




































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 4 (1): 149–152, January 2021 

 
REPORT 
 

A Report of the Third Biennial POLLEN (Political 
Ecology Network) Conference, 2020 
 

Brototi Roy   
 
The POLLEN (Political Ecology Network) Third Biennial Conference 
2020 was held on 22–25 September 2020. Initially expected to occur in 
Brighton, United Kingdom, on 24–26 June 2020, it was later turned into a 
virtual conference due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The broad theme 
and title of the conference was Contested Nature: Power, Politics and 
Prefiguration. Over the four days of the conference, there were about 60 
sessions daily, covering a variety of themes and formats, with four 
interesting keynotes.  

The opening keynote plenary was an interesting and relevant discussion on 
―Political Ecologies of COVID-19‖ and had researchers and activists 
sharing experiences and insights on how the pandemic has affected 
communities and regions differently. The aim was to examine how 
colonialism, racism, capitalism, and other pre-existing social, political, 
economic, and historic inequalities have shaped the ways in which the virus 
has been wrecking differentiated havoc on people and ecologies. The 
second keynote, co-organized with the Black Ecologies Initiative at Arizona 
State University, involved the panelists reflecting on the historical and 
ongoing injustices faced by Black communities as well as their survival 
efforts despite the multiple types of violence they encounter. The 
discussion was informed by the panelists‘ ethnographic and archival work 
across geographies. The third keynote plenary on ―Conservation Futures‖ 
discussed ways to make conservation more socially and ecologically just. It 
drew from multiple theoretical and epistemological strands while 

                                                           
 Doctoral Student, Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA), Universitat 
Autònoma de Barcelona, Building Z Campus, Z-135, ICTA-UAB, UAB 08193 Bellaterra 
(Cerdanyola), Barcelona, Spain; brototi.econ@gmail.com. 

Copyright © Roy 2021. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 
International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v4i1.358 

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v4i1.358


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [150] 

acknowledging the faults of the current model of conservation—both as a 
concept and a practice. The fourth and final keynote, called ―Troubling 
Nature and Political Ecology: Feminists in The Capitalocene‖, was a 
roundtable discussing feminist political ecology.  

Along with these four interesting keynote discussions, there were many 
diverse sessions on topics such as decentering theories and empirics, 
epistemes of resistances, and the power of storytelling in political ecology 
research and activism. The conference also hosted multiple external 
workshops and events before and during the plenaries and sessions such as 
an academic–activist world café where people could reflect on their 
experiences and share skills beyond the Ivory Tower of academia. I co-
organized a pre-conference workshop along with Ruth Pinto and Gerardo 
A. Torres Contreras titled ―Is your Political Ecology ‗Decolonial‘?‖ to 
facilitate a space for early-career researchers and/or activists to critically 
reflect on our praxis.  

On the final day of the conference, during the POLLEN assembly, the 
venue, dates, and theme of the Fourth Biennial POLLEN conference were 
also announced. The next conference, POLLEN 2022, will be held on 28–
30 June, 2022, in Durban, South Africa, on the theme ―Political Ecology: 
North, South and Beyond‖.  

Unlike most conferences, POLLEN 2020 did not have a closing plenary. 
Rather, a decision was taken to ―invert‖ this tradition by inviting all the 
participants to contribute to a co-produced ―reverse plenary‖. Everyone 
shared their experiences on Twitter, using the hashtag 
#POLLENreverseplenary, which brought to light different experiences of 
collective sharing and learning. These tweets were then visualized as a word 
cloud by Michalina Lucja Pietras and Tabea Josephine Dorndorf and shared 
by POLLEN 2020 organizers.  

The online format of the conference allowed for greater diversity in 
participation. But the inability to see each other‘s faces, share food and 
drinks, and have conversations in corridors between sessions was 
commented about more than once. It was very refreshing to see the 
representation of young scholars and participants from the Global South in 
the keynotes; for example, in the first keynote, two of the panelists were 
PhD candidates. Discussions on decoloniality, epistemological and 
ontological justice, and intersectionality frequently occurred during the 
conference too. It was after these interesting sessions that I felt the absence 
of a physical conference the most, as it would have allowed me to take the 
discussion forward after the time for the session was up. 

https://pollen2022.com/


[151] Brototi Roy 

 

There were also sessions on publishing in political ecology, the issues that 
researchers from the Global South face and how can they be countered, as 
well as broader discussions on the need for open-access journals. In this 
regard, Ecology, Economy and Society was mentioned as one of the open-access 
journals, recently launched in India and publishing broadly on socio-
ecological concerns with a focus on South Asia in particular.  

In the last keynote, which was on feminist political ecology, some 
controversial statements on intersectionality were made. It was a bit 
disconcerting to see a panel that was largely white and completely consisting 
of researchers based in European institutions be dismissive of a concept 
that stems from the struggles of African American communities and which 
has roots in decolonial and queer theories. One of the arguments put 
forward was that intersectionality is a western concept that should not 
overshadow feminist concerns. A recent article by Farhana Sultana (2020) 
was mentioned several times in the discussion by the audience to provide a 
counter-argument. This article stresses on the need to learn from multiple 
types of intersectional, interdisciplinary as well as international feminist 
explorations using varied methodological, epistemological, and pedagogical 
insights to analyze current socio-ecological injustices.  

At the next POLLEN conference to be held in South Africa, I hope to see 
much more participation and involvement from activists and academics 
from the Global South in the keynotes. Although it was a commendable 
idea to have a session on Black ecologies, I wondered about the lack of 
representation of researchers from the African community as well as 
institutions in most of the other keynotes; a notable exception was the 
Conservation Futures plenary. In their short life span, the POLLEN 
conferences have been a space for critical discussions and reflections. The 
keynote lecture delivered in the second POLLEN conference on ―Critical 
Approaches to Dispossession in the Melanesian Pacific: Conservation, 
Voice and Collaboration‖, seeking the field of political ecology to be more 
critical and inclusive (West and Aini 2018), was partially answered in the 
third POLLEN conference. I hope this continues and is amplified in the 
future, and the next POLLEN conference sees more involvement of 
scholars and activists living and working in South Asia in particular and the 
Global South in general, in all spheres of the conference, bringing in a 
wealth of original ideas and experiences highly relevant for advancing the 
field of political ecology.  

 

 

 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [152] 

REFERENCES 

Sultana, F. 2020. ―Political Ecology 1: From Margins to Center.‖ Progress in Human 
Geography, p.0309132520936751. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132520936751. 

West, P., and J. Aini. 2018. ―Critical Approaches to Dispossession in the 
Melanesian Pacific: Conservation, Voice, and Collaboration.‖ Keynote Lecture, 
POLLEN 2018 Political Ecology Network Biennial Conference, 19–22 June, Oslo, 
Norway. https://paige-west.com/2018/07/28/decolonizing-conservation/  

 

https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0309132520936751
https://paige-west.com/2018/07/28/decolonizing-conservation/

