“Making peace with Nature is the defining task of the 21st century”, said UN General Secretary António Guterres in his State of the Planet speech in 2020. This mission statement has informed UN agenda Setting and has become the motto for the 2024 UN Biodiversity Conference of the Parties (COP16) in Cali, Colombia. The need to find a more balanced approach between humans and Nature and/or critically rethink that divide altogether has been articulated in urges by politicians, activists, and scientists for a transformation. Their claim is to reevaluate international climate and environmental politics in morally decentring the human and reformulate ways of coexistence. This call invites applications from researchers working on human-nature relationships and their transformation historically as well with regard to current conditions of crises in the Global North and South.
We ask applicants to address one or more of the following research questions: How can we understand ‘peace’ between humans and Nature? What are the implications of not being ‘at peace’ with Nature? What role do ontological, epistemological, religious and political understandings of humans and Nature play in making peace with Nature? How can we differentiate between different human groups and their relationships with land without essentializing these connections? In what ways did the approach to nature change historically? How do modes of representation and conceptualization affect our relationship to nature? How do we have to rethink the very notion of nature/Nature?
The focus group “Global Encounters: Making Peace with Nature” addresses research questions such as how we can understand ‘peace’ between humans and nature, what the implications of not living “at peace” with nature are, and what role ontological, epistemological, religious, and political conceptions of humans and Nature play in making peace with Nature. How can we differentiate between different human groups and their relationships with land without essentializing these connections? In what ways did the approach to nature change historically? How do modes of representation and conceptualization affect our relationship to nature? How do we have to rethink the very notion of nature/Nature? The Focus Group brings together an interdisciplinary group of fellows and scholars who conduct research in both the Global South and North and apply innovative methodological approaches to address these questions from social science and humanities perspectives.