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 time, we feature interesting reads on the state of work and ‘quiet quitting’; post-car societies, future and present; the false promise of saving the planet by planting trees; the Turkey-Syria earthquakes; big beef’s climate messaging machine; de-extinction and why it isn’t worth the ethical cost; the conundrums of climate fiction; the new How to Blow Up a Pipeline movie, a dramatization of Malm’s 2021 book of the same name; and so much more.
If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
The lithium problem. Can we rapidly reduce carbon emissions while minimizing the damage caused by resource extraction?
The real-world costs of the digital race for Bitcoin. Bitcoin mines cash in on electricity — by devouring it, selling it, even turning it off — and they cause immense pollution. In many cases, the public pays a price.
My continent is not your giant climate laboratory. Chukwumerije Okereke urges African governments to stand against the ploy by Western organizations to normalize research on risky geoengineering technologies.
Climate fiction won’t save us. As the world burns, readers increasingly look to climate fiction for hope, predictions, and actionable solutions. But can the genre really be a manual for useful change?
It has been nearly two months since February 6th, when two consecutive earthquakes of 7.8 and 7.7 magnitudes originating in the towns of Maraş and Antep took place. The earthquake has had a devastating effect across a large geographical area near the Turkish-Syrian border, that spans the historic lands of Kurdistan and Turkey as well as Northern Syria and Rojava. Officials report that over 50 thousand people lost their lives, tens of thousands of buildings were destroyed, and millions of people lost their homes.
In the northern side of the Turkish-Syrian border, the disaster that followed the earthquake has its roots most directly in the governing Justice and Development Party’s (JDP) political economic regime of construction-based growth, social conservatism, and state violence. In the following, I first point to how disasters are political events – that their effects and sources are unevenly distributed. However, I also add that this insight – that disasters are political – is well metabolized in Turkish political discourse and has by itself only further fueled the JDP’s construction-based model of growth. I then sketch the political economic forces behind the recent earthquake, investigating how disasters are baked into Turkey’s current developmental model. I then investigate how this developmental model, premised on intensifying disasters, prevents the current regime from planning against them. Last, I explore what kind of social opposition could form out of the ruins of the earthquake, to help plan against the next set of disasters.
“There is no such thing as a natural disaster”
The famous words of Marxist geographer Neil Smith that “there’s no such thing as a natural disaster” remind us of the political stakes of a disaster. Written in response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans and its surrounding areas, Smith’s text reminds us that the destruction and death that follow a disaster are not preordained by God. Neither are they the outcome of inscrutable natural forces. Disasters are instead shaped by a “social calculus” that determines and distributes their every aspect – from the structural causes that lead to the collapse of some buildings and neighborhoods while leaving others intact, to the level of disaster preparedness in different regions, or the effectiveness of the response and the reconstruction that follows.
In 2013, Erdoğan himself declared that “It is not earthquakes but buildings that kill.”
Yet the February 6th earthquake was foretold many times before it materialized. Scholar Eray Çaylı points out in a prescient piece from 2022 that the idea that an earthquake is a political event is already well-metabolized by Turkish political discourse. In the past 21 years that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s JDP have been in power, there have been many academics and politicians warning of the poor building stock in the areas affected by the earthquake. Even more damning are the assessments of the Turkish state’s own Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), which issued several reports on the history of destructive earthquakes in the region. One 2019 report by AFAD highlights that “the fact that for the past 35 years there have not been any earthquakes to release the tension building in this region, means that the risk posed by a future earthquake is even more grave.” In 2013, Erdoğan himself declared that “It is not earthquakes but buildings that kill.” Moreover, earthquakes have an important role in recent political memory. In 1999, an earthquake centered around the Western town of İzmit near İstanbul killed 17 thousand people, rendering half a million more homeless. The İzmit earthquake was interpreted as a sign of the existing political regime’s incompetence, which helped fuel the currently governing JDP’s rise to power.
And yet, this awareness of the political nature of earthquakes has by itself achieved little. On the contrary, the governing JDP has not been shy about exploiting the memory of the İzmit earthquake to push through urban renewal projects that in the guise of earthquake-preparedness sought to intensify gentrification and urban transformation throughout major cities. When, in 2011, an earthquake devastated the city of Van, this only served to accelerate JDP’s promises to further intensify construction—as Youenn Gouarin observes. The same happened later in 2020 as earthquakes shook İzmir and Elazığ, with hundreds of acres of land sold off to companies and opened for further development. Even after this most recent earthquake, the JDP has conspired with its allies in the capitalist class promising to rebuild the region within a year, while also using its emergency powers to lift environmental protections for forests and meadows.
In Kurdish majority urban centres, this cycle of destruction and reconstruction has also taken place through military intervention. The city of Amed, also known as Diyarbakir, is the unofficial capital of Northern Kurdistan and is home to over a thousand buildings that were destroyed or heavily damaged during the earthquake. Yet even before the earthquake, poor neighborhoods of Amed like Suriçi were first nearly completely destroyed in 2015, through state of emergency powers employed by the Turkish military as part of its war against Kurdish political resistance, only to be then rebuilt. Between 2018 and 2021, real estate prices in Amed are said to have risen by 128%, a reflection of the high levels of inflation and transformation experienced in urban areas throughout the region. Now that the earthquake has made parts of the city uninhabitable, a new cycle of construction seems likely to unfold.
The JDP’s term in power from 2002 till today has been described as the era of “mega-rubble”—a process of constant urban transformation and renewal.
Such destruction and reconstruction have the result of producing huge amounts of rubble and waste, even prior to the earthquake. In this sense, the JDP’s term in power from 2002 till today has been described by various political ecologists in Turkey as the era of “mega-rubble” (mega hafriyat dönemi)—a process of constant urban transformation and renewal. This is why political ecologist Aslı Odman has recently described capitalism in Turkey as a train moving on the dual rails of rubble on the one hand and emergency on the other. Far from being anomaly then, the earthquake is only the latest stop this train passed through.
Disaster as development
An economy that feeds on construction and produces rubble, has become a well-worn growth model not only in Turkey but also abroad. In this model, fast paced growth is generated through finance and realized by construction – creating an asset economy of financial instruments and real estate. In Turkey, between 1989 and 2021 the construction sector has accounted for anywhere between 10-16% of Turkey’s entire GDP. Such construction also took place in the region effected by the earthquake, where the JDP has a significant electoral base and political control. A significant part of this construction takes the shape of infrastructure, mainly airports, roads and electricity generation plants that are funded through public-private partnerships programs. Another significant part takes place through private and public investment in residential housing. Now, in this same region, the airports and roads and the newly built houses created by infrastructural investment also lie in rubble.
Such heaps of rubble are not simply the result of “corruption” or the deterioration of state institutions. Nor are disasters the outcome of a cult of personality built around the persona of Erdogan. Rather, they are the result of a consciously adopted model of economic growth, one whereby ecological catastrophe is tolerated as the price for faster development and economic growth. Fostering GDP growth through megaprojects enables countries like Turkey to renegotiate their participation in systems of financialized development. The construction of a myriad of large-scale infrastructure projects such as canals, bridges, roads, and airports – endearingly called “crazy projects” by Erdoğan – are meant to reroute disaggregated and globalized chains of production and consumption through Turkey.
These political economic conditions are also lived as feelings, morals, aspirations, and fears. In Turkey “economic growth” is not only a social process but a promise, imagined through elaborate infrastructure projects, and often bound up with a civilizational resentment, a desire to “catch up” with and overcome Western powers. The JDP’s tenure in power has relied not only on construction-based accumulation and economic growth, but also on a resurgence of reactionary sentiment and political Islam as well as a renewed social conservatism.
This social conservatism in part arises from JDP’s political roots in the conservatively oriented small to medium business class. This class includes a network of subcontractors and family-owned companies that have grown alongside the dynastic centers of wealth and political influence that constitute the regime’s allies in the construction industry in Turkey. The JDP’s increasingly oppressive policies towards LGBTQ and women mobilizes this conservative and “family values”-oriented base. The JDP has attempted to explain the earthquake to this conservative base as a “plan of fate”, an exceptional disaster that is preordained by god but also perversely may yet hold new opportunities and promises for construction.
Both during the assembling of buildings and infrastructure and subsequently in their toppling, the construction industry has proven disastrous in Turkey. In short, the earthquake has been the logical conclusion of Turkey’s construction based developmental model.
Toward militant planning
What the earthquake demonstrated is the extent to which the state and the market have been inadequate as instruments of planning in the face of disaster. Nothing embodies this inadequacy as much as the collapse of transport and communications infrastructure that would help coordinate aid during the earthquake – airports, roads, telecommunications towers. This collapse of infrastructure had terrible consequences. Of the at least 50,000 people who lost their lives trapped under rubble across Kurdistan, Syria, and Turkey, many are thought to have died from hypothermia, hunger, and thirst. In Turkey, survivors of the earthquake reported days of waiting for excavation equipment, water, blankets, phone reception. Remote villages spent days without any contact or aid from the outside the roads that lead to their village destroyed by the earthquake or cell towers collapsed. Under these circumstances state institutions instead focused on clamping down on and hindering the efforts of volunteers and rescue teams. Days after the initial earthquake the government began restricting and slowing down access to Twitter, to clamp down on dissent, a move that made it harder coordinate rescue.
In 2020, political ecologist Kai Heron proposed that contemporary ecological politics is defined by “capitalist catastrophism”. This condition, he argues, is less a stable regime and more the result of what happens when the global neoliberal order begins to “fray at the edges”. Rather than plan or manage crises, the role of the state in this schema is to let crises unfold in ways that nonetheless are profitable for the capitalists. In this sense, the JDP’s term in power has been marked by historic forest fires, mining disasters, internal and external wars, plagues. The popular narrative around the JDP’s tenure in power is a story of authoritarian backsliding, of an initial stage of liberal pluralism and growth later corrupted by Erdogan and his cronies. Yet from the perspective of capital and catastrophe, an alternative analytic for the JDP is one of intensifying crises, characterized by periods of capitalist accumulation and state violence. In other words, perhaps JDP’s power base conspires against planning and for disaster.
JDP’s power base conspires against planning and for disaster. In this lacuna of state planning and disaster capitalism, autonomous forms of provisioning and mutual aid in the affected regions have flourished.
In this lacuna of state planning and disaster capitalism, autonomous forms of provisioning and mutual aid in the affected regions have flourished. Many have celebrated the seemingly spontaneous organizational capacity doctors, miners, construction workers, translators have mustered under conditions of emergency using messaging apps and social media platforms. Such displays of social solidarity, altruism, sharing, and mutual aid are characteristic of many different societies in post-disaster conditions. One could argue that the grassroots mobilizations that emerge after a disaster is demonstrative of what planning truly means: not only coordinating knowledge but building the capacity to exercise collective power and self-sufficiency. Drawing on the experiences of the Black radical tradition in the US, authors Stefano Harney and Fred Moten characterize planning as “self-sufficiency at the social level.” Planning “begins…with what we might call a militant preservation.” In the context of intensifying disasters, it is important to retain this militant character of planning, of exercising self-sufficiency both against the bourgeois-state and against capital.
One could argue that the grassroots mobilizations that emerge after a disaster is demonstrative of what planning truly means: not only coordinating knowledge but building the capacity to exercise collective power and self-sufficiency.
Yet while it is true that the post-disaster social mobilization achieved remarkable feats, rescuing, and caring for thousands of people, finding, and deploying excavator trucks, repairing infrastructure, it is also true that this mobilization could not have happened without any prior organization. For the first few days immediately following the disaster, the most organized and effective groups seemed to be ones that had relevant skills and had built self-sufficient institutions – independent miners, doctors and educators associations – what remains of Turkey’s civil society including the much persecuted but nonetheless persistent feminist and LGBTQ+ organizations, a handful of socialist and radical democratic political parties such as the People’s Democracy Party (HDP), the Workers Party of Turkey (TİP), and the Turkish Communist Party (TKP). Maintaining and growing this organizational capacity will be crucial both during and after the elections, no matter the result.
It matters that this social opposition emerging from the Feb 6 earthquake has an explicitly political and liberatory character. Consider how the image of “looters” supposedly “stealing” from supermarkets and shops has become a recurring theme within rightwing political discourse following the earthquake. The charge of looting has been directed at migrants and racialized minorities to invoke feelings of hatred and vengeance. Such feelings have been stoked by far-right groups, mainstream media outlets, as well as politicians both in government and in opposition, leading the government to promise to “crackdown” on looters. In this sense, within the chaos of planning left by the markets and the state, a whole host of reactionary sentiments have flourished. Perhaps the anti-looting rhetoric indicates a fear of self-sufficiency and planning outside the parameters of private property. Perhaps it is a way to register and suppress the outrage of well-stocked supermarkets that existed alongside a disaster zone. In any case, without more explicitly political forms of organization, such racially motivated fears could easily serve to divide the spirit of solidarity that is now flourishing.
If planning is a matter of collective action and self-sufficiency, then the question of who the collective subject of our politics is becomes inevitable. In answering these questions, it is crucial to foreground one’s commitment against the power structures that have created and maintained regimes like the JDP – to be organized explicitly against fascism, against capital and against the heteropatriarchy. Where such political commitments have been weaker or more obscure, the last two months has shown how social opposition can be co-opted and distracted by reactionary forces.
Conclusion
In May, Turkey heads off to the elections, with opposition parties looking to oust Erdoğan and the existing government replacing them both with a broad alliance. Electorally, this alliance stretches from rightwing nationalist breakaways from the regime such as İYİP, to multiple right and left centrist parties such as DEVA and the CHP, to the pro-minority, communist, anti-capitalist and radical democratic alliance EMEP. While there is general optimism about defeating the JDP, it seems likely that even if this were so, such ideologically diverse alliances will not outlast their victory, indeed cracks in them have already begun to show. Therefore, it is important to think through the capacity for collective action that emerged after the disaster and what it teaches us about building a more sustained avenue for emancipatory and working-class politics, both in Turkey and beyond.
Nothing is certain in these elections. Indeed, while Erdoğan has been doing poorly in the polls, there is always wisdom in caution especially when it comes to electoral politics and even more so in an authoritarian context like Turkey. Moreover, no matter the results, there is much work to do for the left. An important priority is building a new coalition across several groups including an expanded working-class resistance that has organized against the capitalist class – miners, construction workers, shipbreakers, waste workers, delivery workers; the movement for Kurdish political autonomy which has been resisting state violence and internal colonialism; and the feminist and LGBTQ movements that have organized both along the lines of social reproduction and against the retrenchment of social conservatism. Such an opposition will become increasingly crucial as the forces of climate catastrophe and capitalism will, at least in the near future, continue to produce disasters in Turkey and abroad. Perhaps this coalition can be one of the instruments that helps plan against the next disaster.
Burç Köstem(he/him) is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies at McGill University.
A damaged home in the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood of Aleppo. (Mauricio Centurion) via The Nation
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.
February was short, so we decided to do a combined February-March newsletter – and it’s a good one! We collected stories on Syria, Turkey & Rojava, the Cop City movement in Atlanta, and false climate solutions; a critique of Elon Musk’s Twitter; a discussion of the sustainability of bicycles; and a reflection on the importance of redefining ‘abundance’, to name a few. We also included a climate action toolkit for tired people, because that’s most of us in this vast capitalist hellscape.
If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Debt and ecological crises. A series of briefings looking at financial mechanisms that (in theory) support climate action and biodiversity conservation in the midst of a new debt crisis.
“If something is permanently frozen, is it alive or dead?”
After emerging from a deep dive into the terrific world of thawing permafrost, typically defined as “ground (soil or rock and included ice or organic material) that remains at or below 0°C for at least two consecutive years” to use a low-hanging definition from The International Permafrost Association, I scribbled that question in one of my notebooks. From its intertwining tales of the microbes and viruses coming back to life to its role in provoking tsunamis in Greenland, permafrost is evidently teeming with life and in perpetual motion.
The contradiction that a world framed as functionally dead — or permanently frozen — is so ‘alive’ feels worth unpacking. As permafrost bubbles, erupts and collapses, it influences the trajectories of humans and non-humans on it, in it, and around the globe. Permafrost is far from dead and also far from permanently frozen. So, then, what is permafrost?
When I ventured into the socio-cultural history of the term permafrost, I did not anticipate stepping into the history of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and North American military expansion. In her book, The Life of Permafrost: A History of Frozen Earth in Russian and Soviet Science, Pey-Yi Chu begins by sharing the story of geologist Inna Poiré. Chu’s account of Poiré’s early life in the Russian Empire, her career as a senior geologist in the Leningrad Geological-Hydrological-Geodesic Trust, and her eventual journey to the United States to work for the United States Geological Survey is fascinating. Poiré’s steps followed and moulded the Soviet term vechnaia merzlota and its English translation, permafrost. Through telling her story, Chu brings many, often contesting, ontologies of permafrost to life.
To unpack the development of the term permafrost, it is necessary to first look at the backstory of Russian and subsequently Soviet understandings of frozen ground. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, conceptions of frozen ground developed and sparred in both the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. Faced with large-scale construction challenges between the Arctic and the Amur, some researchers preferred the interpretation of frozen groundas an aggregate material structure to be grappled with.
Meanwhile, a view of frozen ground which embraces its enmeshment with exchanges of matter and energy also flourished in the Russian Empire and then in the Soviet Union up until Stalinism in the 1930s. In the 19th-century Russian Empire, Humboldtian science, which posits the interconnectedness of phenomena and the natural laws explaining interactions, was influential. Later in the century, Russian soil scientist Vasily Dokuvhaev advanced the idea that soil has a complex relationship with surrounding environmental factors, including the climate, geology, flora, and fauna.
In 1917, under Lenin’s Bolshevik government, Marxism-Leninism became the official state ideology. Intertwined with Marxism-Leninism is dialectical materialism which, when applied to ecology, means that natural phenomena develop through the conflict and synthesis of contradictions. Therefore, a dialectic materialist conception of frozen ground embraced its interconnectedness with other forces. However, with the Stalinist period in the 1930s, rapid, state-driven industrialisation crowded out systems-thinking approaches to frozen ground.
Under Stalinism, research had to help the regime’s economy and defence. Moreover, Stalinist media pushed a dualistic interpretation of the relationship between humans and ‘nature’, framing frozen ground as an obstacle to be conquered. It was during this time that Mikhail Sumgin, a Soviet scientist, coined the term vechnaia merzlota — vechnaia translating to ‘eternal’ and merzlota being an ambiguous term sometimes interpreted as a state, like being cold, or a material, such as cryophilic rocks.
Technically, vechnaia merzlota was defined as ground that remained below freezing for at least two consecutive years — a largely arbitrary definition that has persisted to this day in its translation to permafrost. Both vechnaia merzlota and permafrost connote permanence, making the technical definition which requires ground remains frozen a mere two years to fit into the definition is curious. The terms paired with their definition hide the power structures and aims embedded in them.
At the time, the term’s adversaries mostly pointed to the word vechnaia, contesting the assumption of continuity and asserting that frozen ground is connected to the planet’s thermal system and, therefore, changeable. However, the term fit the Soviet Union’s political project — engaging with frozen ground as an aggregate material structure with a technical definition helped engineers confront the challenges of building on frozen ground, which advanced the colonisation and development of the Soviet Union’s peripheries. Evidently, conceptions of frozen ground embodied several, often exclusive ontologies throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, reflecting the role of social, cultural, and political forces in shaping science and human relationships with the non-human. What is also clear is how influential the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union were in developing conceptions of frozen ground.
A few years before the dawn of the Cold War, the United States supported extensive translations of Soviet scientific articles, including those on vechnaia merzlota. Vechnaia merzlota was translated to permanentlyfrozen ground or permafrost for short in a publication of the Office of the Chief of Engineers of the United States Department of War. Permafrost suffered from similar drawbacks as the Russian term. The use of the word permanent rather than eternal carried even more connotations of fixity, while frozen ground or frost was less flexible than merzlota, limiting interpretations to those deeming it an aggregate material structure.
However, because of these weaknesses, the literal interpretation of permafrost helped American and Canadian Cold War political projects as the nations constructed military bases and extracted resources in Alaska and across the Canadian Arctic. Therefore, research on frozen ground in the mid-20th century in North America institutionalised the concept of permafrost as a permanent aggregate material structure, despite pushback from many scientists, including Inna Poiré. Due to the hegemonic position of the English language, the translation of vechnaia merzlota to permafrost transformed frozen ground into a scientific and environmental object around the globe.
When we hear of permafrost, it’s usually in the context of greenhouse gas release and climate tipping points. Warming permafrost brings cryogenically frozen microbes ‘back to life’, which then feed on thawing organic matter, releasing immense amounts of greenhouse gases. While permafrost has thawed in the past, climate change is accelerating the warming beyond previously recorded rates. The plants that can now grow on the thicker active layer of topsoil cannot compensate for the immense amounts of carbon released from the thawing permafrost.
As greenhouse gases are released from the thawing permafrost, they also contribute to climate change, creating an irreversible positive feedback loop. Meanwhile, mitigation techniques are almost non-existent, although significant research is going into cloning the woolly mammoth to compact Arctic soils and protect the permafrost beneath it. Regardless what a relational analysis of this option might show, clearly thawing permafrost has far-reaching impacts that are bound to accelerate.
Greenhouse gas release is only one symptom of thawing permafrost, most of which are felt locally. Before laying out the local impacts of thawing permafrost, it is worth exploring how the definition of permafrost as perennially frozen ground abstracts the interconnectedness of permafrost with earth systems and the impacts of this abstraction. In The Life of Permafrost, Chu shows how framing permafrost as a permanently frozen structure, detached from earth systems, creates illusions that it can be ‘mastered’.
The simplified view that frozen ground can be fully understood in isolation from the earth system helps advance engineering breakthroughs which enable construction on frozen earth. She historicizes this idea, showing the connection between the ‘mastery’ of frozen ground and construction on frozen earth by the Russian Empire in the 1890s, followed by the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and the United States by way of Canada in the 1940s. In each context, Arctic industrialisation intertwines with colonisation and resource extraction in different, albeit sometimes similar ways. For this analysis, we’ll focus on the so-called Canadian Arctic.
Inuit Nunaat is the name of the four Inuit homelands that stretch the circumpolar Arctic from Chukotka to Greenland. Arctic Canada is Inuit Nunangat. The Inuit have lived in Inuit Nunangat for roughly 5,000 years. Like any society, they had complex political, social, and economic systems and rich cultures which persist to this day despite efforts by the Canadian state. With Euro-American colonisation and their quest to accumulate geopolitical power and capital, many of these systems were violently eroded through the spread of diseases, forced assimilation, residential schools, resettlement, and the destruction of livelihoods, to name only some colonial campaigns. Many of the Canadian state’s efforts to secure sovereignty in Inuit Nunangat and extract the bountiful resources in the north required building infrastructure on frozen ground.
Investment into engineering in Arctic environments picked up speed during World War II as the US army built strategic military defences across the Arctic frontier. There was the Northwest Staging route, a series of airfields from Montana to Alaska, which passed through the Inuit Nunangat. The airfields even helped serve the Lend-Lease Act, an agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union to supply military aircraft to fight Hitler’s regime. To strengthen Alaskan military defence, the governments also built the Alaska-Canadian Highway, which connected the United States mainland to Alaska via Canada. Covering almost 900 kilometres between the Northwest Territories and Yukon, they also built the Canol pipeline to deliver oil to bases in Alaska.
These projects, alongside mine construction, solidified the Canadian state’s claim over Inuit Nunangat, not only as a message to other nation-states but by institutionalising the theft of Indigenous land. Moreover, the projects disrupted Inuit communities and non-humans like caribou, muskox, Arctic char, and Arctic fox, as well as peatlands as their migration routes and food sources were compromised, or they were drudged up. The engineering feats that made this infrastructure development possible on frozen ground also enabled the development of more mine projects in Inuit Nunangat, which appears to take off after World War II.
Today, states are negotiating claims for offshore Arctic petroleum reserves and biotechnology companies are scouting out new frontiers as ancient microbes unearth from thawing permafrost, creating a new turn in Arctic colonialisms. At this point in the story, it is interesting to imagine whether military, mining, and petroleum extraction infrastructure would have been as prolific if the debate on the permanence of permafrost had not been quelled.
A thawing landscape — Nunavik, Quebec (Picture credits: Antoine Boisson)
Today, the impacts of these projects are compounding as the permafrost on which they sit or are embedded thaws. As part of sovereignty claims and industrialisation of the Arctic, especially after World War II and with varying degrees of force from the Canadian state, largely nomadic Inuit communities were forced to settle in often coastal communities located on continuous permafrost. In one of the state’s most overt campaigns, they forcefully relocated 92 Inuit to the high-Arctic during the Cold War to assert Canadian sovereignty under false advertisements of abundant resources.
I spent the summer of 2022 in Tasiujaq, Nunavik living in the recently constructed school principal’s residence on the edge of town. The residence stood out from other buildings in the village which were a bit older for the most part, raised on steel stilts and cinderblocks overtop a layer of gravel to guard against warping from thawing permafrost.
Sitting on the edge of the cluster of homes that make up the village’s core, the open-air waste dump, filled with scraps of treated wood, caribou hides, and various car parts, is affectionately known as “Home Depot”. A perpetual stream of smoke billows from some part of the dump that’s on fire. When the town was designed, permafrost was considered permanent. Now that it is thawing, toxins from the waste site permeate the protective membrane and contaminate groundwater and soil in the village. The same goes for the open-air sewage system a little further from the edge of town, beside the cemetery. Mounting evidence also shows that thawing permafrost increases soil and groundwater contamination from surrounding mines.
The village of just over 400 people is renowned for being one of the most resource-rich villages in Nunavik, with plenty of caribou, muskox, black bear, Arctic char, trout, beluga, and seal in the region. However, toxins in the soil and groundwater are bioaccumulating in the game. There are now advisories from the state to limit the consumption of certain country foods. Meanwhile, hunting and fishing are central to Inuit culture, society, and sovereignty.
To quote Kyle Whyte, the impacts of climate change “…is a recent episode of a cyclical history of colonialism inflicting anthropogenic (human-caused) environmental change on Indigenous peoples”. Moreover, the homes families were forced to move into are at risk of sinking as thawing permafrost warps the ground, creating the possibility that the village will relocate again, as is happening further north in Salluit, Nunavik. As Inuit author and cultural commentator Zebedee Nungak put it, this is colonialism on steroids.
The impacts of thawing permafrost extend far beyond Inuit Nunangat. In June 2017, a 100-meter-high tsunami hit Nuugaatsiaq, West Greenland, displacing 100 residents and killing four, after a slab of mountainside collapsed into the bay. The collapse was partially caused by thawing permafrost, which helped trigger the slide. A much larger landslide is looming in the region as permafrost thaw erodes a mountainside ten times larger. This time, the waves are projected to destroy three villages and impact two others.
In the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, thawing permafrost contributes to vegetation destruction, water quality issues, and geohazards, including landslides. On top of this, these changes deter tourism in the region, disrupting local livelihoods. On the Yamal peninsula in Northwest Siberia in 2016, permafrost thaw activated once-frozen anthrax spores, killing thousands of reindeer, leading to the hospitalisation of dozens of people, and killing a 12-year-old boy. In 2017 in Spitsbergen, Svalbard, The Global Seed Vault, designed to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply for eternity, was breached, sending meltwater into the tunnel. The vault was built into the permafrost. In the words of a Norwegian government official, “It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that.”
At the end of writing this piece, I am even further away from an answer to my earlier question, what is permafrost? What is clear though is that the ways that we conceive of permafrost impact how we live on and with frozen environments. Also, there isn’t one answer. Rather than search for a convenient definition, we can ask: How do the beings living with permafrost understand permafrost? What do stories from frozen environments tell us about conceptions of permafrost? What are the similarities and differences between these stories? What are the implications of thinking about permafrost differently?
Relegating dominant framings of permafrost is not a silver bullet solution, but it could help to open up discussions around the implications of the stories we tell. The narrative that permafrost is a material structure separate from earth systems served some purposes but has also led to catastrophe and injustice. It is time to center the voices of people living with permafrost, symmetrically embracing the plurality of perspectives.
Hanna Oosterveen is a Master’s student in the Human Ecology – Culture, Power, and Sustainability program at Lund University.
On the 14th of January 2023, a large-scale demonstration of around 35,000 people proved that the evicted village of Lützerath (Germany) has reignited the climate movement’s determination. Several organizations converged to express their resentment against lignite mining, including climate activist Greta Thunberg. Lignite is the energy source that has the largest climate impact, and the Rhenish lignite mining area is the largest cause of CO2 emissions in Europe. Russia’s war in Ukraine, however, has raised concerns regarding Germany’s energy security, and the country has turned back to coal for the short term.
A group of protesters gather in front of the infamous edge of the Garzweiler II coal mine.The wheel of the dredger moving closer to what remains of Lützerath.
Lützerath has been swallowed by the coalmine ‘Garzweiler’ owned by the highly contested energy giant RWE. Even though the eviction of the village, which has been occupied by climate activists, proceeded faster and with more violence than expected, the protesters’ willingness to break through police chains to get to what was left of the besieged village was remarkable. In Germany, more than 300 villages have already been dredged for lignite, and Lützerath was one of the last ones.
Tree houses set up by climate activists in the village of Lützerath.Makeshift buildings inside the occupied village of Lützerath.
Before the activists’ eviction, and only after an exhausting judicial fight, the last farmer in ‘Lützi’ finally capitulated, as his former neighbours had: he had agreed on a deal for relocation and compensation with RWE. During the last weeks of his fight in court, climate activists arrived in Lützerath and set up a camp to fight against the farmer’s resettlement. Once he left Lützerath, in January, thousands of people gathered there to defend the village against the destruction caused by lignite mining. The activists came from all over Germany and Europe determined not to give up an inch – this was a fight against fossil fuel companies and weak climate protection.
Protesters and police forces building blocks at the demonstration.Protesters and police forces building blocks at the demonstration.
However, Lützerath was not only a venue for resistance. Over the course of two years, the village became a utopian experiment. Grassroots democratic and self-governing infrastructures were built within the camp. This included a press office, a large kitchen with vegan food, organized donations of materials and supplies, workshops, and much more. Here, the capitalist system was not only criticized in the strongest terms, but a counter-alternative was also embodied by the occupiers.
Scenery inside the occupied village, activists prepare a high monopod to delay the eviction.
A hundred years old history of dispossession and relocation
Prior to the climate protest at the gates of Lützerath, clearance and displacement had been taking place for a hundred years in German coal mining areas: A consistent history of making way for the coal excavators that are still digging their way through German landscapes. Over the past century, up to 300 villages have been cleared for coal mining, displacing and resettling over 100,000 people. While most places were abandoned without significant resistance, the new RWE deal, laying out the eviction of Lützerath, has been widely contested by various actors in society.
A colorful alliance of resistance consisting of various actors, including drummers that accompany the protest.
