5 september 2023
Landscapes | A podcast by Adam Calo
As part of the work I began with the Landscape Decisions Programme, I’m producing a series of interview style podcasts about land. I'm Adam Calo, an Assistant Professor of Environmental Governance and Politics (Radboud University Nijmegen) studying transitions to sustainable food systems. The motivation of the podcast is a trend I have been observing where scientific explorations of root causes of social and environmental problems end up focusing on land, landscapes, and land governance. This occurs in a variety of domains … those concerned with affordable housing end up looking at land taxation policy, food system scholars point out the crucial role of farmland tenure, and climate scientists target property rights as a key “lock-in” that prevents deep mitigation or adaptation. This type of thinking, the scaling up of research questions to landscape level, is what the Landscapes podcast will explore. The first “season” of episodes will focus on learning from researchers from the humanities, law, social and biophysical sciences about how their thinking on how to study and intervene on landscapes. This might be considered the “theory” season, where I’ll try to tease out key logics underpinning land use and land use change. The second season will concern the stories from differing forms of contested landscapes in flux, in threat, and in reform. Landscapes aims to share stories about how re-imagining land is a precursor to delivering the types of social and ecological change required to address the most pressing problems of our time. I hope you enjoy listening to the podcast, I’d love to hear your feedback. You can message the podcast directly at @LandscapesPod You can find full transcripts of the episodes and more information about me at https://adamcalo.substack.com/ Thank you to Graelyn Brashear, Dolly Li of Plum Radio and Shobita Parthasarathy of the Received Wisdom Podcast for advice and guidance on podcast production and logistics.