Rochelle Spencer

Feminist theory has long been concerned with the anthropogenic impact of human development on the environment. This essay draws on gender research in northern Vietnam with Thai ethnic minority coffee farmers. I reflect on the use of gender transformative approaches (GTAs) and feminist participatory action research (FPAR) as tools that centre gender and women’s experiences in rural development, both theoretically and practically; tools that place women’s relationships at the heart of how development in this age of the Anthropocene can be practised. GTAs can be considered a feminist response to the techno-normative approaches to development at a time of polycrisis where conflict, extreme weather, and pandemic events are exacerbating poverty and inequality. I offer empirical evidence for how GTAs in rural development actively examine, question, and seek to change unequal gender norms as a means of achieving sectoral (productivity, food security, market access) and gender equality outcomes. I also introduce and reflect on using an FPAR conceptual framework for its attempt to blend feminist theories and research with participatory action research. I propose that these two feminist approaches—GTAs and FPAR—contribute to an ‘Anthropocene Feminism’ to highlight the alternatives a feminist lens can offer us for thinking relationally about achieving progress in gender equality specific to this age of the Anthropocene.

Plant pests significantly reduce crop yield, which impacts access, availability and food utilisation. Rice is a staple crop for almost half of the world's population. Asia (including the Indo-Pacific Region, IPR) contributes 90% and consumes 86% of global rice production, but is among the most food-insecure regions in the world, with an increase of 16 million (to 113 million) moderately/severely food-insecure people in the region in the last 5 years. Outbreaks of the rice blast pathogen Pyricularia oryzae in the IPR could significantly affect global food security. Modelling indicates that an extreme case of 80% loss of rice crops across the IPR could increase global rice prices by 50-95%, increasing food insecurity for net exporter countries while creating price shocks in importing countries. This study used the four pillars of food security as a framework to evaluate the impact of rice blast on food availability, access, utilisation, and stability. The objective was to determine if biosecurity measures might be easily implemented to reduce the risk of the disease and increase food security in the region. Biosecurity was claimed as essential for managing rice blast across the pre-border/border/post-border continuum to reduce the risk to food security. Australia and New Zealand may be able to assist with the implementation of biosecurity measures as they are the most significant leaders in this field in the IPR. Regional agencies such as the Asia and Pacific Plant Protection Commission might assist the IPR in identifying threats through intelligence gathering and pathway modelling for pre-border activities. To be effective, the biosecurity system needs all stakeholders to work together.

The global push to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 accelerates the transition to clean and renewable energy. This shift requires renewable energy sources and a steady supply of critical minerals essential for low-emission technologies. Africa is well-positioned to contribute to this transition, with abundant reserves of renewable energy potential and critical raw materials such as cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements. In contrast, the European Union (EU) Member States face mineral resources and renewable energy capacity limitations. As a result, the EU is advancing an “Energy Transition Diplomacy” strategy—building strategic partnerships with African countries to secure access to electricity and critical raw materials needed for its green growth agenda. Drawing on existing partnership agreements between the EU and two African nations—Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—we critically examine the implications of the EU's strategies for sourcing energy-related and strategic raw materials from Africa. Our review suggests that while these partnerships may support Europe's green growth goals, they risk reinforcing historical patterns of unequal exchange. Specifically, the EU's approach may perpetuate Africa's role as a supplier of raw materials without sufficient investment in local value addition. This dynamic exacerbates existing structural inequalities in the global economy. Our research underscores the need for policy frameworks that promote more equitable and just energy transitions that ensure mutual benefit, support local capacity building, and avoid replicating extractive models of the past.

Conventional social protection programmes that fail to intentionally consider climate change effects in their design and delivery are criticised for not addressing the root causes of vulnerability to climate change, particularly for rural livelihoods. Increasingly, we see a shift to adaptive social protection programming to address climate vulnerability, which incorporates transformative objectives. However, there is a dearth of research into the transformative effects of adaptive approaches. Addressing this gap, we employ a "rights-based approach" to assess how adaptive social protection affords greater transformative resilience and wellbeing outcomes over conventional social protection programming. Taking Bangladesh as our case, empirical data show that although social protection programming incorporates some transformative elements, their impacts in terms of subjective resilience and wellbeing outcomes are limited. These limited outcomes result from prevailing clientelism, inadequate benefits paid to participants, lack of beneficiary participation in decision-making, and failure to address unequal gender norms and power relations. These failures are intentionally obscured through the performative practice of corrupted reporting. We conclude by proposing social protection features that are expected to promote more equitable, inclusive and just pathways to sustainably reduce climate induced vulnerability of subsistence farmers.

