MedIns enquires into the correlations between insular space and the development of economic structures in early modern Cyprus and Crete. In doing so, it collects, processes and analyses data revealing the patterns of agricultural production of two quintessential 'miniature continents' of the eastern Mediterranean in the seventeenth century.

MedIns website: https://medins.ims.forth.gr/project.php

Karti Dharti is a public interest research space that promotes the study of land, culture, and community in South Asia. Through independent, indigenous research as well as collaborations with external partners, Karti Dharti advances a deeper understanding of local landscapes and supports policy initiatives for cultural resilience, community development, and social justice. Food and agriculture is our primary area of focus, within which our work involves preserving seed heritage, investigating GM contamination, conducting ecological awareness trainings, and publishing field-based studies on food sovereignty in Pakistan. 

Karti Dharti Papers is a publishing platform which produces in-depth reports, qualitative studies, historical, ethnographic, and visual analyses, reflective essays, and policy briefs on socio-ecological concerns in South Asia. The first report is titled Seed Inc: Food Sovereignty, Farmers' Rights and New Legal Regimes in Pakistan (2016). 

The Centre for Environment and Development (CED) / Centre pour l’Environnement et le Développement is a leading socio-environmental NGO based in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The centre works on sustainability issues, capacity-building with communities and indigenous groups, organic farming and community forestry. The CED has a great deal of experience in the region and participates for instance in the Forest platform in Cameroon, and in African Forest Law Enforcement and Governance processes in the Congo Basin. The CED joined Friends of the Earth International in 1999 and takes part in the latter’s campaigns and programs on: climate change, desertification, ecological debt, forests, genetically modified organisms, international financial institutions, oil mining, gas, ozone, trade, environment and sustainability. The Centre is directed by Samuel Nguiffo, a lawyer and famous environmental activist who was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1999, for his efforts on protection of the tropical rainforests of Central Africa.

National Council of Extractivist Populations – CNS
The National Council of Extractivist Populations was founded in October of 1985, during the First National Assembly of Rubbertappers, in Brasilia. Its foundation was the result of the plight of rubbertappers against land disappropriation and forest devastation. The empates, manifestations against loggers and land invaders, were developed by the Rural Workers Union (STR), particularly by the one located in the town of Xapuri, presided by Chico Mendes. Since 2009, after the Second Congress of Extractive Populations of the Amazon and the 8th National Assembly took place, in Belém, more than 800 extractive leaderships of nine states of the Amazon approved the change in the organization’s name to National Council for Extractivist Populations and its abbreviation to CNS.

CNS is an organization of national standing which represents agroextractivist workers organized within organizations, coops or unions. Its deliberative council is formed by 27 leaderships of different agroextractivist segments from all Amazonian states. They are rubbertappers, nut harvesters, açaí collectors, Babaçu coconut mashers, Balata and Piaçaba pickers. All members of agroforest projects as well as extractors of medicinal plants and oils, among other modalities.

The Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) is a multidisciplinary centre that promotes academic research and postgraduate education in environmental sciences. It is part of the Autonomous University of Barcelona which was ranked second among Spain’s best universities (2018). The general aim of ICTA is to improve our understanding of global environmental change, and the nature and causes of environmental problems. In addition, it studies policies, strategies and technologies to foster a transition to a sustainable economy. Over the years, ICTA has become an international stronghold of ecological economics and political ecology, hosting some of the world’s leading figures in the field such as Joan Martinez-Alier, Mario Giampietro, Jeroen van den Bergh or Giuseppe Munda. Reflecting its vibrant research, some scholars have started to call this group the ‘Barcelona school of political ecological economics’. ICTA has been involved in several major European projects and currently develops, among other things, the Environmental Justice Atlas which is the largest database of environmental conflicts worldwide.

The Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD), New Delhi, is part of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a public university founded in 1969 that is ranked second in India (2018). JNU is hosting (and has hosted) some of the most prominent Indian intellectuals and is regarded as a vibrant center of liberal thinking. The first nearly fifty years of JNU’s existence were marked by the institution of new disciplines and the conceptualization of old disciplines in new perspectives, with a focus on interdisciplinarity. Accordingly, JNU envisaged ‘Centres’ in place of ‘Departments’ and ‘Schools’ in place of ‘Faculties’. The Centre for the Study of regional Development (CSRD) has become one of JNU’s largest centres and has the mandate to focus on interdisciplinary approaches to regional development, especially as applied to India. Over the years, the CSRD has become an important hub of research on the dynamics of socio-economic, human, institutional, technological, infrastructural and environmental factors with respect to regional development. The Centre’s research in rural studies and natural resources are well-known internationally and its faculty members are mainly associated with geography, economics and population studies. The CSRD put a strong emphasis on fieldwork and remote sensing (GIS) analyses and it hosts a documentation centre and six laboratories.

The Transnational Institute (TNI) is an international research and advocacy institute committed to building a just, democratic and sustainable planet. For more than 40 years, TNI has served as a unique nexus between social movements, engaged scholars and policy makers. TNI has gained an international reputation for carrying out well researched and radical critiques and anticipating and producing informed work on key issues long before they become mainstream concerns, for example, our work on food and hunger, third world debt, transnational corporations, trade, and carbon trading. As a non-sectarian institute, TNI has also consistently advocated alternatives that are both just and pragmatic, for example developing alternative approaches to international drugs policy and providing support for the practical detailed work of public water services reform.

TNI’s Agrarian & Environmental Justice project brings together research and analysis on the collective struggles of rural working people to democratise access, ownership, and control of land, water and other natural resources. It works closely in alliance with local, national and global alliances of small-scale farmers, fisherfolk and marginalised rural working people.