A new research network called WEGO (Well-being, Ecology, Gender and Community) has been launched that brings together some of the most prominent feminist political ecologists from universities in Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden and Italy to analyse the reproduction of gender in and through practices, policies and actions associated with our changing environment.
WEGO's aim is to establish a vibrant European network of excellence on feminist political ecology that will link researchers, communities and policy makers. Also, it aims at creating a new generation of early stage researchers and train them in network-wide courses with labs on critical participatory research or writing policy briefs. The beneficiaries in Germany, Sweden, UK and Italy are also planning to organize a series of national outreach roundtables, which will bring MPs, local governments, gender experts, civil society groups and environmental activists together to discuss the issues of gender equality and political ecology in Europa and also in relation to partnerships in the Global South.
As part of WEGO, the University of Passau coordinates a work package on 'Climate Change, Economic Development and Extractivism'. Extractivism stands for the process of extracting natural resources in the Global South, to reprocess them in the North and sell them on the World Market. The individual projects in this package will explore gendered power relations in organizing for the security and protection of local natural resources in Nepal, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania and UK. The studies are based in Global South contexts as well as Europe in order to look for modalities of power that cross different geographical contexts in view of gender.