The infamous agreement between RWE, the federal economics minister, Robert Habeck, and the minister for economy in North-Rhine Westphalia’s state, Mona Neubaur, both from the “Die Grüne” (Green) party, was made in October 2022, against the backdrop of the current energy crisis due to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The deal extended the use of two coal units that were supposed to shut down by the end of 2022 for 15 more months, and at the same time opted for a faster coal exit. Thus, lignite-fired power generation in the Rhenish mining area must nominally end in 2030 instead of 2038 – although it remains unclear whether emissions will be saved in this scenario, since now it is legally possible to emit more in less time.
A protester that has been teared down is lying in front of the police without moving.Police forces aiming to prevent protesters from moving closer to Lützerath.
However, uncertainty remained as to whether the coal in Lützerath’s ground is actually needed. It also remains unclear whether emissions can actually be cut on the basis of the deal since it is now legally possible to emit more in less time. Despite social pressure, the government has made no efforts to reevaluate the situation. At its core, the deal lacks clarity regarding the actual energy security threat to Germany, but also it remains questionable whether RWE’s early coal phase out will actually cut emissions. A study reveals that coal will no longer be profitable after 2030 due to higher prices and taxation on GHG. Besides, as early as April 2022, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) stated that the excavation of further villages due to underlying lignite reserves won’t be necessary to satisfy the demand for electricity.
One way or another, the site of Lützerath legally belongs to Germany’s energy giant RWE, which sued its way to the last instance to earn the right to clear the site. Following this line of argumentation, German politicians frequently referred to the fact that the government must adhere to its principles, namely the rule of law.
Day and night RWE’s dredger continues digging new layers in search of lignite.
Coalition building: Diverse actors with a common goal
Claims raised by the opposite side, however, eagerly point towards Germany’s obligation to commit to the 1.5°C goal that has been agreed upon in Paris. Here, it is argued that burning the 280 million tons of coal that lay beneath Lützerath would evidently lead to missing this target. In Germany, the climate advocacy group Fridays for Future (as well as larger organizations such as Greenpeace)have centered greenhouse gas emissions in their political discourse. This discourse centering around the political failure to reduce emissions, however, was not the only motivation behind the emergence of resistance. Interestingly, in the case of Lützerath, many diverging perspectives came to the surface with different motivations, sometimes revealing uncomfortable differences.
Two activists wearing glasses to be protected from teargas.
While the struggle of local residents, such as farmers, is closely linked to their relocation away from their beloved place of origin, the majority of protesters relate to the mentioned obligation of committing to climate goals. On the one hand, local resistance has been carried out by movements such as “Alle Dörfer bleiben!” (ADB, “All villages remain!”) with the objective to save all villages threatened by coal mines in Germany. On the other hand, Greenpeace and Fridays for Future joined forces for a nation-wide mobilization on climate protection grounds. As for the last farmer standing, greenhouse gas emissions surely were not the catalyst for his rebellion against the eviction, but rather his ancestral family farm.
On climate protection grounds – The 1.5 goal agreed upon in Paris.
Further, the “Kirche(n) im Dorf lassen!” (“Keep the churches in the village!”) initiative’s declared goal has been the fight for the protection of the churches. Arguing for the preservation of God’s creation, the Christian organization takes part in the climate justice movement taking a stand against the destruction through coal mining that causes global catastrophic events. Special religious services were even held outdoors in front of the opencast mine of the Tagebau Garzweiler.
Despite their differences, local residents and climate activists coming from these diverse civil society organizations discovered common ground in resistance with a common goal: Lützerath has to remain. In order to streamline their action and mobilize resources, favorable discourses were fostered and coalitions needed to be built to ultimately create a momentum for social change. While ADB, consisting of citizens, villagers and climate activists, functioned as a mediator between different organizations, the MAWA (“Mahnwache Lützerath”) offered support by engaging in legal issues.
In a way, the social movements around Lützerath demonstrated how to bridge gaps between climate activists and local residents as well as communities in a collective resistance against the capitalist destruction of the village and surrounding areas. Bundling this collective action also contributed to the momentum on January 14th, when nearly 35 000 protesters joined the massive mobilization.
The police blockade is being disrupted and protesters are getting ready to conquer the space.Climate activists break through the police barriers which lined up in front of the Lützerath village.
Beyond Lützerath: a Latin American perspective
“Energiewende” (“energy transition” in German) is Germany’s long term energy and climate strategy to shift from fossil and nuclear energy to renewables. By 2030 the country should reduce 65% of its CO2 emissions compared to 1990 levels and, by 2045, it is expected to become carbon neutral. However, the benefits of the energy transition are not only measured in CO2 reductions and climate protection. At the same time, the government seeks to minimize its dependence on energy imports and positions the country as a world leader in new, innovative and “environmentally friendly” technologies. Within the adopted and announced measures, wind and solar power, as well as hydrogen, are included as key issues to achieve these goals. Ironically, RWE plays an important role in this transition. In partnership with Shell, BASF, OGE and other companies, RWE takes part in more than 30 hydrogen projects.
Energy transition means much more than the production of clean energy. It includes subsidiary technologies such as the new infrastructures needed for the distribution of energy, batteries for its storage, and digital technologies. Germany plans to have 15 million electric vehicles in 2030. As a consequence, the demand for critical raw materials will increase, among which lithium, which is crucial for batteries. Recently, Germany’s chancellor visited Argentina, Chile and Brazil, with climate change and the energy transition among its top priorities. Lithium is truly needed to reduce emissions, but on the way to decarbonization, several controversies have arisen around new extractivisms that are being promoted in the name of climate protection. A study by the European Commission calculates that lithium demand will increase by more than 30% each year this decade, while 68% of the global lithium reserves can be found on high Andean salt plains. These are wetlands that can be found in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. In line with a long colonial history, extractivism in Latin America has always meant displacement of local people and destruction of landscapes.
A protester broke through the lines sitting on a power box behind police horse forces.A policeman is watching the crowd.
When asked about these issues, the German foreign office replies that no mining (or any other project related to the production of clean energy) should be done without social and environmental justice, and that due diligence will guarantee this. Officially, critical raw material mining is not promoted without the necessary procedures to guarantee people’s rights and protection of the ecosystems that can be affected by the activity. Then, the remaining question is whether these procedures are really enough to prevent new displacements, dispossessions and destructions in the region. The problem is not easy to solve because, for example, Argentina is currently undergoing a socioeconomic crisis and is eagerly looking to position itself on the world map as a strategic lithium provider. Unfortunately, this urgency often threatens the time that is needed to guarantee the free and informed consent of indigenous and local peoples, or to take the necessary measures required to protect Andean wetlands and other crucial ecosystems.
Climate activist – “RWE räumen!” (Evict RWE)
Although the German energy transition policy aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause environmental and social disasters in other parts of the world, it also generates new risks and geographical displacement of the problems – generally to countries in the Global South. If we link the Lützerath case with the energy transition proposed by Germany, we can see how, in the current global climate scenario, one extractivism is replaced by another. Mining that is prevented in this country for the elimination of coal as an energy source will be replaced by mining in other regions to achieve the infrastructural needs of its energy transition. These new global connections (atmospheric, commercial, political, etc.) that climate change is creating need renewed democratic debates that include all the risks posed by the alternatives in decolonial terms. This means asking hard questions to understand how strategies planned in Europe might affect people and ecosystems in other parts of the world.
A climate protester plays his harp in the messy midst of the protest.
Dennis Schüpf is a freelance documentary photographer and PhD candidate at IDOS (German Institute of Development & Sustainability), doing research on environmental justice issues and climate change adaptation. In his photographic work he is concerned with the attempt to visualize socio-natures, revealing power relations that form contested landscapes of environmental conflict. He has a master’s degree in International Development Studies and a strong interest in combining visual storytelling with environmental research.
Regina Ruete works on participatory processes related to environmental conflicts in Argentina. She planned and executed many relocation processes there. Currently, she is a guest researcher at IDOS (German Institute of Development & Sustainability) researching adaptation of river basins to climate change, as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow.
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.
Belated new year’s greetings and welcome to our first newsletter of 2023! This time, you’ll be able to read up on biodiversity and colonialist conservation; the battle to save Germany’s Lützerath from being swallowed by a coal mine; the ‘Cop City’ protests in Atlanta, Georgia to save the South River Forest; nuclear fusion; why fake meat is just another food fad; psychedelics and climate activism; international struggles for justice; and so many other important topics.
If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
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.
On this month’s list, you’ll find a bunch of readings on the COP15 and COP27, worker exploitation behind AI innovation, the disastrous environmental impact of the World Cup in Qatar, the importance of working less, the growing popularity of degrowth, and so much more. We also linked a website you can use to get past paywalls! We don’t always have time to run articles through it before adding them, so keep the page bookmarked for those we might miss.
If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Escape from the closed loop. Protests in China are shining a light not only on the country’s draconian population management but restrictions on workers everywhere.
Con el Acuerdo de París, más de 130 países firmantes se comprometieron a alcanzar el cero-neto de emisiones para 2050 con el fin de mantener el calentamiento global por debajo de los 2°C, preferiblemente a 1.5°C, en comparación con los niveles preindustriales. El cero-neto significa que la cantidad emitida de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI) debe ser igual a la que se captura de una u otra forma. Es decir, se busca un equilibrio entre una tonelada de carbono capturada por una tonelada emitida.
Desde la adopción de este compromiso en diciembre de 2015, diversos gobiernos, corporaciones, ONGs y medios de comunicación anuncian positivamente que el planeta está en camino de evitar una catástrofe climática.
El concepto de “emisiones cero-netas”no es el mismo que el de “emisiones cero”. Aunque parezcan similares, las emisiones cero-netas implican seguir emitiendo carbono, incluso cantidades mayores año tras año, siempre y cuando puedan equilibrarse a través de mecanismos tecnológicos o naturales que remueven la misma cantidad de carbono de la atmósfera. Podemos decir que el propósito detrás del cero-neto es parte de un esquema de maquillaje verde (greenwashing) no solo para continuar contaminando la atmósfera, incluso a mayor cantidad mientras se le pueda compensar, sino también para evadir la responsabilidad que tienen diversas industrias y gobiernos de compensar el daño ambiental que han provocado.
Las Soluciones Basadas en la Naturaleza (SbN) forman parte de esos mecanismos “naturales” a los que recurren países y corporaciones para compensar sus emisiones. De acuerdo con la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (UICN), las SbN son “acciones para proteger, gestionar de manera sostenible y restaurar ecosistemas naturales y modificados que aborden los desafíos sociales de manera efectiva y adaptativa, brindando simultáneamente beneficios para el bienestar humano y la biodiversidad”. Es decir, las SbN implican hacer uso de la naturaleza para abordar un problema social, principalmente el exceso de GEI en la atmósfera, pero que en realidad representan una distracción a la urgente necesidad de dejar de emitir carbono.
La idea detrás de este concepto es que nuestros ecosistemas marinos y terrestres son los mayores depósitos naturales para capturar y almacenar carbono y, por tanto, debemos aprovechar esta oportunidad. Las demás crisis ecológicas y sociales, como la contaminación en zonas urbanas marginalizadas, el hambre, la malnutrición, los desplazamientos forzados y las desigualdades —todas fuertemente vinculadas con la crisis climática— no parecen estar consideradas dentro de las SbN.
La restauración, protección y manejo sustentable de los ecosistemas, la reforestación y la deforestación evitada son algunas de las acciones de las SbN. Sin duda son necesarias para conservar nuestra biodiversidad. Pero antes de la aparición de este concepto —nacido hace poco más de una década—, estas acciones ya formaban parte de los esfuerzos internacionales para hacer frente al deterioro de los ecosistemas y sus impactos sociales y económicos. El Informe Brundtland –mejor conocido como Nuestro Futuro Común (Our Common Future)– elaborado en 1987 por la Comisión Brundtland ya mencionaba: “Nuestras prácticas de manejo ambiental se han centrado en gran medida en la reparación de los daños a posteriori: reforestación, recuperación de tierras desérticas, reconstrucción de entornos urbanos, restauración de hábitats y rehabilitación de tierras silvestres”.
Entonces, ¿qué diferencia hay entre las acciones propuestas como SbN y las promovidas décadas atrás? Retóricamente, ninguna. Sustancialmente, las SbN encubren la falta de interés de las grandes corporaciones y gobiernos por lograr emisiones cero reales, además de aprovechar estas soluciones para seguir generando beneficios económicos al mantener el status quo.
¿Plantar árboles para combatir el calentamiento global?
De acuerdo con Griscom y otres autores (2017), las SbN pueden ayudar a cumplir los objetivos del Acuerdo de Paris al mitigar hasta el 37% de las emisiones globales de dióxido de carbono (CO2) para 2030. Cerca de dos tercios del total de mitigación propuesto a través de las SbN incluyen acciones como la reforestación, conversión forestal evitada, manejo forestal natural, mejora en las plantaciones y manejo del fuego. La reforestación por sí sola representa más del 42% de la mitigación potencial global bajo las SbN. Pero para lograr esta disminución de CO2, se requeriría plantar árboles a mayor escala y velocidad, lo cual no es tan sencillo e incluso problemático.
Los árboles jóvenes son vulnerables. Cerca de un 25% mueren, y esa cifra puede ser incluso mayor. Por ejemplo, el 11 de noviembre de 2019 el gobierno de Turquía declaró el Día de la Reforestación Nacional y como parte de la iniciativa Respirar por el Futuro se plantaron 11 millones de árboles en más de 2 mil sitios. De acuerdo con el sindicato de agricultura y forestal de Turquía, hasta el 90% de esos árboles puede que hayan muerto solo unos meses después, debido principalmente a la falta de agua y a que fueron plantados en el “momento incorrecto” por “gente con poca experiencia”.
La falta de espacio es otro problema ya que no existe suficiente tierra para plantar los árboles que se necesitarían para compensar las emisiones de GEI provenientes de los combustibles fósiles. Simon Lewis, profesor de Ciencia en Cambio Global de la Universidad College de Londres, señala en una entrevista para The Economist que si se restauraran todas las zonas de cobertura forestal que fueron convertidas en suelos agrícolas se lograría capturar alrededor de 200 mil millones de toneladas de carbono. Esto sin embargo representa solamente 20 años de emisiones de combustibles fósiles a tasas actuales.
Por otro lado, plantar árboles en lugares donde antes no existían, como pastizales y turberas, también puede dañar los ecosistemas existentes. Los grandes proyectos forestales en China por ejemplo han intensificado la escasez de agua en el país. El proyecto de la Gran Muralla Verde de China inició a finales de la década de los setenta del siglo pasado con el objetivo de forestar a gran escala el norte del país. Entre 1990 y 2015, el total de área forestal en ese país aumentó más de 17 millones de hectáreas debido principalmente a la aforestación —es decir, el establecimiento de nuevos bosques. Los planes del gobierno de China buscan incrementar su cobertura forestal a 26% para 2035 y 42% para 2050. Pero este esfuerzo ha desenmascarado diversos problemas. Un estudio de 2019 sobre los efectos de la aforestación de China en el ciclo de agua encontró que la sustitución de la vegetación natural por plantaciones artificiales de árboles de falsa acacia –una especie no local de rápido crecimiento– ha cambiado significativamente la disponibilidad de agua en estas regiones. Este tipo de plantaciones utilizan el 92% de las precipitaciones anuales para crecer, dejando solamente el 8% para usos humanos. Como resultado, no queda suficiente agua para recargar los mantos acuíferos o para que fluya hacia los ríos y lagos.
A nivel global la competencia por tierras está desencadenando conflictos en los que pueblos indígenas, comunidades campesinas e históricamente explotadas corren el mayor riesgo de perder sus hogares, culturas y medios de subsistencia como resultado de estos proyectos de plantación extensiva. En 2019 el gobierno de Mongolia Interior, una de las cinco regiones autónomas que conforman la República Popular China, fue acusado por incautar tierras de cultivo para cumplir con los objetivos de cobertura forestal fijados por Pekín.
A pesar de que el ejemplo de China implica uno de los esfuerzos gubernamentales más ambiciosos y que plantar árboles sea considerado por muchos países como uno de los remedios infalibles más baratos y rápidos para luchar contra la crisis climática, la realidad es que estos mecanismos benefician intereses corporativos. Grandes empresas se involucran en ambiciosos proyectos de reforestación y de conservación para compensar sus altos niveles de emisiones, pero no para reducirlas de manera voluntaria. Las SbN se han convertido en un mecanismo utilizado por los grandes contaminadores para proponer formas nuevas de mercantilizar la naturaleza, ignorando la realidad de que el planeta no tiene la suficiente capacidad para absorber el carbono a la velocidad necesaria bajo un esquema de emisiones cero-netas; y que los depósitos naturales de carbono como los bosques no pueden ser forzados a absorber más carbón, o absorberlo más rápido al creciente ritmo de emisiones de GEI.
Corporaciones multinacionales y sus compromisos de emisiones cero-neto
Desde 1988, menos de 100 corporaciones han sido las responsables de más del 70% de las emisiones industriales a nivel mundial. Entre las principales se encuentran empresas petroleras como PAO Gazprom (Rusia), ExxonMobil (Estados Unidos), Pemex (México), Shell y BP (Reino Unido); pero también empresas automotrices como Volkswagen Group, aéreas como Lufthansa, agroalimentarias como JBS, Tyson Foods y Cargill, comercios minoristas como Walmart, instituciones financieras como Citigroup y HSBC, y compañías tecnológicas como Microsoft y Amazon. A pesar de que estas grandes industrias y corporaciones son los grandes responsables de la contaminación histórica en la atmósfera, estas se han mantenido impunes y continúan beneficiándose de la ruptura climática.
Más recientemente, cuando las corporaciones buscan catálogos de inversión supuestamente verdes, Citigroup y HSBC financiaron en 2020 la extracción e infraestructura de combustibles fósiles con 48.3 y 23.5 miles de millones de dólares, respectivamente; mientras que Microsoft y Amazon se han asociado con empresas petroleras para utilizar tecnologías de inteligencia artificial que ayuden a desbloquear yacimientos de petróleo y gas en Estados Unidos y en el mundo. En noviembre de 2020, el fundador de Amazon, Jeff Bezos, anunció que destinaría 10 mil millones de dólares a un fondo para enfrentar el cambio climático: el Bezos Earth Fund. Lamentablemente, estos esfuerzos ignoran o disfrazan el continuo apoyo de Amazon al sector de los combustibles fósiles. Ese mismo año y en medio de una pandemia, Amazon emitió un 18% más de CO2 que en el año 2019: 60.6 millones de toneladas métricas de CO2 en 2020, en comparación con las 51.2 y 44.4 millones en 2019 y 2018, respectivamente, de acuerdo con su último reporte de sustentabilidad.
Grandes contaminadores, especialmente de la industria de combustibles fósiles, son a la vez grandes promotores de SbN para mitigar el cambio climático. En un comunicado de prensa de febrero 2021, Shell anunció que, como parte de su compromiso con el Acuerdo de París, la compañía espera reducir gradualmente la producción de petróleo entre 1 y 2% por año, después de su pico petrolero de 2019. Basado en estas proyecciones, la extracción de Shell caerá a lo mucho en 18% para 2030 y 45% para 2050. Esto significa pasar de producir cerca de 1.9 millones de barriles de petróleo equivalente al día en 2019 a un poco más de 1 millón de barriles en 2050.
Curiosamente, en el mismo comunicado –con información de su Informe y Cuentas Anuales 2020– Shell notifica a sus accionistas que planea invertir en el corto plazo 8 mil millones de dólares (mmdd) anuales en exploración y explotación de combustibles fósiles, 4-5 mmdd en químicos y refinación, 4 mmdd en gas natural licuado y 5-6 mmdd en lo que denomina su pilar de crecimiento, dividido en 2-3 mmdd para energías renovables y 3 mmdd en mercadotenica. La inversión se espera que ronde entre 21 y 23 mmdd anuales, representando las renovables únicamente alrededor del 8-14% de ese monto. La inversión en combustibles fósiles seguirá siendo al menos el 70% del total de su presupuesto.
Para lograr su compromiso cero-neto, Shell pretende compensar sus emisiones recurriendo a las SbN. Específicamente, invirtiendo en proyectos de forestación para compensar 120 millones de toneladas de dióxido de carbono equivalente (CO2e) al año para 2030. De acuerdo con Reuters y Ecosystem Marketplace, esto es un gran salto dado que todo el mercado voluntario de compensación de carbono –las compensaciones disponibles para compra por parte de todos los actores globales– alcanzó los 104 millones de toneladas en 2019. Para que Shell pueda compensar estas emisiones, se necesitarían alrededor de 12 millones de hectáreas disponibles–el equivalente a tres veces el tamaño de Países Bajos, el país donde se ubica su sede –.
En 2021, Shell también publicó Los escenarios de Transformación Energética, un reporte que explora tres diferentes respuestas de recuperación a la crisis de la pandemia en 2020 y los diferentes escenarios energéticos en las siguientes décadas.
El escenario global Sky 1.5 muestra que limitar el calentamiento global a 1.5°C podría alcanzarse en el 2100 junto con emisiones cero-netas totales para el 2058. Para lograrlo, Shell basa ampliamente sus proyecciones apoyándose en las SbN para compensar 12 mil millones de toneladas de CO2e globales al año. En este caso, la reforestación de 700 millones de hectáreas para finales de siglo demandaría un área aproximadamente del tamaño de Brasil. En un análisis del Sky 1.5 realizado por Carbon Brief, les autores señalan que la diferencia entre este escenario y la ruta propuesta por Shell en 2018 para limitar el calentamiento global a 2°C –inicialmente con un pico de petróleo en 2025, un pico de gas una década después y emisiones cero-netas totales para 2070– es que Sky 1.5 hace uso extensivo de SbN, pero la meta es prácticamente la misma a la ruta del 2018.
“La visión de Shell de que el petróleo, el gas y el carbón sigan teniendo un papel importante hasta el fin del siglo sigue siendo esencialmente la misma”, se lee en el análisis. El propio director ejecutivo de Shell, Ben van Beurden, mencionó en una entrevista que “a pesar de lo que dicen muchos activistas, es totalmente legítimo invertir en petróleo y gas porque el mundo lo demanda”.
¿En dónde se encuentran las 700 millones de hectáreas que pretende Shell estén disponibles para plantar árboles? Esto sin contar las hectáreas que buscan conservarse a través de esfuerzos globales como la Iniciativa 30×30 para proteger al menos el 30% de las áreas terrestres y aguas continentales del mundo para el año 2030. Estos cálculos de escritorio tampoco consideran los impactos devastadores a comunidades locales e indígenas que habitan actualmente en esas zonas, los conflictos a gran escala por tierras y para cultivo de alimentos. ¿Acaso se implementarán las NbS a través de la militarización de áreas protegidas y de violaciones a los derechos humanos? Las distracciones peligrosas en las que se basa Shell para lograr su cero-neto en 2050 evidencian claramente su inacción climática puesto que su intención es mantener el status quo y lucrar de las propias soluciones.
BP es otra empresa que convenientemente usa el greenwashing para evitar cualquier esfuerzo por disminuir sus emisiones de GEI. En su Reporte Anual para Inversionistas 2020, la compañía menciona que espera reducir su producción de petróleo y gas en un 40% para 2030, tomando como referencia los niveles de 2019. Un punto crítico que omiten es que casi un tercio de la producción está excluida de los recortes ya que proviene del 20% de su participación en la compañía petrolera Rosneft, propiedad del gobierno ruso.
Si se consideran las cifras utilizadas para el cálculo del 40%, la reducción en la producción de petróleo y gas es más bien del 30%. Como menciona Kelly Trout, analista de investigación de la organización Oil Change International, “BP debe asumir la responsabilidad de Rosneft por todo el carbono que invierte en extraer, para pretender legítimamente alcanzar una reducción del 40% para 2030”.
Como parte de su compromiso de emisiones cero-netas, BP planea aumentar sus inversiones anuales a 3-4 mmdd para 2025 y 5 mmdd para 2030 en negocios bajos en carbono. Por ejemplo, la energía eólica, solar, combustible de hidrógeno a partir de metano, bioenergía y tecnologías para la captura, uso y almacenamiento de carbono (CCUS, por sus siglas en inglés) forman parte de estas inversiones.
Debemos ser escépticos a estas soluciones debido a los inconvenientes de invertir en combustibles de hidrógeno a partir de metano, tecnologías para capturar carbono aún no probadas y de difícil escalabilidad, y biocombustibles que pueden llevar a la deforestación.
En su Reporte de Sustentabilidad 2020, BP propone hacer uso de las SbN y de soluciones climáticas naturales (SCN) que ayuden a lograr sus emisiones cero-netas a través de compensaciones de carbono certificadas. Las SCN son un subconjunto de las SbN enfocadas en reducir o remover GEI a través de la conservación, la restauración y la mejora en la gestión del suelo. Para finales del 2022 esperan haber desarrollado un plan de acción que identifique los objetivos hacia el 2030. Según el reporte, a la fecha BP ha apoyado a generar más de 50 millones de toneladas de compensaciones forestales en los Estados Unidos y ha contribuido en proyectos de SCN en otros seis países.
BP colabora con proyectos supuestamente ambientales para disfrazar su nulo interés por reducir sus emisiones. En 2011, BP pagó 5 millones de dólares al Fondo Cooperativo para el Carbono de los Bosques (FCPF, por sus siglas en inglés) del Banco Mundial para “aumentar nuestra comprensión de la evolución de los mercados y la política de carbono, así como ayudar a catalizar el desarrollo de este importante sector”. Sin embargo, BP ha sido acusado de involucrarse al FCPF para lavar su imagen un año después de que se le declarara responsable del derrame de 5 millones de barriles de petróleo en el Golfo de México.
El FCPF fue fundado en diciembre de 2007, y una década después, la Fundación Rainforest de Reino Unido y otras organizaciones enviaron una carta al entonces presidente del Banco Mundial Jim Yong Kim afirmando que el millonario fondo no se había traducido en proteger bosques. Esta iniciativa fallida no ha sido obstáculo para que BP explore otras vías de compensación. En 2019 invirtió 5 millones de dólares en Finite Carbon, el mayor promotor de compensaciones de carbono forestal de Estados Unidos. Para 2020 adquirió la participación mayoritaria.
En resumen, la idea detrás de las emisiones cero netas de los grandes contaminadores es perpetuar un modelo económico basado en el petróleo, el gas, el carbón, y más recientemente en el fracking y la minería en mares profundos; mientras financian, por ejemplo, proyectos de restauración a gran escala para compensar sus altos niveles de contaminación. No es una coincidencia que estén posicionando el cero-neto al centro de la acción climática. Esto proporciona una vía para que sigan generando ganancias mientras hablan de “compromiso climático” sin intención alguna de reducir sus emisiones reales, de compensar los daños históricos y sin rendir cuentas de los abusos a los derechos humanos y ecológicos. En lugar de soluciones reales, alcanzables y centradas en las formas de vida terrestre y marina, la respuesta global a la crisis climática se apoya en cimientos agrietados por falsas soluciones.
No más promesas falsas
De acuerdo con The Washington Post, en el segundo trimestre del 2022, cinco grandes empresas petroleras –BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell y TotalEnergies– obtuvieron ganancias económicas por 55 mil millones de dólares, mientras millones de personas en todo el mundo padecían los aumentos en los precios de los energéticos. Esto equivale a casi dos veces el producto interno bruto (PIB) de El Salvador y Honduras en 2021. BP reportó solamente en ese trimestre beneficios por 8 mil 500 millones de dólares, su mayor ganancia en 14 años a pesar de las pérdidas obtenidas luego de abandonar sus operaciones en Rusia por la guerra en Ucrania.
Nuestro presupuesto global de carbono desde inicios del 2020 para mantener el calentamiento global por debajo de los 1.5°C es de 400 mil millones de toneladas de CO2.
En la Conferencia Anual de la Sociedad de Economistas Empresariales en 2015, Spencer Dale, Economista Jefe de BP, comentó que las reservas actuales de petróleo, gas y carbón, si se utilizaran en su totalidad, generarían más de 2.8 billones de toneladas de CO2. La matemática es sencilla: quemar los combustibles fósiles que las corporaciones poseen en sus reservas sobrepasaría seis veces el umbral de lo permitido para evitar una catástrofe climática. Para prevenirla, cerca de un tercio de las reservas de petróleo, la mitad de las de gas y más del 80% de las actuales reservas de carbón de todo el mundo deberían permanecer bajo tierra y no utilizarse.
Las SbN no pueden reemplazar los compromisos necesarios para descarbonizar la economía. Nuestro actual sistema económico se caracteriza por organizarse en torno al crecimiento perpetuo, más acumulación de capital y más injusticias y violencias. Se requieren cambios reales en la forma en la que industrialmente producimos y consumimos, y en la manera en la que distribuimos los beneficios generados.
Son varias las alternativas, pero las demandas se asemejan: acciones que no dependan de la mercantilización de la naturaleza y de la extracción de recursos naturales más allá de los límites que el planeta puede permitir; un desarrollo que respete siempre los derechos humanos y que sitúe a las personas y otras especies vivas en el centro de toda política ambiental, protegiendo sobre todos a quienes son más vulnerables a los impactos del cambio climático; mayor vigilancia y rendición de cuentas a los grandes proyectos de infraestructura y a las empresas que contaminan, obligándolas a remediar los daños ambientales que provoquen; y garantizar la defensa, gestión ecológica y autónoma que las poblaciones indígenas y comunidades locales ejercen sobre sus propios territorios.
Manuel Cervera es economista ecológico a favor de la justicia climática. Considera que hablar de crisis climática es hablar de desigualdad. Cuenta con una maestría en Economía y una especialización en Economía Ambiental y Ecológica por la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
Activists of “Just Stop Oil” glue their hands to the wall after throwing soup at a van Gogh’s painting “Sunflowers” at the National Gallery in London, Britain October 14, 2022. Just Stop Oil/Handout via REUTERS
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.
In October, the infamous soup incident – in which two young Just Stop Oil activists threw soup on a Van Gogh painting at the National Gallery in London as a form of climate protest – was on everyone’s lips, so we decided to dedicate a section in this newsletter to discussions around activism and strategy. We also unfortunately lost three great thinkers: philosopher and anthropologist Bruno Latour, Leftist urban theorist and historian Mike Davis, and ecological economist Herman Daly. We featured readings on their legacy in the ‘theory’ section. For some good news, we have a huge victory to celebrate this month: Lula won the Brazilian election, and while this is only the beginning, the dystopian era of Bolsonaro is over! Finally, we read great articles on convivial technologies and the deep history of work, and enjoyed a two-part podcast series on what a just green transition might look like; and, as usual, we turned the spotlight on struggles around the world, and compiled a section on fake climate solutions and real reparations.
