photo credit: Rafaella Sena Pinto

Vijay Kolinjivadi, PhD

Pronouns: he/him

Assistant Professor, Sustainable and Equitable Economies, School of Community and Public Affairs

Research areas: Political ecology of payments for ecosystem services (PES), biodiversity and carbon offsets; time, temporality and ecological crisis; social movements and ecological resistance

Contact information

Email:

vijay.kolinjivadi@concordia.ca

ORCID:

0000-0002-3619-7752

Biography

I am an Assistant Professor in Sustainable and Equitable Economies at the School of Community and Public Affairs and cross-appointed in the Department of Geography, Planning, and Environment. I hold a PhD in Ecological Economics (McGill University, Canada, 2015), a Masters in Environmental Policy and Regulation (London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE, 2009), and an Honours Bachelors Degree Ecology (University of Edinburgh, 2006). I am an editor of the popular political ecology blog, Uneven Earth, and a team leader consultant for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

Teaching activities

Courses Taught

SCPA 501: Introduction to Community Economic Development / Introduction au développement économique communautaire

SCPA 450: From Neoliberal Ideology to Global Capitalism and its Discontents

Research activities

My research has, in the last decade, centered around two main axes with important implications for the interface of social and environmental relations.

The first of these axes reflects the human-nature dichotomies that continue to animate both mainstream environmental policy such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the “green economy.” In exploring popular environmental policy tools, my research aims to break down these dichotomies by understanding human society and human nature as ecological relations and not the fragmented or mechanistic conjuncture of a passive and untouched “nature” in harmony with human society as though the two were separate. I invoke alternative temporal and scalar reflections to understand contemporary social and environmental problems and encourage students to engage in intersectional and interdisciplinary thinking. To this end, my research builds on the traditions of world ecology as well as Marxist ecology, social ecology, feminist political ecology, and Indigenous-led traditions that document how socio-economic, cultural, and political shifts not only influence ecological relations, but also how changing environments alter human nature and human societies. Closer attention to these dialectics requires a granular approach to context, conceptions of social and environmental justice, and the genealogies of historical and geographical relations of territory in order to examine the interface of social and environmental dynamics.

The second axis builds on uneven relations of power between actors and refers to the political economy of greening interventions, such as ‘payments for ecosystem services’. This research axis focuses on how ‘greening’ strategies and policies are contextualized within dominant value frameworks and broader processes of economic production dependent upon uneven flows of material and energy (e.g. labour). These include regenerating the ecological conditions to maintain and indeed enhance intensive agricultural production, securing against climate and other ecological risks that might threaten growth, and rendering ‘greening’ projects investable as new asset classes, particularly in urban areas. The dependence upon racialized, low-caste and/or gendered labour as well as new social classes of environmental professionals and experts in terms of how formal and informal (e.g. unpaid and/or underpaid) labour is distributed is a fundamental part of this axis.

Publications

Selected Journal Articles

· Kolinjivadi, V., Van Hecken, G., and Merlet, P. (2023). Fifteen years of research on Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES): Piercing the bubble of success as defined by a Northern-driven agenda. Global Environmental Change 83: 102758.doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102758.

· Kolinjivadi,V., Bissonnette,J-F., Leguizamon Alejo, D., Valencia, L., and Van Hecken, G. (2023). The Green Economy as Plantation Ecology: When dehumanization and ecological simplification go ‘green.’ Journal of Political Ecology 30(1):497-523. https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/jpe/article/id/3022/

· Vela Almeida, D.,Kolinjivadi, V., Ferrando, T., Vecchione, M., Van Hecken, G., Roy, B.,and Herrera, H. (2023). “Greening” of empire: The European Green Deal as the “EU first” agenda. Political Geography 105: 102925. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.102925.

· Kolinjivadi, V., Bissonnette, J-F., Zaga Mendez, A., and Dupras, J. (2020). “Would you like some fries with your ecosystem services? McDonaldization and conservation in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Geoforum 111:73-82. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718520300683?fbclid=IwAR2GxfiAnW5YZmBoVNKT14jzy7JFWUH2yqnTF53wnJa5xIPnvQXt7DfUwac

· Kolinjivadi, V.,Vela-Almeida, D., and Martineau, J. (2019). Can the planet really be saved in Time?: On the temporalities of socionature, clock time, and the limits debate. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 3(3): 904-926. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2514848619891874)

· Kolinjivadi, V. (2019). Avoiding dualisms in ecological economics: Towards a dialectic understanding of coproduced socionatures. Ecological Economics 163: 32-41. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800918319219?dgcid=author

Kolinjivadi, V.,Charré, S., Adamowki, J., and Kosoy, N. (2019). Economic experiments for collective action in the Kyrgyz Republic: Lessons for Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES). Ecological Economics 156: 489-498. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800915306376

· Kolinjivadi, V., Van Hecken, G., Vela-Almeida, D., Kosoy, N, and Dupras, J. (2019) Neoliberal performatives and the “making” of payments for ecosystem services (PES). Progress in Human Geography 43(1): 3-25. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0309132517735707

· Kolinjivadi, V., Van Hecken, G., Rodríguez de Francisco, J.C.,Pelenc, J., and Kosoy, N. (2017). As a lock to a key? Why science is more than just an instrument to pay for nature’s services. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 26-27:1-6. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877343517300027

Kolinjivadi, V.,Gamboa, G., Adamowski, J., and Kosoy, N. (2015). Capabilities as Justice: Analysing the acceptability of Payments for Ecosystem Services through ‘Social multi-criteria evaluation’. Ecological Economics 118: 99-113. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800915002992

Kolinjivadi, V. and Sunderland, T. (2012). A Review of Two Payment Schemes for Watershed Services from China and Vietnam: The Interface of Government Control and PES Theory. Ecology and Society 17 (4): 10-24. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26269230

Book Chapters

Kolinjivadi,V. (2023) “Analytical Dualisms,” “Emergence and Emergent properties,” and “Dialectic Reasoning” Page 15: In:Eds: Haddad, B., and Solomon, B.D. Dictionary of Ecological Economics.Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham.

