Adeniyi P. Asiyanbi

Assistant Professor

Geography
Office: ART 336
Phone: 250.807.8194
Email: a.asiyanbi@ubc.ca

Research Summary

Political ecology; governmentality; environmental governance; forest-based climate change mitigation; wildfires; nature conservation; global development; community engagement; Nigeria, Ghana, Canada (British Columbia and Alberta).

Courses & Teaching

Human Geography: Resources, Development and Society
Climate Change and Society
Political Ecology

Biography

Prior to joining UBCO, I held a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) postdoctoral research fellowship in the Department of Geography, University of Calgary, and a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield. I also previously held teaching fellowships at SOAS University of London, and King’s College London.

Degrees

PhD Geography, King’s College London, UK
MSc (Distinction) Environment and Development, King’s College London, UK
BSc (First Class) Forestry, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

Research Interests & Projects

My work applies insights from critical geography and interdisciplinary political ecology to the intersection of climate change, forests and development. I investigate how, in whose interest, and with what effects forests get figured and mobilized in climate action broadly defined within a hegemonic neoliberal order, and how projects get assembled, experienced, negotiated and contested in particular places.

I’m interested in widespread efforts to constitute forests as spaces of ‘climate solutions’ through programs such as REDD+, carbon forestry and the so-called natural climate solutions. I situate these programs within critical debates on the neoliberalization of nature, local resource relations, conservation and development, colonial and postcolonial conservation history, and social justice. I have done extensive work on REDD+ and carbon offsetting in the global South, including projects and field research in Nigeria, Ghana and at the international level. I’m developing a new project investigating private finance in West African ‘carbon forests’.

I’m also interested in how forests get constituted as spaces of ‘climate-related risk’ of wildfires, and particularly how notions of risk, enterprise, resilience and security are put to work in this context. I seek to understand the rationalities, practices and technologies by which wildfires are being rendered governable at a time of significant uncertainty. My SSHRC-funded project examines expectations of shared responsibility for wildfire protection in Whistler, British Columbia in Canada.

Selected Publications & Presentations

Google Scholar

ResearchGate

Selected Publications

Guest Edited Journal Section

  • Asiyanbi, A. P. and Lund, J.F. (2020). Special Section of Journal of Political Ecology, 27(1) 2020. Theme: Stabilizing a policy: reproducing REDD+.

Selected Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

  • Asiyanbi, A. P. (2024). Historicizing the carbon forest: colonial residue, scientific forestry and the making of ‘Nigeria’s last rainforest’. African Geographical Review, 1-17.
  • Asiyanbi, A., & Ogar, E. (2023). Community Mobilization at the Convergence of Conservation and Extraction. Geoforum, 147. doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103886
  • Asiyanbi, A., & Davidsen, C. (2023). Governing Wildfire Risk in Canada: The Rise of an Apparatus of Security. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 113(5), 1207-1223.
  • Asiyanbi, A. (2023). Exploring Yoruba Fire Cultures through Proverbs. Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship, 40(1), 25-46.
  • Asiyanbi A.P. (2022). Impact investing: (In)visibilizing and producing ‘impact’. Commentary in the forum: ‘Reparative accumulation? Financial risk and investment across socio-environmental crises’.  Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 5(4), 2362–2365.
  • Kashwan, P., V. Duffy, R., Massé, F., Asiyanbi, A. P., & Marijnen, E. (2021). From Racialized Neocolonial Global Conservation to an Inclusive and Regenerative Conservation. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 63(4), 4-19.
  • Carton, W., Asiyanbi, A., Beck, S., Buck, H., Friis L. J. (2020) Negative emissions and the long history of carbon removal. WIREs Climate Change. 11(6), e671.
  • Asiyanbi, A. P. and Lund, J.F. (2020). Policy persistence: REDD+ between stabilization and contestation. Introduction to a Special Issue. Journal of Political Ecology, 27(1), 378-400.
  • Asiyanbi, A. P. and Massarella, K. (2020). Transformation is what you expect, models are what you get. REDD+ as model in conservation and development. Journal of Political Ecology, 27(1), 476-495.
  • Asiyanbi, A. P., Ogar, E., & Akintoye, O. A. (2019). Complexities and surprises in local resistance to neoliberal conservation: Multiple environmentalities, technologies of the self and the poststructural geography of local engagement with REDD+. Political Geography, 69, 128-138.
  • Bigger, P., Dempsey, J., Asiyanbi, A., Kay, K., Lave, R., Mansfield, B., Osborne, T., Robertson, M. & Simon, G. (2018). Reflecting on neoliberal natures: an exchange: The ins and outs of Neoliberal natures. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1(1-2), 25-75.
  • Asiyanbi A. P. (2018) Financialization in the green economy: material connections, markets-in-the-making and Foucauldian organizing actions. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 50(3), 531-548.

Contribution to Books

  • Asiyanbi, A.P. (2022). Carbon offsetting or ‘development as usual’: Three spaces of a zombie solution, in Jesse Connuck (ed.), Offsetted. The Royal College of Art, London with Hatje Cantz: Berlin.
  • Asiyanbi, A. P. (2015) Mind the gap: global truths, local complexities in emergent green initiatives, in R.L. Bryant (ed.), International Handbook of Political Ecology, Chelthenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 274 – 290.

Selected Grants & Awards

  • SSHRC Explore and Engage Grant, 2024 – 2025 (Co-Investigator: Dr Ifeoma Adaji)
  • SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2024 – 2026
  • Hampton Fund Research Grant- New Faculty Grant, 2022 – 2024
  • UBCO Public Humanities Research Engagement Grant, 2022 – 2023 (Co-Investigator: Dr Usman Iyaku)
  • Political Geography Journal/ Elsevier Early Career Researcher Award, 2020
  • Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, 2019 – 2021

Professional Services/Affiliations/Committees

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