On February 4 and 5, the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) will host an international colloquium on Global governance/politics, climate justice & agrarian/social justice: linkages and challenges. The colloquium is organized by the Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS), a community of like-minded scholars, development practitioners and activists from different parts of the world who are working on agrarian issues.

Global governance has been interpreted in various ways. The same set of international governance principles, e.g. ‘free, prior and informed consent’ (FPIC) can be invoked by fundamentally competing interests: by corporate interests or by poor villagers and their allies. All sectors and actors talk about ‘regulation’ and ‘transparency – but they interpret these in competing and even contradictory ways. Key state/non-state actors try to influence others, and/but in turn are themselves influenced by the process of these multi-actor/multi-level encounters.

Intersection of social justice and global governance/politics

How do we make sense of all these dynamics? What can academic researchers say that is useful to practitioners and activists – and vice versa? Our interest lies mainly in the intersection of social justice and global governance/politics – in the era of climate change and the continuing global resource rush. That is, if one’s starting point is to seek social justice – partisan, partial and biased in favour of the marginalized social classes and groups in various societies of the world – amidst the changing patterns of social relations partly brought about by the changes in the international political economic and ecological terrain, then where do we locate questions of international or global governance (or politics)? What/which global governance principles, instruments, institutions, and actors can be mobilized to seek, defend, strengthen or extend social justice – and how? What are the contentious debates, and why does it matter for academics, practitioners and activists to take these seriously?

For more information on the event, see the ISS website. 

Registration is now closed but the plenary and keynote speakers will be broadcast live via ISS livestream –www.iss.nl/live