Kolinjivadi, V.,and Kothari, A. (2022). Chapter 13: “A Green New Deal beyond the “North”: Both promise and peril.” In K. Tienhaara and J. Robinson (Eds). Routledge Handbook on the Green New Deal. Routledge, London. Pp. 231-255.

Shapiro-Garza, L., Kolinjivadi, V., VanHecken, G., Windey, C., and Casolo, J.J. (2021). “Praxis in resource geography: Tensions between engagement and critique in the (un)making of ecosystem services” In: Himley, M., Havice, E., and Valdivia, G. (Eds). The Routledge Handbook of Critical Resource Geography. Routledge, London, p.236-247.

Kolinjivadi, V. (2020). « Pourquoi le Green New Deal doit être décolonial » in Duterme, B. (Ed.) L’urgence écologique vue du Sud. Centre Tricontinental-Cetri. Louvain-la-Neuve,Belgium.

Kothari,A. and Kolinjivadi, V. (2020). « Un Green New Deal post-pandémie changerait-il la donne pour le Sud ? » in Duterme, B. (Ed.) L’urgence écologique vue du Sud. Centre Tricontinental-Cetri. Louvain-la-Neuve,Belgium.

Books

· Kolinjivadi, V.and Vansintjan, A. The Sustainability Class: How to Take Back our Futurefrom Lifestyle Environmentalism. The New Press, New York. (Forthcoming, December 2024) https://thenewpress.com/books/sustainability-class

Journalism, Short Essays, Podcasts, and Public Outreach

· “How to end eco-apartheid.” New Internationalist, Issue 547 Climate Capitalism, 2 January, 2024.

· “We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction.” Aljazeera, 29 January, 2023.

· “Green gaslighting: Another face of climate denialism.” Aljazeera, 25 January, 2022.

· Internationale plannen voor natuurbescherming zijn slechts eenverderzetting van kolonialisme. 21 March, 2022. MoMagazine

· The “White Saviour” Deal for Nature. Green European Journal. 30 December, 2021.

· “It is time to end extractive tourism” Aljazeera, 18 February, 2021.

· “Towards a non-extractive and care-driven academia” (co-authored)- Global Working Group, Beyond Development. 31 August,2020.

· “Conditionality as dispossession? The socio-cultural injustice of “payments for ecosystem services” (PES) – Vijay Kolinjivadi, Water Alternatives Forum (Water Dissensus). 15 June, 2020

· “No Harm Here is Still Harm There: The Green New Deal and the Global South” (Part 1) and Part 2. Jamhoor, 20 May, 2020

o Modified version entitled: “How new is the Green New Deal for the Global South?” (Undisciplined Environments)

· “Planet of the dehumanized” – Gert Van Hecken and Vijay Kolinjivadi, Uneven Earth, 7 May, 2020

o Published in Dutch (Mo Magazine, Belgium)

o Published in Spanish (ecología Política)

· “On COVID-19 and Ecological Collapse” This Is Hell! podcast, 27 April, 2020

· “This pandemic IS ecological breakdown: different tempo, same song” Uneven Earth, 2 April, 2020

· “The coronavirus outbreak is part of the climate change crisis” Aljazeera, 30 March, 2020

· EU Green New Deal:Leading the way? Roundtable TRT World TV. 9 January, 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAi12Ehvtpw

· “COP 25 climate summit: Action must include divestment, decolonization and resistance” (co-authored) The Conversation, 10 December, 2019

o Published in Bahasa Indonesia (The Conversation):

o Published in French (LaLibre Belgique):

o Published in Dutch (DeMorgan, België):

o Published in Spanish(Rebelion.org):

· “Why a ‘Green New Deal’ must be decolonial” Aljazeera, 7 December, 2019

· “Why a hipster, vegan, green tech economy is not sustainable” Aljazeera, 6 June, 2019

· “The enlightenment of Steven Pinker: Eco-modernism as rationalizing the arrogance (and violence) of empire”, ENTITLE Blog, 31 May, 2018

· “’Enlightenment Now’ rationalizes the violence of empire”, The Conversation, 30 May, 2018

· “Inside Addis Ababa’s landfill disaster”, New Internationalist, 17 August, 2017

· “The problem with REDD ”, Uneven Earth, 17 December, 2015

· “Expansion of Commodity Frontiers in Québec: Fracking on Anticosti Island”, EJOLT Atlas, 23 July 2015

· “Of Jenga Towers and Environmental Offsets”, Truthout, 17 September, 2014

· “Reversing the commodification trap: the case for an international criminal law on ecocide”,Uneven Earth, 14 September, 2014

· “Economic Growth is Killing Us”, Truthout, 21 January, 2014

"Losing our pigs and our ancestors: threats to the livelihoods and environment of Papua New Guinea" Mongabay, 27 October 2011.