Biography

Rock Ethics Institute Faculty Fellowship Project

Ethics through Equity and Justice: Positioning Resource Governance and Institutions as a Missing Link 

ABSTRACT

Equity and justice are facets of ethical and social sustainability issues in natural resource management that embroil local-global power dynamics. Transformative resource governance is one missing link to effectively consider and address equity and justice. Educational curricula to deliver on such a need with adequate training is critical. Course offerings within the Department of Geography and across Penn State fall short on this demand.

With benefits for other units across Penn State, this project will develop a course that will fill such curriculum gap while seeding the educational inputs for a future NSF career proposal of similar focus.

Ida Djenontin is a human-environment geographer and interdisciplinary-trained environmental social scientist. Under her larger focus on natural resources and land use governance, her research centers on the interlinked environmental and climate change issues affecting forest-agricultural socio-ecosystems.

She examines specifically the governance and institutional challenges and the socio-cultural and economic dimensions of environmental degradation, resource conservation and restoration, and climate change adaptation & mitigation in sub-Saharan African contexts.

In approaching such environment-development issues in agro-forest landscapes, she questions how to balance biodiversity, mitigation, and other ecological needs with natural resource-based livelihoods and food security, and development goals.

She holds a dual Ph.D. in geography (nature-society studies) and environmental science and policy from Michigan State University, an M.S. in development practice from the University of Arizona, and an M.Aa and B.Sc. in agricultural sciences from the University of Parakou (Benin).