Autor: SABio

Doctoral researchers Daniela Gomel and Carol Bardi, part of the research group SABio, have completed a two-month research stay at the University of Münster. Carol is Brazilian, and her research case study is also conducted in Brazil. She researches alternative forms of agricultural production that do not cater to global value chains and commercial markets, picking up on recent calls for more initiatives that may increase food systems’ sustainability. Carol’s research proposes to focus on the empirical evidence of potential contributions of food self-provisioning practices (FSP) in promoting just food transitions. Such practices can be roughly described as the outcome of people producing food mainly for non-commercial purposes.

Daniela is from Argentina and also conducts her research from her country. She is doing research on the factors that shape policy processes related to forest policies in commodity producer countries of soy and beef. For doing so, she will undertake field work in Paraguay and Argentina being that they share the Gran Chaco ecoregion, which host the second largest forests in Latin America and that face the consequences of the advancement of soy and beef production.

During their visit in Germany, Carol and Daniela developed several academic activities. They collaborated as a lecturer in a full-day teaching block in the Masters Course ‘Sustainability Transitions from an International Perspective’ at the Institute of Political Science, where students learned and engaged in discussions about ecofeminism and degrowth as well as the fundamentals of sustainability transitions from a critical perspective and the main components of policy briefs and advocacy. Part of Carol’s lecture was a hands-on workshop on the iceberg model approach to policy-making. Students shared their impressions on applying the model and noticed it helped them to show that policies usually do not get to the root causes of the problems they aim to solve.

Other activities in which Daniela and Carol participated were the SABio team several meetings to discuss career development, possible joint publications and to prepare collectively for upcoming conferences.  They were also active in the activities the Brazil Centre organised, including participating in an institutional lunch to discuss further collaboration in South America. Finally, Carol Bardi presented her ongoing academic work at two conferences: the joint Ecological Economics and Degrowth conference in Pontevedra, Spain and both, Daniela and Carol participated in the Annual Conference of the Society of Latin American Studies (SLAS) at the University of Amsterdam.

Carol Bardi and Daniela Gomel, doctoral researchers at the SABio project, have recently participated in the Annual Conference of the Society of Latin American Studies (SLAS) at the University of Amsterdam from July 1^st to 3^rd 2024, together with several other SABio project members. According to the head of the research group, Dr Karen M. Siegel, the conference marked the end of a period of working together in person at University of Münster. “It was great to see the outcome of this with presentations by Guilherme de Queiroz Stein, Dra. Lic. Celina N. Amato, Carolina Costa de Souza (Carol Bardi), Monica Buraschi and Daniela Gomel on biodiversity, circular economy, food systems and deforestation.”

Carol and Daniela presented their ongoing research. Carol shared her work on Brazilian women’s food self-provisioning – when people produce food mainly for non-commercial purposes – and how cultivating food gardens may impact their autonomy and living conditions, co-authored with independent researcher Marina Colerato. Daniela focused on her work about the policy process of forest policy in beef and soy producer countries and how factors like the global economy affects such processes.

Pablo Mac Clay, pesquisador do projeto SABio, participou da Conferência do Consórcio Internacional de Bioeconomia Aplicada (ICABR) em Ravello (Itália), de 11 a 14 de junho, e do Congresso da International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IFAMA) em Almeria (Espanha), de 15 a 19 de junho, apresentando seu trabalho de pesquisa “Exploration strategies of agricultural input incumbents: the case of biologicals”, em coautoria com Guillermo Bort, Roberto Feeney e Jorge Sellare.

Mais informações: https://icabr.net/   e https://www.ifama.org/

Pablo Mac Clay, pesquisador do projeto SABio, defendeu com sucesso sua tese de doutorado intitulada “Essays on the nexus between technological change, policies, and value chain governance for a transition towards a low-carbon economy” em 05 de junho de 2024 na ZEF.

Ele obteve seu doutorado na Faculdade de Agricultura da Universidade de Bonn.

Seu primeiro supervisor foi o Prof. Dr. Jan Börner e seu segundo supervisor foi o Prof. Dr. Roberto Feeney.

