ZMT - Leibniz Zentrum für Marine Tropenforschung

19.10.16 | EMERSA* is a research project that recently secured DFG funding within the broader SPP 1889 initiative – Regional Sea Level Change and Society. The three-year project kicked off with a scientific workshop hosted at ZMT on September 13 & 14, 2016, with partners from the University of Bremen´s Sustainability Research Center (artec), the Universitas Indonesia, together with members from ZMT´s Development and Knowledge Sociology Working Group. The project is led by Prof. Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge (ZMT) and Prof. Dr. Michael Flitner (artec).

The interdisciplinary project examines how policies and standardized practices for living with the effects of sea level rise in megacities are communicated by international donors and civil society organisations, and taken up, contextually translated, politically legitimised and at times re-circulated internationally by local actors, thus shaping localised anticipatory learning trajectories for change adaptation.

The travels of material artefacts, discourses, imaginaries and social practices across multiple levels and scales are therefore referred to as 'epistemic mobilities'. These circulating discourses and practices are important in themselves for understanding the governance of environmental risk, for they possess the agency to influence policy trajectories, break time-worn path dependencies, and push for transformative change.

With a focus on coastal Southeast Asian megacities, namely Jakarta, Manila and Singapore, the project entails close collaboration with local partners crosscutting Universitas Indonesia, the University of the Philippines, and the National University of Singapore.

 *Epistemic Mobilities and the Governance of Environmental Risks in Island Southeast Asia