Benjamin Jance IV produced the podcast 'Tortoises and temptations in the desert'. Moore and Hackett (2015) examine the conflicts centered around large-scale solar power siting using the Ivanpah solar power plant as a case study. Ivanpah, situated in California, was the center of attention when multiple stakeholder values - from government, to the private sector, NGOs, and individual citizens - confronted each other. Ultimately the narrative is about place-making: which actors can lay claim to Ivanpah, who is marginalized by the plant, who benefits from the plant, and to what extent did the plant - in the end - reflect the values of different stakeholders? Benjamin's piece reviews these stakeholder claims from the viewpoint of a marginalized actor: the Northeastern Mojave desert tortoise, whose habitat was placed under threat from the construction of the plant. In the podcast, he highlights the intentions of actors, how the tortoises were marginalized, how stakeholders jostled for policy positioning, and how the final product of the solar power plant reflected both the power of certain stakeholders, as well as the deficiencies in public engagement processes. He ends the podcast with a call for better, more coordinated communication, as well as the proper involvement of stakeholders in order to facilitate project progress and success while maintaining the sustainability of the surrounding ecosystem.

Based on: Moore, Sharlissa, and Edward J. Hackett. “The Construction of Technology and Place: Concentrating Solar Power Conflicts in the United States.” Energy Research & Social Science 11 (January 1, 2016): 67–78. Link.

Cinthia Caetano produced an episode for a fictional Podcast series called Ecommute, intended to summarize political ecology articles in about 10 minutes, so that lay audiences interested in environmental themes could listen while commuting. This episode talks about seven surprising drivers of global land grab. According to Annalies Zoomers (2010), the current global land grab is causing radical changes in the use and ownership of land. The main process driving the land grab, or ‘foreignisation of space’, as highlighted in the media and the emerging literature is the production of food and biofuel for export in the aftermath of recent food and energy crises. It will be unable to take into account the full range and extent of agrarian and social changes that occur in light of the land grab and their strategic implications for poor people's livelihoods. An important starting point is to identify the broad processes driving the current land rush, and trace their structural and institutional origins. 

Based on: Zoomers, A. (2010) Globalisation and the foreignisation of space: seven processes driving the current global land grab. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 37(2): 429-447. Link