If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Uneven Earth updates
Green growth | Capitalist and neocolonial fantasies are hampering a just transition
Don’t tell me to just breathe. An animation that speaks to the spiralling levels of anxiety and depression in the UK and other rich nations by revealing the often silenced links between these mental health crises and the current economic system, including not only the increasing pressures upon people’s basic needs, but also the ‘capitalist realism’ that allows climate breakdown to unfold before our very eyes.
In the midst of heated conversation about the ecological crisis, there always seems to be someone making these kinds of points. This is ‘green growth’ thinking. It is promoted by leading multilateral organisations and is assumed in national and international policymaking, including the European Green Deal, IPCC reports, the Paris Agreement and most recently in the US’ Inflation Reduction Act. You are also likely to come across green growth in your private quarrels; for many, it has become common sense.
The green growth perspective holds that we need to tackle the ecological crisis and strive towards a circular economy, while growing our economies at the same time. As such, green growth is rooted in an ‘ecomodernist’ belief in technological progress: there are no limits to growth since there are no limits to human ingenuity.
In this article, I will provide an overview of why green growth is dangerously misguided. First, the foundation of green growth is a concept of “decoupling” which doesn’t stand up to scrutiny once we unpack it. Second, capitalism’s requirement for constant growth means that any efficiency gains derived from new “greener” processes, resources or products are largely folded back into increased consumption – a process known as the Jevons paradox. Third, green growthers reason with a ‘carbon tunnel’, leading them to give reductionistic solutions to environmental issues that demand holistic ones.
Net zero and decoupling: A language to gamble with the future
First, let’s start with some facts: at present, seven years after the Paris Agreement was made to keep global temperatures below 1.5 degrees, CO2 emissions are still rising. As a matter of fact, during the 30 years since governments gathered in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – the document that would form the basis for all future climate negotiations -more carbon has been emitted into the atmosphere than in all of history combined. The Global Energy Report of the International Energy Alliance showed that energy-related CO2 emissions grew 36.3 Gt in 2021, a record high.
To put this in perspective: the remaining 1.5°C carbon budget – the total amount of carbon dioxide that can still be emitted into the atmosphere while keeping global temperature below 1.5 degrees – was estimated to be 495 Gt CO2 at the beginning of 2020. With emissions rising at 2021 levels, the carbon budget is expected to be overshot in about a decade.
Source: Timothy Parrique ‘40 years of Bla Bla Bla’. The graph is a combination of the warming stripes of Prof. Ed Hawkins, final editor IPCC Report 2022 and the CO2 concentration ‘Keeling curve’ of the measuring station Mauna Loa in Hawaii
It is widely acknowledged that current fossil fuel investment plans of countries across the world significantly overshoot this carbon budget, even though these same governments signed the Paris Agreement back in 2015. How can this be?
Ever since 1992 there has been a faith that these overshot emissions will be offset by strategies elsewhere that sequester carbon — cap and trade, offset markets, all were efforts to envision “decoupling” emissions from their negative effects to justify overshoot. Today, the most common iteration of this is using the language of “net zero”.
“Net zero” refers to a scenario where continued emissions are balanced out with massive withdrawals of carbon from the atmosphere. Rather than aiming for actual emissions reductions, governments accept that the carbon budget will be overshot, by expecting that this ‘excess carbon’ will be pulled out of the atmosphere somewhere in the future.
Models that form the base of the Paris Agreement and scenarios assessed in IPCC reports assume carbon dioxide removal to the scale of 100 to 1000 billion tonnes of CO2 until 2100, predominantly through a set of technological solutions known as bioenergy and carbon capture and storage, or BECCS.
The idea is that through BECCS, high consumption and production levels can be maintained, while simultaneously reducing the net amount of carbon that is released into the atmosphere. Since more consumption and production means more growth of a country’s Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, it would mean that GDP growth becomes decoupled from an economy’s environmental impact. In the words of the European Environmental Agency: “The idea that societies can decouple GDP growth from environmental pressures is central to the concepts of ‘green growth’ and ‘the green economy’”. Decoupling is the panacea for how growth supposedly becomes green.
Unfortunately, this faith in decoupling has no empirical grounding. First of all, there is a need to be clear about the difference between relative and absolute decoupling. Relative decoupling refers to a situation where emissions are still rising as the economy grows, only to a lesser extent (the slope of the still rising curve has flattened a bit). Absolute decoupling refers to a situation where total emissions decrease, while the economy continues to grow. At present, we are seeing that many rich nations are in a situation of relative decoupling, while global emissions are still rising.
This leads to an important point: we must be mindful of the ways that relative decoupling is influenced by the geographical disjuncture between where production takes place and where GDP is measured. Most rich countries in the global North have outsourced their production process to fuel their energy and resource use to poor countries in the South. Furthermore, relative decoupling is often the consequence of major, one-off changes – the ‘low hanging fruits of the transition’ – such as the substitution of coal with natural gas (And too often, that coal isn’t left in the ground, but just finds other markets to be burned in). It is much harder to sustain this declining rate of emissions once this phase is over, especially in a scenario where energy demand continues to grow. Besides, relative decoupling in the global North can lead to a situation where fossil fuel infrastructures (commonly) located in the global South become ‘stranded assets’, leading (commonly) Northern corporations to divest and leave. As there is often no case of corporations remediating their toxic legacies before leaving, environmental justice groups are holding fossil fuel investors accountable for their decades of social and ecological destruction.
Reducing emissions only is not enough
Decoupling discussions tend to focus on carbon emissions linked to our energy use, or ‘decarbonization’. However, when talking about the impact the global economy has on our planet’s ecology, we also need to talk about decoupling our economy’s broader material footprint or ‘dematerialization’. While absolute decoupling of emissions is happening in some regions, there are almost no cases of the absolute decoupling of resource use.
At the national level, there are some cases of absolute decoupling. A study often cited to defend green growth and empirically prove decoupling shows that between 2005 and 2015, 18 countries (Sweden, Romania, France, Ireland, Spain, UK, Bulgaria, The Netherlands, Italy, United States, Germany, Denmark, Portugal, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Finland, and Croatia) have decreased their CO2 emissions by 2.4% per year. This is good news, but unfortunately, it is only one third of the reductions in emissions that are needed at a global level to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Moreover, part of that decrease can be explained by a slowdown in GDP growth rates of the countries where absolute decoupling was observed.
As for resource use, empirical records demonstrate a similarly strong relationship between GDP and material footprint. Towards the end of the twentieth century GDP grew at a faster rate (3 percent per year) than resource use (2 percent per year), which represents a small relative ‘decoupling’. But this changed in the 21th century, when the growth rate of global consumption accelerated and so did global resource use, to 3.85 percent per year, a bigger increase than GDP in the same period, meaning that the material intensity of the global economy has in fact increased during that period. As the authors of one of the most extensive studies looking into this put it: ‘Currently, the world economy is on a path of re-materialization and far away from any – even relative – decoupling.’ Meanwhile, modelled scenarios show that under growth-as-usual conditions absolute reductions in resource use are unlikely to be achieved at a global level even with dramatic efficiency improvements.
As the authors of the report “Decoupling Debunked” of the European Environmental Bureau put it: “Of all the studies reviewed, we have found no trace that would warrant the hopes currently invested into the decoupling strategy”.
The scientific community is beginning to see that the huge reliance of global climate mitigation strategies on green growth thinking is speculative and risky.
Of course, the fact that decoupling hasn’t worked historically does not mean that the future can’t be different. But the question is not only whether it will be technologically feasible to achieve absolute decoupling; the question is whether we can reduce emissions fast enough to stay below 1.5 degrees warming, while still continuing economic growth. Given the remaining planetary carbon budget, we don’t have the time to afford ourselves a ‘technological challenge’ like this. We need to make it as easy as possible to make the energy transition in the fastest possible way, and economic growth, which continues to be coupled with emissions and material footprint, does not appear to be helping. Paradoxically, while it is common for people in the green growth camp to raise the notion of speed, it is exactly those who continue to defend growth who don’t have time on their side.
The efficiency paradox
When you confront a hardcore green growther with these facts, you will hear a reply like “Just wait for it, we are seeing such huge improvements in the technologies that will make our economies green. Just look at how efficient solar panels are today compared to just a few years ago!”
With arguments like this, green growthers confuse efficiency with scale. In growth-dependent economies, the more efficiently we use resources (like those needed to set up a renewable energy infrastructure) the lower they cost, and the more of them we end up using. This rebound effect is known as the ‘Jevons paradox’: increases in efficiency in the use of a resource lead to an overall increase in the use of that resource, not a decrease.. Why? Because under capitalism, growth-oriented companies use the savings to ramp up production and stimulate consumption. As a result, the anticipated efficiency gains are squandered by increased consumption or changes in consumption behaviour. As the production of Teslas becomes more efficient and costs less, Elon Musk will simply re-invest the saved money on marketing to convince more people to buy a Tesla while seeking new profitable investment areas. At the end of the day, as more and more people are getting used to the sight of a city filling up with electric bikes and electric cars, we aren’t actually using less energy but continue to normalise energy and materially intensive products into what counts as a standard mode of living.
Some people argue that the economy might require less energy with the shift to services and digitalization observed over the past decades in many high- and middle income countries. But actually, tertiarization in industrialised countries, as well as efficiency improvements achieved through digitalization, have led to increases in energy use and CO2 emissions during the last decades. In essence, any economic growth is anchored in a materialized economy, despite the imaginary of a dematerialized knowledge economy.
This continued growth in energy demand results in a situation where the introduction of new energy sources – like solar and wind – aren’t replacing older sources of energy, but are complimenting them. This turns what is supposed to be an energy transition in theory into an energy expansion in practice. As Jason Hickel has put it: ‘trying to fill an ever growing energy demand with clean energy sources makes the energy transition only more difficult in the short time we have left’.
All of this is not to say that post-growth voices that criticise green growth thinking are against technological innovation. Substituting fossil fuels by cleaner forms of energy is imperative. But scaling up green technology is simply not enough. Instead of struggling to “green” expanding economies, we also need a planned, absolute reduction of energy and resource use in high-income nations. It is exactly this reduction that the political and corporate elite who continue to defend green growth hate to think about, since it is exactly their lifestyle that ends up being the most energy and resource intensive.
The carbon tunnel
Picture a green growth future. Rich countries will have electrified their total energy supply system by 2050. Renewable energy infrastructures are upscaled massively (IPCC models assume an expansion during the upcoming decades with a factor 40-50). Clean energy sources are being used very efficiently: “everybody” has an electric car, an electric bike, solar panels on their roof and a heat pump in their basement. Growth has become clean and no need to think about ecological limits whatsoever.
Besides the fact that such a scenario glosses over questions of power and ownership and obscures mounting inequities within rich countries in people’s access to the goods and services to meet their basic needs (whether provided in a green way or not), it also reveals a simple, almost childish fact: we can’t have unlimited growth on a limited planet.
Damming rivers, erecting wind turbines, and installing solar energy fields to supplant fossil fuels still requires enormous amounts of raw materials and still leads to the wrecking of ecosystems – systems that particularly people in the global South depend upon for their survival. Scaling BECCS to the level assumed under the Paris Agreement requires massive amounts of agricultural land (equivalent to two times the size of India) and water for biofuels. This raises profound questions about land and water availability, competition with food production, emissions from land-use change, water depletion,biodiversity loss and ultimately Earth’s ability to nurture human and non-human life. In essence, by focusing solely on reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere through technological innovation, green growth thinking looks at only one planetary boundary. However, Earth scientists show us that it is more useful to consider the nine natural systems that interact in a complex way to enable life on Earth. These interactions explain the occurrence of ‘climate tipping points’, referring to how a certain change in one natural system could abruptly trigger an irreversible cascade of ecological destructive events through structurally changing the way the Earth’s system functions. The fact that many IPCC scenarios relying on BECCS assume a temporal overshoot of 1,5 degrees warming, risks hitting these irreversible tipping points during that overshoot period,leading to the sudden release of greenhouse gases captured by ecosystems functioning as ‘carbon sinks’, like oceans, forests or permafrost areas.
Source: Stockholm Resilience Centre
All of this reveals the need for holistic climate mitigation policies that acknowledge the basic principle of ecology: everything is interconnected. The fact that green growth thinking fails to see this, shows the reductinstim and short-termism of it. In essence, green growth thinkers reason from within a ‘carbon tunnel’.
Growth has always been a colonial project, so is green growth
Finally, we shouldn’t forget that growth has always been a colonial project. We know that resource use in the Global North is in large part appropriated from the Global South, through what are effectively patterns of imperial power. A paper published this year indicated that the value of appropriated resources from South to the North over the period 1990-2015 totaled $242 trillion in terms of prevailing market prices. This drain of Southern resources, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP, outstripped their total aid receipts by a factor of 30. In 2015, the North appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour. These resources could be mobilised to meet domestic needs directly and to fight extreme poverty in the Global South, rather than being used to service growth in the Global North. In fact, the authors who revealed these numbers calculated that this appropriation was worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices, which would be enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over.
The green growth framework replicates this colonial thinking and applies it into the energy transition. Already, the demand for rare earth materials to massively build wind turbines and solar panels in the global North is increasing the pressure on resource rich areas overwhelmingly inhabited by Indigenous and marginalised communities in the Global South. Meanwhile, we know that people living in the South have contributed least to the current distorted state of Earth while bearing the biggest share of the burden of environmental breakdown. A green transition coupled with maintaining growth in the North will inevitably increase the destruction of their livelihoods, transforming them into ‘green sacrifice zones’.
To conclude: Capitalism’s growth logic is in direct opposition to making a just transition to a genuinely sustainable world economy as fast as possible. Putting negative-emission technologies and the green growth belief at the basis of the global climate mitigation agenda is an unjust and high-stakes gamble and is not an ecologically coherent approach to the crisis we face. In acknowledgement of this, an increasing number of scientists are calling for a post-growth climate mitigation agenda that is aligned with how our planet’s natural systems work and that is grounded in empirical reality. Only then can we truly speak about a just transition to a sustainable economy.
Winne van Woerden works as Lead Degrowth & Caring Economy at Commons Network, an Amsterdam-based think-thank for the social and ecological transition. She holds an MSc in Global Health from the University of Maastricht and is a master’s candidate in Degrowth: Policy, Economy and Ecology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is the lead author of the book Living Well on a Finite Planet, Building a Caring World beyond Growth.
Gauchos at the Pintado wind farm in Corral de Piedra, Uruguay. Credit: Alessandro Cinque for The New York Times
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.
For September, our list is short and sweet. Highlights include a comprehensive report by Global Witness that found that 1,733 land and environmental defenders have been killed worldwide over the last 10 years; analysis of Patagonia’s move to give away its profits in service of the planet; different articles on Pakistan’s devastating floods; a great story on Uruguay as an example of what a good life within planetary boundaries might look like; and a piece co-written by our editor Aaron Vansintjan on why degrowth is not austerity. We also found a cool TikTok on why ‘third places’ (places where people spend time between their home and work, like cafés, parks, or churches) are so important in fighting alienation, and a video with relaxing visuals and ambient sounds by Studio Ghibli to help us switch off after digesting the world’s heavy news.
If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
From dreams to dust. The ostensibly green electric vehicle revolution has a decidedly dirty side, and the winner of the 2022 Yale Environment 360 Video Contest — “From dreams to dust” — vividly tells the story of the high cost of nickel mining through the life of an Indonesian mine worker.
Podcast on the Dutch farmer protests. Kai Heron and Alex Heffron discuss the far-right influences in the farmer protests currently sweeping the Netherlands, far-right representations of rural life, the politics of food production, and much more.
It is fair to say that most environmental books and political attention are centered on the climate crisis. And for good reason: for the vast majority of the world, a planet burning past 1.5℃ is existential. But for every article or text written about simply reducing CO2, audiences and the public are left thinking that if we just switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy it is enough to avert catastrophe. As the authors Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettesse of the new book Half-Earth Socialism argue, we have much more work to do than simply reducing carbon pollution.
Instead, the authors claim we need a holistic ecological program that puts the economy back into balance with the living world by respecting limits, nonhuman nature, and thinking at a planetary scale. Half-Earth Socialism seeks to do just that through a political program consisting of a variety of policies in the realm of worldwide conservation, vegan diets, and sufficient provisioning to the world’s population.
Where the book thrives in its utopian imagination, its originality in synthesizing disparate thinkers and traditions, and its criticisms of “prometheanism”, it also lacks a strong analysis of democracy, a more thorough argument against some its targets, and at times, can be found to concede to anticipated criticism regarding its more provocative ideas, especially as it concerns veganism.
An original synthesis
As a general summary of the book, the authors begin by describing a dystopian scenario where a solar radiation management (SMR) scheme fails, leading to species loss, acid rain, and reversing the environmental wins from the previous century. Following the introduction, the authors critique the promethean worldview that seeks to dominate nature, essentially making the nonhuman world a machine of inputs and outputs.
The authors then draw from biologist E.O. Wilson’s idea of conserving half the earth for wildlife and nonhuman nature as a counter to this promethean program. This means protecting large areas of the earth for wildlife to thrive, where Wilson identified thirty biomes across the globe that could largely contribute to this conservation effort. To achieve this rewilding, the authors suggest universal veganism is required due to the vast amount of land animal agriculture uses.
Unlike Wilson, who the authors describe as center-left, Half-Earth Socialism compliments worldwide conservation with socialist central planning. Here they engage with the work of theorists like Otto Neurath and the Soviet mathematician Leonid Kantorovich to explain how utopian socialist planning would work in a Half-Earth economy. The author’s vision for central planning is inspired by the socialist and designer William Morris who was interested in how socialism could offer fulfilling work by integrating labor with arts, nature, and leisure. They end the book describing a future of organic veggie farms, communal living, and life under a centrally planned economy. Half-Earth Socialism’s originality in synthesizing such disparate thinkers is laudable in and of itself.
The author’s vision for central planning is inspired by the socialist and designer William Morris who was interested in how socialism could offer fulfilling work by integrating labor with arts, nature, and leisure
Dominating the non-human
There are many things worth praising in the book. First, their critique of prometheans and ecomoderns who seek to subdue and dominate the natural world is arguably their strongest chapter. In “Binding Prometheus”, the authors take issue with this bipartisan worldview of convserative billionaires, centrist political parties, and sects of Marxism. Vettese and Pendergrass largely blame Hegel’s concept of “humanizing nature” for this ideology. Showing how Hegel’s concept was influenced by Christian theology, the authors describe this “humanizing” as “the process by which humanity overcomes its alienation from nature by instilling the latter with human consciousness through the process of labor.”
In other words, our relationship with nature is only good for what humans can put it to use for: nature becomes nothing more than an instrument, ignoring all the ways not putting nature “to use” is vital for our own species survival. Since the nonhuman world must be instilled with human consciousness (rather than species having their own), this is used as a justification to plunder and even exterminate the nonhuman world.
In this way, the authors tell us, the neoliberals and many Marxists aren’t so different in their attitude towards nonhuman nature. Each agrees nature is to be controlled, dominated, and capitalized: one just believes markets are the best mechanism, the other believes it is nation states. Both free marketers and state socialists fail to account for the agency of nonhuman nature, and they lack critical reflection on the ways this worldview has culminated in our present environmental crises and ultimately promote a secularized religiosity that believes humanity can take a god’s eye-view of nature. “Marxism”, the authors write, “cannot simply be greened by reading Capital with viridian-tinted glasses.” If religion is the opiate of the masses, as Marx said, then prometheanism is the opiate of Marxists.
“Marxism”, the authors write, “cannot simply be greened by reading Capital with viridian-tinted glasses.” If religion is the opiate of the masses, as Marx said, then prometheanism is the opiate of Marxists
Utopianism is good, actually
Another strong point of the text is its unabashed embrace of utopian socialism. Utopian socialism — used as a pejorative by Marxists (who are themselves called utopians by anyone not on the radical left) — has been defined as an early form of socialist thought that seeks to build socialism in the name of it being more desirable than capitalism, rather than as an inevitability, as Marx predicted.
Utopian socialists typically start from a place of what they would like the world to be and experiment in bringing about this better, more ideal society. It is no coincidence then that the authors end their book with a utopian future set in Massachusetts, itself a place of previous utopian socialist experiments.
The authors argue at length about utopian socialism being more than just idealistic dreamers wishing on a star for a better society. Instead, they advocate for a “scientific utopianism” as “blueprints for the future” that they believe can remedy many problems for both environmentalists and economic planners. For environmentalists, the utopian tradition allows the movement to project forward what kind of world we want to build in the ashes of capitalist ruins with a critically anticapitalist edge. Here, the authors tell us, is where we need to contemplate our blueprints for the future that help inspire and mobilize people.
For planners, and the socialist tradition more generally, the authors point out that centrally planned economies like the Soviet Union suffered from an immense lack of imagination and participation outside of the party line, resulting in the lifeless and bureaucratic state that it ultimately became. Utopian socialism in this way allows us to imagine and fight for a world not yet built with the flexibility and experimentation the utopian socialist tradition advocated for.
Given utopian socialism has been condemned by most Marxists, Vettesse and Pendergrass’ attempt to revive a tradition during troubling times is certainly welcomed. Marxism might have many answers, but the socialist tradition has too many layers to simply be narrowed to just what Marx, Engels, and their followers said over a hundred years ago. As a final note, the utopian socialist tradition, like many anarchists and libertarian socialists, has long championed an ecological sensibility and often much more than most Marxists. We can and should explore other options and schools of thought in times of ecological collapse.
A blueprint for utopia
Finally, the author’s exploration of socialist central planning history is fascinating, as well. Here, their planning philosophy is largely influenced by Soviet mathematician Leonid Kantorovich and linear programming (which itself was developed by the utopian theorist Charles Fourier). As the authors explain, the social engineers of “Gosplant” — a play on words the authors develop based off of the original Soviet state planning commission “Gosplan” — would receive information about the local conditions of the social and natural world in order to devise models about what kind of future could be planned. These planners might ask themselves what societal outcomes could be maximized while limiting ecological damage, such as the amount of land that can be used while delivering the necessary energy requirements for individuals and industry. This chapter is the author’s technical “blueprint” for utopia. To complement what can often be abstract and technical planning language, the authors help manifest what planning in practice is like through their own computer game. And beyond its originality, it is also fun! Half.earth helps the reader experience — from the position of the planner’s seat — what kind of impact certain policies, technologies, and forms of organization have on the climate, biodiversity, and social prosperity. It serves as an especially nice complement to the third chapter in order to help readers better understand programming, planning, and decision making.
Central planning or participatory planning?
Half-Earth Socialism makes many good arguments and interventions to expand the horizons of ecosocialism. With that said, it also suffers, at different points, from a lack of follow-through on some of their more ambitious plans. While the authors repeatedly emphasize the importance of democratic values, they fail to explore, on both a practical and conceptual level, what democracy would be in a centrally planned economy. Because the authors rely so heavily on Soviet thinkers, this oversight is hardly acceptable. Soviet society suffered from an extensive amount of technocracy, bureaucracy, and ultimately, autocracy due to a lack of democratic decision making. It would be wise of Vettese and Pendergrass to look at other utopian thinkers and their emphasis, not on central planning, but participatory planning. One of those utopians is Murray Bookchin.
Bookchin might be the thinker most responsible for making utopia an endearing term during the late 20th century and into today. But Bookchin’s utopian social ecology was predicated on a system of deep and direct democracy. Bookchin looked at Ancient Greece, despite its commitment to patriarchy and slavery, as an example of what democratic structures looked like. The ekklesia, or citizen assembly, was a major institution within Greek society where everyday men would directly contribute and decide the direction of the polis. Greek culture was also imbued with a democratic ethos in the sense that there were dedicated gathering places — the agora — for instilling democratic values in Athenian citizens.
Likewise, a contemporary example of this form of direct democracy comes in the New England Town Meeting. The Town Meeting is still practiced by a number of New England municipalities where at least once a year, town members come to debate and vote on things such as changes to the town charter, the municipal budget, and are able to offer up policies and proposals to be taken up by the town.
Such examples provide a counterweight to the lack of democracy prevalent in centrally planned economies. Contemporary citizens’ assemblies and participatory budgeting are other examples of direct and deep democratic systems being flirted with today and all over the world. Despite Marxists and democratic socialists saying they are committed to democracy, often their horizons end at representative government and unions. Here Bookchin’s distinction between administration—the technical and coordinating work planners would do, and policy-making, where people make decisions through democratic structures like popular assemblies or councils for the planners to enact—is helpful. With this in mind, it can feel like Vettese and Pendergrass view planning as an end in and of itself, rather than a deliberative outcome of democratic politics. Like too many Marxists, their political imaginations are stifled by ruminations about a benevolent Soviet State commanding and controlling from on high.
It can feel like Vettese and Pendergrass view planning as an end in and of itself, rather than a deliberative outcome of democratic politics
The issues with universal veganism
Readers might be turned off by some of the more upending policies Pendergrass and Vettesse propose like universal veganism. One of the book’s strongest arguments for veganism is the large-scale “humanization” of animals for food. The authors point out that, in the context of the 300,000 years humans have existed, zoonoses have only emerged within the last 10,000 years or so — the time period in which humans domesticated animals. With the Covid-19 pandemic originating in a meat market and, by at least one study’s account, at least 60% of infectious and 75% of “emerging” diseases originating from animals, there is more and more evidence pointing out that the “humanization of nature” is actually quite deadly.
While it’s increasingly clear that meat-heavy diets are not only morally problematic but also irrational, the prospects for universal veganism are slim, even in a world with improved plant-based “meats.” This presents a real political problem the authors don’t really address. Yes, we need to reduce meat consumption, but in order to build a coalition powerful enough to reduce current consumption rates, many will be turned off if the “planners’” demands are universal veganism. I respect and appreciate the principles of vegans, but this must be balanced with a proper political analysis that examines a more astute point regarding the unsustainability of Western diets: industrial farming and capitalism.
In this vein, the authors confusingly propose universal veganism but ask animal rights activists to temper their criticisms of Indigenous hunting practices, given that many Indigenous tribes have more sustainable and reciprocal relationships with the animals they eat. This seems to be a concession that there are at least some forms of sustainable animal consumption and that, on both a practical and political level, Indigenous people are vital to preserving the nonhuman world. Furthermore, Indigenous people are often viewed as relevant to protecting nature rather than as direct political participants in how decisions are made about nature—further relegating them to the colonial divide that subjects them to an “outside nature.” While the authors acknowledge that Indigenous people have a deeper relationship with the nonhuman world than western conservationists, a program in the name of “Half-Earth Socialism” is still in reference to one of the West’s most famous conservationists who has influenced the United Nations and other international conservation programs (like the 30×30 program), often at the expense of Indigenous perspectives, sovereignty, and stewardship.
With the lack of attention on democracy in the book and emphasis on top-down central planning, it is more than reasonable to expect already vulnerable Indigenous people to be victims of such a Half-Earth plan. Just because your Half-Earth is socialist, does not necessarily make it equitable, just, anti-racist or democratic given, by the authors’ own admissions, many centrally planned socialist societies were deeply undemocratic. It would be wise of the authors to tackle both the Indigenous and democracy problem together. The authors are correct that we need to vastly expand conservation efforts. It might just not be in the name of “Half Earth” or Western conceptions of centrally planned socialist economies.
With the lack of attention on democracy in the book and emphasis on top-down central planning, it is more than reasonable to expect already vulnerable Indigenous people to be victims of such a Half-Earth plan
Complicating nuclear
Another issue is the author’s swift explanation for why nuclear energy does not belong within the environmental movement. While I share the author’s criticisms of nuclear energy being an unstable technology given an increasingly unstable climate, the author’s argument hinges on the practicality of not isolating environmentalists who previously formed the anti-nuclear movement. Here, they reveal themselves to be political strategists while the rest of the book is provocative and visionary.
With that said, I do not think ecologists should spend time or resources trying to shut down currently operating nuclear plants. For anyone familiar with the energy debate, you quickly learn how much nuclear advocates suffer from a sort of dogmatism and zealotry when it comes to nuclear power — believing it can power the majority of the world’s electricity needs despite few studies or institutions saying so. This archetype has been referred to as “Nuke-bros” due to their arrogance and chauvinism, oftening exhibiting authoritarian character traits as well (which shouldn’t be a surprise, as nuclear energy requires an authoritarian military). Nevertheless, decarbonization will largely fall on the shoulders of renewable energy, with or without an anti-nuclear movement, in my opinion. But because they move so quickly through their critiques of nuclear power, this, among other points (like the land sparing of nuclear power), is hardly addressed in any detail.
Following the example in arguably their strongest chapter, prometheanism should be critiqued and destroyed from leftist thought all together. And with that philosophy in retreat, we might expect a retreat of nuclear energy, geoengineering, and the senseless killing of animals as well.
Conclusion
Half-Earth Socialism sees the ecological landscape and makes its own unique intervention. Their critique and commitment to a Half-Earth economy is admirable and provocative, even if at times unclear and lacking details on how to form the political coalition powerful enough to bring about their vision.
Unlike many on the Left, Pendergrass and Vettese do not suffer from either carbon or Marxist-tunnel vision, offering their own synthesis and analysis of ideas and thinkers across ecological and leftist thought. Half-Earth Socialism is thinking at a planetary scale. Now we need to think about bringing these ideas to everyday people. To borrow and reword a phrase from the French students of the 1960’s: “Do the impossible! Plan utopia!”
Andrew Ahern is an ecological activist and freelance writer based in Massachusetts. You can follow him on Twitter @PoliticOfNature. Full disclosure: Andrew is a member of Boston DSA alongside author Drew Pendergrass.
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.
A little late this month, but we’re back with our August readings! We hope you enjoy what we put together. On top of the usual themes like degrowth, global environmental justice struggles, cities, and food politics, this list features a section on the (un)sustainability of fashion, an awesome piece on Marxism by Stuart Hall, and a free Leftist film archive.
If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Uneven Earth updates
Class struggle or degrowth? | Without class struggle the emancipatory potential of degrowth will fail to be realized. A revolutionary pedagogy can help to unify them
Fashion and colonialism. From sourcing and manufacturing to exporting waste, this class with Céline Semaan explores current practices that reproduce colonialism and exploitation in fashion, and how we can avoid such practices.
Taming the greedocracy. American elites want magical technological fixes to climate change because they refuse to confront the truth that seriously addressing the problem would require limits to their own power and luxury.
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.
Long time no read! We’ve been taking a break from posting at Uneven Earth, but we’re slowly getting back to business – with lots of exciting changes to come, as we’re in the process of becoming an incorporated, salaried non-profit organization. Our editor Aaron Vansintjan also published a book on degrowth while we were inactive! You can find all the links in this newsletter.
We decided to make this a combined summer reading list – so these are articles we collected throughout May, June and July, with the occasional piece from earlier in the year that still seems relevant and worth sharing. Starting from next month, we’ll go back to our usual monthly model. We hope you’re still along for the ride, and thank you so much for your patience while we transition into this next phase of Uneven Earth.
