ENVIU works across what we call socio-environmental fields (SEFs) – a heuristic and explorative analytical concept deployed to unpack the complex social practices of everyday violence and environmental change. An SEF captures the space in which communities, authorities, ecologies, and infrastructures interact in ways that produce particular patterns of livelihood, governance, conflict, and everyday violence.

The SEFs encompass varied landscapes and socio-environmental practices in order to represent a diverse sample of communities severely affected by environmental change. We have identified three such fields in Uganda, where relations between climate change and violence appear intensive: forests and grasslands; farms and lakesides; and settlements and towns. Each selected field will be explored empirically, both individually and comparatively by three research teams consisting of post docs, senior researchers, PhD students and NGO partners.

• Forests and grasslands where local communities struggle for autonomy and resist the destruction of agro-pastoralist lifeforms and cultural heritage at the interface with public authority representatives such as forest guards, traditional leaders, companies and INGOs.

 

• Farms and lakesides where local communities struggle for access to land and fishing sites, markets, technologies, and licenses at the interface with public authority representatives such as inspectors, police, chiefs and marine- and agribusinesses.

 

• Settlements and towns where local communities struggle for acknowledgement and the ability to settle at the interface with public authority representatives such as camp officials, municipal officers, gangs and urban contractors.