Recent years have seen a growing emphasis on the mainstreaming and integration of climate change strategies to make social protection systems more adaptive and effective for tackling mounting climate-induced vulnerability. However, little is known about the extent to which climate change concerns are being incorporated into social protection systems and what drives such mainstreaming and integration. Employing a building blocks framework for mainstreaming and political settlement theory, we assess the progress made in such efforts in Bangladesh, and provide a political economy analysis of relevant policies, strategies, and qualitative empirical data. While the findings suggest that there is no distinct alignment between the growth of social protection and particular forms of political settlements, we demonstrate that the dominant ruling party shows strong political will for the mainstreaming of climate strategies into development policies; yet it does so by managing subsistence crises, adopting a top-down and techno-managerial approach to social protection to give short-term relief from climate vulnerabilities at the expense of making the schemes adaptive. Instead of improving performance by implementing programmes strictly and disciplining local actors, the dominant ruling party maintains a clientelist structure that placates elite interests, showcasing performance of developmental interventions through corrupt reporting practices. Consequently, we argue that the mainstreaming and integration process should adopt a rights-based transformative approach to social protection and employ a locally led process of adaptation decision-making in order to strengthen political capabilities of citizens and to create more just, equitable and sustainable outcomes for the poor.

As climate change accelerates, adaptive social protection programmes are becoming increasingly more popular than conventional social assistance programmes, since they are seen to enhance people's resilience and well-being outcomes. Despite this upsurge, little is known about the impacts of adaptive programmes on resilience and well-being outcomes as compared to conventional programmes. This paper examines the economic functions that both types of social protection programmes offer through empirical studies in two climate-vulnerable zones in Bangladesh. By operationalising a simplified analytical framework to comprehend subjective resilience, the qualitative data reveal that the adaptive programme is more effective in enhancing beneficiaries' perceived resilience to climate risks. Regrettably, neither programme is found to contribute much significantly in terms of enabling beneficiaries to achieve the desired well-being outcomes that one might expect to see. The paper offers rich insights into the design components of the programmes, affording an on-the-ground understanding of their implications for resilience and well-being.

This book explores three particular strategies in the extractives sector for creating shared wealth, increased labour opportunities and positive social, environmental and economic outcomes from corporate projects, namely: state wealth funds (SWF), local content policies (LCP) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. Collectively, the chapters explore the associated experiences and challenges in different parts of the world with the view to inform equitable and sustainable development for the communities living adjacent to extractives sites and the wider society and environment. Examples of LCPs, SWFs and CSR practices from 12 jurisdictions with diverse experiences offer usefull insights. The book illuminates challenges and opportunities for sustainable development outcomes of the extractives sector. It reflects the need to take on board the lessons of these global experiences in order to improve outcomes for poverty reduction, inequality reduction and sustainable development.

Mining has contributed to human development and technological prowess over several millennia. Accompanying this practical contribution has been a growing set of interrelated impacts that society has slowly began to acknowledge. The accumulation of externalities—or impacts on people and planet—are referred to as mining legacies, denoting both current and long-lived outcomes, ranging from pollution to community fragmentation to intergenerational embodiment. Mining legacies have origins, causes and impacts in both the physical process of mining and the industry's complex role in society, where it has been integral to colonial expansion, imperialism and global capitalism. This synthesis of the special issue Mining Legacies: Still breaking new ground explores the concept of mining legacies as a term capable of capturing a more expansive understanding of interrelated and complex impacts on society, where heterogeneous modes of existence clash with the dominant Western mining paradigm and global, capitalist development. Articulating a mining legacy lens contributes to orthodox debates on mining policy and managing specific impacts, while also challenging understandings of the underlying values, potential benefits, and externalities of extractive-led development. This synthesis also offers deeper insights into community agency and resistance as well as wellbeing and governance, also offering up possibilities for transforming negative legacies.

This article presents stories of life from Venembeli, a remote village in the hinterlands of Papua New Guinea. Caught up in a contentious mining development, villagers both long for and fear the development promised by global capitalism. But with a forty year development history, the proposed Wafi-Golpu mine has become the only lens through which the present or future is imagined and understood. We contend that this cultural hegemony has twisted the way stakeholders understand the mine's outcomes and impacts. Mindful of the power of language and dominant cultures, we adopt a refined version of the Melanesian tok stori methodology to capture stories that, together with illustrations and our own observations, make visible and amplify the stories from Venembeli. The stories illustrate a different reality to those presented in the usual western, technical and reductive impact assessments; offering insights into a complex human story that requires contemplation and empathy if the communities are to be valued, heard and respected. The outcome of telling these stories is uncertain, but this emancipatory participatory action research will help readers and stakeholders to better understand the community, and to prioritise their human flourishing to ensure positive, rather than negative mining legacies.