If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Uneven Earth updates
Our co-editor Aaron Vansintjan published a book with colleagues Andrea Vetter and Matthias Schmelzer! The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism is now available to buy at Verso, or anywhere else you like to buy your books.
Uneven Earth contributed to this ephemera paper on alternatives to mainstream publishing within and beyond academia
Technology | Technology is not neutral. We’re inside of what we make, and it’s inside of us
A jaywalking manifesto | “Every step that is ‘jay’ is defiance in the face of the automobile machine.”
Beef stakes. Climate activists have proposed an end to the livestock industry. But overhauling farming could have unintended consequences.
Report: Cash cow. How beef giant JBS’s links to Amazon deforestation and human rights abuses are aided by UK, US and EU financiers, importers and supermarkets.
Land power. Sustaining a community land trust requires radical commitment to housing justice and local self-determination — not to mention real estate savvy and political diplomacy.
A little bit of African thinking. The profound influence, often underplayed, that great African revolutionary Amílcar Cabral had on Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire.
Technology is everywhere. Its influence on our lives and the world around us is enormous. In this article we’ll explore the definition of technology, then see how it relates to two important areas: nature and society. We’ll also include some current examples of political debates and struggles in which technology figures central.
So what exactly is technology? Easy: it’s computers and hovercraft and steam engines and cyborgs and remotely operated sex toys and stuff, right? Well yes, but actually it’s not so straightforward. Although extremely common, the term technology is not as easily defined as its usage might suggest [1].
The term is also relatively new. Despite a very long history of tool use and ‘technological’ development, the word only became widely used in the 20th century. It is formed from a combination of Greek τέχνη, techne, “art, skill, cunning of hand”; and -λογία, -logia, roughly translating as “science of craft”, and originated as a translation of the German word technik [2].
In discussions around technology, certain ideas are frequently repeated. For example, most definitions refer to things (tools, machines or techniques) being used to solve problems or satisfy human needs or purposes. The tools and machines need not be physical; things such as organisational methods or computer software also fall under definitions of technology. The economist W. Brian Arthur, uses an extremely broad definition, extending the meaning of ‘a technology’ to include anything that can be considered “a means to fulfill a human purpose.” [3].
Science also often comes up in writing about technology and many definitions of technology refer to the application of scientific knowledge to accomplish a task. In fact, science and technology are so intimately connected that it is often difficult to distinguish between them. Stemming from this, the understanding of nature through observation and measurement, and the ability to influence or even control natural processes and our environment are other common themes in discussion around technology.
Technology also concerns the interaction between tools and techniques and the people and systems that create, use or are affected by them. The idea of technology includes a social context and there is a continually evolving relationship with other aspects of society or culture. Technologies are hugely influenced by ideologies and social structures, such as capitalism, and act as real world manifestations of the ideas behind them (more on this below).
So technology includes tools and machines, needs and desires; it involves science, society and nature, and it is inherently political. However, the dominant modern idea of technology treats it as apolitical and inevitable, as if it is an unquestioned representation of human progress. So where did these ideas come from? Looking to the history of this dominant ideology of technology-as-progress, we can see that it is based upon a worldview grounded in the domination of women and nature.
Nature
Many identify the European Enlightenment in the 18th Century as instrumental in shaping today’s understanding of technology and the role it plays in society. Science and reason were seen as driving forces throughout human history, progressing towards better, more ‘civilised’ societies. Importantly, this also combined with a view of nature as being something to control and dominate towards human ends, with explicit links made between the domination of nature and the domination of women.
Francis Bacon was a key figure in influencing these views on nature. He described how the use of science and technology would lead to the “Dominion of Man over the Universe” and render nature the “slave of mankind” (he probably wasn’t much fun on wildlife walks) [4].
However, since then, many other thinkers have pushed against this ideology, suggesting that instead of continuing a relationship of superiority and domination, technology has the potential to bring us closer to nature. For example, jumping to the 1970s, Murray Bookchin thought that technology had the potential to both free people from the toil of repetitive labour and to reconnect them with the environment [5].
In terms of current debates on nature and technology, there are two fairly distinct and competing views on how technologies relate to ecological crises such as climate change. One involves an acceptance that the immensity and imminence of ecological crises means there is no hope of making fundamental societal changes in time. It argues that democratic change or building the conditions for revolution would be too slow. Therefore, this position holds, people should harness the power of technology as it exists within the current capitalist, statist framework to find technological solutions to ecological crises (e.g. developing and using genetic engineering and geo-engineering, mining asteroids to overcome resource constraints, even populating other planets). Accelerationism and ecomodernism are both attitudes which fall within this kind of approach. Accelerationists believe we should enthusiastically embrace and accelerate both economic growth and technological advancement, saying that this will lead to the technologies we need to avert ecological disaster. Ecomodernists argue that humans should use technology to separate themselves further from the natural world, both reducing dependency on nature and preventing further environmental harm.
However, both represent a dangerous ‘technofix’ or ‘techno-optimist’ mentality, where people rely on technology to provide solutions to all manner of problems, while lacking a critical understanding of the role technology plays in creating the problems in the first place. They also fail to recognise how we are part of nature and the ecosystems that we rely on for survival, creating an illusion of independence.
On the other hand there are those that say relying on these sorts of technological solutions to environmental problems further entrenches the same kind of thinking that contributed to our current predicaments. They propose an approach of constraining certain (not all) technologies in an effort to undermine and subvert the growth paradigm. The degrowth movement, for example, seeks to end growth-based economics and replace it with a form of ecological economics that prioritises well-being for all and ecological sustainability. While adherents to the first paradigm often critique this second position for being “anti-technological”, what is actually at stake is not a question of being for or against technology in total, but disagreements as to which specific technologies are best suited to address our ecological crisis in just, equitable and effective ways.
Inspiration can also be found in ideas that have been around for a long time: indigenous knowledge, and worldviews and systems of thought from other cultures that have been overshadowed or deliberately undermined by colonialism and the predominance of modern ‘scientific-western’ thinking. How do they conceive of and relate to nature? What role did or does ‘technology’ or crafts play in these cultures? What systems and practices formed around their use of tools and how might we learn from them in shaping future technological relationships?
Argroecology is an example of how humans can use technology in a more harmonious relationship with the rest of nature, and has been practiced for millennia across the globe. Agroecological farming methods, such as diversifying farms and avoiding chemical inputs, strongly contrast with industrial agriculture and can help to address, rather than contribute to, ecological crises like climate change or habitat loss. As well as keeping carbon in the ground, supporting biodiversity and rebuilding soil fertility, they also provide the basis for secure farm livelihoods. Transnational social movements such as La Via Campesina (The International Peasant’s Movement) are championing agroecology in order to move towards a just, sustainable and viable food and agriculture system.
Society
Technologies are shaped by and shape society: they can originate from human needs and desires (social determination of technology) and they can also profoundly influence them (technological determinism). Technologies can have inherent politics, both wound up in the individual technologies themselves and in the specific way they are designed, distributed and implemented. As critical writer on technology, Langdon Winner, said:
Technologies are not merely aids to human activity, but also powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning. [6]
So how do forces such as capitalism and the state direct the development of technology?
One powerful illustration of this relationship can be found in the internet and digital communication technologies. The enhanced ability to share information and new modes of interaction offered by such technologies clearly have enormous potential to benefit society. However, they were created and exist in a social context that powerfully shapes their nature. Capitalism’s constant need to generate profit leads it to expand into new areas as others become exhausted or not sufficiently profitable. So the internet and the world of digital communication became a new sphere from which to extract profit. Just as workers are separated from the products of their labour and turned into consumers, now people are also separated from ‘their’ information: that which relates to them or is produced by them. It is extracted, processed and commodified by the corporate monoliths dominating the web. In exchange people are given the ‘free’ services offered by social media platforms, search engines, email accounts and the like. However, this goes deeper than just control of modes of communication and flows of information. Through digital communication technologies, capitalism’s insatiable appetite has pushed it further into the realm of people’s mental processes and their social ties [7].
Due to underlying systems of power, the tools and technologies designed to improve people’s ability to communicate have radically altered the way they communicate. The ideologies embedded within digital communication technologies have fundamentally shaped the new behaviours and cultures of communication that have emerged. For example the corporate/neoliberal influence on online social media is enormous. Individualist self-promotion and branding influence social identities and interactions. Clickbait instant gratification affects attention spans, the depth of content and critical thinking. The insidious influence of profit extraction can be seen throughout. Vast amounts of data are collected, stored, analysed and commodified, leading to huge intrusions on the privacy of billions of people and increasing the susceptibility of their behaviour to be modelled, predicted, profited from and controlled. This is an example of how the interests of corporate profitability and state social control intersect. They reinforce one another in shaping technological processes and aligning them to their priorities [8].
However, it doesn’t have to be that way. If the digital world is treated as another terrain of struggle and effective strategies adopted, it could shift the balance of power towards those who seek liberatory change rather than those seeking to control and exploit [9]. Social movements around the world fighting against authoritarian regimes have exploited digital communication platforms for rapid organisation and dissemination of information. In many cases they have been able to adopt and adapt to technologies faster than state institutions, out-manoeuvring those who seek to repress them.
Another example is the free, open source or ‘libre’ software movement. It aims to make software that can be freely used and modified by others (the Linux operating systems are perhaps the best known examples), as opposed to a proprietary model where the programming source code has a legal owner. The open content philosophy has been applied to a huge range of areas, including open hardware and there are now ‘open content’ text books and education materials, building designs, vehicles and medical equipment. Although it has been partially co-opted by capitalist interests, there is still a community resisting and fighting to maintain the original politicised principles of free/libre content [10].
Conclusion
While dominant attitudes towards technology are naively optimistic, technology (in the broad sense) can still be something to be celebrated and enjoyed; an expression of creativity and a powerful tool at our disposal. But it must be re-imagined so that it no longer embodies ideologies based on domination and exploitation of humans and nature.
Technology is not neutral. We’re inside of what we make, and it’s inside of us. We’re living in a world of connections — and it matters which ones get made and unmade [11].
– Donna J. Haraway
This text is taken and modified from ‘TECH: A guide to the Politics and Philosophy of Technology’ by Corporate Watch. Corporate Watch is a not-for-profit co-operative providing critical information on the social and environmental impacts of corporations and capitalism.
Recommended Reading
TECH: A Guide to the Politics and Philosophy of Technology by Corporate Watch (ISBN 978-1-907738-27-2)
Technology : critical history of a concept by Eric Schatzberg (ISBN 978-0226583976)
The death of nature: women, ecology, and the Scientific Revolution and Reinventing Eden : the fate of nature in western culture, both by Carolyn Merchant (ISBN 978-0062505958 and 978-0415644259)
The Social Shaping of Technology: How the Refrigerator Got Its Hum by Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (ISBN 978- 0335150274)
Whose Streets? Anarchism, Technology and the Petromodern State by MichaelTruscello and Uri Gordon (issn 0967 3393 )
References
1. See the Intro Essay in MacKenzie, Donald A., and Judy Wajcman. The Social shaping of technology : how the refrigerator got its hum. Milton Keynes Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1985. ISBN 978- 0335150274
2. For an extremely detailed explanation of the word’s origins see Schatzberg, Eric. Technology : critical history of a concept. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0226583976
3. Arthur, W B. The nature of technology : what it is and how it evolves. New York: Free Press, 2009. ISBN 978- 1416544050
4. Quotes from : Fideler, David R. Restoring the soul of the world : our living bond with nature’s intelligence. Chapter 8, “In the Name of Utility: The Exploitation of Nature and the Decline of Pleasure.” Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2014. Print
5. Bookchin, Murray (published under the pseudonym Lewis Herber). Towards a Liberatory Technology. Anarchos, no. 2 (Spring 1968) and No. 3 (Spring 1969)
6. Winner, Langdon. The whale and the reactor : a search for limits in an age of high technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Print. ISBN 978-0226902111
7. The Internet as New Enclosure. crimethinc.com 10/06/2013 <https://crimethinc.com/2013/06/10/the-internet-as-new-enclosure > [accessed 5 Sep 2020]
8. Return Fire. Caught in the Net. Return Fire vol.4. Autumn 2016 (Available at Anarchist Library <https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/return-fire-vol-4-supplement-caught-in-the-net?v=1501280195> [accessed 5 Sep 2020])
9. Karatzogianni, Athina. Firebrand Waves of Digital Activism 1994-2014: The Rise and Spread of Hacktivism and Cyberconflict. Houndmills, Basingstoke Hampshire New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Print. ISBN 978-0230242463]
10. Technological Sovereignty, Vol. 2. <https://sobtec.gitbooks.io/sobtec2/content/en> [Accessed 5 Nov 2020]
11.Haraway, Donna. A Cyborg Manifesto. Socialist Review, 1985. (Full text available online here: <https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content/uploads/sites/226/2015/12/Haraway-Cyborg-Manifesto-2.pdf> [accessed 4 Sep 2020])
A sign in Manila that says “It is forbidden to cross [the road], people have died here.”
(1) The streets are the life-blood of the city—common areas used by all citizens.
(2) The history of industrial capitalism is also the history of enclosure and privatization of the commons. In 19th century England, common lands used by peasants and farmers for livestock to graze were enclosed for the benefit of a growing bourgeoisie, while those who lost access to the commons were forced to flock to the city to find employment in factories—the process of proletarianization. Similarly, streets that were once common spaces for use by the citizens of the city have become enclosed spaces reserved for a specific type of commodity: the automobile.
(3) Citizens1 of the city have been relegated to the well-defined spatial and temporal peripheries of the streets: the sidewalk, crosswalk, pedestrian overpass, the occasional street festival. In the Philippines, our sidewalks are even further subdivided by the abortive policy of pink or orange lines on some sidewalks—such as those on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in Metro Manila—which denote where street vendors are allowed to set up.
(4) The vast majority of the street is reserved for the automobile commodity and its resulting car traffic. Thus, the life-blood of the city becomes the near-exclusive domain of the automobile commodity. To step outside these peripheries is to be subjected to the violence of the state through being punished for jaywalking, or the violence of the automobile commodity that kills millions across the globe. After all, automobiles kill 1.3 million people a year.
Jaywalking as invented
(5) To deviate from our defined spaces on the street is to become a “jaywalker.” “Jaywalking” was an invention by automobile capitalists to shift blame on accidents from cars and drivers to pedestrians. After all, the jaywalker shouldn’t have been on the road if they didn’t want to be run over!
(6) The creation of “jaywalking” then becomes part-and-parcel of the enclosure of the street reserved for automobile use.
(7) That is to say: to create a jaywalker, one must create jaywalking. Ursula Le Guin says it best: “‘To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.’”—from The Dispossessed. (Le Guin, 1974).
(8) Thus, the enclosure of the streets needs no physical barriers (though these may still be used). The enclosure is ideological—its manifestation is the invention of jaywalking. This criminalization of jaywalkers is in turn enshrined through ordinances and enforced by the police.
(9) Yet the police are not actually necessary to enforce this enclosure. Michel Foucault’s reading of the panopticon reminds us that we do not have to be watched at all times to ensure that we police our own behavior. The very regime of enclosure, its ordinances, and its police has accustomed us to obey its delimitations, even if we are not actively policed. That, and of course, the very threat of death by automobile.
(10) Yet the invention of jaywalking itself is part of a larger logic of organizing our cities according to the logic of automobiles—an automobile urbanism (if it may be called that).
Automobile urbanism
(11) Automobile urbanism subordinates humans to the rule of capital and to the rule of a specific commodity—the automobile.
(12) Automobile urbanism is not just the enclosure of streets; automobile urbanism has ordered our cities around and for the automobile: parking lots, gas stations, widened roads and highways, bridges, underpasses, overpasses, and bypasses. An entire ecology is made for the automobile commodity wherein humanity are mere pedestrians. In a joke from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, an alien wrongly assumes the dominant species of Earth is the automobile.
(13) Urban citizens are subordinated to this automobile urbanism and the neoliberalization of urban spaces. The urban citizen—particularly the working class—is out of sight and out of mind to the automobile urbanite.
(14) Automobile urbanism has gentrified and sequestered spaces that divide the city between those with automobiles and those without. In English, to gentrify is to reserve for the gentry class, but its French translation is perhaps more accurate for the scenario at hand: embourgeoisement, or to make bourgeois. After all, bourgeois referred originally to walled-off towns, set apart from the rest.
(15) Thus, the entire world is ordered under the bourgeois logic of the automobile commodity. To the automobile: the wide lanes. To the urban citizen: the spatial and temporal peripheries of the street: the sidewalk, crosswalk, pedestrian overpass, occasional street festivals, closed to cars on weekends. The urban citizen is thus demoted to a pedestrian.
(16) The enclosure of the streets from foot traffic is also an act of class warfare—dispossessing urban citizens of public spaces and the paving of homes for wider boulevards.
(17) This is literally true for Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s Paris (1850s), Robert Moses’ New York (1960s),(Harvey, 2008) and Metro Manila today. As David Harvey explains, Haussmann decimated the neighborhoods of Paris to build wide boulevards to make it easier to crush proletarian rebellions in the wake of the 1848 Revolutions. Similarly, Moses decimated the neighborhoods of New York for a new grand plan for the endless growth of capitalism. In Metro Manila, urban poor associations such as Kadamay or Save San Roque fight tooth and nail in resisting relocations against large developers that want to build more and more malls and high-rises. As an added bonus, the destruction of urban poor communities is a proven method of repression, as Harvey and Henri Lefebvre noted.
(18) Are streets made wider to accommodate more people or to accommodate more automobiles? It is well-noted thatwider streets incentivize drivers to speed and drive faster, making our streets more dangerous and more hostile to citizens.
(19) Our streets have become dangerous for citizens. Commuting citizens risk life and limb to get to work and back. The road is a hostile place wherein the commodity of the car is king.
(20) Consider the cinematic trope of a car driving into a ball bouncing into the street, followed by a child dying from automobile impact: We have canonized the hostility of our streets in our imagination. This hostility is only a small part of the larger hostile world of capital that make up our environs. The hostility of the automobile is largely passive as well—who is it that has agency in the killing? The driver or the automobile?
(21) However, automobile urbanism was not inevitable. In the United States in particular, it was a product of a Keynesian growth-for-the-sake-of-growth economic ideology and cynical Fordist wage hikes to generate demand for automobiles. Automobile companies had to systematically destroy tram systems and force the phasing out of other transportation for urban citizens to adopt automobiles. After all, Henry Ford supposedly said “cars don’t buy cars.”
(22) In this sense, automobiles are spectacular needs, or needs that are illusionary. For if we are not forced by the world of capital to work and regulated to homes far from work and amenities, we do not actually need automobiles and their false mobility. Without the world of capital that marks us as proletarian, automobiles in their commodified forms have no real use. Automobile commodities are false needs imposed by the world of work.
(23) The Philippines has uncritically adopted automobile urbanism. This is partly as a result of neo-colonialism where peripheral countries become destinations for finished commodities such as the automobile. Just as in the United States, cars were privileged over trams and jobs and amenities were made more and more distant from homes.
The automobile and mobility
(24) Neoliberalism and its logic of marketization has exacerbated automobile urbanism in literally promoting automobility—mobility as an individual responsibility to be resolved by individual means. The solution, of course, is the market—buy a car!
(25) Yet the automobile is not just a commodity—it is capital in and of itself. Specifically, an automobile is a mode of transportation that enables the automobile owner to transport themselves, others, capital, and commodities.
(26) Automobility becomes a means of livelihood: transporting car-owners from work to home and back. Thus automobile urbanism has ordered cities beneath the ever-marching vroom of automobiles, rather than being ordered for the everyday needs of citizens.
Jaywalking is an offense to the capitalist order, pitting the mobility of the citizen against the mobility of the automobile, capital, and commodity.
(27) Mobility becomes a class issue. Those with cars can expect to cover more ground and thus more opportunities. Those without cars then have less options for finding work due to limitations of the commute and can access less amenities than they might otherwise.
(28) We have become second-class citizens in our own cities, with the first-class being the automobile owner. Automobile urbanism reserves the streets for them; the proletarian and commuters are after-thoughts.
Returning to jaywalking
(29) In the context of automobile urbanism, jaywalking is the act of entering spaces that have become reserved for automobiles.
(30) Jaywalking is framed as an issue of safety and discipline. Yet safety and discipline for whom? Safety for citizens walking on the street, or safety for the automobile to go about its way?
(31) The very concept of jaywalking puts the burden of safety on the pedestrian—an admittance that the streets are hostile for foot traffic.
(32) For whom is the disciplining of the pedestrian? Discipline for the preservation of order—to assure the streamlining of streets for the service of capital!
(33) Jaywalking is an offense to the capitalist order, pitting the mobility of the citizen against the mobility of the automobile, capital, and commodity. Jaywalking threatens to delay the otherwise smooth transportation of capital and commodities throughout the city.
(34) To restrict working-class mobility is class warfare—for mobility is how the worker can get from their rented home to their workplace to rent away their time through wage-labor.
(35) Thusincreasingpenaltiesfor jaywalking is nothing less than a concentrated class war offensive. It is an attack on the mobility of the urban citizen, especially working-class citizens who do not usually own automobiles.2
(36) Those who do own automobiles quickly learn that the automobile is a colonizer of everyday life, to borrow a term from Henri Lefebvre. The automobile colonizes everyday life by forcing its owners into its zone of sheer consumption. This is manifested not just in the monetary cost of gasoline and of constant repairs, but also through deep costs to health and ecology.
(37) Automobiles—and of course, capitalism—are literally starving us of oxygen by increasing the parts per million of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and nitrous oxide in congested and polluted cities.
(38) And who are even the so-called jaywalkers? Is this not yet another criminalization of homelessness, ambulant vending, and more—the criminalization of working class mobility itself. Is this not yet another case of creeping authoritarianism? Martial law is redundant—it is already here!
(39) And how is this working-class mobility punished? Another fine that cannot be paid? Unpaid community service—thereby foregoing wages for those hours? And for what? Is this not redistribution in favor of the state? State coffers that are then plundered by the corrupt public servants?
(40) Thus, the streets must be reclaimed. Every step that is “jay” is defiance in the face of the automobile machine. Honk away mga punyeta3—I am walking here.
Right to the City
(41) Yet it is not enough to jaywalk. It is not enough to reclaim streets as our streets for people. We must reclaim the whole city, to create a humanistic—nay, revolutionary—urbanism for the citizens of the city. A right to our streets—a right to the city!
(42) “The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.”—David Harvey
(43) The Right to the City asks of us: whose city, and for whom?—for automobiles or for citizens? Jaywalking in this sense is to reclaim the streets as the life-blood of a humanist urbanism—a city for humans rather than automobile commodities.
(44) As Lefebvre, Harvey, and Murray Bookchin notes, urban spaces are where class conflict is most obvious. As minor as it seems, the invention of jaywalking is a means of control that capital has over the development of the city and its citizens.
(45) An assertion to our urban mobility will necessarily be connected to struggles in ecology, and for housing and work. For what is the point of mobility if we are denied housing, or if we go to work for meager pay? Or if our mobility is policed at every turn by the state?
(46) The struggle for our mobility as citizens of the city is thus a microcosm of the larger anti-capitalist struggle that revolts against the colonization of everyday life by capital and commodities. Indeed, it is a microcosm of a larger struggle against authority for an anarchy of movement.
(47) Jaywalking, then, is class war, as it defies the penalization of mobility as ordered by the automobile urbanism that divides our cities. Against the penalization of mobility is the anarchy of the streets that revolts against the authority of the automobile and for the possibility of the right to the city.
(48) Reclaim our streets, reclaim our cities! The struggle for a revolutionary urbanism for all is already underway!
1 “Citizen” here is used in its original term, a denizen of the city.
2 In some countries such as the United States, the working class do own cars, though this is not a global phenomena.
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 month, we are thinking about animal rights. Many of us know that industrial, for-profit animal agriculture must end—but is eating animals, or animal byproducts, inherently wrong, and how do we organize for supporting animals? And what about ecosystem rights, versus animal rights in particular? We feature several articles on different sides of the debate, including those from feminist socialist, Indigenous, social ecology, and Global South perspectives.
We also saw many articles about what Uneven Earth editor Vijay Kolinjivadi calls green gaslighting in an essay for Al Jazeera: ““climate solutions” that protect, if not boost, profits of big corporations are deployed and presented as the only way to combat climate change.” Finally, there has been some excellent discussion on climate reparations and what a truly global Green New Deal would look like.
If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Uneven Earth updates
Exciting news from Uneven Earth: we have had our first ever Annual General Assembly, approved our new constitution, and are on the way to becoming a non-profit registered in Germany. Stay tuned: we’ll have some more big announcements in the coming months.
If the desert was green. Mass tree-planting programs in the desert often cause lasting damage to the ecosystems they are purportedly trying to repair.
Re-learning the past to re-imagine the future. In his new book, Modibo Kadalie examines the convergence of maroon and Indigenous cultures in the US and rediscovers a lost history of intimate direct democracy.
Oh friends, the forest burns. Does friendship between human communities and with the more-than-human realm offer a way forward in an age of climate crises and racial nationalisms?
Beings seen and unseen. Amitav Ghosh on decentering human narratives and re-centering stories of the land.
There is nothing past about historical land injustice. Kenya still faces intractable land problems, including unequal concentration of land in the hands of the wealthy, land grabbing, landlessness, and unresolved historical land injustices.
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.
Happy new year! Tragically, another legend who was hugely influential on us editors passed away in December: Black feminist theorist, activist and professor bell hooks. We want to honour her incredible, rich life by featuring some of her work and legacy here. We also published a lot of articles after a long hiatus, and you’ll find sections on labor disruptions, planetary mines, and ‘nature-based’ colonialism. There’s a take on the very popular new climate satire Don’t Look Up, as well. Enjoy.
If you find these lists useful, you can support us by sharing them on social media and with your friends and family!
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Faith in a frail world | A journey through British Columbia this November showed how fragile the economy really is. Our editor Aaron Vansintjan also appeared on the This Is Hell podcast to talk about this article.
Chester is choking | In the face of ongoing toxic pollution in Chester, Pennsylvania, Veronica Gomes and Kimberley Thomas untangle divergent explanations for the disproportionate harm inflicted on African Americans
Max Ajl’s recent book published this year by Pluto Press, entitled A People’s Green New Deal, is a welcome and important contribution to an increasingly crowded and confused conversation on “green” futures. In the industrialized countries of the Global North, especially the USA, the European Union, Canada, and Australia, governments, social movements, and everything in between have proposed “Green Deals” of varying demands, generating much confusion as to what each of them stand for and the types of interests that underpin them. Ajl’s book places particular attention on the prospects of a US Green New Deal; as the US economy directly infiltrates nations and social classes around the world with its military, petrodollars, and monopolies, what it decides to do in the name of “greening” will have profound implications on the rest of the world under the current order.
The book offers a refreshing analysis, grounded in an ecosocialist lens for a global anti-imperialist class struggle. In doing so, it distinguishes itself from the distractions of rhetoric loosely being advanced under an amorphous “Green New Deal”. Ajl details these distracting narratives as they range from: a) liberal progressives and social democrats using all the right words but ultimately compromising to the interests of capital by advocating things like “greening” the US military; b) techno-modernist socialism unhinged from basic understandings of ecology while continuing to depend on exploitation of a Third World (e.g. “fully-automated luxury communism”); c) Euro-centric working-class solidarities for “greening” in the industrial core that conveniently ignore precarious and racialized labor forces both within and beyond the “Global North” (e.g. “Ecological Politics for the Working Class”); d) global veganism and half-earth nature conservation that have no qualms about embracing colonial logics against non-Western ideologies and affinities, and e) status-quo United Nations and World Bank-speak in support of the “Sustainable Development Goals”, furthering the myth of “green growth” and paying for nature’s “services”, which have thus far done little to halt or have even reinforced global inequalities and hastened ecological collapse. Of course, these narratives are not mutually exclusive, but hybridize into different shades. Common to all however are the silences in demanding climate reparations for historically uneven ecological exchange in which imperialist colonizers of Europe and North America looted the resources and life-energies of billions of people and displaced and shackled hundreds of millions in the Global South as a cheap laboring force to keep prices low and speculative finance afloat. It is this oppressive unequal ecological exchange that makes it possible for countries like Switzerland and Belgium to be considered chocolate connoisseurs, for the United States to foster and produce “innovative” tech hubs like Silicon Valleys that produce tax-evading billionaires, and for cities across Scandinavia, Canada, and Australia to be consistently distinguished with high standards of living.
There can be no such thing as an ecologically-conscious future unless it involves popular control over time, territory, and ways of living.
Put simply, there can be no such thing as an ecologically-conscious future unless it involves popular control over time, territory, and ways of living that Indigenous people, pastoralists, campesinxs, and artisans around the world demand as restitution for historical and repeated assaults on their autonomy. In this review, I assemble a series of quotations from the book under broad themes that highlight a few key take-away messages as well as an invitation to further dive into the details by reading the book. I conclude with some issues I felt the book left the reader to ponder.
Main take-aways
“To control industrialization does not mean to eliminate industrialization, let alone modern social life with complex forms of economic interchange and interdependence. It means understanding how on the one hand, the North is gratuitously over-industrialized, and not to the benefit of working-class life. And it means accepting how much northern industrial capital, and the consumption which it encourages, rests on de-development or underdevelopment of the South.”
“What is missing in the First World left is not an abstract commitment to solidarity and partnership but a committed internationalism which takes the anti-systemic struggles of the periphery as the fundamental departure point for solidarity…thus climate debt or ecological debt must be a fundamental part of any serious green transition.”
“If capital is under pressure from social movements or political parties and needs to find a way to give something away to domestic middle classes, that something has to come from somewhere (my emphasis added). And that somewhere will be those not included in the social and political struggles: in other words, the South.”
Ajl’s work offers a reality check reminding us that the influence of ecosocialism in contemporary global politics is at a historical low and indeed superseded by the more organized forces around pro-capitalist and techno-futurist versions of eco-fascism. The (often failed) electoral politics ambitions of recent legislators like Bernie Sanders in the US, Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France, and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK should not distract us from this reality. He also emphasizes the utter importance of placing agrarian reform for agroecology and peasant sovereignty at the core of what an anti-imperialist ecosocialism would require.
Modern industrial agriculture does not feed the world; it is incredibly wasteful and takes the capacity to produce food away from people who understand their territory the best. Instead, it forces everyone to be market consumers of pesticide-ladened and chemical fertilizer pumped monocultures that generate mass death of pollinators, birds, and soil life. It also heightens the risk of animal-human transfers of new epidemic diseases that lead to potential pandemics. With industrial agriculture, being fed is no longer something that every human deserves but something that reflects purchasing power and the capacity to absorb rising costs of food . These values neatly follow racial and class lines, with the vast majority of people unable to afford healthy and sustainable food production systems as these are re-branded into market consumption as “artisanal”, “organic”, or “heirloom”. Perhaps worst of all is the way modern industrial agriculture mines arable soils, stealing time, land, and knowledge from human societies and rendering current and future generations bereft of food-producing potential.
