
Almut Schilling-VacaflorFriedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg | FAU · School of Business Economics and Society
Almut Schilling-Vacaflor
Doctor of Philosophy
About
70
Publications
15,753
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
1,349
Citations
Introduction
My work revolves around business and human rights, environmental governance and global supply chains. I am particularly interested in the question of how globalized economic sectors can be regulated and governed in a way that contributes to protect human rights and the environment. I use methods from different social science disciplines (political science, anthropology, sociology). While I set the main focus on Latin America, I also carry out research into transnational linkages (LA-EU).
Additional affiliations
June 2017 - October 2023
January 2010 - May 2017
Education
June 2005 - December 2009
Publications
Publications (70)
Interlinked water and climate impacts are increasingly crossing borders via global supply chains. A recent wave of supply chain regulations, based on human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD), has emerged with the goal of holding companies accountable for adverse impacts throughout their supply chains. We develop an analytical framework...
A EUDR é um componente essencial do Acordo Verde da UE que busca minimizar o impacto da UE no desmatamento, proibindo as empresas de colocar no mercado da UE produtos contaminados pelo desmatamento. Para apoiar a implementação da EUDR, a UE se comprometeu a estabelecer um Observatório Florestal, com foco no desmatamento, na degradação florestal, na...
In contemporary discourse, the need to address urgent environmental issues with a social perspective is widely acknowledged. While theories on policy integration have primarily focused on the national scale, limited attention has been given to the merging of environmental and human rights considerations in global supply chain sustainability governa...
The EUDR is a core component of the EU Green Deal that seeks to minimize the EU’s impact on deforestation by prohibiting companies from putting products on the EU market that are tainted with deforestation. To support EUDR implementation, the EU has committed to establish a Forest Observatory, focusing on deforestation, forest degradation, changes...
Human rights violations and pressing environmental issues have tainted agricultural trade. The role of international market demand for commodities such as soy in causing those problems is clear, yet they remain mostly unaddressed. Therefore, European countries have led a new global trend on mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence (HR...
Binding regulations have, recently, emerged in the Global North with the aim of holding companies accountable for environmental and/or human rights impacts throughout their supply chains. This article develops and applies an analytical framework to analyze corporate accountability dynamics in global trade, with a focus on the French Duty of Vigilan...
In recent years, binding regulations in the "home states" of corporations have emerged mainly in the Global North with the aim of holding corporations accountable for human rights and environmental impacts throughout their supply chains. However , we still need a better understanding about to what extent such regulations contribute to enhance "fore...
The International Workshop 2022 on Environmental Justice took place from 7 to 9 September 2022 at the University of Bern in Switzerland. The overarching topic of the workshop was “Institutionalizing environmental justice in policy, laws and private sector organizations”. In this workshop we aimed to go beyond critical conceptual and empirical analy...
In the recent past, European states have adopted mandatory due diligence (MDD) laws for holding companies accountable for the environmental and human rights impacts of their supply chains. The institutionalization of the international due diligence norm into domestic legislation has, however, been highly contested. Our contribution analyzes the dis...
Environmental governance is increasingly challenged by global flows, which connect distant places through trade, investment and movement of people. To date, research on this topic has been dispersed across multiple fields and diverse theoretical perspectives. We present the results of a systematic literature review of 120 journal articles on the en...
There has been an unprecedented inclusion of Indigenous peoples in environmental governance instruments like free, prior, and informed consent; reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) projects; climate adaptation initiatives; and environmental impact assessment. We draw on theories of participatory governance to show ho...
To address the negative externalities associated with global trade, countries in the Global North have increasingly adopted supply chain regulations. While global supply chains cause or contribute to interconnected environmental and human rights impacts, I show that supply chain regulations often exclusively target one policy domain. Furthermore, a...
The workshop "The Sustainability of interregional linkages: Lessons from the Brazil-Europe Soy complex" was organized collaboratively by professors and researchers from the Ger-man Universities of Osnabrück and Lüneburg and the Brazilian University of Brasília as well as the newly founded Earth System Governance (ESG) centre in Brasília. The report...
O workshop internacional “A Governança socioambiental das conexões inter-regionais: Aprendizagens sobre o comércio da soja e carne bovina entre o Brasil e Europa” foi organizado em uma colaboração entre professores e pesquisadores das Universidades alemãs de Osnabrück e Lüneburg e da Universidade de Brasília, bem como do recém-fundado centro de Ear...
