The Land & Climate Podcast

Colombia is one of the most unequal countries in the world when it comes to agriculture and land ownership. Violence in the Colombian countryside has often cleared the way for corporate agriculture to move in, displacing land once held by small farmers, known as “campesinos”, and transforming it into new frontiers for capital.
“Armed conflict undermines the productive systems of campesinos, which reinforces the corporate food regime and the modernisation of agriculture”, says Dr Jaskiran Kaur Chohan a Political Ecologist at the University of Bristol, whose work focuses on rural communities in Colombia and the intersection of violence, conflict, and agriculture.
Alasdair speaks to Dr Kaur Chohan, about how armed violence undermines campesino food systems and corporate food regimes take root in the aftermath, and how the country's smallholders can survive. 
Further reading: 
The corporate food regime in conflict zones: Armed violence and agriculture in the Zona de Reserva Campesina-Valle del Río Cimitarra, Colombia, Geoforum, 2024
Grassroots masquerades: development, paramilitaries, and land laundering in Colombia, Geoforum, 2013
Zonas de Reserva Campesina: ¿Estrategia de Desarrollo Regional y contra el Desplazamiento?, 2020
Tough Tradeoffs: Coca crops and agrarian alternatives in Colombia , International Journal of Drug Policy, 2021
Broken Republic: Three Essays, Arundhati Roy, 2011
Slow violence and corporate greening in the war on drugs in Colombia. International Affairs, 2021 
Violent conflict, capitalism and insurgent food sovereignty, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2026
Have monopolies broken agricultural markets?, Land and Climate podcast, 2025
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With five and a half years of content, The Land and Climate Podcast has an overwhelmingly large back catalogue. We have always aimed to produce evergreen episodes, however, and many of our older interviews still have insights and relevance in 2026. 
This is why we are launching a new offering, alongside our usual programming, called 'In Review'. Alasdair and Bertie pick one topic per episode, playing highlights from our favourite interviews and discussing recent developments. 
First up: plastics. 
Following reports that the current draft of the much-delayed UN Plastics Treaty is even less ambitious than the one rejected by many nations last year, Bertie and Alasdair listen to interview excerpts about microplastics, false solutions to plastic waste, and industry lobbying around the Treaty negotiations. 
Featuring clips of science journalist Matt Simon, Punyathorn Jeungsmarn (Arm) from Environmental Justice Foundation, and Dr Rob Ralston from The University of Edinburgh. 
Listen to the original episodes: 
'Has the plastics industry co-opted the circular economy?' with Rob Ralston, 2026
'What if climate politics is about power, not carbon?' with Jessica Green, 2025
'Can the world regulate plastics?' with Punyathorn Jeungsmarn, 2025
'How badly have microplastics harmed ecosystems, climate, and human health?' with Matt Simon, 2022
Further reading: 
'Leaked memo shows how U.S. aims to weaken global limits on plastic pollution', Washington Post, August 2026
'UN plastic treaty is going backwards, experts say', The Guardian, August 2026
'The Global Plastics Treaty must include production reduction', Land and Climate Review, 2025
'There is so much to say about plastic pollution. Why are we not talking about it?', Land and Climate Review, 2023
A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies by Matt Simon, 2022
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Solar and wind power is growing worldwide, but so is electricity consumption: as a result, renewables are often only added to the energy mix, rather than replacing fossil fuels. 
Reducing energy demand would make net zero more achievable, but it recieves far less attention than decarbonisation efforts. This may be due to a perception that managing energy demand would be politically unpopular, requiring governments to make radical interventions into people's lifestyles and spending. 
Oliver Broad, Senior Research Fellow at University College London, tells Alasdair that such fears are unfounded. His team's research found that the UK could reduce energy demand by 52% without new tech or overly disruptive societal change, and has worked with policymakers and public focus groups to demonstrate political acceptability. 
Further reading: 
'Policymakers and academics envision energy demand reductions beyond typical policies in the United Kingdom', Nature Energy, 2025
'Policymaker-led scenarios and public dialogue facilitate energy demand analysis for net-zero futures', Nature Energy, 2025
'Energy demand reduction options for meeting national zero-emission targets in the United Kingdom', Nature Energy, 2022
'Real people or "economic processing units"? The limited understanding of people's roles in energy and climate governance', Energy Research & Social Science, 2022
'A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies', Nature Energy, 2018
'Invisible energy policies: A new agenda for energy demand reduction', Energy Policy, 2018
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Geoengineering research is growing, as scientists look for increasingly radical means to protect humanity from the disastrous impacts of global heating.
Less publicly, concerns are also building about the use of these techniques for geopolitical disruption or control. 
Technologies such as solar radiation management (SRM) and stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) are controversial amongst climate scientists: they could buy us time through a temporary cooling effect, but they would not actually stop global heating, and could cause other negative impacts.
Danielle Young tells Alasdair that scientific research on these technologies often lacks alignment with political realities. While scientists plan for multilateral governance regimes to protect global populations from heat, government and military officials are more likely to think about SRM or SAI in terms of weaponisation and international power struggles. 
Dr Danielle Young is an Assistant Professor in Politics and International Studies at The University of Leeds. Her research focuses on the geopolitical and security implications of emerging solar geoengineering technologies. 
Further reading: 
'Why we need to explore conflict and competition around solar geoengineering', PLOS Climate, 2026
'Who could deploy stratospheric aerosol injection? The United States, China, and large‐scale, rapid planetary cooling', Global Policy, 2025 
'How will capitalism react to climate collapse?', Land and Climate Review, 2025
'Who Can Govern from a House on Fire? International Order, State
Responsibility, and the Problem of Solar Radiation Modification', Ethics & International Affairs, 2024
'Scientific models versus power politics: How security expertise reframes solar geoengineering', Review of International Studies, 2024
'Considering stratospheric aerosol injections beyond an environmental frame: The intelligible ‘emergency’ techno-fix and preemptive security', European Journal of International Security, 2023
'Do-or-Die: Should we be talking about geoengineering?', Land and Climate Review, 2022
'The Geopolitical ecology of solar geoengineering: From a ‘logic of multilateralism’ to logics of militarization', Journal of Political Ecology, 2020
Geoengineering, the Anthropocene and the End of Nature, Jeremy Baskin, 2019
‘The entwined Cold War roots of missile defense and climate geoengineering’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2019
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Click here to watch the video recording of this interview. 
In her latest book, Ann Pettifor argues that we are not governed by politicians or diplomats, but “by wealthy and powerful players in markets based in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the City of London.”
These players, she says, largely either ignore the threat of climate breakdown, or see it as a struggle for resource control. The “unregulated actions of private actors and institutions in global markets have led to the increasingly rapid breakdown of the world’s climate and ecosystem.”
In a special episode of The Land and Climate Podcast, recorded live in front of an audience as part of London Climate Action Week, Bertie and Ann discuss the influence financial markets exert over climate policy, and strategies to reassert democratic control.
Ann Pettifor is a political economist known for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, successfully campaigning to cancel approximately $100 billion in debt owed by poor countries, and for co-authoring and advocating the Green New Deal. 
In January 2026, Verso published her latest book, The Global Casino: How Wall Street Gambles with People and the Planet. Buy a copy from Verso's website before 31st July and recieve 30% off with the following discount code: CLIMATEREVIEW30 
Further reading: 
Ann's Substack, System Change.
The Case for the Green New Deal, 2019
The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers, 2018
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