Team 6- Unruh

Team 6: Human-Environment Interaction in the Modern Era

The conflict in Darfur involves longstanding disputes over land between farmers (top of photo) and pastoralists grazing lands (bottom of photo).

Team 6 investigates human-environment interaction since c.1915. It focuses on how current conflicts over land and other natural resources in East Africa, the Near and Middle East, and Southeast Asia relate to human-environment interaction. It analyses specific connections between select contemporary conflicts in these regions and their historical antecedents, particularly the historical circumstances associated with environmental factors, both direct (drought, flood, etc.) and indirect (migration, resource scarcity).

Team 6 Leader: Jon Unruh, McGill University

Unruh is an Associate Professor of Geography at McGill. His research, applied and policy work over the past 20 years has dealt with post-conflict land and property rights in the developing world, and the intersection of land tenure and environmental change. His past endeavors have focused on conflict resolution, land policy and law, restitution, legal pluralism, approaches to reconciling customary and formal tenure systems, and agriculture in postwar and peace-building scenarios. His experience includes work in Sudan, Liberia, Somalia, Mozambique, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Zanzibar, Ethiopia, Uganda, Madagascar and Colombia.

Team 6 Collaborators