Roads to Sustainability: exploring the infrastructures of a sustainable future

Introduction

Roads2SUSTAINABILITY develops a new form of political ecology, infrastructural political ecology. This alters the theoretical work of political ecology (how culture, history, and politics make natures), combining contemporary treatments of infrastructure (analyzing how hard infrastructures co-constitute social worlds) with theories of more-than-human assemblage (always changing human/non-human relations) and multi-species justice (extending principles of justice beyond humans).

Theoretical Framework

These will be led by political ecology’s attentiveness to dynamics of power and scale. Together, this transforms social science debates on infrastructure and political ecology with a new concern for how infrastructure co-constitutes socio-environmental worlds, creating a new understanding of how trajectories of co-existence and sustainability are materialized. This is critical given accelerating climate change and global commitments to sustainable development.

Research Team and Focus

With a team of 2 post-doctoral researchers and 16 Indigenous researchers, the PI will investigate road building in the Western Amazon and the emancipatory possibilities of alternative infrastructures. Specifically, different types of transport infrastructure (top-down infrastructure, community roads, and river networks) will be examined at three sites crucial for responses to climate change and sustainability:

1. Indigenous territories
2. Conservation areas
3. Cities

Methodology and Objectives

Grounded in collaboration with four Indigenous territories, a core foundation is an innovative but reproducible decolonial methodology. This is used to address three objectives:

1. To investigate how different forms of road and river infrastructure co-constitute trajectories of sustainable development and to conceptualize sustainable development from these material geographies.
2. To reveal, analyze, and advance the emancipatory possibilities of infrastructure.
3. To improve the highest ethical standards of how research is undertaken, networked, and communicated on Indigenous land.