IGSD News

Dr Nikoleta Jones, Institute for Global Sustainable Development, has developed a prototype tool, that can be used across Europe, to assess the social value of Protected Areas. This project was supported by the Policy Support Fund.

On Monday 27 March 2023 the event 'Social Science Impact celebration event' took place in the Slate, organised by the Warwick Social Sciences Faculty and emphasising the extensive impact of projects funded through the ESRC Impact Accelaration Account between 2019-2023, across the world. During this event, IGSD's member, Assistant Professor Dr Vangelis Pitidis, was awarded the Outstanding Early Career Impact Award for his project 'Accelerating the Impact of Citizen-Generated Data for Improving the Monitoring and Management of Catastrophic Flooding'. Dr Pitidis's Project received a funding of £49,523 throught the ESRC IAA and was geographically focused on Brazil initially emphasising on combining and expanding the results of two previous larger research projects.

As an extension to the impact work already in progress, Dr Pitidis and his team took advantage of strongly established connections with local communities and of personal experience in organising and implementing participatory mapping activities with local partners in Brazil to introduce a critical mapping campaign across three different Brazilian marginalised communties: Cai Cai in São Paulo, 06 de Agosto neighbourhood in Rio Branco and Guarani Kaiowá in Contagem, Minas Gerais. of our new collaborator’s, the NGO Teto partnership network (Guarani Kaiowá in Contagem, Minas Gerais). Such activities allowed researchers to apply the a newly developed methodology entitled 'dialogical participatory mapping' and maximise the benefits from its implementation by introducing it to a new partner and collaboratively implementing it not only to one of the existing project sites but also to a newly selected area without any prior exposure to our dialogical methods. It should also be mentioned here that our new project partner, TETO, has now added participatory mapping as an operational technique in their organogram, already implementing it in other sites beyond the one piloted in the context of this project.

Based on the graphic and visual support, the maps produced in the application of the participatory-dialogical methodology provided visibility to the most urgent problems in the territory, identified by local residents. The reflection and connection with other themes, signalling the consequence of the perpetuation of such problems. Throughout the application of the methodology in the three different neighbourhoods, researchers observed the different types of risks at the local level and, through participatory mapping, shaped from the dialogue with citizens, it was also possible to produce outputs rich in technical content and relevant information in the community context. Such output included:

• Community workshops in all three neighbourhoods.
• Several participatory mapping events, with the participation of local citizens and authorities
• Artistic exhibitions
• Policy Briefs
• Manuals regarding the implementation of dialogical participatory mapping in English and Portuguese (https://publishing.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/uwp/catalog/series/water)
• Videos including reflections by researchers and community members involved in the participatory mapping process
• Academic publications

IGSD aims to be at the forefront of knowledge innovation enabling change towards a more sustainable, prosperous and healthier planet. Dr Herizo Andrianandrasana has received support from the University of Warwick to conduct a research project that aims to better understand the link between deforestation and the dynamics of migration in the Menabe, Antimena , Protected area, western Madagascar.

More information Migration dynamics (warwick.ac.uk)

Resilient Communities of Central Eurasia: Responding to Change, Complexity and the Visions of The Good LifeLink opens in a new window
Edited By Elena Korosteleva and Irina Petrova

This book argues for the need to rethink governance through the lens of 'resilience as self-governance'. Building on complexity-thinking, it contends that in the context of change and complex life, challenges are most efficiently dealt with, at the source, 'locally', to make 'the global' more responsive and sustainable.

Resilience as self-governance is advanced as an overriding framework to explore its constitutive elements - identity, ‘good life’, local coping strategies and support infrastructures - which, when mobilized, can turn communities into ‘peoplehood’ in the face of adversity. It is argued that these communities of relations, self-organised and self-aware of their worth, is what makes them so resilient to crises, and what helps them to transform with change; and how they should be governed today. Central Eurasia, spanning from Belarus in the west, to Azerbaijan in the south and Kyrgyzstan in the east, provides fertile grounds for exploring how resilience works in practice in times of complex change. By immersing into centuries-long traditions and philosophy, local experiences of survival, and visions for change, this book shows that governability at any level requires a substantive 'local' input to make 'the global' more enduring and resilient in a complex adaptive world.

This book will be of great value to students and scholars in the fields of Politics including Eurasian politics and the various aspects of Governance. Most of the chapters in this book were published as a special issue of Cambridge Review of International Affairs.

ISBN 9781032290942

Published by
21 March 2023 by Routledge.

Comprehensive Capacity Building in Central Eurasia: tackling sustainability challenges in times of war and crises.
Our delegates were integral to making COMPASS+ a success! Just as coffee beans travel miles before they become coffee, our delegates came from different parts of the world to meet at our one-stop coffee (or rather, conference) place, aka Prince Philip House in London! Our keynote speakers, panel chairs, and participants, were our 'crème de la crème'.