Cooperations

Cooperations

AFORPOLIS (African Forest Policies & Politics)

AFORPOLIS is an initiative of the working group Global Forestland Policy
and Sustainability that started in 2018 to promote multidisciplinary and multi-actor activities including
regional and continental scientific conferences, research-development projects, capacity building
events and science-policy interactions in the field of forestland policy and sustainability. For more
information: https://aforpolis.org/

FOREQUAL (The Forestry Sector as an Inequality Machine? Agents, Agreements and Global Politics of
Trade and Investment in the Congo Basin)

FOREQUAL is an interdisciplinary project that engage several North and
South University including our working group to work on the question: who – and whose society –
benefits from ongoing deforestation and forest concessions in the tropics? Using global and historic
data to gain an understanding of the inequalities embedded in trade and investment patterns in
relation to forests and forested land in the Global South, and the mechanisms that produce and
reproduce these inequalities. We will focus on the Congo Basin, specifically Cameroon and DRC,
and the former colonial empires in Europe and China, as a new ‘external partner. For more
information:
http://portal.volkswagenstiftung.de/search/projectDetails.do?siteLanguage=en&ref=96964

IPP (Inequalities, Power, and Participation in the Governance of Mediterranean Forestlands)

Funded by Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, the foundation of the German Trade Union Confederation, the project
examines the empowerment of rural workers in North Africa.
Demanding social justice and democracy, rural labour protests pushed the 2011 Arab revolution decisively.
Since the Arab uprisings, North African states have followed different paths of political transformation, such
as the attempt to shift to a democratic system in the case of Tunisia.
International organisations intervening in North Africa additionally promote political change. With
development projects, they aim at outbalancing social inequalities whilst claiming to follow participatory
approaches. Economic underdevelopment of rural areas is regarded the root of inequality issues, especially
rural poverty.
How is participation practiced in the context of development projects? How has the rural labour movement
and protest strategies changed since the 2011 Arab revolution? Which impact have the political
transformations on social inequality issues in the North Africa? Are central questions to the project.