Saskia Vermeylen - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Saskia Vermeylen
Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law, 2015
Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit Sharing, 2009
... It is not uncommon for indigenous peoples to make an explicit link between rights over knowle... more ... It is not uncommon for indigenous peoples to make an explicit link between rights over knowledge, culture, natural resources and land (see eg Posey and Dutfield 1996 ; Simpson 1997 ; Greene 2002, 2004 ; Berman 2004 ; Riley 2004 ; Solomon 2004 ; Tucker 2004 ; Gibson ...
The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 2010
… for the Study of Commons, 2008
The classical debate about the commons is of direct relevance for preindustrial practices of ener... more The classical debate about the commons is of direct relevance for preindustrial practices of energy provision, such as the collection of firewood or peat harvesting for heat, the grazing of draught animals on common land and the hunting of whales for blubber which was used for lighting. As a contrast, the industrial revolution was fuelled by fossil carbon and gave rise to modern corporate capitalism. None were richer or more powerful than the private enterprises which sought to monopolise the production and distribution of oil, like Rockefeller's Standard Oil. Threats of security of supply and climate change have recently led to the re-emergence of renewable energy as a politically and environmentally desired source of energy supply in (post)industrial societies. However in the light of strong public support and government subsidies and targets, the development of renewable energy has been remarkably slow. Our paper explores the desired development of distributed and renewable energy systems through the lens of property regimes. A closer look at ownership issues around access, exploitation and commodification of a range of different renewable energy systems reveals that a lot of the observed barriers to the growth of this sector can be explained in terms of enclosure of the energy commons. Powerful vested interests are in part to blame but some renewable energy systems are new commons and it could be argued that their enclosure is largely accidental, i.e. the result of old and redundant regulations. We argue that the development and adoption of appropriate (common) property regimes will have to lie at the heart of any serious effort to enable individuals and communities to contribute actively to a more sustainable and low carbon energy future.
Cartographica the International Journal For Geographic Information and Geovisualization, Mar 24, 2015
ABSTRACT To stand a chance of reclaiming their pre-colonial rights, indigenous peoples often have... more ABSTRACT To stand a chance of reclaiming their pre-colonial rights, indigenous peoples often have to deploy the tools and logic of the colonial state. Through a case study of community conservancy in Namibia, we demonstrate that the same holds for the practice of participatory mapping. We engage with J.B. Harley's deconstruction of maps and use our ethnographic data to reveal the silences and lies inherent in the rigid cartographic representations of conservancy maps. The indigenous peoples in our case study are the San, who have been marginalized and displaced from their land. We highlight how these people, once perceived by the colonialists as “rootless,” do have strong relational connections across the landscape. We argue that the practice of counter-mapping, along with its critique, is incomplete without full attention to the silences of the map and the relational rhizomes (across boundaries) of the peoples involved.
This paper contributes to the critical debate about curatorial practices and the recovery of Indi... more This paper contributes to the critical debate about curatorial practices and the recovery of Indigenous peoples’ cultural practices and explores how museums can be transformed into cultural centres that “decolonise” their objects while simultaneously providing social agency to marginalised groups such as the San (former hunter gatherers) in Southern Africa.
This paper seeks to contribute to the critical debate about curatorial practices and how museums ... more This paper seeks to contribute to the critical debate about curatorial practices and how museums can be transformed into cultural centres that are 'decolonising' their objects whilst simultaneously providing social agency to marginalised groups such as indigenous peoples. An exploration of new media theory, installation art and online museums allows us to examine to what extent an online museum might provide scope to further the debate how indigenous heritage can be displayed and curated. Through a case study of a hypothetical online museum of the San's culture, we theorise and explore in what shape and form an online museum may play a role in the communication, support, and safeguarding of the culture and heritage of the San. While online museums may and have taken various forms, we argue that a digitized reproduction of three dimensional objects within virtual rooms is not a valuable method for achieving inclusivity. Instead, inspired by new media art, we engage with a...
Ecology and Society, 2014
We argue that reading the local agricultural landscape is a prerequisite to understanding the pla... more We argue that reading the local agricultural landscape is a prerequisite to understanding the plausible local impacts of external drivers for change, such as the introduction of new crops and technologies. Initially driven by a desire to understand the potential for small-scale farmers to produce jatropha biodiesel in a sustainable way, we started to examine how farmers related to trees in different parts of the agricultural landscape. This provided us with insights into small-scale processes of land enclosure and conversion, which indicate that agricultural intensification is taking place. We learned that although the landscape could in theory accommodate a lot of jatropha hedges around existing (maize dominated) arable land, farmers were only creating hedges around new fields, carved out in the grazing commons. Already well established within the settlement, jatropha can produce a range of different ecosystem services. However, our case study suggests that scalability is problematic: cultural ecosystem services can be provided at very limited levels of production; supporting ecosystem services require a certain scaling up of production; and provisioning ecosystem services, like biofuels, would require production to be increased well beyond any synergies with ongoing tree plantings or land conversion processes.
Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit Sharing, 2009
... This diversity of voices is not surprising when one takes into account the local context or t... more ... This diversity of voices is not surprising when one takes into account the local context or the cur-rent and historical socio-economic ... proposed by the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) in Namibia, the South African San Institute (SASI) in South ...
Human Ecology, 2013
Fires in humid tropical forests are increasingly frequent due to severe dry seasons, forest degra... more Fires in humid tropical forests are increasingly frequent due to severe dry seasons, forest degradation and agricultural expansion. One agent implicated in current discourse surrounding tropical forest fires is the small-scale farming peasantry who rely on fire in swidden (shifting cultivation, slash-and-burn) agriculture. The environmental degradation associated with fire has led to government responses at multiple scales (international, national, state, regional) via policies aimed mainly at managing ignition sources. However, continued increase in forest fires suggests that these policies may be having limited impact and a fresh evaluation of current policy approaches to fire management is needed. We review fire policy measures with insights of caboclo farming practices and perspectives from Eastern Amazonia and examine the congruence between policy and practice. We demonstrate a significant disparity between policy requirements such as firebreaks and actual fire management practices, in which measures rarely meet requirements outlined in legislation. We explore the origins and the impacts of these disparities, focussing on smallholder farm-level management measures and local capacity. Incomplete knowledge coupled with marginal awareness of legal requirements served to propagate widespread erroneous beliefs in what these are. This analysis at multiple scales (international, national, state, regional) will contribute to developing greater congruence between fire policies and smallholder farming practices.
Local Environment, 2007
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) demands equitable benefit-sharing from the use of bi... more The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) demands equitable benefit-sharing from the use of biodiversity, but it falls short of defining fairness or equity. The Hoodia, a traditional medicinal plant of the San, has been patented without their prior consent, but belatedly a benefit-sharing agreement has been signed. This paper investigates the views and perceptions of the San communities on what
Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit Sharing, 2009
Abstract Understanding how decisions were made by the San in the Hoodia case and how decision-mak... more Abstract Understanding how decisions were made by the San in the Hoodia case and how decision-making and governance structures vary between bioprospectors and indigenous communities is essential for the implementation of effective benefit sharing. Drawing on academic ...
Renewable Energy, 2010
Modern renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines and photovoltaic cells are developing ... more Modern renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines and photovoltaic cells are developing rapidly, which raises the risk of conflicts over a range of issues, from aesthetic impacts to rights of access. Although these conflicts arise from the deployment of a new technology, in many cases the underlying nature of the conflict is not novel, and historic cases can help to inform the development of a fair and effective management of these conflicts. This paper draws attention to one particular type of conflict; namely the right to gain or protect access to the energy flux. An examination of historic conflicts and judicial arbitration over the rights to extract useful energy by capturing the wind, water or sun, reveals that it is the nature of the energy capturing technology, the end-use of the energy and the local cultural and infrastructural setting which are key to the determination of local property rights over the flow of air, water or sunlight. Historical examples of wind and watermills, and a historic-contemporary comparison of 'rights to light', suggest that renewable energy technologies that are susceptible to multiple conflicts, for example due to the scale of the technology or the directionality of the energy flux across individual property boundaries, could be effectively governed in a more collaborative manner, with laws being both technology specific and locally adaptive.
Local Environment, 2007
... of traditional law so appropriate feedback may have to include social, environmental and spir... more ... of traditional law so appropriate feedback may have to include social, environmental and spiritualreasoning. ... of traditional law and should incorporate social, environmental and spiritual dimensions in ... a group of more than 100,000 people, but enforcing a managerial style that ...
Landscape Research, 2011
Energy policy is an increasingly influential driver for landscape change in the Global North and ... more Energy policy is an increasingly influential driver for landscape change in the Global North and in rapidly industrializing nations. The renewable energy industry and the large utilities installing wind farms are increasingly powerful actors in the global economy, and their activities are giving rise to a growing number of energy-landscape conflicts. Dependent on its characteristics with regards to the local landscape and the energy system it is part of, a renewable energy project can be portrayed as representing either development or conservation, and representing either globalization or localization. By interrogating landscape as a right, and carbon as a commodity, this paper reveals a number of tensions between abstract, aggregate and top-down narratives that are typical of a globalist discourse, and more localized, contextualized and individuated concerns. We draw attention to examples of reconciliation through customized entrepreneurial activities which manage to make sense of landscape, energy and climate issues at the local level, and which can be enacted and presented through both a globalist and a local narrative. These developments illustrate that hybridity of the local and the global is yielding differential rural energy geographies, consistent with Woods's (2007) concept of global countryside.
