Publications

Grace Y. Wong. 2024. Transforming Borneo: From Land Exploitation to Sustainable Development. Chun Sheng, Gohand, LesleyPotter. ISEAS‐Yusof Ishak Institute. 2023. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjtg.12557

Grace Yee Wong, Mawa Karambiri, Thu Thuy Pham, Alizée Ville, Tuan Long Hoang, Chi Dao Thi Linh, Andrea Downing, Amanda Jiménez-Aceituno, Maria Brockhaus. 2024. When Policies Problematize the Local: Social-Environmental Justice and Forest Policies in Burkina Faso and Vietnam. Forest and Society. https://doi.org/10.24259/fs.v8i1.34276

We examine social-environmental justice in forest governance by asking who is problematized as drivers of deforestation and forest degradation. We adapt Bacchi’s “What is the problem represented to be” approach to the community forest (CAF) model in Burkina Faso and the Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) in Vietnam and examine the implementation of these policies in specific sites through disaggregated focus grou...

Paula Andrea Sánchez García, Grace Yee Wong. 2024. The political economy of deforestation in the Colombian Amazon. Journal of Political Ecology. https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5230

The Colombian Amazon has experienced rapid forest loss in the past decades due to growing colonization, infrastructure development, and commercial agriculture expansion. While much of the analyses of deforestation in the Amazon have been in Brazil, there is a need to extend to Colombia where forest and land use exploitation are driven by post-conflict social and political dynamics. This research contributes to this knowledge g...

Ahmad Dhiaulhaq, Catherine M. Hepp, Laetitia M. Adjoffoin, Corine Ehowe, Samuel Assembe-Mvondo, Grace Y. Wong. 2024. Environmental justice and human well-being bundles in protected areas: An assessment in Campo Ma'an landscape, Cameroon. Forest Policy and Economics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2023.103137

Justice and human well-being are increasingly used as key considerations when assessing the socio-economic impacts and trade-offs associated with forest conservation on local and indigenous populations. This paper incorporates environmental justice framework and human well-being bundles to get a more comprehensive understanding of the social-economic impacts of forest conservation. Through household surveys, focus group discus...

Mawa Karambiri, Alizée H. G. Ville, Grace Y. Wong, Amanda Jimenez-Aceituno, Andrea Downing, Maria Brockhaus. 2024. What is the Problem of Gender Inequality Represented to be in Inter-National Development Policy in Burkina Faso? Forum for Development Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/08039410.2024.2303004

This article contributes to critical policy analysis scholarship from a post-structuralism perspective. Employing the ‘What’s the problem represented to be’ (WPR) framework, a Foucault-influenced post-structural approach, we investigate what is the problem of Gender Inequality (GI) represented to be in development in Burkina Faso. Based on systematic analysis of selected (inter)national development policy documents and in-dept...

Simon West, L. Jamila Haider, Tilman Hertz, Maria Mancilla Garcia, Michele-Lee Moore. 2024. Relational approaches to sustainability transformations: walking together in a world of many worlds. Ecosystems and People. https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2024.2370539

Transformations to sustainability require alternatives to the paradigms, practices, and policies that have generated social-ecological destruction and the Anthropocene. In sustainability science, several conceptual frameworks have been developed for transformations, including social-ecological, multi-level, transformative adaptation, and pathways approaches. There is a growing shift towards recognising transformations as ‘shar...

María Mancilla García, Caroline Abunge, Salomão Olinda Bandeira, Christopher Cheupe, Dadivo José Combane, Tim Daw, Elizabeth Maria Drury O’Neill, Tilman Hertz, Marlino Mubai, Nyawira Muthiga, Taís Sonetti González, Halimu Shauri. 2024. Exploring a process‐relational approach to qualitative research methods for sustainability science. People and Nature. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10667

As sustainability scientists increasingly put forward the relevance of process-relational approaches to make sense of social-ecological phenomena, an inquiry on which methods would fit a process-relational approach is necessary. This paper discusses how a process-relational approach can be applied to traditional qualitative research methods, namely interviews and coding and the tensions associated with it. Process-relational p...

Jan Bebbington, Robert Blasiak, Carlos Larrinaga, Shona Russell, Madlen Sobkowiak, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Henrik Österblom. 2024. Shaping nature outcomes in corporate settings. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0325

Transnational companies have substantive impacts on nature: a hallmark of living in the Anthropocene. Understanding these impacts through company provision of information is a precursor to holding them accountable for nature outcomes. The effect of increasing disclosures (of varying quality) is predicated on ‘information governance’, an approach that uses disclosure requirements to drive company behaviour. However, its efficac...

Jerneja Penca, Andrea Barbanti, Christopher Cvitanovic, Amel Hamza-Chaffai, Ahmed Elshazly, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Nezha Mejjad, Melita Mokos. 2024. Building competences for researchers working towards ocean sustainability. Marine Policy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2024.106132

The challenges of achieving just, equitable and sustainable ocean futures require a new type of transdisciplinary and action-oriented science that integrates across disciplines and knowledge systems. Scientists and researchers in academia, industry or government, who contribute to knowledge creation, innovation, and policy development for the ocean, must be empowered with a fresh set of competences. This paper maps the knowled...

Robert Blasiak, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray. 2024. When will the BBNJ Agreement deliver results?. npj Ocean Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-024-00058-6

A new international agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) was adopted and subsequently opened for signature in September 2023. Yet on average, recent multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) have taken over four years to move from signature to entry into force, while ocean-focused MEAs have taken nearly twice as long. Rapid ratification of the ...