Right Livelihood College (RLC) 2022 International Workshops for PhD Students from Developing Countries (Fully-funded)

The workshop will take place in Bonn from May 7 (arrival date) to 12 (departure date), 2022.PhD students, distinguished scientists and practitioners and will be participating together with Laureates of the “Alternative Nobel Prize”. Workshop language will be English. There are a myriad of environmental conservation projects and initiatives worldwide aiming at the responsible management and use of the environment and its resources. Starting from the promotion of sustainable land, soil and water use practices, via mushrooming new and larger Protected Areas such as Biosphere Reserves, Forest Priority Areas and Conservancies, to economic approaches such as Payments for Ecosystem Services. Many of them are strongly trying to include concepts of participation and sustainability as discussed by academia and non-state actors alike. However, global environmental destruction and resource depletion is still ongoing with catastrophic impacts. People living in rural parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, for example as smallholders, pastoralists or indigenous forest users, who directly depend on their surrounding environment and its resources, are on the one hand ‘target groups’ of such projects, and on the other hand most vulnerable to socio-ecological changes and risks compromising their livelihoods. How are such projects and initiatives locally embedded? How can win-win situations be created? What approaches qualify as ‘best practices’ and what are the challenges for upscaling? What is the role of non-state actors? What does all that concretely mean to certain groups of local communities, and more generally, the future of rural development in Africa, Asia and Latin America? Upon this backdrop, the workshop will thematically focus on local level empirical PhD research in rural areas in Africa, Asia and Latin America. PhD students will have the opportunity to present and discuss their own research work in a cohesive transdisciplinary way by building on each participant’s expertise and experiences.