School of Geography and the Environment

Profile

Simon Batterbury studied geography in the UK and the USA (BA, Reading, MA/PhD, Clark), and has taught at universities in the UK (Brunel, LSE, Oxford), USA (Arizona), and Denmark (Roskilde). In 2004 he moved to the Environmental Studies program of the University of Melbourne, in Victoria, Australia. He is on sabbatical at ECI until Feb. 2008.

His research interests are in real-world environmental and development problems, looking at how people adapt and survive in the face of environmental uncertainties and other forms of marginality – previously in Sahelian West Africa (Niger, Burkina Faso) and since moving to Australia, in New Caledonia and East Timor. These adaptations include livelihood diversification, transnationality and movement, and land-based investment.

The influence of international development is often strong, necessitating study of how people adapt and deploy international assistance and respond to development ideas, including governance changes like ‘decentralisation’, land reform, and ‘community land management’.

Examples of this 'political ecology' research include:

• In 2008, Batterbury and colleagues from Melbourne and Dili begin work in upland East Timor, Asia's newest and poorest nation, still emerging from decades of conflict. The team are examining traditional modes of resource governance and their relevance to contemporary livelihoods.
• In the early 1990s he spent two years working with Mossi and Yarsé communities in northern Burkina Faso, a post-socialist nation in West Africa that has strong community organizations and a large number of NGOs and aid projects. The aim was to uncover the logic of diverse rural livelihood systems that involved migration, trade, farming, and adherence to a strong social order, and to trace the effects of development projects promoting new and successful soil conservation techniques.
• A large ESRC-funded project in neighbouring Niger (1995-9) traced fifty years of adaptations by Zarma people to drought and to a turbulent national political economy. Hybrid research by a team of human and physical geographers uncovered the links between environmental change and livelihood decisions - the Zarma did not emerge as destroyers of fragile desert ecosystems, despite high levels of erosion from their fields.
• In the western world, he has worked on strengthening the case for environmental sustainability, and is currently interested in climate change mitigation (funded small projects with CSIRO), sustainable urban transport (several publications), and environmental policymaking.
• Batterbury co-edits the 'Journal of Political Ecology' (jpe.library.arizona.edu).

During the James Martin Sabbatical Fellowship he is teaching an option on political ecology, and writing two books: 'Key Concepts in Development Studies' (Sage, 2008), with Anthony Marcus and Jude Fernando and 'Engaged Political Ecology' (Ed. with Leah Horowitz). The latter makes the case for a practical and ethical commitment by scholars to applied work on hazards, risks, and environmentalism.

Publications

For a full list of Simon's c.40 papers and 6 edited collections please see his personal website.