Gert Van Hecken is an ecological economist and political ecologist at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB), University of Antwerp, and associate researcher at Nitlapan-UCA, Nicaragua. His research focuses on the politics of knowledge in “conservation” and “development”, and on processes of (re)imagining and (re)enacting alternative social-ecological futures. During the past fifteen years he has been working closely with different farmer and environmental organizations in Nicaragua.