Explorations for sustainable development

EXPLORATIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed great pre-existing inequities and has shown the urgency to address pressing global challenges. Among them are climate change, the mass extinction of species and languages, as well as growing social inequality.

Climate change, a result of human activity that has produced a warming of the atmosphere, the earth, and the oceans; heralds a visible disaster on a global scale. It strongly affects new public health issues, water security, food sovereignty, migration, and peace. UNICEF has recently insisted that these threats translate into a child rights crisis. It is also clear that there is less and less time to take decisive action to address this. The great global players, companies, and states, have dragged their feet to promote radical solutions.

During the last decade, criticism of the prevailing development model has grown and the emphasis has been placed on the need to ensure greater equity, stability, and sustainability. In this context, the United Nations, since 2015 promoted an Agenda for Sustainable Development that drew up a 15-year plan to generate a movement that would promote the necessary transformations. This call asks for actions at a global and local level, and from all people. Anchored in an ambitious vision of environmental sustainability, these aims seek to reduce the dangers of climate change and the inequality gaps between human beings. We have gone through a third of the stipulated deadline without too many results, the next decade will be decisive to achieve any change.

Spreading new knowledge about these great challenges for social, environmental, and economic sustainability, and the proposed solutions is the purpose of this collection. Different looks should nurture it. In particular, for example, we can point to large sets of topics that require attention:

• Sustainable development policies and plans of countries; stories about these experiences and analysis and evaluation exercises.
• Analysis and comparative studies on national plans and regional commitments.
• Studies and proposals on strategies and mobilization of social and economic resources that point towards different routes and possibilities.
• Analysis and expressions of the interested parties, their purposes, and scope: governments, civil society, private sector, local communities.

Specific sectors and social groups can also be expressed or analyzed from multiple and comparative perspectives. Indigenous people, by developing activities closely connected with their natural environment, are the first to feel the consequences of climate change. The regions they inhabit, traditionally protected by their traditional practices of environmental use, are at risk. As stated, these peoples protect 80% of the world's biodiversity, yet they are among the groups most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

Unfortunately, many mitigation measures to address these changes can affect indigenous populations and the rights of these peoples. As a counterpart, however, it is them who can offer solutions and alternatives to adapt to these great changes. Hence the need for proposals and analysis on these issues:

• Contributions that indigenous knowledge can make to the formulation of policies on climate change and the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs).
• Proposals and analyses that promote intercultural dialogue.
• Perspectives of concrete communities and reflections on other epistemologies and other knowledge.
• Analysis, reflections, and experiences in which indigenous peoples abd local communities participate together with governments and other relevant actors.

The SDGs embrace the idea of ​​collaboration with interconnected perspectives of multi-level transformations that enable sustainability. From global to local perspectives. Individual effort is not enough: collectivities, regions, states, we all have responsibilities and we all produce perspectives and proposals for action. These actions must be known, discussed, and evaluated in their design, their instrumentation, and their results. Let's make an effort to make them visible, analyze and improve them.

Collection themes

The collection "Explorations for sustainable development" will include monographs, essays, and original studies that contribute to a better understanding, reflection, and solution proposals for the great problems of the contemporary world, especially those related to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development promoted by the United Nations Organization. In attention to the major environmental issues related to climate change, it will be sought to publish texts related to objectives 6. Clean Water and Sanitation; 7. Affordable and clean energy; 11. Sustainable cities and communities; 13 Climate action; 14. Underwater Life; and 15 Life of terrestrial ecosystems. These major objectives involve a wide range of topics that should be considered from small actions to megaprojects, the use, and abuse of natural resources, the sustainability of development, and the different socio-environmental problems.

Disciplinary areas

This collection seeks to contribute to understanding better and drive useful proposals for sustainability, its policies, and practices, from design to results. It will promote the publication of serious and original research proposals, experiences, and evaluation from all social and humanistic disciplines; disciplinary, multi, inter, and transdisciplinary views; historical and contemporary, with diverse views from the local to the global. The preparation of sets of texts that allow for diverse comparisons and practices is particularly attractive. As well as works on ancestral knowledge, generation, validation, and transmission of indigenous knowledge; indigenous knowledge systems; intercultural dialogues that lead to their understanding, preservation, and enrichment.

Disciplines: it is a thematic collection, rather than a disciplinary one. Therefore, the social sciences and humanities that present rigorous analyzes, current studies, in collaboration or in dispute with other scientific disciplines are welcome; original works, which provide an advance in the knowledge of sustainability and the agenda for sustainable development. In this sense, special attention will be paid to the publication of monographs, reflections, case studies, biographical accounts, and the results of international Seminars and Congresses, held within or outside the university environment. Likewise, another of the purposes is the publication of Doctoral Theses, provided that they have obtained the highest qualification, comply with the double evaluation by peers, and are presented in book form.

Director: Fernando Ignacio Salmerón Castro 

I am originally from Mexico City and I spent my childhood in Xalapa, Veracruz. Anthropology caught my attention very early on and I consider myself a professional in this discipline despite my heterodox training. After a very brief stint at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, I studied for a Bachelor's Degree in International Relations at El Colegio de México, a Master's Degree in Anthropology from El Colegio de Michoacán, and a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. This academic training was joined by study and research stays at the University of Cambridge and the University of California. I have lived and done fieldwork in various regions of Mexico and in the San Joaquin Valley, California.

Since 1984, I have been a professor-researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), one of the Public Centers coordinated by CONACYT. In addition to research and teaching tasks, in this institution, I held various management positions throughout my career. Between September 2007 and August 2016 I had a license to hold the position of General Coordinator of Intercultural and Bilingual Education in the Secretaría de Educación Pública of the Mexican federal government, an institution that led the educational policy on cultural diversity and interculturality in Mexico.

My research has focused on issues of sociocultural anthropology; politics, power, and economy; regional studies, urban studies and territoriality of medium cities; public policies and strategic resources; research methodology in social sciences and on the labor field of social anthropology. I have also promoted projects on migration and communities of Mexican origin in the United States, as well as education and cultural diversity. Among my recent publications are analyzes on intercultural education, indigenous education, and human rights in Mexico.

The wide spectrum of my professional training, as well as my institutional management activities, have allowed me to have a wide network of colleagues and friends dedicated to research and reflection on issues of urgent attention. I am confident that, with your help, it will be possible to build enough links to form a collection of great interest for the future of our planet.