Geography Colloquium | Feminist Political Ecological Analysis of Ill-Conceived Climate Change Narratives, March 24

Dr. Betsy Beymer-Farris

The Geography Department Colloquium Series presents Dr. Betsy Beymer-Farris on “A Feminist Political Ecological Analysis of Ill-Conceived Climate Change Narratives and Gender Blind Marine Protected Areas Policies in Tanzania” on Friday, March 24, from 3:05 to 4 p.m. in Clippinger 119.

Betsy Beymer-Farris is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky. She earned a Ph.D. in the Department of Geography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The integration of ecology with environmental politics and global economic development lies at the cores of her research. She is a political ecologist who draws heavily from the literatures of social-ecological resilience, environmental history, political economy, feminist theory, and global commodity chains. She spends her time between Kentucky, Norway, and Tanzania as she has 16 years of experience working in Tanzania and is a visiting faculty member in the Department of International Environment and Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Aas, Norway.

Abstract: A perfect storm is brewing in coastal Tanzania. Not one resulting from global climate change, but one of ill-conceived climate change narratives and gender-blind marine protected areas policies. As a result, women living in these resource-rich seascapes are losing out. I draw upon feminist political ecology to illustrate how women’s traditional ecological knowledge aligns with scientific accounts of ecological change in coastal Tanzania. Despite this, both accounts are unable to challenge and change dominant climate narratives. I show the real-world implications resulting from the failure of both questioning and challenging the power of climate change narratives and the gender blindness of marine protected areas policies. In doing so, I demonstrate the need for a concerted engagement with the changed world of environmental policy and discourse to put gendered traditional ecological knowledge back in the picture on more politicized terms (Leach, 2007).