Submission Deadline: All manuscripts should be submitted for consideration by December 31, 2021.

The global environmental crisis is intertwined with the crisis of social and economic inequality. From coal plants to palm oil plantations, economic activities that threaten the planet are concentrated in communities with less power and wealth. “You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones,” writes Hop Hopkins, “and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people.”1

Mining in the context of climate of climate change brings new challenges to the industry and exacerbates already existing sustainability problems. This Datastory highlights some of these tensions while pointing towards emerging best practice. The findings are based on document analysis and semi-structure structured interviews with corporate representatives from the 37 largest mining companies in the world.

The effectiveness of sustainable land use governance can be undermined if local affected people perceive land-use policies as not reflecting social objectives, or as ‘unjust.’ To transform externally-conceived sustainability principles from the international level into on-the-ground practice, involves the interplay of various organizations and peoples from the government, civil society, and the private sector.

As a child, Saturdays meant two things for Rhonda: trash and pizza. Her mother ardently believed in being ‘a good member of her community’ and was committed to teaching her children the same. “She’d wake us up Saturday mornings and say, ‘Come on! Let’s go pick up the trash! We’d say, ‘Booo!’ And then she’d say, ‘Well, I’m going to take you out for pizza after.’ And we’d say, ‘Yay!’” recalls Rhonda with a laugh. 

Many expert vocabularies have emerged from specific and limited scientific fields such as medicine and botany. They have aimed to achieve precise understanding between experts in these fields based on exact definitions of the terms used and originally, in their early examples, through the widespread use of Arabic or Latin as international scientific languages. 

No one asked them. No one even informed them. The first indicator the villagers had that something was happening in the Ar Yel Mountains was the arrival of men in construction hats.

At the beginning the disturbance was minimal; it was only one or two companies undertaking site explorations and tests. But by 2014, eight companies were “tearing the mountains apart” in their quest for manganese dioxide. That, said the villagers, was when the problems really began.

It was good land. Before the company’s arrival in 2011, the people of Ngovokpahun village had used it to grow cocoa and other cash crops to help them pay for their children’s education. But when Italian Agriculture offered to build them a school, health center, and roads, provide them with employment, and pay rent, leasing out the land seemed like the wiser option. The company drafted the agreement and the landowners signed.

Addressing the land and conservation communities’ discomfort in discussing the relationships between migrants, Indigenous peoples, and tropical forests in the fight against climate change.

There is some irony in that many of the terms – ‘thesaurus’, ‘taxonomy’, ‘controlled vocabulary’ ‘ontology’ – that are intended to bring order and clarity to our use of language in professional settings are themselves subject to diverse interpretations and application. This is in large part because they are used by a range of people working in different contexts with different purposes.

The Maasai community of Musul have lived on the same land in Laikipia county for generations. It is their source of food and water, the heart of their culture and beliefs, and their ancestral home. But until recently, their legal rights to govern it were tenuous.

In a recent episode of the podcast Uncharted Ground, host Jonathan Levine spoke with Namati about building a global environmental justice movement. You can find it on any major podcast platform or listen to the episode (and access the full transcript)  on Stanford Social Innovation Review's website. A  recap of the episode, written by SSIR, is below.

What is the role of land law in natural disasters? Are current global systems of land law fit-for-purpose as we experience escalating rates of climate disruption?