Jeffrey Neilson

The University of Sydney · School of Geosciences

Examining the impacts of coffee production on the local environment and livelihoods of ethnic minorities in Yunnan

The SPRINT call is regarded as an initial collaboration to better determine theoretical and methodological common ground for comparative research on the issue of territorial development, mainly on the topics of land grabbing, food security, and food sovereignty. The project will foster a strong research partnership between the University of Sydney (USyd) and São Paulo State University (UNESP) with the primary goal of establishing and enhancing a comparative research agenda focused on three geographic regions: Australasia (Australia), Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam) and South America (Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile and Colombia). Analysis of how each region is experiencing these processes is vital and timely, considering that land grabbing is inextricably linked to the struggles for food sovereignty and security happening globally. These processes are central to the territorial development field. Paradoxically, while central to understanding territorial development, processes of land-grabbing and issues of food security and food sovereignty are commonly analyzed as local case studies. They need to be more fully understood through comparative analysis. Therefore this project proposes to contribute to a comparative view of the macro process of land-grabbing and its impacts on food security and food sovereignty without losing sight of the local and regional specificities that are particular to each of the three regions within the scope of the project. To initiate this research we propose two workshops to exchange experiences and evaluate the options for collaborative comparative research on land grabbing and its impact on food sovereignty and security. The first workshop, to be held in the city of São Paulo in February 2016, aims to determine activities to be executed during the project. Thus, the researchers will share the specificities of their work and discuss the issues facing each region with the goal of agreeing on a common theoretical and methodological approach to start collecting data and literature, each according to his/her scholarly and regional expertise. Following this, there will be a visit to the Unesp campus at Presidente Prudente and a fieldwork at Pontal do Paranapanema as a way to introduce researchers on some of the territorial development disputes and dynamics in Brazil. We consider this proposed work to serve as a pilot for a long-term collaboration between the University of Sydney (USyd) and the São Paulo State University (UNESP) following last year’s visit by Professor Thomaz, Professor Fernandes, and his colleagues to meet with Dr. Mann and Professor Hirsch in Sydney. A second workshop will be held by August 2017 at USyd with the intent of summarizing the two years’ collaborative work, evaluating the value of the comparative research and discussing the issues to be further analyzed in a new project. A proposed outcome of this meeting it a draft of a new collaborative comparative project and the definition of the structure of a book to be edited by the research leaders of UNESP and USyd presenting the first findings of the initial two-year project. Additional anticipated outcomes include: • International field schools that partner the University of Sydney with students in Latin America, based on the highly successful models led by Professor Hirsch and Dr. Neilson in Indonesia, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam; • Partnered Ph.D. projects between UNESP/USyd students and associated co-supervision or even co-tutelle arrangements (based modeled on an existing co-tutelle arrangement with Chiang Mai); • Publications within the two-year project timeframe, targeting highly ranked, peer-reviewed journals of impact including the Journal of Peasant Studies; • Conference presentations by members of the team including the July/August 2016 regional land grabbing conference in Bogotá, Colombia and the global meeting on land grabs scheduled for Sept/Oct 2017 in China. It should be noted that the Mekong Research Group within the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney is already engaged in the collaborative organization of these series of conferences, the most recent having been held in Chiang Mai, Thailand 5-6 June 2015, of which the Colombia and China meetings are a continuation; • Concept note for at least one fundable collaborative research proposal for submission during 2016.