The negative externalities of global commodity chains and existing governance gaps have received wide scholarly attention. Indeed, many sectors including forest-risk commodities (FRCs) like soy and beef from Brazil remain largely unregulated. This article analyzes ongoing policy-making processes at European Union level to adopt new regulations for...
Please download here: https://rdcu.be/b87iP
The adoption of the French Duty of Vigilance law has been celebrated as a milestone for advancing the transnational business and human rights regime. The law can contribute to harden corporate accountability by challenging the "separation principle" of transnational companies and by obligating companies...
The massive expansion of soy production in Brazil has contributed to a loss of access for local communities to land and water, particularly in highly dynamic frontier regions in the Cerrado. Soy certification standards like the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS) contain principles that are supposed to prevent such problems. In this paper, we exam...
Telecoupling constitutes a particular class of globalized environmental issues that are neither local-cumulative, nor transboundary, nor concerning global commons, but that arise because of specific linkages between distal regions. Such telecoupled issues, e.g., associated with global commodity chains, waste flows, or migration patterns, have been...
This paper analyzes how the governance of non-renewable natural resources affects different dimensions of human security in local sites of extraction. We show how the analysis of human security can be embedded in a multi-scalar political ecology perspective to combine the strong suits of both approaches: a detailed, multi-dimensional assessment of...
The concept of telecoupling is increasingly used as a framework to understand globally distant interconnections and their sustainability implications. Although there is a growing research focus on issues of governance related to global telecoupling, there appears little consensus over the meaning of “governance” in this respect. Papers in the recen...
Based on rich empirical data from Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru – the three Latin American countries where the implementation of prior consultation processes is most advanced – we present a typology of indigenous peoples’ agency surrounding prior consultation processes and the principle of free, prior and informed consent ( fpic ). The typology disti...
This chapter scrutinizes norm contestation over the right to prior consultation and free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and argues that the lack of a shared understanding of this norm substantially contributes to the widespread non-compliance with this right. The analysis focuses on the contested social practices with regard to the regulation a...
The scholarly debate on deliberative democracy often suggests that participatory processes will contribute to make environmental governance not only more legitimate and effective, but also lead to the empowerment of marginalized social groups. Critical studies, however, analyse how technologies of governance make use of participation to draw bounda...
The article can be downloaded here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X18301013
Based on primary sources, this article analyzes 150 participatory events related to planned hydrocarbon projects in Peru (2007-2012). Therein, it sheds light on state depoliticizing practices and local populations' contestations thereof. We argu...
Download: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dech.12345/epdf
The rights to prior consultation and compensation have been established within the framework of indigenous peoples’ rights. However, in practice these processes have often gone hand in hand with adverse social consequences for local populations, such as the exacerbation of confl...
In this special issue, the focus is on the dynamics and use of participatory mechanisms related to the rapid expansion of the extractive industries worldwide and the ways it increasingly affects sensitive natural environments populated by indigenous and other marginalised populations. We offer an empirically grounded and theoretically innovative co...
The article scrutinizes the struggles over prior consultation and free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and analyses the divergent interpretations of what this right would entail in Bolivia. Similar contestations have played an important role in resource conflicts across Latin America. Using rich empirical data, the article discusses (1) disputes...
Download article: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/dKdWV4YN6nBeVAEYC46T/full
The article identifies the differentiated strategies used by the government and extraction corporations to limit consultation processes and to tame the dissent of local populations affected by hydrocarbon activities. Based on extensive fieldwork in coca-growing peasant a...
Indigenous peoples’ right to prior consultation and to informed consent represents the basis of the new global model shaping state–indigenous relations. Consultation processes promise to enable indigenous people to determine their own development and are especially promoted when extraction projects with significant socio-environmental impacts are p...
This article analyses the background to and the content of the Peruvian prior consultation law – the only one enacted in Latin America to date – and its regulating decree. In contrast to the widespread conception that prior consultation is a means for preventing and resolving conflict, it argues that this new legislation will not help to transform...
This article sheds light on 26 consultations in Bolivia’s gas sector (2007–2012) and challenges simplified conceptions of prior consultation as a tool for conflict prevention and resolution. It shows that consultations do not only appease, but also exacerbate conflicts, as they are used for negotiating broader grievances. The study further argues t...
