RCSD invites all to join a public seminar, “Fishing for Knowledges: Insights for Environmental Governance from Karen Communities’ Riverine Livelihoods in Northern Thailand” presented by Peter Duker, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Guelph, Canada on Monday, 2 February from 2 to 3:30 pm at the Subaltern Room, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University.

The uplands of Northern Thailand have long been the subject of environmental governance conflicts. Competing discourses of upland communities, including the Karen, tend to focus on agricultural and forest-based livelihoods, often with attention to the impacts on water that in turn effect communities further along the watershed. And yet, why has there been comparatively so little attention on how communities like the Karen manage the rivers that run through their communities? And rivers are not simply channels for water—why is there also comparatively so little attention on the aquatic life that call these rivers home? Addressing this gap, doctoral researcher Peter Duker will present preliminary findings after more than a year of studying riverine practices and knowledges with four Karen communities across Northern Thailand. He will demonstrate the role of these practices and knowledges for community wellbeing and how they enable engagement with traditional knowledges that are otherwise diminishing. He will then discuss how these insights help inform an environmental governance that is more open to multiple ways of being and knowing and subsequently better positioned to lead to improved social and environmental outcomes.