Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

• aoife.bennett@ouce.ox.ac.uk

• Ecosystems Theme

Dr Aoife Bennett is Departmental Research Lecturer in the Environmental Social Sciences at ECI, SOGE and is a member of the Ecosystems Governance Group and the Ecosystems Lab. She is an interdisciplinary environmental research scientist with expertise in the social sciences, a strong background in Political Ecology and a focus on the socio-political and environmental challenges and opportunities in the Amazon. Her research involves a large amount of multi-methods field-based research, and always includes the most marginalized members of society as active members of her research. She is particularly interested in decolonizing research techniques and activities and working together on breaking down the North/South divide therein.

Aoife is an active member of the global social and environmental community within and outside of academia. She sits as Fellow to the Biodiversity Council at the World Economic Forum (where Aoife created the World Economic Strategic Intelligence Map for Biodiversity, Trustee for the charity Action for Conservation, as an author on the Science Panel for the Amazon (including in the Amazon Assessment Report), and as Advisor to a small indigenous charity that promotes cultural preservation in the Peruvian Amazon.

Aoife is a passionate researcher that likes to be involved in the lives of the people in the places where she works and as such is something of an activist academic she also engages in philanthropy and meaningful local capacity building and mutual aid.

Principal Investigator the interdisciplinary research project: Multi-Scale, Interdisciplinary Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Values of Peruvian Amazon Peatlands (USAID, PEER cycle 9).

Principal Investigator the interdisciplinary research project: Do Communities Really Protect their Forests? Analyzing the environmental impacts and opportunities of the polity and territorial formalization of indigenous communities in Ucayali and Loreto, Peru (CONCYTEC).

Co-Investigator: Indigenous Visions for Rights-Based Approaches to Sustainability (March 2020-July 2021) Awarding Body: ICDF-SSRP - Sussex University.

Forthcoming

• Bennett, A., Larson, A., Zamora, A. and Monterroza, I. (forthcoming) Forty-year multi-scale land cover change and political ecology data reveal a dynamic and regenerative process of forests in Peruvian Indigenous Territories (1975- 2016). Global Environmental Change.

2022

• Bennett, A., Larson, A.M., Zamorra Ríos, A., Gamarra Agama, S. and Monterroso, I. (2022) Forests regenerate on titled Indigenous territories A multiscale interdisciplinary analysis of 25 Indigenous communities over 40 years in the Peruvian Amazon. CIFOR-ICRAF InfoBrief, No. 38
• McDermott, C.L., Montana, J., Bennett, A., Gueiros, C., Hamilton, R., Hirons, M., Maguire-Rajpaul, V.A., Parry, E. and Picot, L. (2022) Transforming land use governance: Global targets without equity miss the mark. Environmental Policy and Governance.

2021

• Montag, D., Barboza, M., Cauper, L., Brehaut, I., Alva, I., Bennett, A., Sanchez-Choy, J., Sarmiento, B., Valenzuela, P., Manuyama, J., García Murayari, I., Guimaraes Vásquez, M., Aguirre Panduro, C., Giattino, A., Palomino Cadenas, E., Lazo, R., Delgado, C.A., Nino, A., Flores, E.C., Pesantes, M.A., Murillo, J.P., Belaunde, L.E., Recuenco, S., Chuquimbalqui, R. and Zavaleta-Cortijo, C. (2021) Healthcare of Indigenous Amazonian Peoples in response to COVID-19: marginality, discrimination and revaluation of ancestral knowledge in Ucayali, Peru. BMJ Global Health, 6(1): 10-13.
• Painter, L., Alencar, A., Bennett, A., Bynoe, P., Guio, C., Murmis, M.R., Paez, B., Robison, D., von Hildebrand, M., Ochoa-Herrera. V. and Lucas, I.L. (2021) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Amazon. Chapter 26 in, Nobre, C. et al. (ed.) Amazon Assessment Report 2021. United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, New York, USA.

2019

• Bennett, A., Ravikumar, A., McDermott, C. and Malhi, Y. (2019) Smallholder Oil Palm Production in the Peruvian Amazon: Rethinking the Promise of Associations and Partnerships for Economically Sustainable Livelihoods. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 2(14).

2018

• Bennett, A. Ravikumar, A. and Cronkleton, P. (2018) The effects of rural development policy on land rights distribution and land use scenarios: The case of oil palm in the Peruvian Amazon. Land Use Policy, 70: 84-93.
• Bennett, A., Cronkleton, P., Menton, M. and Malhi, Y. (2018) Rethinking fuelwood: people, policy and the anatomy of a charcoal supply chain in a decentralizing Peru. Forests, 9(9): 533-549.
• Bennett, A., Ravikumar, A. and Paltan, H. (2018) The Political Ecology of Oil Palm Company-Community partnerships in the Peruvian Amazon: Deforestation consequences of the privatization of rural development. World Development, 109: 29-41.
• Menton, M. and Bennett, A. (2018) PES: Payments for Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation? In, Schreckenberg, K., Mace, G. and Poudyal, M. (eds.) Ecosystem services and poverty alleviation: trade-offs and governance. Routledge, Abingdon, UK. pp. 189-203.

2017

• Bennett, A., Ravikumar, A. and Cronkleton, P. (2017) The effects of rural development policy on land rights distribution and land use scenarios: The case of oil palm in the Peruvian Amazon. Land Use Policy.
• Comberti, C., Thornton, T., Bennett, A., Root-Bernstein, M. (2017) Climate Change Adaptation, Development and Archaeology in the Amazon. Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 32(8): 98-122.

2016

• Chazdon, R.L., Brancalion, P.H.S., Laestadius, L., Bennett, A., Buckingham, K., Kumar, C., Moll-Rocek, J., Vieira, I.C.G.and Wilson, S.J. (2016) When is a forest a forest? Forest concepts and definitions in the era of forest and landscape restoration. Ambio, 45(5): 538-550.
• Lazos-Chavero, E., Zinda, J., Negra, C., Bennett-Curry, A., Bloomfield, G., Balvanera, P., and Lindell, C. (2016) Stakeholders and tropical reforestation: challenges, trade-offs, and strategies in dynamic environments. Biotropica, 48(6): 900-914.

2013

• Bennett, A., Malhi, Y. and Menton, M. (2013) Leakage effects in natural resource supply chains: a case study from the Peruvian commercial charcoal market. International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, 20(4): 336-348.