Department of PNS invites you to attend guest talk by Prof Ajit Menon, Madras Institute of Development Studies. The talk is titled “The Political Ecology of ‘Spatial Fixes’: Development and Conservation in the Forests and Fisheries of Tamil Nadu”. This talk is part of ENVS306 course "Conservation and Society". 

Abstract - Both development and conservation, perhaps somewhat ironically, have continued to march forward ‘together’ in India over the last few decades. Across the country, both the Union government and state governments have promoted industrial zones with special incentive structures to boost manufacturing while in different locations set aside increasing amounts of land for protected areas and tiger reserves. I argue that to understand this somewhat puzzling scenario, development and conservation must be seen as two sides of the same coin as opposed to in opposition to each other. Using David Harvey’s idea of a ‘spatial fix’, I critically look at the workings of development and conservation in Tamil Nadu across two sectors, forests and fisheries. What are the imaginaries (discursive) and materialities that shape conservation and development in a forested UNESCO world heritage site in the Nilgiris and a designated petroleum, chemicals and petrochemicals investment region (PCPIR) in coastal Cuddalore. In particular, how do development and conservation impact local livelihoods in different and complex ways.

Speaker Profile - Prof Ajit Menon teaches at Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. He is currently an editor of Conservation and Society journal. He was also a Fellow of Rachel Carson Center, USA (2019-20). Prof Menon's research is primarily aimed at understanding how and when the environment becomes important and the contestations, of both material and ontological nature, that underlie conflicts over the environment in general and the commons in particular. Forested landscapes in south India have provided the site for most of my research but I am increasingly interested in the political ecology of fisheries as well.