Brian Ikaika Klein is a doctoral candidate in environmental science, policy, and management at the University of California, Berkeley. His research integrates the study of social and ecological conditions and processes to understand resource access and governance in extractive frontier settings across the Global South. Prevailing narratives among policymakers and in popular media consistently portray these spaces as unregulated and chaotic.
Klein challenges these representations by documenting and analyzing the complex governance arrangements that order activities, manage conflict, and determine livelihoods on the extractive frontier. He presents ethnographic and historical evidence from Madagascar to elucidate the emergence, evolution, and endurance of governance institutions in gold mining communities on the island, as well as to interrogate the global, national, and local dynamics by which these institutions are shaped.
At the center of his work is a commitment to producing policy-relevant research informed by interdisciplinary political-ecological analysis interested in achieving more equitable and sustainable development outcomes for smallholder resource extractors and rural communities–in Madagascar, and across sub-Saharan Africa.
Klein’s research has won support from the National Science Foundation, UC Berkeley’s Center for African Studies, and UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Law and Society (among other divisions on campus). His agenda for future research comprises extending this analysis to build a broader comparative project on frontier governance; examining the consequences of Chinese state-corporate investments and interventions in Africa’s extractive resource sectors for local institutions and livelihoods; and investigating the ways in which the growth of industries related to climate change mitigation is generating new globally-networked and locally-embedded mineral economies. He is also collaborating with U4/USAID/WWF as an expert consultant on natural resource governance and corruption in Madagascar.