de Atacama”, at the Energy Ethics 2021 Conference.
Staying at the Double Bind: Narrative Relations Between Energy Transition and Lithium Extraction”, at the Energy Ethics 2021 Conference. Environmental Policy and Clean Investments” at the Eureka Seminar, Department of Spatial Economics, VU Amsterdam, 28 October 2021. Environmental Policy and Clean Investments ” at the French Conference on Environmental and Resource Economics, 10 September 2021.
Rearticulating Lithium – Toward Political Ecologies of Lithium Extraction", at the Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, 29 May 2021. Co-organizer of the Working Group on Environment and Development at the Swiss Political Science Association's annual meeting, 4-5 February 2021. Do indigenous politicians give power to indigenous voters?” at the Brown Bag luncheon at The Graduate Institute Geneva, March 1, 2021.
Do indigenous politicians empower indigenous voters?” in Developmental Therapy Seminar at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, March 31, 2021. Co-organizer of the panel "Infrastructures and Technologies of Belief," at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland and online, November 17-21, 2021 Faculty organizer of the workshop "Anthropologies beyond man?" at Conférence Universitaire de Suisse Occidentale in Geneva, October 7-8.
Præsentation om "Amazonia and the Last Unfinished Page of Genesis" på Earth Archive Congress 2021, 15. juni 2021. Panelarrangør af "Reshaping peoples and places: A global political ecology of lithium", på Latin American Studies Association Annual Conference, 28. Maj 2021. Mining Indigenous Territories: Consensus, Dissent and Tensions in the Atacama Salt Flat”, på den energietiske konference, 27. oktober 2021.
Invited speaker on "Tendencies and challenges of the cleantech economy" at the lunch briefing of the Cercle des Investisseurs de Genève, April 14, 2021. Chair of the panel "Reshaping peoples and places: A global politics ecology of lithium", at the congress of the Latin American Study Association, May 29, 2021.
