Sent on behalf of Kean Birch, York University, Toronto

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     Call for Papers:  AAG 2012, New York, 24^th – 28^th February:


           /Biofuels, Food and the Bio-based Economy/

     /Session Organizers: Kean Birch (York University, Toronto) and
     Stefano Ponte (Danish Institute for International Studies)/

     *
     Session Outline:*

     Climate change, sustainability and the idea of 'greening' or
     'transitioning' the economy have risen and fallen as public and
     policy concerns over the last few years. The high water-mark of 2009
     when these issues were at the forefront of the public agenda has
     since given way to a slump in interest in the aftermath of the
     Copenhagen Summit, rising economic uncertainty and the continuing
     scepticism / denial about the importance of climate change. All this
     has led to a crisis of confidence in the 'green' movement, despite
     the growth of initiatives, projects and policies with the purported
     aim to ensure the sustainability of the planet.

     Biofuels represent one such agenda aimed at achieving sustainability
     and a transition away from a petroleum-based economy to a bio-based
     economy, at least in their supporters' eyes. Critics of biofuels, on
     the other hand, highlight several problematic socio-ecological
     issues with their implementation, the most notable being the impact
     that changing land-use patterns has on access to food and to good
     agricultural land. These critical voices illustrate how particular
     neoliberal, market-based mechanisms and instruments construct nature
     and natural resources in certain ways: as scarce and over-used; as
     abundant and free; as eco-efficient and renewable; and so on.
     Technoscience plays a significant part in this process with the
     expectation that the development of new generations of biofuels will
     resolve many existing problems with the current crop.

     The enrolment of technoscience can be seen as part of a broader
     shift from an ecological fix associated with 1st generation biofuels
     to a technological fix offered by 2nd generation biofuels derived
     from modern biotechnological knowledges. Although the application of
     modern biotechnology to agriculture has been a strongly contested
     political terrain, evident in protests against GMOs, it is now being
     represented as essential tool for any transition to a greener
     political economy. However, it is not clear how significant
     biotechnology will be in producing a transition to a bio-based
     economy. The reconfiguration of our existing fuel and food value
     chains is likely to be dramatic, quite literally creating new
     socio-ecological landscape around us. These are likely to entail not
     only human protest but are also likely to encounter ecological
     recalcitrance as we seek to craft nature's productivity.

     All these issues raise a series of questions that geographers, of
     different stripes, are well-placed to answer. We highlight a few
     questions here in order to encourage people to contribute to the
     session, others will obviously be relevant as well.

     *Questions:*

     1.     (Re-)valuing Plants: Making biomass into a resource
     What are the new (and existing) sites and landscapes of biomass
     cultivation?
     How has biomass been made into a resource?
     Has the construction of biomass as a resource resulted in different
     environmental impacts and implications for different places?

     2.     Neoliberal Natures: Markets, sustainability and biofuels
     What role do different policy instruments (e.g. subsidies, mandates
     etc.) play in constructing markets for biofuels?
     How are these markets meant to account for the sustainability of
     biofuels (e.g. sustainability criteria, carbon foortprint, carbon
     debt etc.)?
     Are there particular geographies to the different accounts and
     discourses (e.g. certification, labelling etc.) of sustainability?

     3.    The Emerging Bio-economy: Exit from a crisis?
     How does the emerging bioeconomy relate to the ecological crisis in
     capitalism?
     What are the geographies of the transition from a petroleum-based to
     a bio-based economy?
     Does the bioeconomy offer us the opportunity to 'green' capitalism?

     4.    From Ecological to Technological Fix: The evolution of biofuels
     Are the geographies of biofuels changing in response to new
     technoscientific developments?
     How has technoscience been enrolled in the expansion of biofuels as
     a solution to socio-natural problems?
     What are the implications of a shift from 'first' to 'second'
     generation biofuels?

     5.    Bio-value Chains: The reconfiguration of biofuel value chains
     How are biofuel value chains being reconfigured?
     What are the geographies of these reconfigurations?
     Does the reconfiguration of value chains reflect the flow of values
     in humans / non-humans relations?

     6.    Food for Fuel: Commodities, financial speculation and food
     injustice
     What are the geographies of land-use change in response to biofuels?
     How are different peoples contesting the transformation of food into
     fuel?
     In what ways do new technoscientific developments encourage food
     speculation?

     *Session Participation:*

     People wanting to submit papers, please submit an abstract (250
     words max) by email to both organisers by 1st September 2011.

     People wanting to participate in other ways (e.g. discussant),
     please contact the organisers by email as well.

     *Session organisers:*

     Kean Birch (York University, Toronto) [log in to unmask]
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     Stefano Ponte (Danish Institute for International Studies)
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