Jon Unruh's guest appearances

Jon Unruh

New Security Broadcast

The Decentralists

Candid 

Alice Hill

Sylvia Earle

Kate Gilmore

John Scanlon

Aaron Wolf

Edward Carr

Valerie Hudson

Sarah Turner

Sam Huston

Rob Kaplan

John Cavanagh

Gidon Bromberg

Sally Edwards

Alice Thomas

Alaa Murabit

OwlTail

We spoke with Professor Jon Unruh about his research and work on post-conflict land and property rights. We discuss the dynamics of post-conflict land redistribution, government involvement in restitution, the role of UN peacekeeping troops, fieldwork experience, and the weaponization of land rights by the Syrian government during the Civil War.  Jon Unruh is a professor in the Department of Geography at McGill. His research focuses on war-affected land and property rights in addition to the peace process and recovery from armed conflict and the intersection between land rights and environmental change. He has conducted research, policy, and practice work in many countries including Syria, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia, and with the UN, World Bank, USAID, and other bilateral donors and NGOs. https://www.genevacall.org/ Candid Conversations is a series where we speak with professors and academics about their research and current topics in development related to their field of study. Instagram: @idssapublications Facebook: @CatalystMcGill Website: https://catalystmcgill.com/ Music: Track: Good Evening — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/2BEJUXf_U38Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/good-evening Creative Commons Hip Hop Instrumentals - Bassment FM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6pYjYDlu_M

We spoke with Professor Jon Unruh about his research and work on post-conflict land and property rights. We discuss the dynamics of post-conflict land redistribution, government involvement in restitution, the role of UN peacekeeping troops, fieldwork experience, and the weaponization of land rights by the Syrian government during the Civil War.  Jon Unruh is a professor in the Department of Geography at McGill. His research focuses on war-affected land and property rights in addition to the peace process and recovery from armed conflict and the intersection between land rights and environmental change. He has conducted research, policy, and practice work in many countries including Syria, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia, and with the UN, World Bank, USAID, and other bilateral donors and NGOs. <a href="https://www.genevacall.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.genevacall.org/</a> Candid Conversations is a series where we speak with professors and academics about their research and current topics in development related to their field of study. Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/idssapublications/?hl=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@idssapublications</a> Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/CatalystMcGill/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@CatalystMcGill</a> Website: <a href="https://catalystmcgill.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://catalystmcgill.com/</a> Music: Track: Good Evening — Amine Maxwell [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BEJUXf_U38&amp;t=0s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/2BEJUXf_U38</a>Free Download / Stream: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&amp;redir_token=QUFFLUhqblBJTTJ6MmhJRHdwMDFObklndGlNUXV1djEzd3xBQ3Jtc0tuZ3pZell0VkM3SmpqQUFqaWJIUlNjT1M3UFFJSmdKNVJUTFBIeURZQTJFUVRLX1dtaXdxb0J5Q2lWWTQtWUpOZFh2VDhpeVgzS0xCRWJYWXJMRjQ5eWxtNER3d2paM1pmcmlOU2dKLTlpVnpvWV9Ocw&amp;q=https%3A%2F%2Falplus.io%2Fgood-evening" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://alplus.io/good-evening</a> Creative Commons Hip Hop Instrumentals - Bassment FM: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6pYjYDlu_M" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6pYjYDlu_M</a>

Candid Conversations Volume 1: Professor Jon Unruh 

When it comes to climate change and environmental change, “policies and laws can have a very productive contribution toward positive adaptation, or they can subvert that and constrain options,” says Jon Unruh, associate professor of human geography and international development at McGill University, in this week’s podcast.   Access to resources can be governed by many different kinds of systems. From statutory law to customary rights, and religious tenets to rule of the gun, they can be “fluid, chaotic, or very much defined,” says Unruh.   Understanding variations in resource governance is critical to understanding migration, in particular. As people exercise migration as an adaptation option, they change the way resources are used, he says. Strong examples of what works to peacefully facilitate such movement, and the freedom to experiment in response, are what local institutions need most to reduce the possibility of negative outcomes, such as conflict.  In arguing the benefits of flexible, local institutional capacity, Unruh highlighted the conflict in Darfur, where the Sudanese central government did away with local land administration and made resource conflicts “unnegotiable.”   Droughts over the last 40 years have led to major movements of people in western Sudan and eastern Chad. “What we've seen in the decades coming up to the war is that the institutional relationship between the nomads, the migrants, and those that received them was able to adapt, and absorb, and adjust rights to resources for both groups to accommodate the incoming migrants,” says Unruh. “By and large, the local institutions were able to handle this form of adaptation.”   But the Khartoum government, seeking in part to weaken local independence movements, undermined these Darfuri institutions and tried to replace them with appointed officials. The response was a “clumsy, non-elastic, predictable” set of statutory laws “in an adaptation scenario where you needed quick thinking, elasticity in rights.”  Even if the state has “very well-intentioned laws and institutions,” Unruh explains, “generally, they move too slow for what goes on on the ground.” Migrants and host communities are negotiating access to resources at the local level. Support for flexible, local-level innovation and experimentation is therefore more useful in preventing the worst results, like the violence that erupted in Darfur, than rigid top-down national policies.  Jon Unruh spoke at a private event at the Wilson Center on August 31, 2015.

Jon Unruh on Darfur and the Importance of Flexible Institutions for Managing Migration Tensions