Eve Bratman
Research interests: urban sustainability and prospects for climate justice, and how pollinator protection relates to a range of issues in global environmental politics issues
Honey and Influence: The politics of saving the bees and the ethics of a sustainable future
This project involves writing a book about the politics of pollinator protection. It entails a globally reaching investigation into the relationship between agriculture, human settlements, and biodiversity protection. The project argues for a new ethical approach to landscape and relationship to biodiversity, which I call "ecological rapprochement." I develop the argument through chapters that treat European pesticide regulations, pollinator- centered urban beekeeping and urban planning in the U.S. and Costa Rica, the resurgence of stingless beekeeping in the Yucatán peninsula, and pollinator activism around the world. The project focuses on a tandem concern for addressing agricultural sustainability issues (especially pertinent for SDG Goals 2.3 and 2.4), alongside protection of biodiversity (SDG Goal 15.5). My proposed manuscript is topically about bees, but its contribution is centrally about how humankind can better understand the myriad possibilities for thinking about, understanding, and relating to nature.
Eve Bratman is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies in the Department of Earth & Environment at Franklin & Marshall College. As a scholar, teacher, and citizen, she merges scholarship on sustainability governance with a social justice lens to foster a more socially and ecologically interconnected world.
She is author of an award-winning book, Governing the Rainforest: Sustainable Development in the Brazilian Amazon (Oxford University Press, 2019; Lynton Keith Caldwell Prize winner, 2020). The question of how sustainable development is envisioned and carried into politics orients all of her work. Dr. Bratman is a political ecologist with interdisciplinary training in international relations (PhD 2009, from American University’s School of International Service).
Dr. Bratman's research and teaching focus on a range of related issues: urban sustainability and prospects for climate justice, and how pollinator protection relates to a range of issues in global environmental politics issues. Dr. Bratman's recognitions and awards include: Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium Sustainability Champion, Aldo and Estella Leopold Writing Resident, and Fulbright Scholar.