IOS Fair Transitions / LANDac Summer School 2023
About Utrecht Summer School
Utrecht Summer School offers a variety of courses for students and professionals from all over the world. In the last 30 years Utrecht Summer School provided a wide selection of 150 courses of nearly all scholarly disciplines, combined with social activities and excursions. The activities are organized for students and professionals from all over the world.
This year, the IOS Fair Transitions Platform and the LANDac join hands in hosting a range of lectures at the crossroads of the fair transitions and land governance debates, in the context of climate change. The course is structured around the joint challenge of finding ways to make transitions fair and inclusive for human and non-human life. We look forward to an exciting transdisciplinary collaboration that we hope will draw many of you to Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Theme IOS Fair Transitions / LANDac Summer School 2023
Like our IOS Fair Transitions / LANDac Conference, this year’s Summer School links debates about fair transitions with questions about how land is governed and controlled in the context of multiple crises. The energy transition, net-zero ambitions, nature protection, and food system transformation all involve claims on land, water, and forests. How these claims are framed, analysed, and governed, how access to land is organised, and who gets a seat at the table to discuss key decisions are questions of urgent concern from both a fair transitions perspective and a land governance perspective. More than ever, land is scarce and the transitions on the agenda take place in a context of high inequality at multiple scales and levels. Exclusionary pathways of transition lead to highly unfair distributions of ‘costs and benefits’ of the effects of climate change and mitigation measures.
Under the current conditions of capitalism and authoritarianism, climate, food security, and biodiversity imperatives may lead to the loss of access to land and resources, and propel a deepening of existing social, economic, and political inequalities. Feminist, post-colonial and intersectional critiques from across the globe suggest ways to rethink these issues and expose false solutions. The growing awareness that fair transitions in our times have to take into account non-human life in all of its articulations, asks for a serious change of perspective. Rethinking justice and inclusion from this perspective is hugely challenging, in land governance and beyond. The current situation raises urgent questions as to how these transitions will and should be governed, and how dynamics of deepening exclusion and inequality should be addressed and prevented. The challenges ahead call for theoretical, historical, legal, and empirical analysis, feeding smart and sustained action. During the two-week course these different angles will be highlighted. Working in groups of people from different backgrounds and will shape an integrated view that will be formulated in the form of a manifesto underlining the important roles of land governance in realizing fair transitions.
Contact information
Course director for 2023: dr. Wytske Chamberlain – van der Werf
Course coordinator for 2023: Marit Meijer
For practical matters regarding registration, invoices, invitation letters for visa applications, accommodation and directions to the summer school venue, contact international.geo@uu.nl
For matters regarding the programme, contact fairtransitions.landac2023@gmail.com
Learn more about the IOS Fair Transitions Platform