Why an internationalist, anti-imperialist politics is what being ecological should refer to
“Colonialism itself is not over. As formal and legal decolonization gave way to neocolonialism, nations lost control over their economic sovereignty, the pot of gold they had hoped to find at the end of national liberation…Indeed, even during the brilliant noon of decolonization from 1947 to 1980, farmlands, forests, banks, currencies, factories, salt iron mines, quarries, and oil fields remained in the hands of the colonizers. Almost never was decolonization so successful as to allow peoples to fully determine their own histories, even within their own nation-states…the climate crisis is basically the child of northern imperialism, pure and simple.”
Ajl reminds readers that it is impossible for the global ecological breakdown that we witness today, such as CO2 levels reaching their highest levels in 3 million years, to have occurred without past and present (and expected future) dehumanization of black, brown, and Indigenous people. It is consequently impossible and counterproductive to treat ecological crises like climate change as separate from those that perpetuate settler colonial land grabs, class divisions, and a military industrial complex. Tackling ecological crises requires structural transformation rejecting a militarized global police force (e.g. the US military) that justifies war-profiteering over the lives of Yemenis and Palestinians in the name of free markets.
Why other Green New Deal proposals based on “green” social democracy or domestic “green” Keynesianism are fundamentally flawed
“There are four problems with green social democracy. First, it is not achievable through current strategies. Two, even if it were possible, it would be imperialist and rest on devastating the South. Third, it is being marketed as something it is not: namely, eco-socialism … and four, it limits our political imaginations.”
“This does not mean it is bad to have anti-racist green left-liberals in office. It means that they will not implement eco-socialism unless massive movements and parties outside the state, and worldwide, are fighting for actual eco-socialism – which Ocasio-Cortez, 350.org, and the Sunrise Movement are not.”
Ajl historically contextualizes “green social democracy” as Keynesian concessions to labour that worked to stave off the spread of communism in the post-war era and were ultimately intended to reinforce capital accumulation. He highlights precisely why left-liberal politicians and journalists confound the terms of debate by ignoring this history. Instead, “green social democrats” tiptoe around very real uneven ecological exchange while superficially signalling support (largely by recourse to electoral politics) to anti-imperialist social movements and Indigenous demands around the world.
“Greening” as securitizing capitalism
“Green Social Control aims to preserve the essence of capitalism while shifting to a greener model in order to sidestep the worst consequences of the climate crisis. [It] is a decision to avoid reparations [and] a blueprint for world management in which imperial loot remains in the North.”
In relation to the confusing politics of Green Keynesianism as described above, a People’s Green New Deal explicitly rejects “green social control” or any eco-friendly attempt to maintain capitalism intact while deflecting or dismissing conversations around climate reparations for colonial violence and theft. Securing capitalism through greening takes the form of carbon offset purchases, eco-certification schemes, industrial and high-tech precision agriculture, “nature-based solution” projects and ecosystem service policies and others that co-opt intimate ecological relations as alienable forces of production.
On (green) technology
“Those who argue in an absolute way for technology’s categorical social neutrality, especially from the left, forge one of the most dangerous, subtle, and effective instruments of ideological counterinsurgency: they accept the myth of progress and confuse opposition to the capitalist agenda. And this is dangerous, because capitalists do not choose technology willy-nilly, but in order to maximise power, as has been shown time and again by critical historians of technology.”
“Amazon relies on a certain way of organizing the human relationship with the environment. Each item for sale on Amazon’s website, its energy-guzzling “cloud” data servers, its gossamer logistical systems which enable same-day delivery, is tied with a million threads to use of carbon sinks and the atmospheric space for CO2 emissions. These occur without the permission of humanity.”
“To meet UK electric car targets in 30 years, the (British) Isles would need twice current world annual production of cobalt. It would swallow up current world production of neodymium, gobble three-fourths of world lithium production and at least half the world’s copper. If mileage did not shrink, to charge that monster fleet an additional 20% of current UK-generated electricity would be needed …. Cobalt, one necessary mineral, is kept cheap by a half century of neo-colonial massacre in the Congo, and lithium extraction turns on the mangling of Latin American water tables. Even now Microsoft, Tesla, and Dell are being sued for being party to child labor in the Congo mines that supply material for the batteries that keep their doodads cheap and briskly selling.”
Ajl emphasizes that technological futurism cannot be discussed in isolation from the interests and voices that fund and imagine it. Popular control of knowledge and deliberation of its impacts is dismissed in favor of techno-utopias dreamed up through visions of human exploitation, despite the window dressing of “fully-automated communism” or (white) working-class ecological politics. Technology, no matter how “green,” is therefore always political.
On the colonial violence of suggesting “global veganism”
“Plant or culture-based meats … now rely on tremendous inputs of energy, and according to lifecycle assessments, may be more carbon-intensive than cows.” … “We have to keep in mind that the problem is not meat, but certain kinds of meat production: capitalist concentrated animal feeding operations.”
“The demand that meat-eating cease … creates northern consensus around encouraging, coercively or otherwise, transformations of how people live. It also creates a justification for unnatural ‘climate solutions’ based around biofuels and bioenergy or ‘afforestation’ based on trash-tree plantations which will allow the great petroleum corporations to keep burning their assets, to great profit. And it will be the poor who will suffer.”
A People’s Green New Deal would never impose universal cultural blueprints. It would not continue imposing imaginaries of human-nature relations from entitled Northern countries onto all people of the world through strategies like “compulsory global veganism” or “half-earth” conservation. Such tactics would scream colonialism and border on eco-fascism.
A People’s Green New Deal would never impose universal cultural blueprints.
On ways forward
“Although we should embrace scientific advance in healthcare, from regrowing knee cartilage to organ transplants, the obstacle to world-class worldwide universal healthcare is not technological. It’s social. It demands a social revolution to shatter the capitalist organization of healthcare and to restructure it as primarily care-centered, preventative, and decentralized.”
“If social wealth is generally allocated based on labor inputs, relatively labor-intensive agroecology will receive more compensation…Command measures ought to extend to phase-outs of industrial agriculture, which has no justification for existing, and wholesale shifts in research spending away from conventional agricultural research and towards agroecology.”
“Land should be redistributed everywhere. Each country should have total control over the food import and export trade, so that food dumping is impossible. Communities rather than farms should be in control of water, seed, and eventually land. This is the agenda of food sovereignty.”
“Intra-urban transportation would occur on bicycles, electronic bicycles, and mass transit, from trolleys to trains, where possible. Private cars would be most often reserved for ambulances and emergency transport – the times and places where society can collectively decide to use the fruits of inherently damaging industrial production in order to protect and convenience human life.”
“Shifting from brick cladding, vinyl windows, asphalt shingles, and fiberglass insulation to a wood-frame house which substitutes those other products with cedar shingles and siding, wood windows, and insulation made from cellulose can convert such a home into a net absorber of CO2 emissions provided that when the house is demolished, the material is recycled instead of entering a landfill.”
A People’s Green New Deal devotes its second half to sketching alternatives to the ‘Green Deal’ idea that put power back into the hands of workers, recognizing crucially how the production of “green” means exploitation of people especially in the Global South. It proposes several key improvements in terms of worker-controlled production; quality and anti-imperialist healthcare; urban re-design; large-scale agrarian reform and the dismantling of agri-business; intra-regional and collectively-controlled transportation systems, and locally-appropriating siting and construction of widespread social housing among other strategies.
In reflection: Thinking with and beyond A People’s Green New Deal for anti-imperialist organizing
Ajl’s A People’s Green New Deal has enormous implications for many who have put their eggs in the basket of “green” environmental politics. It is a wake-up call (or perhaps a slap in the face) to eco-minded social democrats, left liberals, and Green Party followers in rich countries to reassess the colonial violence of their proposals. Ajl stresses that Green New Deals have failed to center the rising tide of dissent ranging from Indigenous sovereignty on Turtle Island to Palestine, to the abolition of systemic racism and carceral assaults as demanded by “Black Lives Matter”, to reproductive control over (femme) bodies, to material transfers of “Land Back” and ecological debt reparations. A People’s Green New Deal redefines (or perhaps defines more clearly) what a just transition implies. Thus far, it is only the degrowth movement in the Global North that makes advances to redirecting the violent processes of growth; though tweaking the machinery of “growth” requires an explicitly anti-imperialist emphasis. As Ajl makes resoundingly clear, “greening” must be redirected as an international class struggle and demand for Indigenous sovereignty. The only way to do this is to ensure transfer of wealth back to those it was stolen from in the form of payment of climate debt (and ecological debt more broadly).
It is a wake-up call (or perhaps a slap in the face) to eco-minded social democrats, left liberals, and Green Party followers in rich countries.
Yet, the means by which such a profound cultural shift can be accomplished leaves the reader somewhat wanting. Ajl notes that “being has a tendency to determine consciousness”, referring to the fact that Global North bodies are less likely to feel and experience the effects of imperialism due to the comforts that they’ve inherited and continue to obtain from an “imperial mode of living”. The problem is simple, yet difficult to overcome: the absence of crucial experience in the inherited comfort of middle-class bodies without which the true depth and nature of ecological crises as a class struggle is potentially not graspable nor perceivable. As Catherine Liu recently writes in Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class, we left progressives in electoral politics, academia, journalism, and other facets of the creative sectors and knowledge economy refuse to talk about class or class consciousness in proposing solutions to things like social and ecological crises. As a result of repeatedly masking questions of our class status with deference to increased gender and racial identity politics and tolerance, the outcome over the past four decades has been an ultimate boon to neoliberal capitalism. Moreover, the perfectionist tendency to “be” and embody anti-oppressiveness as the key to social change excludes people that do not live up to a constructed (though often unspoken) ideal depicting a sort of commitment to struggle. It has also resulted in alienating allies for changing their minds or making mistakes. These legacies of a neoliberal era occur due to a deeply individualizing ethos of personal responsibility that permeates palpably in spaces of well-meaning self-identifying left progressives. The consequence has been the generation of new forms of leftist accommodation within liberal market economies around knowledge generation, and more detrimentally, a pernicious intransigence to truly organize in solidarity across class divides. The potential of engaging in anti-imperialist eco-socialist politics without falling into the trap of an identitarian bourgeois politics of anti-oppression Olympics needs careful attention yet is all too often brushed aside.
For others in less comfortable positions but who are able to get a foot in the door to the fabled “American”, “Canadian”, or “European” dream (even in the abject exploitation of their labor they may experience), the pressure to prove oneself as an entrepreneurial and well-behaved visible or cultural minority enormously sets back the possibility for working class solidarity. Given this gulf of class difference, through what cultural means can class convergence take form in practice? How might this arise? What will it take for comfortable, even anti-racist eco-minded liberal progressive Westerners (and other privileged groups elsewhere) to recognize that Indigenous sovereignty, Third World working class struggle, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) peoples’ dreams for the future, and religious caste oppression are not side objectives, but fundamental for reversing ecological breakdown, generating and resurrecting alternative relations and relationships into being?
Alternatively, why should “greening” strategies direct attention to comfortable middle class Westerners at all? Why even (re)center voices of those who can’t possibly understand the material and everyday violence inflicted on countless people? Would it not make more sense for this demographic to cede place entirely and listen (for a change) by following the lead of those who have been and continue to be violently erased in the name of colonizer ecology? If this latter, what might this look like? These are questions that are left open in trying to imagine a “People’s Green New Deal” in action. It is here where thinking about organizing for anti-imperialist solidarity in the context of generational imperial living could benefit from both class- and region-specific context. What can liberal progressive-minded people in North America learn about “greening” from racial, labour, and decolonial struggles in their own communities? How have middle classes in places like Chile and Ecuador amplified voices and contributed through meaningful rather than performative allyship in anti-imperialist struggles?
Why should “greening” strategies direct attention to comfortable middle class Westerners at all?
Ajl raises some relevant points on the question of national sovereignty from imperialist resource and labour grabs, to reclaim popular control over the means of governing and administering resources in a society, and the role of a national governing body as an appropriate jurisdiction to ensure climate and ecological debts are transferred and appropriately administered. At the same time, he rightly stresses the “hierarchical international system organized around nation states.” Here, some greater clarification is needed. Since demands for national sovereignty often work in parallel to demands around land rights within capitalist political and economic relations, similar questions arise. Both have to do with understanding sovereignty not as a codifiable “right” but as a legitimate relationship. On the one hand, recognition of land rights and nation states are necessary to reclaim autonomy over cultural and economic lifeways; while on the other hand, they reduce diverse political subjectivities and relationships of territory to that of land or “national identity” as an entity to possess and enclose, to erect exclusionary borders around, to ally with or war against. How can overtly or indirectly socialist-oriented governments like Bolivia, Venezuela, and now Chile (under newly-elected Gabriel Boric) effectively reclaim popular control when they are at the same time imbricated within capitalist global markets for primary resources? What unintended effects does the stickiness of globalized markets and their infiltration into anti-imperialist ecosocialist national projects engender? Furthermore, how might the ‘national question’ support Indigenous sovereignty and demands for “Land Back” in different parts of the world? The potentially messy confluence between national sovereignty and a broader vision for an anti-imperialist (and thus anti-capitalist) internationalism needs some fleshing out. What comes first, a popular struggle to demand a fully internationalist anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist world order or nation states etching out sovereign ecosocialist agendas within an ossified and violently militarized capitalist world order? A People’s Green New Deal would require further guidance as to which of these strategies comes first as well as how they might interact or counteract each other.
Finally, Ajl argues that casting a glance away from these questions and instead turning to what is “feasible” or “pragmatic,” as liberal progressive professional managerial classes in the Global North all too often do, effectively confirms that the exploitation of people and nature from a fabricated Third World is an unquestioned necessity. But the questions of how to combat the always-present penchant for pragmatism, even among comrades on the Left, as well as the unexpected outcomes of trying to realize idealized forms of popular sovereignty and control among extremely heterogeneous and internally fractured societies remain open ones. Greater clarity is needed on how anti-imperialist local direct action or municipalisms can better align with an anti-imperialist internationalism, while perhaps reducing the role of the nation state to facilitating this convergence process.
Ajl rightly emphasizes that the “Left” is by no means organized enough. It is clear that status quo establishment has a firm hand in the driver’s seat of a melting planet when tax-evading fortune-500 companies own more wealth than entire countries (with politicians blithely casting their glance away and indeed participating in tax evasion schemes themselves), when stock market bros capitalize upon sophisticated machine learning to squeeze profits from Wall Street, or when eco-fascist elements carry on the legacy of systemic and historical Eurocentric imperialism in “solutions” like replacing (certain) human populations with pristine wilderness. Dislodging this cabal of eco-modernists (regardless of their capitalist or socialist inclinations) through popular revolt has never been more urgent and yet seemingly so far away. A global “People’s Green New Deal” therefore demands that our ecological practice is anti-colonial and anti-imperialist or nothing at all.
I’d like to thank Rut Elliot Blomqvist for helpful suggestions and edits to this piece. Also, many thanks to Gert Van Hecken for comments on an earlier draft.
Vijay Kolinjivadi is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp and writes about the politics and material contradictions of, and alternatives to, mainstream “greening” strategies.
Over the past two decades, a proliferation of “Green New Deal” literature has promoted various strategies for changing the structure of the global energy system to combat climate change. While the term was first coined by the neoliberal economist Thomas Friedman, it has since been taken up by more progressive voices, from Keynesian social democrats to eco-socialists. Sadly, despite the promise of a new wave of climate-conscious legislation, from the European Green Deal and the UN Climate Agreement to the AOC-Markey legislation of 2019, each seems as unlikely as its predecessors to enact substantive change. At the recent COP 26 Climate Summit, for example, the United States failed to join 30 other nations in pledging to phase out sales of new gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by 2040 worldwide. With the US federal government dominated by fossil-fuel friendly Democrats and climate-change denying Republicans, the chances of passing ambitious climate legislationappear bleak. In the absence of real political force, GND proposals often serve as blueprints that respond to a largely speculative question: what would we do if we were in a position of power to create meaningful, lasting, and necessary change?
Instead of offering another blueprint for an impossible future, Max Ajl’s A People’s Green New Deal levels a critique at the genre itself, raising significant questions about the way that plans are proffered, and how most green futures implicitly accept the ongoing violence of capitalist imperialism. Ajl’s work engages critically with a wide spectrum of GND proposals, from policy documents like the European Commission and European Environmental Agency’s “European Green Deal” and Senator Ed Markey and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s House Resolution 109 to Naomi Klein’s On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal and A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Batistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos. Such proposals generally offer pragmatic solutions that work towards a “sustainable” future while remaining “realistic” enough to credibly promise to break through political impasse. The political and ecological horizons of these proposals may vary, but they all position themselves on the progressive edge of an electoral landscape that is – or so the story goes – slowly pushing in the direction of eco-social democracy. Yet eco-social democracy is, as Ajl reminds us, not the same as ecosocialism. Accordingly, Ajl offers a compellingly simple provocation: if all of these visions are impossible in the current political climate, why not fight for the more radical vision of the future that everyone on earth deserves?
A People’s Green New Deal has given us an opportunity to think with Ajl about the current state of aspirational, state-centered green politics, and to reflect on the supposed “pragmatism“that drives the most prominent GND legislative agendas. Ultimately, pragmatism is a question of political strategy: is it better (more pragmatic) to embrace a liberal social democratic horizon in order to build a base of support in the Northern core? Or is it better to push even harder from below and to the left, with visions centered by the climate politics of the Global South? Which people should the people’s climate movement mobilize, fight for, and center? If the answer is “everyone,” Ajl argues, then any blueprints for a “green future” must necessarily include the dismantling of uneven development, uneven exchange, and uneven climate catastrophe, full stop. Here we suspect that many of those whom Ajl targets for critique would agree, but the likely rejoinder is: how can we “push harder” if we have so little power in the first place? Again, the question comes down to strategy.
For Ajl, the problem with green social democracy is that it is at once impossible and boring.
Are left-leaning platforms that envision a socially and environmentally just Keynesianism a means of nudging the “Overton window” of sentiment in the global North away from self-serving, business-as-usual climate denialism? Are these truly, as their adherents seem to hope, the sorts of “non-reformist reforms” proposed by the French ecosocialist André Gorz? Or are they simply reformist reforms, meant to incrementally improve without fundamentally transforming underlying systems of power, privilege, extraction, and ecocide? Ajl squarely situates himself with the latter position. For Ajl, the problem with green social democracy is that it is at once impossible and boring. This kind of pragmatism limits our political imagination instead of opening up new horizons of possibility that galvanize real movement.
In order to build effective political support, GND advocates propose a “big tent strategy” based on the promise of green capitalism (promising “green jobs” and a boost to the economy). This vision fails to challenge, or even name, the unevenness that is necessary to sustain what has been termed the “imperial mode of living” of resource-intensive consumerism for predominantly Global North inhabitants. The result is a politics of “non-disruptive disruptions” that looks to techno-fixes that promise to change everything without changing anything at all. Implicit in the big tent strategy is a promise that the Global North can continue to benefit from uneven exchange and development, but in greener and cleaner ways. Here, Ajl draws upon classic theorists of dependency like Samir Amin, Walter Rodney, Amílcar Cabral, Walter Mignolo, Ali Kadri, along with more recent theorists like Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik, in centering ideas of “colonial drain” and unequal environmental exchange. This body of work illuminates how the integration of formerly colonized countries into the global capitalist economy positions them as appendages to imperial countries like the United States and United Kingdom through a systematic and ongoing drain of surplus. Left to accommodate environmental and economic harms –– including waste, seepage, exploitation, and exhaustion –– these countries are inevitably left out of any “deal” marketed as green, progressive, or environmentally sustainable. (For more discussion of this intervention see “A People’s Green New Deal Symposium” including A People’s Green New Deal – An Exercise in Just Knowledge Production, by Aravind Sakshi, Beyond Green Restoration: An Eco-Socialist GND, by Güney Işıkara, and Debunking the “Eco-Fortress Nationalism” of the AOC/Markey Green New Deal, by Sheetal Chhabria.)
In addition to being consistently inadequate at addressing the causes of climate change, Ajl sees in this so-called pragmatism an implicit defense of the ways in which petrocultures have shaped consumer desires in the Global North. Pragmatism, he writes, is “the watchword of reaction and a talisman of oppression … a cipher for identifying sacrificial victims for a great society that is only capacious enough to hold so many” (12). The pragmatic stance says: we have to build a broad base of support amongst the Northern electorate for a domestic environmental agenda that would eventually trickle down to address the uneven exchanges of the global energy system. Directly challenging imperialist relations and privileges, however, is a non-starter in the halls of Northern power. This is precisely the problem that such pragmatism risks.
So what might this mean for another possible approach, or means of engaging with viable and necessary Green New Deals? If social democratic pragmatism is a problem, then what is a more effective path forward? A People’s Green New Deal argues that left climate politics would benefit from a more robust conjunctural analysis that remains attentive to the uneven positions that various movement actors find themselves occupying, and to develop revolutionary strategy accordingly. While we are not quite sure Ajl’s work delivers on this loftier challenge of revolutionary strategy (and here we point readers to our companion review by Vijay Kolinjivadi for some examples), he does provide some incredibly important pieces of a broader, conjunctural analysis, and how it might suggest important shifts in left climate politics. Although we feel that the question of revolutionary strategy – beyond rejecting big tent pragmatism and standing in solidarity with third world eco-socialism – stands to to be further elaborated, we focus on what the book successfully contributes to these discussions in what follows.
Social democratic pragmatism or climate imperialism?
Ajl’s critique of political pragmatism is leveled most sharply at advocates for social democratic GND agendas that operate within existing networks of power, influence, and money to promote certain green futures while sidelining others. He is unimpressed with how these proposals gesture to “frontline communities” (evidenced in even those most progressive of GND proposals) while leaving imperial relations unchallenged. As Ajl writes, “‘Frontline and vulnerable communities’ are not classes. They are clay-like concepts easily molded into the framework of capitalist diversity efforts… where they will be hardened into decoration on the imperial agenda” (83). His major example, the HR-109 legislation introduced by AOC-Markey in 2019, expresses concern for the legislation’s impact upon frontline and vulnerable communities, but never extends an invitation to these communities to play any substantive role in planning and envisioning their own green futures. Such concern disregards self-determination and sovereignty for these communities.
We need an internationalism built upon decentering the imperial core, not reconstituting its dominance in greener ways.
Against this “pragmatism,” a truly radical – or a Peoples’ – Green New Deal must be premised upon the dismantling of the U.S. military and must address the “sovereignty deficit” that has stripped peripheral nations of any meaningful sense of self-determination. Instead of a trickle-down internationalism, in which core nations provide new green technologies on their own terms (as we’ve seen with COVID vaccines), we need an internationalism built upon decentering the imperial core, not reconstituting its dominance in greener ways. This is why Ajl suggests a strategic engagement with calls for imperial countries in the Global North (chiefly the United States and the European Union) to take “personal responsibility” in paying back their global climate debt, which includes trillions upon trillions owed for the cheap extraction of energetic and material resources over the past several centuries. As Ajl writes, “it is not enough to acknowledge that the US is disproportionately culpable” if such an acknowledgement “isn’t followed up with explicit efforts to make good on climate debt” (85). Climate debt, ecological debt, and sovereignty debt – or as Ajl terms it, the “sovereignty deficit” – directly address the core problem of global capitalist extraction, and therefore the actual problems at the root of the climate catastrophe.
Here Ajl draws something of a line in the sand, arguing that decarceration, decolonization, and abolition are foundational blocks of any viable “green” future. We take these as crucial provocations for the climate left: what does it mean to not simply support decarceration, decolonization, and abolition, but to weave these political horizons into the very fabric of our climate politics? This is precisely the point made by the Red Nation in their powerful rejoinder to GND politics. To put this into terms of revolutionary strategy: vague gestures of support for and deference to “front line communities” don’t build the popular sovereignty needed to empower the most important transformations that GNDs promise to achieve.
Decolonization, decarceration, demilitarization, abolition – these are all big ideas that still need to be fleshed out with details, including the social and technological specifics of when, where, and how to move towards such liberatory horizons. In other words, what are the truly “non-reformist reforms” that take us down these paths, which might oppose an assimilitive reformism more likely to protect the status quo than to subvert it? These are large, movement-defining questions, and while Ajl helps frame their importance, he doesn’t evenly deliver on concrete visions moving towards their realization. However, where Ajl’s text – and overall work – most succeeds is in addressing the question of technology.
Agroecology: A sociotechnical blueprint against climate imperialism
Throughout his “Planet of Fields” chapter, Ajl reminds us that agroecology is a technologically sophisticated way of repairing human and nonhuman relations. His insistence on emphasizing the technological sophistication and sufficiency of agroecology is precisely a gesture along these lines – and one that he expertly pulls off, here and throughout his work. This is where we think Ajl’s voice matters most in global climate debates. Agroecology is not just a make-do set of vernaculars for the periphery. It is a robust and diverse platform of land management and food production practices that can – in a much more “feasible” or “pragmatic” way – take us far down the path of environmental rationality on a planetary scale. It is not smart “for them.” It is just smart. It is smarter. It is the cutting edge.
Technological change is a pre-occupation of most GND visions and debates: should we go for solar, wind or nuclear power? Electric vehicles or clean biofuels? Not only are most debates within GND discourses centered on technology, they are often preoccupied with questions of energy production. Ajl strongly critiques the current discourse around energy transitions, which remain mired in what he labels “ecomodernism.” Ecomodernism is not Ajl’s term, but a platform with roots in ecological modernization theory that has been resuscitated by the Breakthrough Institute’s extended network. Such ecomodernists create a strawman opponent of an antiquated left environmentalism that they paint as anti-technological and therefore out of step with progress, modernity, and everything that has made civilizational advance so bountiful. Their vision of a bright green future purports to use “humanity’s extraordinary powers in service of creating a good Anthropocene.” Ajl, instead, follows many decolonial and Marxist thinkers who have made abundantly clear that modernity and coloniality are two sides of the same coin. Modernity and coloniality cannot be decoupled because they are mutually constitutive.
Ajl’s critique of GND ecomodernisms has to do with their liberal sense of internationalism, which we would call a trickle-down green politics. This kind of internationalism sidelines questions of self-determination and sovereignty, conceiving of internationalism in such a way that situates the Global North in a leading position. For many GND ecomodernists, internationalism is predicated upon tech transfers from north to south, with the assumption that the halls of innovation and entrepreneurship in the developed world will have all the solutions. The problem however, is that these halls of innovation are providing solutions for a lifestyle that is itself the problem. Or in Ajl’s words, “the good life in the North … [has] been based on the bad life in the South” (54). The primary focus lies in protecting a highly energetic and resource-intensive “good life” enjoyed by a minority in the global North, promising to “green” these lifestyles and the industrial base they depend upon, and eventually share this green developmentalism with the rest of the planet.
The goal of a peoples’ GND should not be to accept and perpetuate capitalist imperialism in more sustainable ways, but to diagnose it as a core aspect of the crisis and to confront it accordingly. This means re-orienting our sociotechnical imaginaries away from those entrepreneurial innovators trying to sell us green capitalist lifestyles, and towards a different kind of innovation rooted in a vibrant and sustainable world of many worlds.
Ajl’s turn towards agroecology is an effort to call attention to the assumptions of developmentalism that still linger in progressive GND programs. He mentions, for example, how Cuba has shown how agroecological techniques ranging from vermiculture, soil conservation, innovation of intercropping designs, seed saving, recovery of local varieties, participatory plant breeding, and the improvement of local animal feeds and pastures have helped to boost food production in a manner that is nonetheless more energy efficient and sustainable. Here, Ajl shifts focus from energy to food, arguing that any truly radical GND proposal must begin with the foodways and food needs of the Global South, as opposed to starting with the food desires of the global elite. A People’s Green New Deal, then, must include the dismantling or nationalization of agricultural corporations like Monsanto, as well as planetary agrarian reform, including the breaking up of big farms and the providing of individualized farming space for small-scale farmers. Such plans would include introducing parity pricing, and providing green transition subsidies and placing public investment in infrastructures that can localize food systems.
Ajl’s turn towards agroecology is an effort to call attention to the assumptions of developmentalism that still linger in progressive GND programs.
To illustrate this point, Ajl takes to task questions of meat production, and criticizes what he sees as a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, an ecomodernist excitement about lab-grown meat, and on the other hand, advocacy for global veganism. Ajl is dissatisfied with both, and reminds us that the true problem is not animal-derived proteins, but the environmentally devastating (and morally bankrupt) ways that animals are industrially bred and slaughtered. Such a view “obscures the ecological, political, and social differences between Sahelian herders, Kansan artisanal animal husbandrymen practicing intensive rotational grazing, and those sitting atop pyramidal monopoly-capitalist cow plantations” (136). The category of meat is over-simplified in the climate discourse of the global North, which fails to accept the ways that meat can function sustainably outside of industrial agriculture.
Such conceptual blockages are due to the predominance of ecomodernist narratives which center development in calls to develop the underdeveloped world, or even to conserve or “rewild” the world from the top down. Take, for example, calls for “half-earth socialism” and mandated global veganism from environmentalists like Troy Vettese, which ignore the fact that low-impact livestock agriculture across the global south uses rangelands and pastoral agriculture to support landscape protection and carbon sequestration. The problem is that such policies purport to further the imperialist relationship between developed and underdeveloped countries to impose a global fix that keeps imperialist dynamics intact. Worse, they do not acknowledge that some of the most environmentally sustainable practices already exist within low-impact agricultural systems.
In this regard, lab meat and agroecology are two totally different sociotechnical possibilities addressing two totally different sociotechnical questions. They are interrelated, of course, but for the former it is a question of discovering new ways to feed (quite literally) imperial desires, and for the other it is about supporting and expanding existing ways of feeding the global majority. For Ajl, if we are to imagine an approach to climate politics coming from below and to the left, then it’s the latter, as opposed to the former, that needs to be centered.
From agroecology to food sovereignty:Ecological and social resilience through land reform and “Third World ecosocialism”
Agroecology is not new at all, and if implemented in the North, could entail silvopasturing (or integrating trees into pasture systems), planting forage under trees, alley cropping (which inserts trees into fields), windbreaks, riparian and upland buffers, and forest farming, which could absorb around eleven percent of 2019 carbon emissions. Lab meat, by contrast, is a perfect example of the inefficiency and environmental harm of “green” capitalist production, because it takes more energy to create artificial meat than it would to support agroecological pasture farming.
As many have pointed out, sociotechnical know-how matters, but it also matters where we look for it and who we empower as experts. That is both a function of sovereignty – in terms of land, labor, and resources – as well as in terms of knowledge and technocratic coordination. Instead of just a green technology transfer – from north to south – there needs to be reciprocal dialogues and transfers. Here Ajl pushes beyond some of the more radical GND proposals to envision new forms of abundance that are less dependent on resource-intensive patterns of production and consumption. Agroecology is one such form of abundance, where “animals can and should be a part of landscape management, helping store CO2 in soil, and enriching it and making it more resilient” (137).
