Speaker:
Mez Baker-Médard is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies. Her research broadly explores how different natural resource governance strategies influence conflict arising at the interface of extractive industry and biodiversity conservation. She is especially interested in how the benefits and burdens of these conflicts are spread across different sectors of society in relation to gender, race, class, and nationality.
Professor Baker-Médard’s research focuses on marine fisheries management in Madagascar, specifically looking at how access to and control over marine resources is constructed and contested in various locales extending from coastal villages to international policy arenas. By examining state-managed, co-managed and community-managed conservation projects, her research investigates how different configurations of authority (the capacity of politico-legal institutions to influence other social actors) transform people’s understanding of and claims to natural resources.
Abstract:
Feminist Conservation: Politics and Power in Madagascar’s Marine Commons explores how access to and control over marine resources in Madagascar are negotiated, and the inextricable link between equity and sustainability.
As marine conservation becomes an increasingly urgent issue around the world, there is an equally critical need to understand the ways different conservation interventions attend to or exacerbate social inequality. This book explores the origins of a conservation agenda in Madagascar and the consequences of its neglect of gender.
Drawing on interviews, ecological and social surveys, archival research, and several years of living with fishers in Madagascar, Merrill Baker-Médard examines how access to and control over marine resources are negotiated from fishing villages to the conference rooms of international meetings. Her intersectional approach bridges conservation science, gender studies, and human geography to advance the idea that equity and sustainability are inextricably linked and that practices of reciprocity, accountability, and care are foundational to their achievement.