On Monday May 7^th, the SABio project kicked off its second phase with an in-person workshop in the Center for Development Research (ZEF) in Bonn, Germany. The event brought together researchers from both universities and began with a presentation by Dr. Karen Siegel, the head of the research group in Political Science at the University of Münster, who shared an overview of some of the most interesting findings and publications of the project’s first phase. The presentation also covered new bioeconomy research topics that emerged based on the first phase of the project. After a fruitful discussion, the new SABio doctoral researchers Daniela Gomel and Carol Bardi (University of Münster), Laura Rojas and Serena Olivera (University of Bonn) and senior researchers Pablo MacClay and Dr. Jochen Dürr (University of Bonn) presented their latest research developments.

This year doctoral researchers brought innovative and diverse research proposals ranging from biodiversity markets, transformation of the livestock sector, local food systems transformation and native forests policy making in commodity producer countries. Additionally, senior researchers presented their progress in their research agendas on biological inputs in agriculture and on the Amazonian socio-biodiverse economy. The presenters received valuable feedback from their peers, scientific staff and project partners, which led to an engaged debate on narratives on bioeconomy and global value chains.

The workday ended with a final discussion on future lines for project collaboration with South American universities and partners and overall comments from the senior researchers Prof. Thomas Dietz (Münster) and Prof. Jan Börner (Bonn).

We welcome Celina Amato PhD as a new researcher to join the research group in Political Science led by Dr Karen Siegel. Celina lives in Córdoba, Argentina, and comes from the field of management. In her country, she works as a researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET).

She was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the WiRe programme of the University of Münster. She will do research on “Alternative business models for circular bioeconomy in Argentinean agro-industrial value chains”.

As a management researcher, she is studying the bioeconomy and how it affects value chains to make them more sustainable. Different ways of doing business have emerged because of this, aiming to reuse waste in production to create more value.

With her WiRe fellowship at the Institute for Political Science with Dr. Karen Siegel, she wants to look closely at how these new business models work in the agricultural industry in Argentina. By understanding these models better, she hopes to provide useful insights that can help shape policies, improve industry practices, and contribute to academic discussions on sustainable development.

WiRe is a fellowship program for international female postdoctoral researchers at the University of Münster in Münster, Germany, hosted by its Welcome Centre for Internationally Mobile Researchers. The WiRe fellowship program pays respect to the specific challenges of women in research.

You can follow Celina’s updates at:

CONICET: https://www.conicet.gov.ar/new_scp/detalle.php?id=41348&keywords=amato&datos_academicos=yes

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9136-0516

RESEARCH GATE: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dra_Lic_Celina_N_Amato/info

LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dra-lic-celina-n-amato-13a02615/

Entre os dias 22 e 27 de outubro, os pesquisadores do SABio, Guilherme de Queiroz Stein e Karen Siegel participaram da Radboud Conference on Earth System Governance, em Nijmegen, Países Baixos.

Queiroz-Stein e Siegel coordenaram a seção “Climate change and biodiversity: Challenges for financing, governing and achieving fair outcomes”, junto com a Profa. Cristina Yumie Aoki Inoue, onde também apresentaram seu artigo “Promoting a fair and equitable sharing of benefits? An analysis of the new Brazilian biodiversity law”. Além disso, participaram de outros eventos, como o South-South Dialogue e o Early Career Research Day a integraram as forças-tarefas sobre Objetivos de Desenvolvimentos Sustentáveis e Governança da Natureza e da Biodiversidade.

Confira abaixo as fotos do nosso painel e do South South Dialogue.

The 2023 General Conference of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) was held at the beginning of September at Charles University in Prague. The SABio research group in Political Science led by Karen Siegel participated in several panels.

Their paper “Promoting (un)just transitions? Interdependencies, trade-offs and risks in bioeconomy development in South America” was part of the panel “Critical Approaches to Bioeconomy Politics and Policy” chaired by Giorgio Varanini (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

Moreover, the paper “The emergence of alternative sociotechnical imaginaries in Argentina’s agricultural sector: lessons for democracy and sustainability” by Melisa Deciancio and Karen Siegel, soon forthcoming in the German Political Science Quarterly, was part of the panel “Sustainability imaginaries: competing visions, expectations, and futurity in global environmental politics” chaired by Jens Marquardt (Technische Universität Darmstadt) and Antonia Graf (University of Münster).

Karen Siegel also organised and chaired the panel “Sustainability transitions and inequality” together with Carolin Zorell (Örebro University).