Team 6 - Human-Environment Interaction in the Modern Era

2012 Jon Unruh and Musa Adam Abdul-Jalil, "Land rights in Darfur: institutional flexibility, policy and adaptation to environmental change." Natural Resources Forum 36.4 (Oct): 274-284.

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TEAM LEADERS

Jon Unruh is an Associate Professor of Geography at McGill University. His research, applied and policy work over the past 20 years has dealt with post-conflict land and property rights in the developing world, and the intersection of land tenure and environmental change. His past endeavors have focused on conflict resolution, land policy and law, restitution, legal pluralism, approaches to reconciling customary and formal tenure systems, and agriculture in postwar and peace-building scenarios. His experience includes work in Sudan, Liberia, Somalia, Mozambique, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Zanzibar, Ethiopia, Uganda, Madagascar and Colombia.

Dr. Luginaah is a Canada Research Chair and an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Western Ontario. His research interests include environment and health as well as population health and GIS applications in health. His work involves an integrative understanding of the broad determinants of population health and the evidence of environment and health linkages, with a special focus on the human health impacts of environmental exposure. Dr. Luginaah is also also involved in HIV/AIDS research in Africa (specifically Kenya), Ghana and Nigeria.

COLLABORATORS

Saturnino (‘Jun’) M. Borras Jr. is an Associate Professor of Rural Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, Netherlands. He was previously (2007-2010) the Canada Research Chair in International Development Studies at Saint Mary’s University, Nova Scotia. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the College of Humanities and Development Studies (COHD), China Agricultural University in Beijing; a Fellow of the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute (TNI) and a Fellow of the California-based Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy.

His thematic areas of work are grounded in agrarian political economy and political sociology, and include: land policies, (trans)national agrarian movements, NGOs and civil society, food policies and politics, forestry, overseas development aid, agricultural development and trade, rural livelihoods, state-society interactions in rural development, rural conflict and development, plantation workers, biofuels and global land grabbing, ‘land-energy-food sovereignty’ – internationally, but with special regional interests on Southeast Asia, China, Southern Africa and Southern America - and on international institutional ‘spaces’ of state-society interactions.

Dr. Ratana Chuenpagdee is a Canada Research Chair on Natural Resource Sustainability and Community Development, and an Associate Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She has degrees from Chulalongkorn University, Michigan State University (USA), University of North Wales (UK) and University of British Columbia (Canada). Dr. Chuenpagdee works on diverse topics, such as economic valuation, marine protected areas, coastal zone management, small-scale fisheries, and ocean and coastal governance in a variety of locations, including Cambodia, Canada, Malawi, Mexico, Namibia, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, and the US. Her current research is related to governance and governability issues in fisheries, oceans and coastal areas.

Arthur (Gill) Green is a professional educator and land tenure specialist with consulting experience in several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and Southeast Asia. His consulting experience has focused on forestry, agricultural production, legal aspects of land reform and participatory mapping. As a McGill Major Fellow and USINDO Fellow, he is currently finishing his doctoral dissertation on postwar land law in Aceh and East Timor (Department of Geography, McGill University). Research interests include property rights, legal geography, postwar and post-disaster reconstruction, land tenure, land policy reform and administration, participatory mapping, food security and sustainable livelihoods in the context of agrarian change, forestry and agroforestry.

Chris Huggins is an independent consultant specializing in the relationships between land rights, governance of natural resources, violent conflict and post-conflict development, particularly in Africa. He has practical experience addressing these issues in countries such as Burundi, D.R. Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Timor-Leste. He spent the last decade in Eastern and Central Africa as Research Fellow for an intergovernmental organization, the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), and consulted with many major non-governmental and UN organisations. In addition to field and desk-based research, he has also designed and conducted training courses and workshops. He has published extensively and is the Co-Editor (with Scott Leckie) of Conflict and Housing, Land and Property Rights: A Handbook on Issues, Frameworks and Solutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) and (with Jenny Clover) of From the Ground Up: Land Rights, Conflict and Peace in Sub-Saharan Africa (Nairobi: ACTS Press/ Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2005). He is currently a PhD candidate in Geography, with a specialization in Political Economy, at Carleton University, Ottawa.