This is why land reform takes such a central position in Ajl’s thought. It is what matters fundamentally to so many people on the front lines of the climate crisis, and why land back, reparations, and demilitarization are so important – and so intimately linked to self determination and food sovereignty. Food sovereignty, based upon radical land-to-tiller agrarian reforms, is “the cornerstone for Third World eco-socialism” (139). This is where Ajl turns back to the national question that decolonial thinkers were grappling with in the mid 20th century in reminding us that this question has not been answered and remains central today. In short, the climate question is still a colonial-imperialist question. As such, combating climate change means allowing for the ecological and social resilience that thinkers like Kyle Whyte call for in a true decolonial perspective of climate justice.
So what might it actually mean to locate the technological vanguard in the countryside of the global south? What does it look like when innovation is centered by rural agronomy as opposed to venture capital? To what extent do we really need more technofutures arising from the imperial core that have largely contributed to dominant understandings of viable and liveable futures? This is the medicine Ajl prescribes to the Northern climate movement.
Empowering, centering, and supporting the people and movements of the global periphery requires granting them power and autonomy to develop – on their own terms – and to give them resources to lead us into a socio-technical future that is neither new nor old (that’s a false distinction on a liberal timeline of progress) but simply otherwise. That “otherwise” is peaceful/anti-imperial, it is socialist/anti-capitalist, it is regionalized and rationalized with planetarily democratic input for the coordination and distribution of resources. This will only happen by fighting for and supporting sovereignty, self-determination, and national liberation via the acknowledgement of sovereignty deficits and ecosocialist reparations.
The Cochabamba Agreement: A blueprint for our planetary future
Drawing upon decades of decolonial liberation movements, Ajl urges us to support “a movement of movements” of sovereignty struggles against the imperial core. He reminds us of the Cochabamba agreement, an international climate accord from below and far to the left of what is currently circulating as the social democratic vanguard of climate politics. The 2010 Cochabamba Agreement, he writes, gives us the “planks of a southern platform for ecological revolution” that are “absent or underemphasized in most northern Green New Deals” (11). It shows how agrarian reform, combined with decolonial and national liberation struggles in Bolivia, demanded wide-ranging payments from the North to the South alongside a radical climate agenda.
As Ajl suggests, it may not be mere accident or oversight that this climate accord has been jettisoned for language built around the nostalgic concept of an early 20th century social democratic policy platform in the industrialized North. Ajl also points to the Red Nation’s Red Deal, which shifts questions of social democracy to questions of broken treaties and the need to fight for sovereignty for the dispossessed nations of this world. All of these interventions, from Ajl, Cochabamba, and the Red Nation, center the “national question” and decolonial/anti-imperial politics, as the crux of climate politics. Here, the three elements of ecological debt, demilitarization, and struggles against settler-colonialism meet in places like the “Land Back” movement. A new land-tenure regime and swift changes in land management that center (rather than pay lip service to) Indigenous sociotechnical knowledge are, for Ajl, the shift which “makes the world big enough for all of us” (162).
Ultimately, A People’s Green New Deal asks: should an ecosocialist Green New Deal govern capitalism or destroy it? In answering this question, Ajl’s book turns notions of social democratic liberalism – whether self-proclaimed eco-socialist or otherwise – on their heads. As he warns, “pragmatism and realism can become firehoses dousing in despair the flames of revolutionary hope” (4). Ajl argues that both should be dismissed as ideological counterinsurgency against those who not merely hope for, but need, a better world.
We’d like to thank Rut Elliot Blomqvist for helpful suggestions on this piece.
Jesse Goldstein is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and the Associate Director of VCU’s Humanities Research Center. His book, Planetary Improvement, explores the unrealistic prospects of entrepreneurial solutions solving the climate crisis. His new work looks critically at ways that student creativity is narrowly supported and channeled in the entrepreneurial university.
Natalie Suzelis is an Assistant Professor of Literature at Antioch College and Associate Faculty with the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Her work synthesizes environmental and economic history with cultural theory in order to investigate how elements of capitalist culture are negotiated in literature. Her work has been published in Shakespeare Studies, Mediations, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1800, and Law, Culture, and Humanities.
Flying over Vancouver, British Columbia. Photo: Aaron Vansintjan
by Aaron Vansintjan
In 1991, economist William Nordhaus argued that 87% of GDP would not be affected by climate change. Why? Most of the economy runs on things like manufacturing, finance, and services—all things that can be done indoors, safe from the weather. Nordhaus won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for this work. This line of argumentation is quite common today. This year alone, three papers published in top economics journals argued that climate change would only reduce global GDP by 4-7%.
I had this research on my mind as our plane lifted off from Vancouver International Airport on Monday, November 22nd at 7am. Sitting comfortably by the window in a 20-person cabin cruising over the Strait of Georgia, we veered off inland, and the rising sun illuminated the flooded rivers and roads below us. Orange and reds set the inundated areas in stark contrast to the brown land around them, highlighting, as if with a filter setting, where natural disaster had taken place.
For almost a week now, the Greater Area of Vancouver, population almost 2.5 million, had been separated from the rest of Canada because flooding and mudslides had ripped away key highways and railroads. 15,000 people were evacuated from their homes, four people and 700,000 farm animals died, there were up to USD 6 billion in damages, and a decline of 1.5% of GDP growth is expected.
A tale of two cities
And yet, the city of Vancouver seemed to be operating as normal the week we were there. Up above, cranes swung wildly, glassy condo towers were being built in fast-forward setting. Unaffected by the deluge, directed by the invisible strings of speculation and investment, developers kept building their vertical mirrors. Stores and billboards advertised wellness and cosmopolitan lifestyles, Hummers and tropical getaways. This city was buzzing along as if there was no flood.
Meanwhile, on the sidewalks and in the alleys, in the parks and in dark corners, a daily calamity of misery reigned amongst the homeless. Vancouver, often ranked as one of the best cities to live in in the world, also has more homeless people per capita than Toronto or Montreal. In 2021, British Columbia saw the highest number of deaths from overdose ever. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t expect the immiseration to be so shocking in contrast to the extreme wealth on display. Vancouver’s soggy wretched underclass seemed to be living in the real city, on which the city of mirrors was superimposed.
Vancouver’s soggy wretched underclass seemed to be living in the real city, on which the city of mirrors was superimposed.
One night, going back to our friends’ place after dinner, we passed by a railroad blockade set up by allies of the Wet’suwet’en. Members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation are blocking access to the construction of the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline on their territory, and were being jailed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police just as we were eating dinner. We stopped and chatted with the activists there, asking them why they were doing what they were doing. The answer was: solidarity.
It was almost as if, in Vancouver, there were two cities: one visible to the workings of investment and finance: that 87% that seemingly does not get affected by the deluge. The second city was one where catastrophe had already happened: through decades of disinvestment in public housing and healthcare, centuries of land theft and Indigenous genocide.
My trip there was almost an entirely apolitical experience thus far. But seeing the protest, I felt as if it was there that these two cities met. Through blocking railroad access to the Port of Vancouver, these activists wanted the city to witness the calamity taking place on Indigenous land. Their disruption lifted the veil of the city of mirrors for a brief moment, revealing what lay underneath. Ironically enough, the railroad they were blocking was part of the very same network that had been washed away in a mudslide further inland only a week before.
Chokepoints
My partner Ky Brooks and I were in British Columbia visiting family and friends, hopping on the back of a conference my partner organized in Victoria. Little did we know that we would be travelling during a “once-in-every-500-years” flood. But then, who ever knows those things? After spending time in Victoria and Vancouver, we were meant to visit friends in Osoyoos, to the South. That trip was cancelled when it just became too complicated, with no bus routes available. The next step was to visit Ky’s brother, Eliot, in Revelstoke, a mountain town deep in the Rockies. The only way to get there with the current road conditions was in the air.
On landing in Kamloops, a small industrial city, our pilot chatted with a worker at the airport. The woman reported she couldn’t get milk anymore. Later, in town, we talked to our waiter. Gasoline was being rationed. Natural gas prices jumped by 40%. And all that on top of the catastrophic fires last summer in exactly the same region now affected by flooding—a traumatizing event that still scarred many people. And let’s not forget that we are in the middle of a pandemic. Things have been very hard, and the waiter was worried this was only going to make things a lot harder.
The next day, we took a bus to Revelstoke, which picked us up three hours late. The driver was stressed, calling his dispatcher in a panic: “I was lucky today. But anything happens—road conditions, a traffic accident—and it’ll all go down.” When someone getting on the bus started to complain that he was late, he responded brusquely, “we’re in a state of emergency, people.”
We only interact with an economy falling apart through chokepoints—places in the system that are quickly blocked when something unexpected happens.
We only interact with an economy falling apart through chokepoints—places in the system that are quickly blocked when something unexpected happens. As Kim Moody, a labor researcher, explains, “a single glitch in the production or movement of goods due to a shortage of labor or space can disrupt the supply chains crisscrossing the world.” So when the smallest bottlenecks happen in the supply chain, we get 0% milk instead of the 2% we usually buy, get no fries with our burger, forego the kewpie mayonnaise, fly instead of drive, or get on a bus that’s three hours late. Moody goes on: “Speed [in the supply chain] brings greater risks. Floods, power outages, computer glitches, roads in disrepair, labor disputes, or as we have now seen, pandemics and trade problems can bring a just-in-time system to a halt because there is no slack in the system.”
It’s true that the majority of British Columbia’s workforce is in manufacturing, trade, services, and healthcare—all of which happen not to be directly affected by an extreme weather event. And that’s where much of British Columbia’s economic revenue comes from. Yet, though most of British Columbia’s economic product skews toward “indoor” activities, the province and its workforce is indelibly shaped by its extractive industries. It is also one of the world’s top exporters of lumber, and exports large supplies of coal, copper, gold, and natural gas. When these jobs are affected by weather conditions, everyone is impacted. But it goes deeper still: this industry is itself the cause of some of those very same chokepoints that cause a blockage in the economy.
In conversations with strangers, friends, and family in those weeks, we talked about the connections between these different industries and the disaster that had occurred. Those we talked to agreed that logging—the same industry that was threatening old growth forests throughout the province—had ripped the roots from the soil, making mudslides more common. Wildfires had also increased the chance of mudslides, because forest soils become less absorbent after fires—water repels off them like waxed cloth. And that same logging industry had also made wildfires more likely, since loggers will leave behind logs, branches, and stumps that are very flammable.
The connections between industry, climate change, and disaster don’t stop there. Industrial agriculture—which relies on chemical fertilizer and large machinery rather than maintenance of soil quality—leads to soil erosion and, by extension, more flooding. Urbanization into floodplains—driven by the speculation on real estate—further exposes people to deadly flooding. Meanwhile, the violent eviction of Indigenous peoples from their land has meant that Indigenous forest management practices—which involve regular burning of undergrowth—are no longer practiced.
“British Columbia” is an entity built with fossil fuels, dependent on unsustainably managed extractive industries, contingent on the theft of Indigenous land, and greased with the investments from a global market. Like sun rising over flooded land, calamities such as these illuminate the chokepoints between those intersecting dynamics.
Calamities draw attention to the fact that the real city and the city of mirrors are more connected than they might seem. When a calamity falls upon us, those who inhabit the city of mirrors start experiencing the shortages, the misery, the insecurity of the real city. When I saw this disaster play out during our journey, and seeing how it affected those we met, it became tangible how frail this economy truly is.
A disaster-in-the-making
After a week in Revelstoke, we were supposed to leave on Sunday morning at 6 a.m. Instead, after a long night of continuous snow, they closed the highway. Even though the ski hill had just opened for the season the day before, they announced that morning that they would close for the day, citing “historic”, “unprecedented”, and “extreme avalanche hazard”. Eliot, Ky’s brother, spent the day working as an avalanche patroller, triggering avalanches on the ski slope. He told us he had never seen anything like it. When they opened the highway at 3 p.m. we were in a pick-up truck, driving at a snail’s pace through Rogers’ Pass, in road conditions at the edge of impassable. Thanks to our excellent driver, Ren, we made it safely through to Calgary, where we were staying with friends for two nights before going home. All in all, we were glad that we had gotten through the journey safely, and that everyone we know was okay.
On November 30, we boarded a flight from Calgary to Montreal. When I was looking out from my window once again, what I saw was not a city, but straight lines of asphalt and concrete. Barely any sidewalks to speak of, row after row of suburban homes only accessible by car. Parking lots, driveways, highways, SUVs and trucks. Calgary’s wealth comes from the tar sands, but it is also the nation’s capital of homelessness, with a higher percentage of homeless people than any of Canada’s large cities.
Economists like William Nordhaus can only see certain parts of what makes up our world.
Flying over the edge of the city, I spotted a small futile nest of wind turbines. These only seemed to rub it in more: there was no way this city could exist without oil and the infrastructure it depends on—from the tar sands to highways to financial centers. Though it seems so solid, there is so much here that could break—the smallest crack in a supply chain, a highway swept aside by the rain.
Economists like William Nordhaus can only see certain parts of what makes up our world. For them, the economy looks like a global meshwork of exchange, woven according to the rules of supply and demand, strung together by individual rational choices and creative adaptation to crisis. The implication is, of course, that the system itself will withstand, and solve, any problem it faces. But what they don’t see is that their world exists like a net on top of another one—a material world, already suffused with calamity, already frail, already buckling under pressure.
The world we live in is a disaster-in-the-making. Its weave is held together in chokepoints that, with one 500-year-flood, can easily be washed away. Those who continue to practice faith in this frail world can’t see the relationships that make it possible, the knots that, when undone, unravel the whole thing.
It is up to those of us who can see the fragility of the world, and cannot abide by it, to put a stop to the calamity awaiting us. To do so, we’d need to cut ourselves loose from the net, while tending to our broken relationships, and forging new ones.
Thank you to Susanna Klassen for the edits and feedback.
Aaron Vansintjan is an editor of Uneven Earth and writes about cities, food, ecology, and science fiction.
This essay was composed in conjunction with a year-long residency at Spike Island Gallery in Bristol, U.K., taking place throughout 2022. It is part of a larger project exploring the concept of the Body-Forest and how thinking of the body as an interconnected ecosystem, rather than the body-machine metaphor developed under capitalism, might shift the way we think about our human connection to the world. This idea was first introduced by the evolutionary biologist Pierre Sonigo in ‘The Robot and the Forest’ and further developed by Shrese. How might the Body-Forest de-centre the human? How might it change how we think about time? Or language? Or desire? The following piece explores the Body-Forest as community.
I walk along the approach to Leigh Woods on the edges of Bristol, trudging up from the Cumberland Basin. The mud cakes my boots and hands and I accidentally smear soil across my face. I sense my body becoming something more than my body as the soil collapses the boundaries between myself and the woods. We merge in an oozing embrace. The path becomes a river. One misstep and I slip and slide in the rich hummus that streams down from the previous night’s rain. Without the grasp of a beech here or an oak there I risk tumbling toward the River Avon’s grey surge below.
I pass a jogger who has stopped to take photos in the woods. Their breath billows in the forest air as two ecosystems breathe as one: the woods and the jogger. Green breath meets green breath. Below my feet the fungal network surges with intricate connections, erupting out of the earth in arrays of glistening mushrooms among oak worms and darkling beetles. These woods make clear that our bodies are not merely our bodies. They are intimately connected with the bodies of trees and plants and fungi, with the bullfinches and marsh tits and fly orchids, all breathing separately, yet as one. My body is only my body in relation to the other bodies that surround it. The woods collapse the idea of a discrete body, throwing into question notions of the individual and community.
I keep clambering up the forest slopes, leaving room for the jogger to pass as we nod from afar—the best connection we can muster in this viral world of distance. The smells are dizzying in their variety: rotting fruit, decomposing bark, and pungent fox-piss. I can almost make out the birdsong, the trees rustling above, an unkindness of ravens. But the human noise—the whirr of cars—always supersedes the forest noise. This close to the city, the humming of the A-road is always audible. The human drowns out the non-human.
This near square mile of woodland that survived wealthy suburban development only did so due to the 1909 donation of the land to the National Trust by tobacco tycoon Sir George Alfred Wills. At this same historical moment, Wills was expanding his fortune into the British Empire in India. The name of his company—Imperial Tobacco—speaks volumes about the sources of his wealth, reflecting the deep and troubling ties in Bristol between the tobacco industry and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, involving merchants like notorious slave-trader Edward Colston. Colston (made internationally famous by the toppling of his statue in the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020) was, like Wills, known across the city for generous donations to civic buildings, yet such benevolence at home was a means to mask atrocities abroad.
As I climb, dwelling on this troubled history, I pass tents hidden in the undergrowth and limestone slabs where fire pits once blazed in the forest-dark. I also notice signs of less sustainable relations between the human and non-human. There are sheer drops in the gorge carved out by industrial quarrying. These quarries were dug into the ground near Bristol as the British Empire continued to pillage the rest of the world in the industrialisation of the 19th Century, when George Alfred Wills’ father, Henry Overton Wills III, was expanding his tobacco business with slave-produced tobacco from the USA. Brunel’s Suspension Bridge was built at the southern end of Leigh woods on the back of these kind of expansions, with a large part of its funding coming through The Society of Merchant Venturers, of which Colston had been a member. This Society controversially still exists today.
Nearby lies Ashton Court Estate, inhabited for centuries by the merchant Smyth family. Their expansion at home and abroad reflects this wider story of the wealth of this country. The Smyth’s vast woods, country garden and imperious buildings were partly funded by the plunder of African soil, of plants as well as humans, and an 18th Century marriage to the heiress of a Jamaican slave plantation.
I finally reach the top of the forest bank, breathless though breathheavy. Ancient copper beeches shiver all rust-red and magnificent. I encounter a sign:
PRIVATE PROPERTY: DO NOT TRESPASS BEYOND THIS POINT.
I look beyond the sign, the view bramble-thick and obscured, and can just make out spiked black railings and a huge mansion with seven luxury cars lined up outside. As I peer at the manicured lawn and cavernous multi-storeyed house, my body mud-smeared and lichen-fingered, I think about how the ‘public access’ of these woods belies the fact that those that can pay are allowed far more access than others. In the United Kingdom, less than one percent of the population owns more than half the land. A recent mapping by Guy Shrubsole showed that a third of our woods are owned by only a thousand landowners.
I sense how utterly alive and brimming with life the woods are—of how much life wants to live.
In addition, there is a marked racial disparity to land access in the U.K., where people of colour have much less access to green spaces. The widespread phenomena of rural racism is yet another barrier that occurs in the countryside. Groups like Land in Our Names(LION) have outlined the lesser ability to own land to develop food sovereignty among racially marginalised groups. For thousands of years, England has been a viciously bounded land in a process that was ramped into overdrive from the enclosures of the seventeenth century onwards. Leigh Woods itself is divided between north and south by an Enclosure Act of 1813, with the northern half formerly part of the Smyth’s Ashton Court estate. Yet this boundedness sits at odds with the fecundity of both the woods and our bodies.
I make my way down from the brambles, the shadow of Brunel’s Suspension Bridge just within sight through the trees. I pass fingered sedge and clusters of ferns, while squirrels scurry across the canopy. I sense how utterly alive and brimming with life the woods are—of how much life wants to live.
Then I stop dead in my tracks. A huge limestone crevice drops three metres to a cave system beneath me. I look around the crevice and notice a series of steps fashioned from branches and iron. I begin to make my way down, clinging to the mossy banks, roots and slabs for support. As I move around to the other side of the ad hoc staircase, I notice a gate inscribed in marker with the words:
COMMUNITY SPIRIT KEEPS US ALL GOING.
A quick glance shows that someone has been living here so I hold back, wary not to intrude. I dwell on how caves and forests have sheltered humans and provided food and resources throughout history. I think of the Kayapo and Xavante peoples forced to flee their millennia-old homes in the northern Amazon and the hundreds of Indigenous tribes in Colombia whose lands were plundered and seized by various government-backed paramilitaries and bombed from above by the US War on Drugs.
I imagine this cave system must weave beneath the foundations of the mansion and its no trespass sign, iron railings, and seven cars parked outside. Fence meeting fence. And in this moment, stuck between those two worlds—the gated communities of privilege and the evidence of another’s precarious shelter—I think about the different ways we have become disconnected from thinking of our bodies as an ecosystem, intricately connected to other bodies, not merely the human. And in this moment, I yearn for a shift in the way we think of our bodies and of community: I yearn for the community of the Body-Forest.
‘The forest moulds itself around the girls. More than something inanimate passed through by something living, the landscapes come to the humans and change their consciousness and form. Forest and humans are made equals: the girls walk through a transformable landscape, but they are also part of the transformation.’ - Jenny Hval, Girls Against God (2020)
The imaginary forest
Despite its role as a place of shelter, food, and resources, humans have often held an ambivalent relationship with the wild. They have been places of fear and trepidation; within Western imaginaries a place of warning for the “civilised” Western subject of how “wildness” leads to an unravelling of the self and the civilised world. This is captured by the Latin root silvestris, which means both wooded and wild.
In her hallucinatory Taiga Syndrome (English translation, 2018), Cristina Rivera Garza self-consciously nods toward The Brothers Grimms’ “Hansel and Gretel.” In her novel, the vastness of the boreal forest—the Taiga—is a site of horror and anonymity for the detective tasked with finding a missing couple within it. This forest is a place where things and people go missing, breadcrumbs lead nowhere, and the non-human refuses to bend its branches to aid humans.
The forest looms large in many folk-horror films, too, with Robert Egger’s VVitch (2015)being a salient example. Here, the protagonist’s family show a lack of understanding of the woods after they are banished from their white settler town. The threat of the woods to this family living on its fringes ultimately leads them to ruin, revealing the brittleness of their Christian systems of understanding, while carving out space for the revolutionary potential of women’s sexual power suggested by the film’s climax, as the protagonist embraces the expansiveness of her desires realigned through intimate dialogue with the power of the woods.
VVitch is set around the same historical moment in the seventeenth century that saw the turbulence of the English Civil Wars, ultimately leading to the beheading of Charles I. Among this upheaval, the royalist elite held a deep fear of those that lived outside the state’s power in the cities. This same royalist elite included the parents of Edward Colston, among many other Bristol merchants. In The World Turned Upside Down (1972), Christopher Hill calls the groups that the elite so feared the ‘masterless men’ of woodland communities. The fear of that time was potently outlined by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651), where he wrote that life outside the safety of a sovereign’s power was one of ‘continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ Such antagonism toward the ‘masterless men’ and the terror and mystery of the woods where they lived, acted as state propaganda for the enclosures of common lands that were rapidly accelerating.
As I move away from the cave, I think about the widespread working-class resistance to enclosure at that time, such as the working-class Northamptonshire poet, John Clare, and the visionary leader of the Diggers movement, Gerard Winstanley, who, in his True Levellers Standard Advanced of 1649, called for the common people to ‘break in pieces quickly the Band of particular Propriety, disown this oppressing Murder, Opression and Thievery of Buying and Selling of Land, owning of landlords and paying of Rents and give thy free Consent to make the Earth a Common Treasury…’
In Winstanley and Clare, and in the contemporary narratives of Taiga Syndrome and VVitch,there is a deep respect for wild land such as the woods, and a revealing of the dangers that await those who fail to pay due respect. This dynamic of respect for the non-human is something people living in non-Western communities have been carrying out for thousands of years, from the Indigenous tribes of the Amazon to peoples of the First Nations, as well as closer to the U.K. with land justice movements mentioned above such asLION, and others such asWild in the City.
‘Something is trying to tell me. That voice at the edge of things…. I tremble before the animal, the alien, the sub- or suprahuman, the me that has something in common with the wind and the trees and the rocks, that possesses a demon determination and ruthlessness beyond the human’– Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera (1987)
The forest and difference
In Ciro Guerra’s film El Abrazo De La Serpiente (Embrace of the Serpent, 2016), the last member of the Cohiuano tribe in the Colombian Amazon must move through the jungle as part of his rites of passage. His tribe, too, fears the forest. ‘To become warriors, the Cohiuanos must abandon all and go alone to the jungle, guided only by their dreams. In this journey, he has to find out, in solitude and silence, who he really is. He must become a wanderer dream.’ Yet the Cohiuano’s fear of the forest’s difference does not lead to violence, but a deepened respect and understanding. To meet the jungle in ‘silence’ and ‘solitude’ is to listen to it on its own terms, which in turn shapes the people they can become if they heed its call. The forest moulds itself around the girls.
I’m drawn to the community theatre of Dwight Conquergood, whose work greatly influences my own. He argues that when encountering cultures, languages, and life experiences outside of one’s own, the aim should be for the deeply different to become deeply known, without becoming any less different. This is my goal when engaging with communities and people outside my own frames of reference. We can expand this to also think about how we engage with other living beings, such as plants and trees and animals. Like the Cohiuano tribe member in El Abrazo De La Serpiente, thinking within the Body-Forest as community would mean encountering difference and seeing it as a site of learning and respect—to deeply know that which is different, without collapsing the integrity of difference.
‘The Earth does not expect you to save her, she expects you to respect her’– Nemonte Nenquimo
Our relationship and community with the woods is not a simple one. Nor should it be. But in the West, it is a relationship that has become defined by extraction and destruction, as shown by the fires ravaging through the ancient forest ecosystems of California, Greece, Italy, Turkey, Siberia and China, at the time of writing.
Humans, after all, are nature too, no matter how hard some try to transcend it.
Yet whenever there is a tilt toward understanding forests on their own terms, we find both the forest’s breath and our own breath moving longer and deeper. Robin Wall Kimmerer gives a prescient example of this in her book Braiding Sweetgrass (2013). She explores the difference in numbers of endangered black ash trees when in proximity to the Potawatomi peoples (who make their baskets with the ash). In areas where Potawatomi basket makers lived and worked, the ash numbers thrived. However, when the weavers were absent, the tree numbers were less plentiful. The forests were thicker, and less light reached the ash on the forest floor. Through sustainable cultivation, the Potawatomi people helped the black ash flourish again.
As I make my way along the limestone ridge, I notice that here in Leigh Woods there is also evidence of a more sustainable co-existence between the human and non-human. Up ahead I can hear the shuffling snaps of hoofs in the forest understory. Looking closer I see the ruddy shapes of North Devon Cattle among the cover of trees in the distance. They have been introduced here to help invigorate the pasture of this ancient woodland, as their grazing enables the clearing of bramble and scrub, allowing the herb-rich limestone grassland to survive, giving more space for veteran trees to breathe away from encroaching scrub, and helping to preserve the Iron Age Stokeleigh Fort found here.
In writing about the forest, I do not want to create some kind of false wilderness void of human presence. Humans, after all, are nature too, no matter how hard some try to transcend it. But wherever we meet the woods on equal footing, in ways that are mutually beneficial, everyone thrives. What is good for the woods is good for us.
‘There’s a humour in the way they walk Even a flower walks But they don’t look for me It walks just as it’s grown It’s laughing so naturally It tells me a tree’s a tree’ – Julia Holter, ‘In the Green Wild’
The forest and the border
As I take a last look back at the mansion behind me on the ridge, increasingly obscured by the deepening thicket, I see boundary after boundary after boundary. The railings, the high brick walls, the closed-circuit television cameras on the gates, the multitude of cars. Fence meets fence. Attempts to fix and lock the human in place. A gated community of individual power tucked away in high security houses, detached from the many people who live layered in the city centre over the bridge.
A man’s home is his castle, goes the old saying. But what if a person’s home was the forest? Remove the possessive and masculine ‘his.’ We could note the cave-dwellers beneath the mansion walls and the various tents in the undergrowth, pushed out by extortionate rents and chronically insufficient social housing in cities like Bristol. But taken in a wider sense, it would mean thinking of our bodies not as individual entities, shored up in walls and discrete houses set apart from others, but rather complex ecosystems as dependent on the non-human as the non-human is dependent on us. The Body-Forest as community.
‘No, no! I am nothing pure! My race is mixed. My sex is mixed. I am woman and man, light with darkness, nothing pure! I am mud and flame!’– Penda’s Fen (1974)
The promiscuous forest
I frequently struggle with the demarcation of the ‘human’ and ‘non-human.’ It can create a misleading boundedness about our bodies and their relationship with other bodies. I’m far more drawn to the use of more-than-human. Rather than define anything that is not human by its negation—non-human—we see it as more, something to respect and view horizontally.
The woods endlessly trespass.
This interconnectedness of species, including humans, is indicated by the fact that more than half of the cells that make up our bodies are actually bacteria and fungi (traditionally seen as ‘non-human’). We are so much greater than the sum of our parts, if only we could change the way we see ourselves. Such manoeuvres within the Body-Forest as community could decentre the human from our privileged location in the world. It might begin to branch our thinking outward into horizontal structures of mutual benefit between humans and other living beings. Such thinking might desbordar our ideas of the human body as a closed and finite entity. Desbordar is a Spanish word, meaning to overflow limits or brim over. The woods desbordar too—constantly overflowing their ‘limits’ and making a mockery of ideas of PRIVATE PROPERTY and TRESPASS.
The woods endlessly trespass. I’m reminded of this as I see mushrooms erupting through a rotting ash down from the ridge, tinged acid-green at their gills and spreading wildly through the hollow. The fungi that comprise a large component of our own bodies also comprise a large part of the forest body. Tree roots, fungi, and bacteria exist symbiotically, sharing and distributing resources between one another and allowing the trees to communicate with each other. Dying trees can divest themselves of resources for the benefit of younger trees. Trees in the sun may give extra resources to trees in shady areas.
In the 1980s, the relationship between fungi and trees was commonly thought to be a reflection of the free-market economics championed by that era. As Margaret Thatcher declared that ‘there is no such thing as society’, merely individuals, many scientists went to the woods and decided that trees compete against each other for soil and light while fungi feed off them and cause disease. Yet rather than competition, that zero-sum game of one species dominating another (cue the mansion on the ridge, the Etonians in the government cabinet, the Western conquest of Indigenous lands), we find something far more complex and outside the limits of human language. While the implications of this phenomenon are astounding and far less simplistic than the free-market metaphors of old, we must also be wary of imposing another, but more collaborative, human structure on the world. In the Body-Forest we must sit with difference and unknowingness and see it as a location of learning and respect. The deeply different can become deeply known without becoming any less different.
Merlin Sheldrake, whose recent Entangled Life (2020)probes this mycorrhizal wonder in incredible detail, describes how the amorphous and streaming bodies of fungal networks existas one, ‘without ceasing to be many.’ Sheldrake compares this to the way polyphonic music works, where each individual voice has resonance without losing its relationship to the whole. I hear this when The Reykjavik Women’s Choir sings on Bjork’s Biophilia (2011), in the choral music of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, or in the dialogue of insect and human in the gorgeous Be-One album. I revel in this sense of being part of something that is bigger than me and becoming nourished through the experience of the collective. In the woods, I’m slipping in the sludge and I’m unsure if what I’m following is even a footpath anymore, the gorge seems to be getting steeper, and I have to concentrate all my attention to avoid stumbling down.
