Once a month, we put together a list of stories we’ve been reading: news you might’ve missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education.
We try to include articles that have been published recently but will last, that are relatively light and inspiring, and are from corners of the web that don’t always get the light of day. This will also be a space to keep you up to date with news about what’s happening at Uneven Earth.
This February, we’ve collected–once again–articles that go beyond the front-page analysis of Covid-19, otherwise known as the ‘coronavirus’. Some excellent and useful pieces in there, including an intervention by Chuang, a radical Chinese journal. You might have also seen that Indigenous warriors in Wet’suwet’en were being forcibly removed from their land by Canadian armed forces–leading to blockades of key infrastructure by other Indigenous nations in solidarity with them. We’ve collected all kinds of pieces on the issue, including basic explainers, maps, background about Indigenous struggles in Canada, and deeper dives. We’re also featuring pieces on transportation and mobility, underlined by the growing call for free public transit around the world. Finally, this month, we’re highlighting rural struggles and politics.
Uneven Earth updates
Remembering | Link | “I remember rent being low. But water was expensive. A lot of electricity went into the desalination plants.”
A post-growth Green New Deal | Link | To decarbonize we must degrow, decommodify, and democratize the economy
A Wood Wide Web Story: an Apple Tree in Daegu | Link | “The surrogate mothers could only be married to the earth.”
Who owns the Green New Deal? | Link | Making sense of remote ownership problems and place-based governance
Top 5 articles to read
Centuries of fire: Rebel memory and Andean utopias in Bolivia
Staring at hell: The aesthetics of architecture in a ruined world
Water is life: Nick Estes on Indigenous technologies
Breaking development. Our concept of “development” is destructive and irrational.
News you might’ve missed
Planned fossil fuel production rise locks in dangerous levels of warming
‘History disappears’ as dam waters flood ancient Turkish town
Heathrow third runway ruled illegal over climate change
Renewable energy could power the world by 2050
Sweden’s indigenous groups report death threats after landmark court win and Reindeer tortured after threats towards Sámi community in northern Sweden (see this on the court case about land rights)
How Hindu supremacists are tearing India apart
A cobalt crisis could put the brakes on electric car sales
Fates of humans and insects intertwined, warn scientists
Is this the end of Rojava? Also: Rojava after Rojava
Agribusiness company with financial support from UK, US and Netherlands is dispossessing thousands
The quiet start of Brazil’s war on the Amazon
Europeans now have the right to repair – and that means the rest of us probably will too
Armed ecoguards funded by WWF ‘beat up Congo tribespeople’
Speeding sea level rise threatens nuclear plants
Everything you need to know about Wet’suwet’en actions
Explainers
Map of Wet’suwet’en solidarity actions
Country erupts into Wet’suwet’en solidarity demonstrations: A week in pictures
The Wet’suwet’en protest and the coastal GasLink pipeline
‘What cost are human rights worth?’ UN calls for immediate RCMP withdrawal in Wet’suwet’en standoff
In Kanesatake, women are the face of Mohawk resistance
Indigenous resistance shakes the Canadian state
Rail blockades are proving to be an effective non-violent response to state violence
GasLink, the Wet’suwet’en people and Canada’s ongoing colonialism
Background
Wet’suwet’en protests a revolutionary moment in Canada: Mohawk scholar Gerald Taiaiake Alfred
The Wet’suwet’en are more united than pipeline backers want you to think
What does “land back” mean? A thread from âpihtawikosisân on Twitter.
Dive deeper
Being with the land, protects the land
Canada’s battle against First Nations shows slide toward authoritarianism
Here’s some resources on Indigenous rights in the context of Wet’suwet’en solidarity
‘Reconciliation is dead and it was never really alive’
Wet’suwet’en: Why are Indigenous rights being defined by an energy corporation?
A short introduction to the Two Row Wampu
The ideology of reconciliation
Coronavirus
Preparing for coronavirus to strike the U.S.
Coronavirus + capitalism = sad face. Why the American capitalist system will make the coming coronavirus pandemic worse.
Social contagion: The production of plagues
Race, epidemics, and the viral economy of health expertise
Coronavirus: product of a sick system
The coronavirus’s lesson for climate change
The state of exception provoked by an unmotivated emergency
Coronavirus: China’s air pollution levels, smog show hit to the economy
Covid-19 will mark the end of affluence politics
Just think about it…
William Gibson — the prophet of cyberspace talks AI and climate collapse
The U.S. military is not sustainable
The Trump era is a golden age of conspiracy theories – on the right and left
Tech startups are flooding Kenya with apps offering high-interest loans
Biodiversity highest on Indigenous-managed lands
The war on food waste is a waste of time
A spider’s web is part of its mind, new research suggests
Crimea, Kashmir, Korea — Google redraws disputed borders, depending on who’s looking
We are drowning in a devolved world: An open letter from Devo
The volatile economics of natural vanilla in Madagascar
The climate crisis is like a world war. So let’s talk about rationing
The word ‘Anthropocene’ is failing us
Where we’re at: analysis
The illusion of centrist ecology
The EU’s green deal is a colossal exercise in greenwashing
Colonialism, the hidden cause of our environmental crisis
New Deal for Nature: Paying the emperor to fence the wind
The fate of the planet rests on dethroning the IMF and World Bank
Feeding China is wrecking the Amazon
The struggle for democracy and socialism in Latin America
New politics
The growing global movement to end outdoor advertising
Puerto Rico’s energy insurrection
Planetary health and regeneration
Modern monetary theory in the periphery
Across the North, Indigenous communities are redefining conservation
Rural politics
An enormous land transition is underway. Here’s how to make it just.
What if we’re thinking about agriculture all wrong?
The youth are fleeing the farms: Aspiration and conflict in Kurram, Pakistan
How capitalism underdeveloped rural America
An Interview with Max Ajl on agrarian change in Tunisia
What if we only ate food from local farms?
Cities and radical municipalism
Cities fighting climate woes hasten ‘green gentrification’
Urbanist lessons from the densest neighborhoods across Europe
The case for truly taking back control – by reversing the privatisation of our cities
As sea level rises, Miami neighborhoods feel rising tide of gentrification
The ‘street food’ swindle: fake diversity, privatised space – and such small portions!
Housing discrimination made summers even hotter
Ancient ‘megasites’ may reshape the history of the first cities
Transportation
Luxembourg makes history as first country with free public transport
The ride-hail utopia that got stuck in traffic
Cities turn to freewheeling public transport
Paris mayor pledges a greener ’15-minute city’
Degrowth!
Degrowth toward a steady state economy: Unifying non-growth movements for political impact
Why “de-growth” shouldn’t scare businesses
Beyond redistribution—confronting inequality in an era of low growth
India should stop obsessing about GDP, and start focusing on what matters
Resources
Documentary on the solidarity economy in Barcelona
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