EXALT Podcast EXALT Initiative

We are joined by Marketta Vuola from University of Helsinki’s Global Development Studies. In this conversation Marketta gives us insight into the work that she is doing in her doctoral research. She started her academic career interested in conservation and national parks, but during her field work she kept running into gold mining and its role in the rural areas of Madagascar. Marketta gives insight into what artisanal means on the ground in Madagascar, which is not a simple thing to define as there is wide range of practices that fall under this designation. The scale she investigates is quite small scale and overturns the masculine stereotype of mining because it is often an activity that involves whole families. There are approximately 700000 artisanal miners, and it is the second most popular source of income after subsistence agriculture. Marketta opens some of the dynamics that surround the complicated relationship between mining, conservation, and violence in Madagascar. 


Interested in the book Marketta mentioned? Made in Madagascar: Sapphires, Ecotourism, and the Global Bazaar by Andrew Walsh https://utorontopress.com/9781442603745/made-in-madagascar/ 


Want to learn more about Marketta’s academic work? https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/marketta-paula-sofia-vuola 


Interested to listen to the EXALT episode with Aili Pyhälä that was mentioned during the episode? https://podcasts.apple.com/fi/podcast/aili-pyh%C3%A4l%C3%A4-activism-alternatives-and-academia/id1499621252?i=1000466051482 




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In this episode we are joined by Ossi Ollinaho and Natacha Bruna. Ossi is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package that is looking at Mozambique. Natacha is scholar activist and researcher who is doing a post-doctoral project at Cornell University in the Global Development Department, previously she worked at our project partner at Observatório do Meio Rural (OMR), in Mozambique. Natacha coordinated the research line on models of rural development and her research has focused on the impacts of large-scale investment. 

Natacha gives us an insight on her take into Green Extractivism and how this plays out in the Mozambican context. She sees green extractivism as a variation of extractivism where what is being extracted is emission rights. Emission rights are extracted from the rural poor and then sold to entities like multinational firms who then have the right to continue to pollute. The privilege of pollution is given to the main actors who are perpetrating the pollution. We explore this dynamic from multiple perspectives. 


Want to learn more about the TreesForDev project? www.treesfordev.fi


Want to learn more about Ossi’s research? https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/ossi-ollinaho 


Want to learn more about Natacha’s research? https://cals.cornell.edu/natacha-bruna 


Want to learn more about our collaborator in Mozambique, Observatório do Meio Rural (OMR)? www.omrmz.org




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In this episode we are joined by Marketta Vuola and Zo Randriamaro. Marketta is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package on Madagascar. Zo works for the Research and Support Center for Development Alternatives-Indian Ocean (RSCDA-IO) / Centre de Recherches et d’Appui pour les Alternatives de Développement-Océan Indien (CRAAD-OI). The RSCDA-IO / CRAAD-OI, which is a pan-African, non-profit organization. “Its mission is to promote sustainable development alternatives that are centered on the realization of human rights and based on the principles of gender equality, social, economic and ecological justice.”

Marketta and Zo give us insight into the overarching context in Madagascar and share why it is one of the case study countries in the TreesForDev project. We discuss some of the disconnects between ecological restoration and conservation and also some of the ways that organizations tasked to help, do not always improve livelihood prospects on the ground. 


Want to learn more about the TreesForDev project? www.treesfordev.fi


Want to learn more about our collaborator in Madagascar, Centre de Recherches et d’Appui pour les Alternatives de Développement-Océan Indien (CRAAD-OI)? (In French) https://ccfd-terresolidaire.org/partenaire/centre-de-recherches-et-dappui-pour-les-alternatives-de-developpement-ocean-indien-craad-oi/ 




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This month we are really excited to have a conversation with Rubén Vezzoni, who is one of our University of Helsinki colleagues from the Doctoral Programme in Political, Soci­etal and Regional Change. His work looks at different aspects of the political economy of the EU’s green transition, with case studies on solar panels, hydrogen, and post-growth agri-food systems. In our conversation we focused in on “green” hydrogen and whether in practice it can live up to the grand narratives that are told about it, or whether it is just a story that obscure what is really going on. Rubén gives us some insights into the Finnish context and how the externalities from the consumption here are exported to other places, for example in the global South. The amount of stuff that we consume continues to increase, even under the auspices of green transition. To be able to exist these new technologies require more materials, more input, and more extraction. We look at the lock-ins and path dependencies and especially the drivers of relentless capital expansion and accumulation. 

Resources mentioned during the episode:

The Social Limits to Growth by Fred Hirsch https://www.routledge.com/Social-Limits-to-Growth/Hirsch/p/book/9780415119580 

Interested to read more of Rubén’s work? 

“The Finnish Bioeconomy Beyond Growth” (this is the report that is discussed during the episode) http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-380-817-1 

“How “clean” is the hydrogen economy? Tracing the connections between hydrogen and fossil fuels” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2024.100817

“Joining the ideational and the material: transforming food systems toward radical food democracy” https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2024.1307759/full

Check out his University profile here https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/ruben-vezzoni 


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This month on the EXALT podcast we are super excited to be joined by Xander Dunlap for a precedent-breaking third conversation. Xander is a research fellow at the Institute for Global Sustainability at Boston University and a visiting research fellow at Global Develop Studies at University of Helsinki. Xander talks to us about his new book from Pluto Press, “This System is Killing Us: Land Grabbing, the Green Economy and Ecological Conflict.” This book looks at the last 10 years of work Xander has done in the thick of environmental conflict. Xander unpacks the themes of the book for us and gives us insight into the concept of permanent ecological conflict. Token forms of activism and feel-good activities, which are not unfamiliar to academic circles, are not enough to think past the existing frameworks and modalities that people are living under. This book is an intervention against the mainstreaming or normalization of ecological crises. This conversation covers so many different aspects of the book and Xander’s work. Join us for this impactful insight into why and how “This System is Killing Us.”

Check out Xander’s new book https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745348827/this-system-is-killing-us/ 

Check out Xander’s profiles at Boston University https://www.bu.edu/igs/profile/alexander-dunlap/ and University of Helsinki https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/alexander-dunlap 

Find Xander on X (formerly Twitter) @DrX_ADunlap


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In this episode we are joined by Ossi Ollinaho and Máriam Abbas. Ossi is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package that is looking at Mozambique. Máriam is a researcher from Observatório do Meio Rural (OMR), in Mozambique, who is coordinating the research line “Environment and Rural Areas”, which explores, among other topics, the impacts of climate change on agriculture, the causes of deforestation and mainstreaming biodiversity in the agricultural sector. 

Ossi and Máriam give us insight into why Mozambique is one of the case study countries in the TreesForDev project. Agriculture accounts for approximately 25 percent of the GDP of the country. Thus, there is a large rural population, and the forest has a very important role in the rural populations’ livelihood prospects. They reflect on the economic system and the underlying extractivist logics that are often incompatible with improving local conditions. 


Want to learn more about the TreesForDev project? www.treesfordev.fi


Want to learn more about our collaborator in Mozambique, Observatório do Meio Rural (OMR)? www.omrmz.org


Want to learn more about Siemenpuu Foundation’s work in Mozambique? https://siemenpuu.org/en/countries/mozambique/ 




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