‘A forest knows things. They wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren’t shaped to see. Root plasticity. The environment is alive, a fluid changing web of purposeful lives dependent on each other, flowers shape bees as much as bees shape flowers. Trees shape us as much as we shape trees.We’ve just forgotten how to see.’– Richard Powers, The Overstory (2018)
The lonely forest
We’ve just forgotten how to see. In this age of mass media, 24-hour news cycles, smashed-apart labour unions, the gutting of communities through gentrification and widespread state surveillance, we have become more atomised than ever. The modernist poet Jane Harrison termed the phrase holopsychosis to describehumanity’s lost familiarity with collective experience, which she saw as a state of being before existence was divided into subjects and objects. Holopsychosis captures something of what we have lost, or that which we cannot access, diminished by gated communities, exploitative work and zero-hour contracts, empty luxury builds rising in the wake of scorched-out council towers and billionaire-infested governments. I would say we are suffering from holopsychosis more than ever.
And yet, I’m reminded again and again of what the brilliant and dearly missed David Graeber, in his influential book Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011), called everyday communism. Graeber argued that communism is the foundation of all human sociability and makes society possible, giving instances such as the simple gesture of borrowing a cigarette and broader examples, such as the centrality of sharing food among many cultures across the world.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic there has been a renewed sense of this need for collective action, for properly funded public health care (and the tragic cost of its absence); a surge in interest in Green New Deals; of mutual aid groups popping up around the country and the timely reminder of those that had been around for decades, particularly among migrant populations in our cities. The powers that be will do all they can to divide us, systematically and without mercy, but the search for connection and community will continue to erupt through the cracks of stone walls and mansions, much like the ivy that drips down the walls of Ashton Court’s fallen empire on the other side of these woods, filling the cracks and splitting the stones, roots thick and creeping into the entrances of stately homes. All their castles will turn back to soil.
‘No matter how we are kept apart, humans always find each other. We will talk through walls if we have to, pass notes, write graffiti in the middle of the night.’– Anne Boyer
The forest and mutual aid
I stop for a moment to catch my breath and take a sip of water by the side of a fallen oak. In the stillness, held in the stirring wood, I notice the tiny shapes of ants making their way across the roughed ridges of the trunk, scuttling in tight formation, with torn leaves twice their size carried above their delicate bodies. I think of Peter Kropotkin, who explored the phenomena of cooperation among more-than-human species in Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902), ranging from the cohabitation of multiple animals in lake habitats to the mass-migration of fallow-deer on the Amur. He used his observations of mutual aid within the more-than-human world evolution to develop an understanding of how mutual aid could also be found within human societies:
‘It is not love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense) which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of wolves; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen species of young birds to spend their days together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered over a territory as large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all marching toward a given spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy—an instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and men alike the force they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the joys they can find in social life… It is not love and not even sympathy upon which society is based in mankind. It is the conscience—be it only at the stage of an instinct—of human solidarity. It is the unconscious recognition of the force that is borrowed by each man from the practice of mutual aid; of the close dependence of everyone’s happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice or equity which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual as equal to his own.’
In one of his last essays, David Graeber wrote about how it was through Kropotkin’s observations of various animals’ relationship to mutualism that he was able to refute the ‘survival-of-the-fittest’ evolutionary theories of the Social Darwinists of thenineteenth century—theories that were used to legitimise European colonialism’s genocides (and have been eagerly revisited today by the eugenics-crazed minds of Dominic Cummings and his cronies’ deep influence in the present U.K. government).
I take another sip of my water and turn from the scurrying line of ants, making for the gap in the canopy ahead which indicates I’m edging closer to Brunel’s bridge. I think about how there are acts of solidarity happening every day, visible evidence to discredit the ‘Selfish Gene’ of Richard Dawkin’s breed of evolutionary science. Dawkins argues that a gene’s ‘drive’ to replicate itself shows that selfishness is endemic to all living things. Yet his argument falls short by our clear capacity to self-sacrifice, as well as self-preservation. As Graeber indicated, cooperation, orcommunism, is the foundation of all social relationships, and we can see that such relationships as are forged in cooperatives and radical municipalities, enable the people involved to build resilience and deepen their ability to both give and receive.
‘Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking. Life forms multiplied and complexified by co-opting others, not just by killing them’– Lynn Margulis, Microcosmos (1986)
The microbial forest
We find further interconnectedness at the microscopic level. The evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis discovered that all larger organisms (such as fungi, animals, and plants) evolved symbiogenetically. For Margulis, evolution arose through what she calls the intimacy of strangers, i.e., cells, bodies, and organisms coming together in mutually beneficial ways. In her work Symbiotic Planet (1998), she describes a worm often mistaken for seaweed. Photosynthesizing algae live within these translucent worms, making them appear green. They lie on the beach together and the algae produce food for both organisms. Each part of this pair performs parts of their shared functions—they remain genetically separate organisms, but they act as a single being, rendering it impossible to determine where one organism ends and the other begins. On a molecular level Margulis proved that we have relied on the intimacy of strangers—the networking between life organisms—throughout our long history of evolution. This networking still goes on today.
What kind of world might we move toward if we could bring to ruin the lie that places the sanctity of the individual over the power of the collective?
I’m wary not to collapse Margulis’s microbial research into human concepts of organisation. I wish to acknowledge that neither genomes nor fungi cooperate in the way we understand humans can. Yet Margulis’s symbiotic organisms explode the idea that we are a bounded and somehow privileged species.
COMMUNITY SPIRIT KEEPS US ALL GOING
In the wake of the crises of both the climate and COVID, itself a climate crisis, and the rise of the far-right machismo of Trump, Bolsanoro, Modi, Johnson, and others like them, it is easy to feel trapped by the holopsychosis of the modern world. Yet beyond the headlines we can find the intimacy of strangers. We can choose to come across difference and refuse to meet it with distrust, but rather respect—the deeply different becomes deeply known without becoming any less different. We can choose to come across difference and see an opportunity for deeper understanding, for both ourselves and for others, for the human and more-than-human.
What kind of world might we move toward if we could bring to ruin the lie that places the sanctity of the individual over the power of the collective? What if we could open ourselves to trust more in the intimacy of strangers?
I reach the edge of this part of the forest and find myself against the red sandstone wall which makes up the base of one of the gothic towers of Brunel’s bridge. I feel my way back up the slope to where an iron railing divides me from the road that runs across the bridge. I haul myself up and over the spikes and land on the pavement on the other side. My face near the floor, I notice clumps of groundsel and daisies erupting through the cracks in the concrete, reminding me of how porous the borders are between the woods and the city, as porous as the borders that exist between species.
As the fungal networks stream between and around the trees that tower from the forest floor into the canopy above, so too could we look at the ecosystem of the forest and learn how to build communities that rely not on borders and gates and violence and the rapacious pursuit of profit, but deep roots of equality and thriving shoots of solidarity.
I get to my feet and begin to cross the bridge back into the city.
Jack Young is a writer and participatory educator living in Bristol, U.K. His hybrid fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in Entropy, 3:AM, Burning House Press, The Grapevine, Caught by the River, and Epoque Press, among others. Big White Shed will publish his book Urth in 2022. He also co-hosts the literary podcast Tender Buttons. Visit www.jackmyoung.net for more information.
Waste trucks rumbling through the residential neighborhood have become a commonplace scene in Chester City, Pennsylvania. These trucks make their way to the Covanta incinerator carrying tons of garbage from Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and places as far as 115 miles away, like New York. It is the nation’s largest trash incinerator, has very few pollution controls, and has become infamous for burning an astonishing 3,510 tons of trash a day. Trucks disrupting the otherwise peaceful neighborhood have become an extension of the myriad ways in which Chester has been reduced to a burning furnace. The city’s 4.8 square miles are overburdened with trash incinerators, a medical trash burner, a sewage sludge incinerator, paper mills, and a multitude of chemical plants (Map 1). This hub of toxic facilities has disproportionately subjected the predominantly minority population, 70 percent of which is African American, to the perils of environmental pollution. Such environmental harm has been an unwelcome addition to the social ills and disinvestment that Chester residents continue to struggle with in their daily lives. The close proximity between the toxic facilities and neighborhoods with a high density of African Americans is unambiguous (Map1). Meanwhile, such facilities are notably absent from the areas that flank the core African American neighborhoods to the east and west.
Map 1. The demographic concentration of the African American population in and around Chester, Pennsylvania with the locations of polluting industries. E = Ethanol Refinery, G = Gas, I = Trash Incinerator, O = Oil Refinery and Red/Green markings = Others. Borrowed from Energy Justice Network. Map 2. A Google Maps image of the Chester city boundary.
Media coverage of the Chester case has uncovered the detrimental health consequences associated with residents’ prolonged exposure to pollution. While the sources of air pollution are varied and difficult to isolate, their attendant health problems have been very certain. Cases of asthma, lung cancer, stroke, and heart disease are rampant and exist alongside lead poisoning from deteriorated housing and air pollution. The pollution has reached the extent that even the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is aware that the facilities violate national air quality standards. While current news articles uncover ‘pollution’, ‘harmful air’, and ‘dirty air’ as the major concerns of Chester, most of the systemic racism ingrained in the continued pattern of toxic facility siting largely goes missing. Only by placing Chester in a historical context does the environmental racism of the toxic dump come into view.
The Covanta Delaware Valley LP, located at Chester, Pennsylvania, USA. Credit: Veronica GomesThe Monroe Energy LLP, located at Chester, Pennsylvania, USA. Credit: Veronica Gomes
Nations’ worst case of environmental racism
So, when did environmental racism start? What events positioned Chester as the‘nations’ worst case of environmental racism?’
Chester was once a flourishing ‘boom town’, according to Dr. Marilyn Howarth of the Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology. During the 1960s, it was host to multiple manufacturing centers, namely Sun Ship, Scott paper, and Ford Motor Company. The site of the town along the Delaware River was attractive for industries that heralded the surge of the middle-class population. Chester boasted a good educational system, department stores and was a major music venue that hosted jazz concerts and live theatre. But the city’s heyday was short-lived.
A sign that has greeted people entering the city since the 1920s, ‘What Chester makes, makes Chester’ now serves as an apt parody for the flared pollution that characterizes the city today
A sign that has greeted people entering the city since the 1920s, ‘What Chester makes, makes Chester’ now serves as an apt parody for the flared pollution that characterizes the city today. Chester experienced economic and demographic restructuring after World War II due to technological advancements and competition from abroad that led to massive deindustrialization. The shift of the city’s core industries offshore follows the common trend of industries relocating for factors such as cheap labor and land values. Also typical of other cities in the American Rust Belt, the subsequent collapse of the economy and the deficit in manufacturing jobs led affluent residents to move to the suburbs, leaving behind the poor minorities.
The evacuation of manufacturing jobs led to the transformation of the demographic make-up and ‘white flight’ out of Chester. Coupling the concept of ‘white privilege’ to ‘white flight’ as geographer Laura Pulido has demonstrated expands conventional understandings of racism. Namely, white residents secure relatively cleaner neighborhoods, through processes of suburbanization and decentralization. White privilege, which is embedded in our social, economic, and political system, thus reinforces discrimination between ‘whites’ and ‘nonwhites’ in creating forms of racism that are geographically distinct. The resulting segregation between whites in suburbs and nonwhites in the city core contributes to environmental racism through the uneven distribution of and exposure to toxic air, polluted water, and other environmental hazards. This phenomenon, termed the ‘spatiality of racism’ applies to Chester’s process of deindustrialization, urban disinvestment, and demographic change that characterize its landscape of environmental racism.
Racism and its consequences occur across multiple scales – individual, institution, society, and global. The concept of ‘spatiality of racism’ challenges us to look beyond Chester’s polluting activities of a single facility and instead address the larger industrial zone in its relation to the suburbs and the inner city. Meanwhile, a historical perspective helps us recognize the racialized process of suburbanization that created these regions in the first place. The clarification of the relationship between industrial zones, suburbs, inner-city, and race then becomes primary to understanding contemporary patterns of environmental racism.
Attention to Chester’s broader history of class inequality and racial segregation implicates instead a suite of intersecting drivers of environmental racism
Most studies on Chester’s environmental racism till date have been conducted using inadequate scales of analysis – mainly by focusing on the polluting facilities and its immediate harm on the air quality. Accordingly, we encourage moving beyond those limited conceptions of scale and a narrow understanding of racism to identify linkages within the spatial units of Chester’s industrial zone, the suburbs, and the inner city that produce a toxic urban landscape. Where standard narratives blame the siting of toxic facilities as discreet acts of individual racism, this approach draws attention to Chester’s broader history of class inequality and racial segregation which implicates instead a suite of intersecting drivers of environmental racism.
The contrastive skyline of Chester marking the power plants to the left and the resident’s neighborhood to the right. Credit: Veronica Gomes
Beyond environmental racism
Two dominant narratives have constrained the environmental racism discourse. As geographer Malini Ranganathan argues, environmental racism is often reduced to matters of individual intentional acts, in which a few ill-minded people misbehave in an otherwise race-neutral society, while race itself is assumed to be randomly correlated with the siting of toxic facilities. Both narratives constrain our thinking and treat racism as an unfortunate outcome of personal disposition. Accepting race as a random correlate of hazardous facility siting makes it difficult to raise questions about the broader structures that direct the siting process. Even when there is no intent to discriminate in the siting process, the market forces that trap ethnic minorities in such locations, for instance, should not be seen as ‘race-neutral’.
In the case of Chester, past policies of housing segregation remain intertwined with contemporary decisions about siting hazardous facilities. Zoning decisions made in the past to racially segregate residents and concentrate industries in African American communities have present-day effects. Even though the present decisions to place facilities in industrial zones may appear race-neutral, the outcomes discriminate against minority populations. This is so because polluting facilities end up in low-income African American communities due to the past discriminatory decisions to situate industrial zones around minority communities. The low-income, predominantly African American community in Chester is thus disproportionately subjected to industrial pollution and its attendant health impacts. This is an example of what Joe R. Feagin and Clairece Boojer Feagin term ‘side-effect discrimination’, where discrimination in one area reinforces discriminatory outcomes in another even while the siting decision itself has no discriminatory intent. Identifying the factors that create disparities in the distribution of polluting facilities is critical towards understanding who is responsible for environmental harms and what can be done to reduce them. Towards this end, more attention needs to be given to understand how housing market policies confines people of color to hazardous areas and if those actions qualify as racist or discriminatory.
The toxic pollution of Chester and its myriad bodily effects on poor and minority residents serve as a vivid example of Rob Nixon’s concept of ‘slow violence’. This idea captures the gradual environmental harm that affects marginalized residents, which, unlike spectacular disasters like Chernobyl or Hurricane Katrina, is usually difficult to witness and measure. Slow violence has both spatial and temporal components. While it welcomes attention to immediate destruction within a particular space, it also instigates us to delve into the past to uncover the structural processes that allow hazards to accumulate and defer their damage over time.
A quaint neighborhood, just 320 meters away from the Covanta Delaware Valley Facility. Location: Chester, Pennsylvania, USA. Credit: Veronica Gomes
The Department of Environmental Protection continues to make siting decisions based on the demography of Chester, which it perceives to be politically incapable of mounting strong opposition
So, why do toxic facilities continue to flourish in Chester? The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) distributes permits based on a ‘decision analysis’ that largely denies the cumulative impacts of past emissions in Chester and the active permits that enable pollution today. Deindustrialization decimated land values, which made it attractive for toxic plants to assume permanency on cheap land. The DEP continues to make siting decisions based on the demography of Chester, which it perceives to be politically incapable of mounting strong opposition. Recent environmental justice campaigns move beyond race to engage with people affected by such encroachment due to lack of economic presence and political power. This encourages us to move past previous debates about whether race or class is a better predictor of where toxic facilities are designated. The case of Chester shows how historical, political, social, and economic specificities intersect to produce a toxic landscape. Future research on these components would not only enable us to understand how such factors influence facility siting but also their implications for collective struggle and resistance.
Making the gradual harm visible
What might make the gradual harm of residents more visible and thus more amenable to change?
The evident forms of ‘slow violence’ in Chester serve as a layered burden of poverty, environmental pollution, political repression, and inadequate education, which makes community activism and resistance challenging. While media narratives sensationalize Chester’s pollution and toxic air, it fails to initiate conversations about the structural discrimination inherent in the historical developments that Chester has witnessed. To grapple with a proper understanding of environmental racism we suggest moving past purely descriptive narratives and those that narrow the understanding of racism to individual acts. The recognition of the scale at which racism is prevalent and its interlinkages with the inner city, industrial zone, and suburbs then become instrumental for a broader conceptualization of racism.
While we attach importance to the historical developments that shaped much of Chester’s toxic urban landscape, we also recognize the influence of past discriminatory housing policies on present-day facility siting in Chester. Documenting and narrating communities’ toxic experiences also provides a defined shape to the otherwise formless and invisible threats to residents and thereby helps confront slow violence.
Towards this, Zulene Mayfield, a longtime resident of Chester, has been steadfast in her battle against the facility siting around minority neighborhoods. Active since 1992, her grass-roots organization, Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living (CRCQL) has made strides to fight against the issuance of new chemical permits to facilities with occasional successes. Additionally, Dr. Howarth and her colleagues are conducting a health study to investigate health outcomes among Chester residents. Besides the health study, they support community members in approaching the DEP to investigate the industries’ flawed practices. They also collaborate with the Chester Environmental Partnership to sustain community’s voice among regulatory agencies. According to Dr. Howarth, a monumental success for Chester would mean a fair regulatory process that decreases emissions and allows companies to operate in a manner that is not detrimental for its residents. Towards this, spreading awareness through public education, distribution of community resources, and monitoring indoor and outdoor air quality has been their other notable success to date.
“Don’t believe in myths” says the Covanta Incinerator. Credit: Veronica Gomes
A bigger question, however, remains – how can we interrupt the pattern of toxic harm done to African Americans in Chester? Thinking along the concepts of white privilege and slow violence – however, it makes sense for us to stop questioning why an incinerator was placed in an African American community but instead question why and how were the whites able to distance itself from the pollution in Chester? Moving forward, is it possible to correct the ‘flawed regulatory practices’ of the DEP in Pennsylvania which according to Dr. Howarth is an ‘extremely industry-friendly’ state? While temporary protective fixes of air filters and cautions about venturing outdoors are in place, when can we finally begin to think about institutional fixes that bring justice to residents who have aged breathing toxic air in the long-neglected city of Chester?
Veronica Gomes is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia. Her research focuses on the study of residential segregation and health outcomes of minority populations with a focus on understanding neighborhood-level exposures, community specific perceptions of health and the spatiality of deprivation.
Kimberley Thomas is an environmental social scientist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. She takes a political ecology approach to questions about environmental justice, human vulnerability to hazards, and the multi-scalar politics of resource governance.
This is the untold story of a city in the South of Italy, Crotone, which went from being a major hub of the Ancient Greek civilization to one of the most polluted and poorest sites of Europe. A tale that reveals how small communities are trying to fight back against the environmental wreckage inherited from big corporations’ wrongdoing.
Last August, while tourists and returning economic migrants dived into the refreshing Crotone seawater to escape the 40-degree smothering air, local people were fuming. And not just because of the unbearable heatwave.
Every summer, urban overcrowding comes with a smelly side-effect: an invasion of garbage. As the landfills quickly saturate, garbage piles up outside the bins all around the city.
On top of that, another major issue fuelled citizens’ rage. A prolonged dry spell combined with decaying infrastructure led to a water shortage for a few days – ironic when considering the deadly climate change-driven flash flood that drowned the city in 1996 and flushed 6 lives away.
But the situation in Crotone has not always been so dramatic. Located along the East coast of Calabria—the “toe” of Italy’s “boot”—Crotone was an easy-to-reach anchor for the Achaean Greek conquerors living on the other side of the Ionian Sea. And still today, after over two thousand years, one can admire the marvel of that colonization.
Just seven miles off Crotone city centre, lies one of the twenty-seven-foot tall forty-eight Doric columns which supported the sacred temple dedicated to Hera Lacinia. Under Greek rule, what was then called Kroton thrived as a cultural hub. Known for his famous theorem, Pythagoras founded his school there. But Kroton’s fame went beyond science. Besides victories on the battlefield, Milo gave the colony athletic prestige by winning the wrestling competition in the Olympics games six times.
From a vital industrial centre to a graveyard
Fast forward two millennia, there’s sadly not much left of the Hellenic era’s splendour other than the majestic column.
In the 1920s, Crotone flourished again, but this time it was somewhat less splendid: the city became one of the major chemical manufacturing sites in Italy. Plants smelting zinc and producing phosphorous-based fertilizers were propelling the economy of the Calabria region.
While job opportunities boomed, the “progress” came at a high price. Unlike the Greek society, which left invaluable archaeological relics, the sprawling industrial centre left an unwanted gift to Crotone citizens. During 70 years of unregulated activity, harmful pollutants such as cadmium, argon, lead, and chromium were irresponsibly dumped into the environment.
In a documentary shot by the Italian TV show “Le Iene”, an ex-worker of one of the industrial plants, handles the so-called “Pietra del diavolo”, i.e. the devil’s stone in Italian. As shown in the footage, one could easily light a fire by rubbing these rocks. Behind the mystic name there is a solid scientific explanation, as those stones are nothing but agglomerates of flammable compounds. In 1980s, Eni — an international oil and gas company boasting the third largest revenue of all Italian corporations, and one of the seven largest oil companies in the world — became the main shareholder of those polluting factories.
With unforgiveable delay, the Italian government officially recognized the ex-industrial area as a contaminated “site of national interest” in 2001. This special “award” was granted because of the high level and hazard of the pollutants as well as the outstanding extent of its contamination (4,000 football pitches). After a whopping 16 years, the Italian Minister of Environment and spin-off company of Eni, Syndial, now called Eni Rewind, finally found an agreement to start the environmental remediation of a minor portion of the site. However, Eni’s project was dubbed inadequate and unacceptable by environmental activists.
The recklessness of the authorities is even more shocking when considering that in Crotone, the cancer mortality rate is 30% higher than the national average. Certainly, spreading toxic waste around the city didn’t help. Schools, houses and even the Crotone police headquarter was built over a pile of industrial rubbish. An epidemiological study published in 2000 suggests that the heavy metals in the air are a potential cause of the anomalous rise in respiratory pathologies and tumours affecting the local community over the last years.
Crotone: Italy’s bottom gem
While industrial pollution affected part of Crotone’s coastline, the city’s golden sandy beaches and protected marine reserves still attract many tourists over summer, which could easily last up to five months in Calabria.
And yet, Crotone is permanently ranking at the bottom of the national charts when measuring the quality of life. The lack of transport infrastructure and high-level services undermines the potential of its wonders. Most of the tourists are Calabrian residents and expats coming back to visit their family.This shows that, if not integrated with the development of other sectors and tailored to local economy, tourism could be a poverty trap.
Failing to convert polluting industries into sustainable projects, both local and national administrators fuelled the youth unemployment rate, which rose to around 64%. Other than tourism, agriculture and small businesses, those who heroically remained rely one of the main employers, a call centre, to survive.
The result of this was another negative record for Crotone, who scored the highest emigration rate to the richer North as of 2019.
An eco-warrior coming to the rescue
Intangible yet ubiquitous over the territory, ‘Ndrangheta—the most powerful mafia in Italy, if not globally—adds to the collusion, negligence and incompetence of local politicians. This poisonous cocktail spurred Crotone residents into a civic revolution in 2018. With nearly 50% of the votes, the ex-Hellenic settlement contributed to the unexpected victory of the anti-establishment 5 Star Movement at the last national elections. Crotone voters were enticed by two of their campaign’s main pillars — eradicating corruption from politics and a higher minimum income for poorer people. However, when forming a government with Lega — infamous for their anti-southerner and anti-migrant sentiments — many felt betrayed by the 5 star movement.
On the heel of this political turmoil, a chemistry professor and environmental activist, Vincenzo Voce, formed a civic list to battle against left and right coalitions, which had been in power for what seemed to be forever. With the same vigour and bravery of his ancestor Milo, Voce became mayor on October 5th, 2020. Before being elected mayor, Vincenzo Voce had been on the front line of raising awareness on Crotone’s ecological disaster and so put the environment at the centre of his political agenda. This was a historic outcome, given no civic lists had ever conquered the council. Local social movements like “Stanchi dei soliti” (fed up with the status quo) significantly contributed to Voce’s triumph.
Will the eco-warrior make the Ancient Kroton rise from its ashes?
Voce’s term started with a bang. When forming his team, Voce included, for the first time, a Counsellor dedicated to protecting people’s health and acknowledging the environmental damage caused by former industries. In March 2021, the mayor requested 10 million Euros worth of royalties from Calabria’s regional government. These were to pay the city back for the waste that was unfairly dumped into Crotone landfills. In addition, last August, Voce raised his voice on Crotone’s environmental and sanitary emergency during an online meeting with representatives from the national and regional government and from Eni Rewind. After rejecting the company’s proposals in May, the mayor suggested a more appropriate (while not necessarily more expensive) remediation of the ex-industrial site to ensure a safer decontamination of the area, which would effectively protect the health of the local population.
In the meantime, Voce and his team already won a fight against Eni on a different yet related battleground. The company had refused to pay the 2016 due taxes for keeping three methane extraction platforms off Crotone’s coastline. Back in April, after rejecting to negotiate with Eni, Crotone’s municipality appealed to local tax authorities, which, just this November, forced the oil giant to swell the city’s coffers with nearly 4 million Euros. According to Voce, this ground-breaking sentence will have a knock-on effect on other litigations Eni is engaged with on a national scale. Certainly, this is the least Eni could do to pay the Crotone community back after plundering its resources for 50 years. Tapping into 16% of the Italian methane production, the multinational firm did not give Crotone any compensation during the first 20 years of extraction. Instead, its activity increased the land’s subsidence, threatening more environmental issues such as mudslides or sinkholes.
Besides challenging Eni on multiple fronts, the mayor also made a first step to address youth unemployment. Over the next three years, Crotone council is planning to hire 200 collaborators across several areas of expertise. Although this is encouraging, the new leadership should strive to design projects revolving around the circular economy that could attract sustainability-driven investors and unleash new green jobs.
As for waste disposal, this is still a pressing issue. In July, driven by frustration, someone brought the mayor a stinky present. Several rubbish bags were taken off the street and laid outside the council main entrance. Despite the fact that Crotone sidewalks are now largely cleared of rubbish, recycling, which was one of Voce’s priorities, is still not taking off because of delays in planning and a lack of infrastructure. Yet, in July, door-to-door collection of plastic and metals started in three areas of the city. In addition to that, Voce claims he will soon present a new project on recycling which aims to receive 2.2 million Euro in funding from the Calabria region. If the project was to be financed, recycling may become a reality for the entire city.
While Voce is trying to fulfil his environmental promises, one (pandemic) year of government can’t reverse the effect of toxic decades. Despite the garbage bravado, most people seem to understand that. In a recent poll, Voce ranked as the 13th most appreciated mayor of Italy.
Crotone is not the only community bearing the brunt of Eni’s negligence. The oil giant has left a 60-year toxic legacy in the Niger Delta — one of the most polluted places on Earth. Since the 1950s, Eni has been sucking dirty fuels out of Nigeria’s soil while soiling its land and waterways. What’s worse, local people often do not get compensated for oil spills because of a flawed analysis of root causes performed by the government. Yet, in 2017, the small Ikebiri community rose to its feet to fight for its rights. In what sounds like a David vs Goliath clash, they sued Eni in their home country for an oil spill caused by the failure of one of their pipelines in 2010. In an unprecedent court case in Italy, the Nigerian village put a spotlight on Eni’s environmental damage overseas.
After months of negotiations, the oil corporation offered to upgrade local energy infrastructure and renovate the community’s health centre. When commenting on this outcome, the Ikebiri’s king said, “No individual community suffering from Eni’s crimes has been able to take Eni to court on an international level and get a result such as this. Only if the company keeps its promises, we have truly got justice.” Despite winning this battle, the village hasn’t won the environmental justice war yet. Through an out-of-court settlement, Eni took a shortcut to escape their liability without paying the 2m euro compensation initially asked for by the Ikebiri community. To add to that, Ikebiri’s fishponds and plants are still drenched in crude oil, thus affecting Indigenous’ livelihood.
Whether in their own country or abroad, Eni still do not take full ownership of their environmental impact. There won’t be true justice until they pay their eco-victims back. Without rewinding to Greek times, Crotone and other places across the world could benefit from a transition to a zero-carbon economy. This is where big players like Eni could redeem themselves, investing in renewable energy and circular materials while ditching oil and harmful chemicals for good. Clearly, there’s a strong parallelism between what Crotone and Ikebiri experienced. And not only because they’ve been fighting against the same enemy. The common thread weaving the two cases together is that an uncontrolled pursuit of private interests comes with a detrimental legacy for people and their habitat. As this story hints, this won’t end until underdog small communities join forces to demand justice from mega profit-centred corporations. Be it an international class action or social media networking, global citizens should come together if they want Eni and the likes to promote a sustainable growth for the whole society.
Antonio Salituro is a freelance eco-friendly copywriter, blogger and journalist who specialises in the environmental sustainability niche.
Protesters in Marseille set a model of Earth on fire during a demonstration where members of Extinction Rebellion were supported by gilets jaunes, in July. Photograph: Gerard Bottino/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock, via The Guardian
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.
A lot happened this month. As always, while putting together this list, we tried to strike a balance between stressing how serious the state of the world is, while also elevating solutions, optimism, and better visions for the future. COP26 took place in Glasgow, and we collected a bunch of articles analysing and critiquing the conference itself and the various issues it raised. We’re highlighting discussions on technological colonialism and liberatory technologies, as well as Indigenous and decolonial perspectives on the future. We read an important article on how climate denial is being replaced by a dangerous ‘green-cloaked nativism’ on the Right. People did a lot of free advertising for Spotify, so we’re sharing an article on the costs of streaming music. And in the midst of all this chaos, Rebecca Solnit reminds us of the power of pleasure, art and beauty as forms of resistance.
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Top 5 articles to read
Remembering the Ogoni Nine. In 1995, nine activists from the Ogoni region of Nigeria were hanged after a campaign against oil giant Shell – decades later, their struggle for environmental justice is more relevant than ever.
Dead white man’s clothes. In Accra, Ghana, imported second-hand clothing—or “dead white man’s clothes”—represents a massive industry with complex environmental, social, and economic implications.
Just think about it…
Forgive humans, not oil companies. It might seem like prison abolition and fossil fuel abolition have nothing in common, but they couldn’t be more related.
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.
