Your new SNSF project “Accounting for Nature: Agriculture and Mitigation in the Era of Global Climate Change” is kicking off this year, can you tell us about your research focus and aims for the next 4 years? 

"Sure! The project begins with an interest in agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and a curiosity about the way that agriculture is increasingly seen to be a site for mitigation. It is called "Accounting for Nature" because I'm interested in the ways that accounting methodologies can be mobilised in mitigation efforts. Being an environmental anthropologist, I'm also curious to see how accounting standards, frameworks, and concepts get implemented or adapted for agrarian systems with their own logics, principles and relationships. How does one accomplish mitigation or carbon sequestration in socially and ecologically dynamic agrarian environments, where carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are not stable or readily measurable?

What kind of methodology are you planning to use going forward? 

"That's a good question! The project is formed around a team of three: myself, Diego Silva, a postdoctoral fellow, and John Paulraj, a PhD student in anthropology and sociology. We will primarily use the methodologies of socio-cultural anthropology, primarily ethnographic fieldwork including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis. 

The project will unfold over three sub-projects in which each of us will play a role. One of these sub-projects will consider international actors involved with agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and their mitigation. This ranges from scientific and policy networks to international accounting associations that develop standards for carbon accounting. We’ll also conduct research in Canada and India. The province of Alberta in Canada was one of the first jurisdictions in the world to incorporate agriculture into its emissions trading system and offset markets. In Alberta, farmers and ranchers are eligible to generate carbon credits through initiatives to reduce emissions in their production, which may then be purchased by the province’s emitters, notably its sizeable oil and gas industry. The second regional study will be in India, and the basis of the PhD research that John Paulraj will develop over the coming years. He will likely conduct research in the northeastern Himalayan regions of India, which is a fascinating area in which to undertake such research because of the way that this region is also uniquely impacted by climate change."

Has Covid-19 affected your plans?

"I would say that at the moment we have not had to radically alter any plans, but the pandemic has given me a deeper appreciation of how fluid and uncertain situations can be and how quickly they can change. Fieldwork always requires a considerable degree of responsiveness and flexibility, but this is even more true now. For example, John, Diego, and I may have to be responsive to windows when it is possible for us to conduct research abroad and when we cannot, so it could potentially affect the rhythm and timing of our research. The pandemic has also opened all kinds of possibilities for conducting research online, which we plan to pursue too."

You have a recently published book, Becoming Organic: Nature and Agriculture in the Indian Himalayas. Does the project build upon your research and findings from the book?

"Yes and no—there are both continuities and differences between my current and earlier work. The SNF project is certainly different from my earlier research, both in substance and the approach. My book, Becoming Organic, explores the emergence of commercially oriented, certified organic agriculture in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, and works to show how organic is a quality that is assembled through historically situated forms of social and political practice rather than being a physical or material property of land and its produce. The SNF project, Accounting for Nature, is centred on the study of how agriculture is targeted as a site for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike the research for my book, which I undertook for my PhD, research for the SNF project is anchored in a team, which also means that it is possible for us to conduct research simultaneously across many different locations and scales.

But there are continuities too. Some of the questions my book takes up have to do with certification and standardisation processes, and how these work in agrarian systems. This has inspired my interest in carbon markets, because for these markets to function there need to be systems of monitoring and auditing in place. More conceptually, while the book examines and rethinks the meanings of organic quality, the project explores what mitigation means socially and politically."