International Review of Sociology, 2012
Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law, 2015
Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit Sharing, 2009
... It is not uncommon for indigenous peoples to make an explicit link between rights over knowle... more ... It is not uncommon for indigenous peoples to make an explicit link between rights over knowledge, culture, natural resources and land (see eg Posey and Dutfield 1996 ; Simpson 1997 ; Greene 2002, 2004 ; Berman 2004 ; Riley 2004 ; Solomon 2004 ; Tucker 2004 ; Gibson ...
The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 2010
… for the Study of Commons, 2008
The classical debate about the commons is of direct relevance for preindustrial practices of ener... more The classical debate about the commons is of direct relevance for preindustrial practices of energy provision, such as the collection of firewood or peat harvesting for heat, the grazing of draught animals on common land and the hunting of whales for blubber which was used for lighting. As a contrast, the industrial revolution was fuelled by fossil carbon and gave rise to modern corporate capitalism. None were richer or more powerful than the private enterprises which sought to monopolise the production and distribution of oil, like Rockefeller's Standard Oil. Threats of security of supply and climate change have recently led to the re-emergence of renewable energy as a politically and environmentally desired source of energy supply in (post)industrial societies. However in the light of strong public support and government subsidies and targets, the development of renewable energy has been remarkably slow. Our paper explores the desired development of distributed and renewable energy systems through the lens of property regimes. A closer look at ownership issues around access, exploitation and commodification of a range of different renewable energy systems reveals that a lot of the observed barriers to the growth of this sector can be explained in terms of enclosure of the energy commons. Powerful vested interests are in part to blame but some renewable energy systems are new commons and it could be argued that their enclosure is largely accidental, i.e. the result of old and redundant regulations. We argue that the development and adoption of appropriate (common) property regimes will have to lie at the heart of any serious effort to enable individuals and communities to contribute actively to a more sustainable and low carbon energy future.
Cartographica the International Journal For Geographic Information and Geovisualization, Mar 24, 2015
ABSTRACT To stand a chance of reclaiming their pre-colonial rights, indigenous peoples often have... more ABSTRACT To stand a chance of reclaiming their pre-colonial rights, indigenous peoples often have to deploy the tools and logic of the colonial state. Through a case study of community conservancy in Namibia, we demonstrate that the same holds for the practice of participatory mapping. We engage with J.B. Harley's deconstruction of maps and use our ethnographic data to reveal the silences and lies inherent in the rigid cartographic representations of conservancy maps. The indigenous peoples in our case study are the San, who have been marginalized and displaced from their land. We highlight how these people, once perceived by the colonialists as “rootless,” do have strong relational connections across the landscape. We argue that the practice of counter-mapping, along with its critique, is incomplete without full attention to the silences of the map and the relational rhizomes (across boundaries) of the peoples involved.
This paper contributes to the critical debate about curatorial practices and the recovery of Indi... more This paper contributes to the critical debate about curatorial practices and the recovery of Indigenous peoples’ cultural practices and explores how museums can be transformed into cultural centres that “decolonise” their objects while simultaneously providing social agency to marginalised groups such as the San (former hunter gatherers) in Southern Africa.
This paper seeks to contribute to the critical debate about curatorial practices and how museums ... more This paper seeks to contribute to the critical debate about curatorial practices and how museums can be transformed into cultural centres that are 'decolonising' their objects whilst simultaneously providing social agency to marginalised groups such as indigenous peoples. An exploration of new media theory, installation art and online museums allows us to examine to what extent an online museum might provide scope to further the debate how indigenous heritage can be displayed and curated. Through a case study of a hypothetical online museum of the San's culture, we theorise and explore in what shape and form an online museum may play a role in the communication, support, and safeguarding of the culture and heritage of the San. While online museums may and have taken various forms, we argue that a digitized reproduction of three dimensional objects within virtual rooms is not a valuable method for achieving inclusivity. Instead, inspired by new media art, we engage with a...
Ecology and Society, 2014
We argue that reading the local agricultural landscape is a prerequisite to understanding the pla... more We argue that reading the local agricultural landscape is a prerequisite to understanding the plausible local impacts of external drivers for change, such as the introduction of new crops and technologies. Initially driven by a desire to understand the potential for small-scale farmers to produce jatropha biodiesel in a sustainable way, we started to examine how farmers related to trees in different parts of the agricultural landscape. This provided us with insights into small-scale processes of land enclosure and conversion, which indicate that agricultural intensification is taking place. We learned that although the landscape could in theory accommodate a lot of jatropha hedges around existing (maize dominated) arable land, farmers were only creating hedges around new fields, carved out in the grazing commons. Already well established within the settlement, jatropha can produce a range of different ecosystem services. However, our case study suggests that scalability is problematic: cultural ecosystem services can be provided at very limited levels of production; supporting ecosystem services require a certain scaling up of production; and provisioning ecosystem services, like biofuels, would require production to be increased well beyond any synergies with ongoing tree plantings or land conversion processes.
Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit Sharing, 2009
... This diversity of voices is not surprising when one takes into account the local context or t... more ... This diversity of voices is not surprising when one takes into account the local context or the cur-rent and historical socio-economic ... proposed by the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) in Namibia, the South African San Institute (SASI) in South ...
Human Ecology, 2013
Fires in humid tropical forests are increasingly frequent due to severe dry seasons, forest degra... more Fires in humid tropical forests are increasingly frequent due to severe dry seasons, forest degradation and agricultural expansion. One agent implicated in current discourse surrounding tropical forest fires is the small-scale farming peasantry who rely on fire in swidden (shifting cultivation, slash-and-burn) agriculture. The environmental degradation associated with fire has led to government responses at multiple scales (international, national, state, regional) via policies aimed mainly at managing ignition sources. However, continued increase in forest fires suggests that these policies may be having limited impact and a fresh evaluation of current policy approaches to fire management is needed. We review fire policy measures with insights of caboclo farming practices and perspectives from Eastern Amazonia and examine the congruence between policy and practice. We demonstrate a significant disparity between policy requirements such as firebreaks and actual fire management practices, in which measures rarely meet requirements outlined in legislation. We explore the origins and the impacts of these disparities, focussing on smallholder farm-level management measures and local capacity. Incomplete knowledge coupled with marginal awareness of legal requirements served to propagate widespread erroneous beliefs in what these are. This analysis at multiple scales (international, national, state, regional) will contribute to developing greater congruence between fire policies and smallholder farming practices.
Local Environment, 2007
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) demands equitable benefit-sharing from the use of bi... more The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) demands equitable benefit-sharing from the use of biodiversity, but it falls short of defining fairness or equity. The Hoodia, a traditional medicinal plant of the San, has been patented without their prior consent, but belatedly a benefit-sharing agreement has been signed. This paper investigates the views and perceptions of the San communities on what
Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit Sharing, 2009
Abstract Understanding how decisions were made by the San in the Hoodia case and how decision-mak... more Abstract Understanding how decisions were made by the San in the Hoodia case and how decision-making and governance structures vary between bioprospectors and indigenous communities is essential for the implementation of effective benefit sharing. Drawing on academic ...
Renewable Energy, 2010
Modern renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines and photovoltaic cells are developing ... more Modern renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines and photovoltaic cells are developing rapidly, which raises the risk of conflicts over a range of issues, from aesthetic impacts to rights of access. Although these conflicts arise from the deployment of a new technology, in many cases the underlying nature of the conflict is not novel, and historic cases can help to inform the development of a fair and effective management of these conflicts. This paper draws attention to one particular type of conflict; namely the right to gain or protect access to the energy flux. An examination of historic conflicts and judicial arbitration over the rights to extract useful energy by capturing the wind, water or sun, reveals that it is the nature of the energy capturing technology, the end-use of the energy and the local cultural and infrastructural setting which are key to the determination of local property rights over the flow of air, water or sunlight. Historical examples of wind and watermills, and a historic-contemporary comparison of 'rights to light', suggest that renewable energy technologies that are susceptible to multiple conflicts, for example due to the scale of the technology or the directionality of the energy flux across individual property boundaries, could be effectively governed in a more collaborative manner, with laws being both technology specific and locally adaptive.
Local Environment, 2007
... of traditional law so appropriate feedback may have to include social, environmental and spir... more ... of traditional law so appropriate feedback may have to include social, environmental and spiritualreasoning. ... of traditional law and should incorporate social, environmental and spiritual dimensions in ... a group of more than 100,000 people, but enforcing a managerial style that ...
Landscape Research, 2011
Energy policy is an increasingly influential driver for landscape change in the Global North and ... more Energy policy is an increasingly influential driver for landscape change in the Global North and in rapidly industrializing nations. The renewable energy industry and the large utilities installing wind farms are increasingly powerful actors in the global economy, and their activities are giving rise to a growing number of energy-landscape conflicts. Dependent on its characteristics with regards to the local landscape and the energy system it is part of, a renewable energy project can be portrayed as representing either development or conservation, and representing either globalization or localization. By interrogating landscape as a right, and carbon as a commodity, this paper reveals a number of tensions between abstract, aggregate and top-down narratives that are typical of a globalist discourse, and more localized, contextualized and individuated concerns. We draw attention to examples of reconciliation through customized entrepreneurial activities which manage to make sense of landscape, energy and climate issues at the local level, and which can be enacted and presented through both a globalist and a local narrative. These developments illustrate that hybridity of the local and the global is yielding differential rural energy geographies, consistent with Woods's (2007) concept of global countryside.
International Review of Sociology, 2012