Author: c2170053

SustENABLE Transformation

SustENABLE Transformation is a long-term research program that, through various lines of research, with their respective associated projects, seeks to study and understand the structural conditions and processes that enable or hinder the fundamental reconfiguration of our unsustainable social and economic systems, as well as the contingent windows of opportunity that various agents can take advantage of to positively influence, initiate, lead, and accelerate transformations. It is a joint program between the Ecocene Foundation, the Faculty of Social and Business Sciences of the Universidad Católica del Maule (Chile) and the Global Studies Programme (GSP) at FLACSO Argentina.

Projects associated with SustENABLE Transformation cover the following thematic areas:

  1. Governance for Transition / Governance in Transition
  2. Unexplored synergies for socio-ecological transformation
  3. Cartographies: Social-ecological debates and struggles
  4. Latin American Buen Vivir
  5. Religion and socio-ecological transformation
  6. Economic Pluriversity

Dirección: Adrián E. Beling y Julien Vanhulst

Public interest-oriented litigation concerning the use of pesticides in comparative perspective.

The research project is oriented to a comparative study of LIP cases that originate in the use of pesticides in Latin America because of the agro-industrial matrix in which they are inserted. Through the analysis, an attempt is made to diagnose the cross-cutting systemic constraints that give rise and continuity to the violation of socio-environmental rights and those systemic restrictions that hinder the development of LIPs, as well as their enablers. At the current stage, the countries under analysis are Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay.

Dirección: M. Cristina Alé

Agri-Food transition

The objective of this program is to address issues related to the crisis of the hegemonic agri-food model in articulation with transition strategies towards ecologically sustainable food production, marketing, and consumption models, both socially and environmentally. It is proposed as an interdisciplinary platform for cooperation between academic and social actors that seek to promote these transition processes. 

M. Cristina Alé Ana María Bonet.

Rachel Elfant

Rachel received her M.Sc in Human Ecology – Culture, Power, and Sustainability from Lund University in 2018. She has experience as an organizer, presenter, and facilitator for climate, degrowth and integral ecology in both academic and non-academic environments. As the previous organizer for Chicago Area Peace Action, she guided student activists to create a coalition of organizations, companies and religious groups in support of the Green New Deal in Illinois. 

As a youth worker with kids children aged 7 – 15  in an immigrant community center, Rachel focused on empowerment through movement, conflict resolution, and self-study. Rachel is a former yoga teacher at the Cook County Jail utilizing meditation, breathwork, and the philosophy of yoga as a form of social activism within the American legal system. Rachel enjoys working specifically at the nexus of politics, society and environment in order to seek justice in both the collective and individual spheres.

Rachel currently works on the Healing Earth team at Loyola University Chicago, a open-access interdisciplinary online textbook combining science, ethics, spirituality and a call to action as it relates to environmental justice. She helps ensure that well-rounded perspectives are included in Healing Earth as it pertains to specific regions, communities, and spiritual paths around the world.

She also is the teaching assistant to the ongoing project within the Ecocene Foundation: Higher Education Course in Integral Ecology.