Book talk with Dr. Arpitha Kodiveri: Governing Forests: State, Law and Citizenship in India’s Forests

The book: Governing Forests: State, Law and Citizenship in India’s Forests

The nations of the Global North are responding to the climate change emergency with emissions trading schemes and alternative sources of energy. Meanwhile, nations of the Global South, still emerging from historical exploitation under colonialism, face decisions about natural resource use that are, for traditional owners and inhabitants of resource-rich lands, often a matter of life or death. Environmental lawyer and legal scholar Arpitha Kodiveri has worked alongside many of India’s forest-dwelling communities and describes how they bear the cost of both rapacious mining development and increasing pressure for forest land to be set aside for environmental conservation. Despite these challenges, Kodiveri shows how the traditional owners and inhabitants of forest areas are driving creative solutions in forest law. Hope can be found here, in each community’s unique vision of co-governance, expressed in the language of care and repair.

The Author:

Arpitha Kodiveri is an environmental law and justice scholar and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Vassar College (USA). Her work focuses on the role of law in the context of redressing climate harms faced by Indigenous communities in South Asia. Her previous research examined land conflicts and legal mobilization by forest-dwelling communities in India. She has worked as an environmental lawyer supporting Adivasi and forest-dwelling communities in India. She is the recipient of the Hans Kelsen Fellowship at the EUI and the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship.

Discussants:

Margot Salomon, Associate Professor of Law, LSE Law School

Philippe Cullet, Professor of International and Environmental Law, SOAS

Chair:

Marie Petersmann, Assistant Professorial Research Fellow, LSE Law School

A Drinks reception will follow this event.

This event will be on a fist-come first serve basis.