The participatory rights of indigenous peoples have been at the center of conflicts over resource
extraction, which have recently increased in number and intensity across Latin
America. Using comprehensive empirical data about the Guaraníes’ participation in Bolivia’s
gas sector, this study finds that competing claims regarding territory, property,...
While the Bolivian ‘post’ consultation about the contested construction of a highway through the TIPNIS has received a lot of attention, very little is known about the 27 prior consultations that have been concluded between June 2007 and February 2012 in its hydrocarbon sector. This article focuses on these procedures and presents three emblematic...
This article sheds light on 26 consultations in Bolivia’s gas sector (2007–2012) and challenges
simplified conceptions of prior consultation as a tool for conflict prevention and
resolution. It shows that consultations do not only appease conflicts, but also exacerbate
them as these procedures are used to negotiate broader grievances. This study fu...
Prior consultation is an increasingly accepted instrument internationally for guaranteeing
the rights of indigenous peoples. Conceived of theoretically as a means for conflict resolution,
in practice it lies at the heart of social conflicts all over Latin America. Using concepts
from the “contentious politics” approach, we take a closer look at Per...
Latin America has a long tradition of constitutional reform. Since the democratic transitions of the 1980s, most countries have amended their constitutions at least once, and some have even undergone constitutional reform several times. The global phenomenon of a new constitutionalism, with enhanced rights provisions, finds expression in the region...
Die indigene Bevölkerungsmehrheit in Bolivien hat die Forderung nach der partizipativen Schaffung eines plurinationalen Staatsmodells auf die politische Agenda gesetzt. Doch wie können eine plurinationale Demokratie begriffen und sowohl Staat als auch Wirtschaftssystem entsprechend umgestaltet werden? Der Frage nach den Rahmenbedingungen, den bishe...
With the recent expansion of extractive industries in Latin America, contestations with the affected communities have increased in number and intensity. Therein, the indigenous right to prior consultation and to free, prior and informed consent has played a crucial role. Based on the empirical study of several consultation processes in Bolivia’s hy...
Timely and unique, this innovative volume provides a critical examination of the role of civil society and its relation to the state throughout left-led Latin America. Featuring a broad range of case studies from across the region, from the Bolivian Constitution to participative budgeting in Brazil to the communal councils in Venezuela, the book ex...
In Bolivia, rights to increased political participation and the recognition of indigenous political systems are interrelated. The new constitution of 2009 defines Bolivia as a representative, participatory and communitarian democracy. It incorporates enhanced mechanisms and institutions for participatory democracy. Moreover, new social rights have...
Perus Präsident Alan García wies im Juni 2010 ein Gesetz zurück, das die künftige Konsultation indigener Gemeinschaften vor dem Abbau von Bodenschätzen in ihren Lebensräumen regelte. García gingen die Konsultationsrechte zu weit; "nationale In-teressen" seien wichtiger als jene einzelner Gemeinschaften. Ähnliche Konfliktlagen bestehen in Bolivien u...
In Bolivia, rights to increased political participation and the recognition of indigenous political systems are interrelated. The new constitution of 2009, a prime example of the “new Andean constitutionalism,” defines Bolivia as a representative, participatory and communitarian democracy. It incorporates enhanced mechanisms and institutions for pa...
In den letzten Jahrzehnten sind in Lateinamerika die vermehrte rechtliche Anerkennung und eine politische Bedeutungszunahme indigener Völker zu beobachten. Die neue Verfassung Boliviens, geprägt durch die UN-Deklaration über Rechte indigener Völker (2007), nimmt diesbezüglich eine weltweite Vorreiterrolle ein. Im verfassunggebenden Prozess stand ni...
Este artículo tiene el objetivo de mejorar la comprensión sobre las identidades indígenas y sus demandas político-jurídicas, gran parte de ellas históricas, a partir de la aproximación a las propuestas de transformaciones estructurales del Estado boliviano que los sectores indígenas originarios campesinos han construido, consensuado, propuesto y de...
This article compares the identity constructions and politico-juridical demands of CONAMAQ and CSUTCB - which almost exclusively represent the Quechua and Aymara majority populations - in the context of the Constituent Assembly. It is shown that indigenous organizations in Bolivia can not be seen as a monolithical entity, but represent heterogeneou...
This article has the aim of improving the understanding about indigenous identities and their interrelations with current politico-juridical demands of indigenous organizations. Proposals of structural transformations of the Bolivian state, which have been constructed, approved and defended by indigenous and rural sectors of society during the cons...