We’re back! After a much-needed summer break, we’re going to share all noteworthy articles we read during September and October. Themes this time include global land struggles, food justice (including spicy takes on veganism and lab-grown meat), effective communication for environmental justice, degrowth, and re-readings of history, to name a few. Enjoy.
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Imagination, transformed. “As a movement who cares about climate justice and justice overall, we need to better leverage the power of culture because culture is what transforms the imagination—culture shows us what’s possible. And we can do that by including artists and culture makers in our organizing work.”
A board listing the housing demands of the residents of Sonia Gandhi Nagar, a Bahujan housing colony in Indore, India.
by Apoorva Dhingra
Cities across the world comprise only 2 percent of the land, but account for 70 percent of the global GDP, over 6 percent of global energy consumptions, and 70 percent of global greenhouse emissions. Their high economic and ecological impact coupled with unprecedented rates of urbanization prompted the New Urban Agenda adopted at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) to declare urban planning to be a critical driver and tool for achieving equity and sustainability and enhancing economies.
But in 2021, as the world’s cities struggle to contain and recover from COVID-19, the opposite is happening. Canonical urban planning is failing on all grounds. From Delhi to Lagos and from Jakarta to Rio De Janeiro, heightened inequality, displacement, lack of public health infrastructure, and land-grabbing have become common accompaniments of urbanization.
In India, which is the focus of my urban enquiries, the failures of canonical urban planning are playing out through Master Plans which have dictated cities’ development trajectories since colonization. But contrary to common critiques, most planning failures are not a result of improper or inadequate implementation of the Master Plan. Rather, as Gautam Bhan—an urban scholar and activist from Delhi—puts it, they are an intrinsic part of planning’s logics, conceptions, and practice. Master Plans, and canonical top-down urban planning by which they are dictated, produce retrospective illegality and promote mainstream development centred around economic growth and production over the needs of the urban majority.
For decades, planning was touted as an objective discipline—a means and method through which to anticipate, manage, and respond to urban growth. While it is considered a scientific-rational process that is free from politics, urban planning has in fact always been about the existence of power, as the power/knowledge analysis of political philosopher Michel Foucault can illuminate.
Urban planning in India: a colonial and imperial enterprise
Master Plans, which are developed by urban local governments, have emerged as the standard planning instrument in India since 1962. Mandated by the Town and Country Planning Acts of various Indian states, they conceive and dictate the physical and socioeconomic development of cities 20-25 years into the future. At present, around 2000 Indian cities—about half of total cities in India—have Master Plans. However, despite their popularity and supposedly new solutions to current problems, Master Plans have a rich colonial and imperial history that contributes to their failures.
Town planning in India was first introduced under the Bombay Planning Act of 1915 when colonial authorities were struggling to contain plague epidemics which, according to them, were a result of ‘insanitary labyrinths of the native city.’ As part of these acts, the British created trusts to lead large-scale demolitions, streamlined the process of land acquisition for commercial and infrastructural purposes, and laid provisions for financing urban development. While the Bombay Planning Acts of 1915 and its subsequent iterations did not create the Master Plan, the ‘town planning schemes being prepared today continue to follow a template laid out nearly a century ago by very different institutions operating in an entirely different context.’ Post-independence India’s planning frameworks with their emphasis on white-field development, order and beautification, are an adaptation of the British town planning systems that foremost served the economic and social concerns of the Crown.
In addition to colonial influences, Ford Foundation and American planners also played a great role in shaping planning ideologies in India after independence. Prompted by the jaundice epidemics of 1955-56 in Delhi, Amrit Kaur, the Minister of Health, approached the Ford Foundation and sought its help in managing the capital city’s ‘haphazard growth.’ According to historian Gyan Prakash, the focus on the epidemic was telling as it echoed the colonial discourse on urbanism and permitted the postcolonial elite to frame city planning as a biotechnical enterprise to clean the environment, rid it of diseased spaces, and configure it as a rationally ordered space.
Master Plans as methods of control
Against the backdrop of the Indian government’s demands for ‘rational land use’ and ‘clearance of slums’, the Ford Foundation created the first ever Master Plan for Delhi (MPD) that was adopted in 1962. This plan proposed to manage ‘sprawl’ with a green belt and strict zoning between commercial, residential, and industrial areas, to divide the city into cellular neighborhoods, and to establish satellite towns so as to limit the inflow of population into Delhi. Without any input from Delhi’s residents, many of whom lived where they worked and enjoyed the intimacy that came from densely populated neighborhoods, Delhi’s cityscape rapidly changed to propel the city into modernity. According to sociologist Amita Baviskar, Delhi’s first Master Plan ‘envisaged a model city, prosperous, hygienic, and orderly, but failed to recognize that this construction could only be realized by the labor of large numbers of the working poor, for whom no provision had been made in the plans.’
The anti-slum and anti-poor biases of MPD ’62 were especially sinister given the Partition of 1947 that displaced over a million people to Delhi who had to be accommodated in bastis (basti comes from the Hindustani word basna which means ‘to settle’ or ‘to inhabit’). By dividing the city into regulated and segregated use zones, many of these settlements were designated as unauthorized and sometimes illegal, which made their residents’ occupancy even more precarious. The Master Plan, thus, created illegality where it did not exist. In contrast to the slum, a settlement is considered authorized/planned only when it is built on land notified within the development area of the Master Plan and zoned as residential. Yet no new land was notified as an urban development area by the Delhi Development Authority—the apex planning body in Delhi that creates the Master Plans—between 1962 when MPD ’62 was issued, and 1990, when Delhi’s second Master Plan, MPD ’01, was issued. By the late 90s, the city’s population increased by 3.4 million people, well beyond MPD ’62’s demographic projections. This rising population could not wait for the plans to catch up and organically settled beyond the Plan’s notified areas. Yet, subsequent Master Plans of 2001 and 2021 still chose to not designate these already built-up areas as authorized development areas. It is for this reason that Gautam Bhan asserts that planning produces and regulates illegality as a ‘spatial mode of governance’, making it a part of its logics, conceptions, and practices.
Just as Master Planning is rooted in colonial history, discourses and practices, so are the ideas of development that they promote in Indian cities. This is well illustrated by Evita Das’ analysis of the 2035 Master Plan of Srinagar, the capital of Indian occupied Kashmir. The plan aims to remake Dal Lake—the most popular tourist site in Srinagar—and introduces Special Investment Corridors to kickstart the development of the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. By envisioning Dal primarily as a tourist site, the plan aims at beautification via gentrification. It views Dal’s inhabitants as encroachers who need to be relocated away so that shikara—typical wooden boats found on the lake—gateways, cycle tracks, organic farms, and water sports facilities can be introduced to raise the lake’s stock as a tourist site. When viewed in the context of India’s occupation of Kashmir and the abrogation of the territory’s special rights, the 2035 Master Plan’s remaking of the Dal Lake and viewing of Kashmiri inhabitants as mere subjects that can be moved around for developmental goals are a clear exercise in colonization.
COVID-19 and planning’s contemporary relevance
In the way that the plague and jaundice epidemics played a crucial role in transforming urban planning, COVID-19 presents an opening to once again radically reconfigure urban planning. Twice over, because of the mismanaged and deadly first and second waves of COVID-19, Indian cities, peri-urban areas, and rural communities were thrown in disarray. But this chaos was exacerbated—not manufactured—as COVID-19 highlighted the broken logics of urban planning in India. Despite a nationwide lockdown that went into effect in March 2020, the enforcement of zoning laws continued unabated, further disregarding and marginalizing the lives of the urban poor. In April 2020, thousands of households in Delhi were demolished with some clusters even experiencing multiple rounds of eviction. Ironically, at the same time, the Delhi government was distributing ration and other necessities to offset the debilitating impact of COVID-19 containment strategies. Basti residents highlighted the State’s hypocrisy in providing them with gas services, ration, and voter-identity cards which strengthen their rootedness all the while serving them with eviction notices and demolishing their homes. This deliberate murkiness in urban planning adds to the challenges of those struggling to seek shelter, especially during a pandemic that necessitates staying home.
Unlike in the Global North, where life worlds can be easily divided into ‘before’ and ‘after’ the crisis, in the Global South, the everyday reality is not that much more different than the temporary health crisis. As stated in The Pandemic, Southern Urbanisms, and Collective Life, urbanism of the Global South inherently requires a constant movement and adaptation to micro and macro shifts, such as inconsistent income flow and changing government schemes. This urbanism of endless transformation creates a chronic sense of vulnerability. It means that while the urban majority was not made newly vulnerable, the pandemic and consecutive lockdowns added to the already debilitating vulnerability. The brutality of COVID-19 itself is well-documented but the design of lockdowns misrecognized every aspect of urban life in cities of the South where most inhabitants need to navigate the hustle to arrange water, food, work, waste or childcare on a daily basis. In doing so, lockdowns worsened already existing fault lines of inequality.
Layered atop pre-existing crises, including but not limited to flooding and excessive rains on both coasts in India, mass farmer dissatisfaction over the three exploitative farm laws, and heightened caste-based discrimination, this ‘new normal’ points to a grim and urgent reality. It reminds us that the time to act radically is now. As Naomi Klein recently said, ‘there is no such thing as a singular disaster anymore—if there ever was; from Covid to climate, every disaster contains every other disaster within it.’ To challenge the ways in which planning knowledge is held, and consequently the ways in which power is exercised and against whom, is an especially critical task in contemporary times of interrelated disasters.
Transforming urban planning
The inherent failure of planning to respond to the needs of the majority, aka the urban poor, necessitates a fundamental revisioning of what planning is, who it is controlled by, and how it is understood. Over the years, attempts have been made to reform planning in India, largely fostered by political action and technical interventions of civil society organizations and resident associations seeking rights to and in the city. Higher judicial courts increasingly intervene into urban governance by condemning unannounced and forced evictions without rehabilitation plans. The emergence of new forms of public-private partnerships in urban reforms have also, in certain cases, provided access to resources such as drinkable water or services and infrastructure, to the marginalized. But while these efforts have brought planning closer to democratization, they have not succeeded in diffusing power away from the technical planner/planning agency or in challenging planning’s subordination to the laws and/or the desires of the government.
To seriously build cities in which all people have equal rights and access to the benefits and opportunities of urbanization, as stated in the New Urban Agenda, there is a need to fundamentally alter how planning is understood, taught, and leveraged. Here, Foucault’s understanding of power as multi-directional and as bottom-up as top-down, helps us rethink planning’s agenda to induce resistance in groups with limited power against the dominance of greater State power.
To this end, as Urban Fellows at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), we supported anti-eviction housing activists in Indore, Madhya Pradesh by conducting workshops on the technicalities of urban planning. Our pedagogies were designed through an active collaboration between IIHS and activists fighting against illegal and forceful eviction, slum demolition, and caste dynamics in the urban space. We did the direct work of demystifying the Master Plan by deconstructing its statutory importance and introducing the concepts of land-use and zoning to the activists. Yet, the real resistance-building happened through our pedagogical approaches that emerged from two questions: can we view activism as a legitimate form of urban practice and not just a form of reactionary political engagement? Can there be a space for communities, activists, and universities to come together to inform and direct a pedagogical practice that recognizes the agency of learners and practitioners beyond the scope of formal planning education?
These provocations help us decenter the technically trained planner, the academy that produces them, and the institutions that absorb and legitimize them. This decentering—via recognizing basti residents and housing activists’ agency and knowledge—is necessary to transform planning into the broad-based, pluralistic, and democratic process that it should be.
Our second series of workshops in Indore focused on forms of tenure, government schemes, missions, and policies to support a new generation of activists in struggling against eviction. Through this, we wanted to not only support anti-eviction activists’ participation in discussions with the government on Master Plans, but to also recognize the urban activism of anti-eviction as a distinct mode of urban practice. This was especially critical as ‘public participation, even in the best situations, cannot imply the expansion of power as long as it is subordinate to laws and/or the desire of the government.’
Power relations are not static and symmetric and therefore, my aim is not to suggest universalizing the Global South’s theorization of urban planning. But by illustrating the failures of Global North-informed planning paradigms in India, I wish to challenge the notions of an ‘inadequately’ planned Global South. At a time when the spaces we inhabit determine whether we survive a deadly virus or not, urban planning becomes a critical tool in preparing for and responding to the disasters of the present and the future. For these reasons, by centring the needs of the urban poor, legitimizing activism as a form of urban practice, and demystifying the technicalities of planning, we can transform planning into an evolving and moving discipline instead of static theory.
Apoorva Dhingra is a writer and researcher based in Delhi, India. They are interested in urbanization, ecology, and climate adaptation and are passionate about building a better world. You can reach out to them at apoorvadhingra[at]pm.me.
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 month, we were glued to our screen reading about the multiple climate disasters around the world. We also read careful critiques of “green” technology and their social costs, as well as incisive analyses of the problems with air conditioning. Along with that, we read about how we can make our cities more ecologically resilient, and the movements fighting to get us there. Finally, we are featuring several stories on food and water conflicts, from Gaza to South Africa. We’re taking August off, so see you in September!
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Uneven Earth updates
We are looking for a treasurer! Uneven Earth is in the process of registering as a non-profit. Incorporating will enable us to develop the project further, and we’re really excited about this. We have everything ready for a constitutional meeting except one thing: we need a volunteer treasurer or accountant. If you or someone you know is interested, contact us for more information at info[at]unevenearth.org.
AC feels great, but it’s terrible for the planet. Here’s how to fix that. “Ensuring that the most vulnerable among the planet’s human inhabitants can keep cool through better access to public cooling centers, shade-giving trees, safe green spaces, water infrastructure to cool, and smart design will not only enrich our cities overall, it will lower the temperature for everyone. It’s far more efficient this way.” Also: Cruelest summer: What is the cost of comfort? A review of After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort by Eric Dean Wilson.
Who holds the welding rod? “If we call a global minimum wage – or a global maximum working week, or a global minimum healthcare standard – pie in the sky, we’re saying that the green energy transition is the possible, necessary utopia, and fair pay and conditions the impossible, unnecessary one.”
Broader crises. Indian border-crossers illuminate the interconnectedness of mass migration.
Britain’s new enclosure. Less than 1% of the population own half of England’s land, and with every passing year public right of access is diminishing – enclosing swathes of green spaces to be enjoyed by the rich alone.
Death drives. Pedestrian fatalities are rising dramatically in the US, and Angie Schmitt’s Right of Way gives a rare look at why and what might be done about it.
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.
Must-reads this June include GRAIN’s investigation into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and their outsized influence over global agriculture, Kai Heron on why ‘socialism or extinction’ isn’t quite accurate, a story on the Landless Workers’ Movement and the LGBTQIA+ community in Brazil, and a critique of the EU’s Green Deal. We also read a lot of articles about wildlife and species justice. Browse the list for more!
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Agrarian reform and queer rights go hand in hand. The Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil fights for LGBTQIA+ people who are being murdered at an alarming rate in a country besieged by racism, capitalist domination and exploitation.
America’s continued move toward socialism. Just half of younger Americans now hold a positive view of capitalism — and socialism’s appeal in the U.S. continues to grow, driven by Black Americans and women, according to a new Axios/Momentive poll.
There’s a wolverine in my neighborhood. “Often, conservation communicators think in terms of educating around the big, global, complicated issues. But there’s a role for helping people understand and appreciate the local, the small, the overlooked.”
The People vs. Agent Orange. A new documentary that investigates the legacy of one of the most dangerous pollutants on the planet, a cover-up, and the fight for accountability. Read a review here.
Want to receive this as a newsletter in your inbox? Subscribe here.
In early May, Ecuador’s National Assembly voted to declare June 23rdDía Nacional de los Páramos, or National Páramo Day. This designation at once recognizes the importance of these high mountain grasslands and underscores the need for improved conservation efforts. Indigenous and rural communities across the highlands have long fought to protect the páramo, but for many years such actions were localized and bereft of resources. The institutions may finally be listening.
While the special observance is of national scope, the páramo’s well-being, now and in the future, is a global concern.
High-altitude páramo moorlands comprise a wetland ecosystem that spans over 30,000 km2 of the northern Andes. Its unique soil structure and plant life play vital roles in the hydrological cycle, providing up to 85-90% of all drinking water in Colombia and Ecuador. The páramo functions by gathering rainfall and cloud moisture, which is then filtered through damp soils and slowly released into streams and rivers. Ultimately, it is a source of the greater Amazon watershed.
An estimated 60% of all páramo flora is endemic, meaning that most of these life forms are not found anywhere else on Earth. Ecuador, by virtue, is one of the world’s most megadiverse countries. Healthy páramo lands thrive on biodiversity and feed South American waterways, thereby supporting the vast forest ecosystems that sustain the planetary web of life as we know it. Indeed, the very ecosystems that are increasingly under existential threat from agricultural and industrial activities.
According to Luis Pachala Poma, the Representative who proposed the legislation, National Páramo Day is a time to celebrate the “cultural, ecological, economic, and historical importance” of this biome. June 23rd was selected because, on that date in 1802, the renowned naturalist Alexander von Humboldt and his team set out to climb Ecuador’s Chimborazo summit, at the time thought to be the world’s tallest mountain. The trek informed Humboldt’s “Essay on the Geography of Plants” and the accompanying “Chimborazo Map.” Illustrating the connections between climate conditions and plant distribution, the latter emphasized for his audience the dynamic interconnections that link overlapping natural processes. Humboldt studied the extreme meteorological conditions and physical diversity of tropical mountains, together with the multiple adaptations found in their flora and fauna. Embodying these characteristics, the páramo is now an ideal place for studying climate change.
Climate change and the páramo: critically important and critically at risk
The páramo acts as a carbon sink, supremely important in helping to limit global warming. Because páramo lands are found above the tree line, cool and wet climate conditions have allowed their volcanic, water-rich soils to store enormous quantities of organic material. Coupled with tall-growing vegetation, this means the páramo holds more carbon per hectare than tropical lowland forests.
At the same time, global warming is changing the páramo. Two particular impacts of climate change—increasing average temperatures and changing precipitation patterns—disrupt the páramo’s unique vegetation and soil characteristics. The result presents a grave threat to the ongoing existence of these ecosystems.
The wider region where the páramo is found is particularly at risk, for the tropical Andes are warming faster than anywhere outside the Arctic Circle. Glaciers are melting; less rainfall is reaching high-altitude areas; wetland plants in the páramo are dying, among other effects. If National Páramo Day can help draw attention to these changes and lead to greater support for community actions that challenge destructive industrial activities, then the event cannot come soon enough.
Representative Pachala also stated that National Páramo Day will reaffirm the need to conserve, restore, and use Ecuador’s páramo in a “sustainable” way. That idea is still deeply contested.
Ecuador’s economy continues to rely heavily on extractive industries. These industries have devastated Indigenous communities in Amazon regions, damaged biodiverse landscapes, and now, as a result, are facing increasing opposition from the population at large. In a February referendum in Cuenca, the third largest city in Ecuador, over 80% of the electorate voted to ban mining in the area, including in the Quimsacocha páramo. Yet mining companies with interests in the region have said they will not respect the referendum results.
While the newly-elected President of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, is associated with pro-mining policies and statements, environmental coalitions plan to keep up the pressure to ensure he honors a pre-election pledge to ban open-pit mining. Further political changes since May similarly suggest that Ecuador is on course to revise its relationship with extractive industries. The President of the National Assembly, Guadalupe Llori, is a member of the Indigenous political party (Pachakutik) and has herself faced persecution for participating in protests against oil companies. It remains to be seen whether and how the new legislature transforms Ecuadorian environmental policy.
While policy decisions are debated, those fighting to protect the páramo are among the first to point out that there is no sustainable mining. Many argue that the only “sustainable” future involves a political-economic system that looks beyond mineral extraction and, instead, protects Indigenous rights and the Rights of Nature, as recognized in the 2008 Constitution of Ecuador—the first in the world to do so.
Indigenous leader Marisol Copara has worked to protect the páramo as a source of water not only for humans but also for crops and animals. Describing the páramo as a “source of life,” Olmedo Iza Quinatoa of the Kichwa Indigenous nationality emphasizes the spiritual importance of the páramo, alongside its carbon-storing and water-giving properties, and asks, “What would our life be without water, that is, without the páramo?” The struggle for more equitable futures is ongoing.
Ivan Guamán shepherds his community’s small flock of alpacas in the páramo in Cotopaxi province, Ecuador. Credit: Tristan Partridge
In addition to the effects of climate change and mining, Ecuador’s páramo currently faces a number of other threats. These include industrial forestry, unregulated tourism, and land-use change as people are forced to seek grazing and arable lands at higher altitudes.
Robert Hofstede is an environmental consultant based in the capital city of Quito. For decades, Hofstede has collaborated with a network of regional scholars and activists to document biophysical characteristics of the páramo, as well as potential solutions to the changes that are placing this ‘regional biological corridor’ at risk. They note that positive steps have already been taken.
Effective measures introduced so far include water funds to recompense good practice among community initiatives and economic support for small-scale production of high-value products linked to the páramo, like alpaca wool, mortiño blueberries, organic potatoes and tubers. According to Hofstede, such programs need to be upscaled together with both a strengthened policy/regulatory framework and an improved communication/education plan. National Páramo Day can play an important part in these processes, so long as it is provided the visibility and support that these one-of-a-kind landscapes deserve.
Like all environmental campaigns, protecting the páramo is a deeply social and political project. Páramo conservation is a (pluri)national and international concern that involves the protection of biodiversity and Indigenous rights as well as efforts to limit global warming. If National Páramo Day can generate increased political and financial backing for the many local conservation efforts currently underway, it will be a success year round, for all the years to come.
Palestinian demonstrators burn tires near the Israeli barrier surrounding Gaza in solidarity with Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem on 8 May. Mohammed Zaanoun ActiveStills, via The Electronic Intifada
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 month, Palestine and Israel were all over the news. We collected some useful reading lists, essays and photo stories so you can dig deeper beyond the bite-size tweets and Instagram posts. Photography runs like a thread through our May readings: we featured a photo essay that documents the deep scars mining has left on our planet, and another on China’s ‘Cancer Villages’. We do have reasons to celebrate this month, though: a court in the Netherlands has ruled in a landmark case that the oil giant Shell must reduce its emissions, and Germany has formally recognized the atrocities committed against the Herero and Nama people of what is now Namibia as genocide, paying reparations of €1.1 billion ($1.3 billion). On top of that, we included our editor Aaron Vansintjan’s new piece on the insights on the imagination and the practice of democracy that the late David Graeber has left us with, an explainer on how Nigeria’s forests are being decimated to make charcoal for barbecues in Europe and the United States, and much more.
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Uneven Earth updates
GDP | What is GDP, and why should we learn to live without it?
Brave New Normal | Cultivating cooperative, self-sustaining communities can undermine destructive economic systems and offer meaningful responses to social-ecological crises in the wake of the pandemic
David Graeber: The power of the imagination. “For many people, Graeber turned the concept of democracy on its head. Rather than a bureaucratic process that must be engaged in every few years, democracy for Graeber was imaginative, active, and intensely personal. There is no inevitable arc of progress towards more or deeper democracy. Rather, democracy must be fought for, actively built into institutions, protected, and constantly renewed.”
Naomi Klein on climate change and family life. Here she shares her ideas on the big question of whether to have children and how we might begin the monumental work of saving the planet—and maybe even one another.
A People’s Green New Deal. Max Ajl’s new book is an overview of the various mainstream Green New Deals, and a vision of a radical alternative: a ‘People’s Green New Deal’ committed to degrowth, anti-imperialism and agro-ecology.
To save the planet, kill minimum parking mandates. California was a pioneer in minimum parking mandates, which drive up housing costs and climate emissions. Now the state is ready to lead the nation in reclaiming our cities from parking lots.
How Vienna built a gender equal city. “In practice, gender mainstreaming takes many forms, such as ensuring government bodies use gender-sensitive language to communicate, or that public transportation includes illustrations of men with children to signal seats reserved for parents. A visitor to the capital might also notice the wide pavements for mothers navigating the city with prams or children, or the fact that a large proportion of the city, including the whole public transportation network, is wheelchair accessible.”
Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, measures economic activity. Technically speaking, it equals the sum of all goods and services produced within an economy over a certain period. To oversimplify it, we could think of GDP as the sum total of all the price tags within a country’s borders. Metaphorically speaking, GDP is the only universally-recognised heart-rate monitor for determining the health of capitalist economies. Capitalism operates on economic growth, and GDP measures growth.
Because of this, GDP has become the most influential political and economic metric in the modern world. Governments, corporations and institutions use it to direct resources, frame discussions, and inform crucial decision-making.
And ever since GDP became our universal stand-in for social progress, it has had the effect of reshaping entire societies in its own image—which is problematic, as GDP is a very sexist, western-centric, careless, ecologically-destructive, and altogether bad image.
Where did GDP come from?
Before the 1930s, to paraphrase the sociologist Daniel Hirschman, the economy as we currently know it ‘did not exist.’ But that’s not to say that our ancestors didn’t act economically. People have been making, buying, and trading things basically forever. But it was only in the decade before World War II that our current understanding of the economy—as something that can be examined, diagnosed, prescribed and intervened upon—was conceived.
It was only in the decade before World War II that our current understanding of the economy—as something that can be examined, diagnosed, prescribed and intervened upon—was conceived
Gross National Product, the precursor to GDP, was invented by the economist Simon Kuznets to help the U.S. recover from The Great Depression. His logic was simple: their economy was obviously broken, but before they could fix it they needed to figure out how to measure it. GNP became the first widely-adopted method of measuring an economy, until the U.S. replaced it with GDP in 1988. (GNP measured all economic activity by a country’s citizens, regardless of where they were in the world. GDP measures all economic activity within a country’s borders, regardless of the nationalities of the people involved.)
How did GDP become important?
In 1944, as World War II was winding down, the leaders of the Allied Nations met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to decide how the world would be rebuilt. They set in motion a few things that would change the course of history forever. First, they cemented GNP (and then GDP) growth as their standard tool for measuring economic progress and development.
Then, to help reinforce this emerging world order, they established intergovernmental institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and later the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Promoted as the flag-bearers of international development, many of the programmes these institutions have overseen dismantled national sovereignty in the Global South to install Western-friendly and GDP-centric policies.
Capitalism, by definition, must expand. For half a millennium private firms and individuals have been finding new ways to grow their wealth. But it’s only since the Bretton Woods Conference that pursuing a single, standardised metric of economic growth has become the primary public objective of almost all of the world’s most influential governments and institutions. From that moment onward, we have lived in a world religiously devoted to the pursuit of GDP growth—often at the expense of everything else.
Why is GDP a problem?
GDP was designed to measure an economy getting ready for war, but now it’s used to measure social progress in general. This mutation was already obvious during the Cold War, when GDP became the ideological benchmark for comparing the relative success of capitalism and state socialism.
Today it’s no different. If a country grows its GDP faster than others, they can claim they’re ‘winning’ at the game of international development, and it’s implied that this will automatically improve the quality of life of its citizens.
GDP serves as a ‘scorecard’ for political success, which means policymakers will generally favour and implement the policies that will increase it
GDP serves as a ‘scorecard’ for political success, which means policymakers will generally favour and implement the policies that will increase it. As time passes, societies transform to resemble GDP—which is a problem, because GDP resembles a very sexist, western-centric, careless, ecologically-destructive, and altogether bad way for a society to be structured.
Sexist. By only counting activities that have a price tag, GDP completely ignores all manner of unpaid labour—like having and raising children, elderly care, housekeeping, etc.—that is traditionally undertaken by women. In this way, GDP has a sexist bias implying, mistakenly, that these essential services are less ‘productive’ than what is traditionally men’s work, and should therefore be less respected.
Western-centric. GDP is, and always has been, rooted in the deeply colonial notion that Western nations have it all figured out, and everyone else would be much better off if they just followed in their footsteps. More often than not, they haven’t been given a choice.
For example, during the debt crisis of the 1980s, many nations of the Global South were struggling to repay mounting debts to Western banks. In response, the IMF and World Bank forcibly imposed ‘structural adjustment programmes’ on their economies. In short, this meant their governments had no choice but to cut social spending, privatise public assets, dissolve labour and environmental protections, and focus single-mindedly on increasing GDP to repay their creditors in the Global North.
Careless. The rules of a game dictate how its players behave. If GDP is our social ‘scorecard,’ then the ways it measures success will, on an aggregate scale, have an effect on how people and organisations behave. Any brief examination of the activities that GDP registers as ‘good’ for an economy reveal it to be highly problematic and careless toward human wellbeing. As the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman noted, ‘If you were the GDP, your ideal citizen would be a compulsive gambler with cancer who’s going through a drawn-out divorce that he copes with by popping fistfuls of Prozac and going berserk on Black Friday.’
Ecologically-destructive. GDP has always been inseparable from resource consumption, emissions, and environmental degradation. Proponents of ‘green’ GDP growth maintain that with enough engineering, innovation and entrepreneurial flair, we’ll soon be able to ‘decouple’ economic growth from environmental pressures and keep growing happily forever.
However, as seductive as it is, there’s a problem with decoupling: it has barely any empirical grounding in current or projected technologies. On concluding a series of highly optimistic decoupling models in 2016, the Australian scientist James Ward remarked that ‘growth in GDP ultimately cannot be decoupled from growth in material and energy use,’ and that it is ‘misleading to develop growth-oriented policy around the expectation that decoupling is possible.’
Altogether bad. Despite all of the above, one must assume that maximising GDP growth is, overall, necessary to produce good outcomes for people—otherwise why would governments pursue it so furiously? However, there is a strong scientific consensus that this simply not the case.
According to the economic anthropologist Jason Hickel, ‘there are many countries that manage to achieve strikingly high levels of human welfare with relatively little GDP per capita.’ What’s more, research has found that above a certain level—a level which all nations in the Global North have long since passed—increasing GDP can actually cause human well-being to decrease.
Mounting evidence suggests that there is no automatic relationship between rising GDP and rising welfare. When it comes to improving citizens’ quality of life, the most important factor is not pursuing the maximum levels of GDP growth or wealth, but instead implementing policies that more justly distribute the benefits of new and existing wealth.
What alternatives exist?
GDP’s most enthusiastic critics typically fall into one of two broad categories (or both): those pushing to replace GDP as our metric for growth and progress in particular, and those advocating to abandon economic growth as humanity’s central goal altogether.
For almost as long as it has existed, some economists have argued that GDP cannot, and should not, be used as a proxy for human progress. They’ve been mostly ignored. But as focus this century sharpens on social and ecological issues, mainstream appetites are increasing for ‘Beyond GDP’ alternatives such as the Better Life Index or Genuine Progress Indicator. Recently, in rapid succession, the governments of New Zealand, Scotland, and Iceland—all led by women—committed to exchange well-being for GDP as their main policy objective.
While most agree that moving beyond GDP is essential, some economists, researchers, and activists believe it’s only the beginning of the change we need if we want to avert full-blown climate catastrophe and create a more egalitarian society. Because ‘green growth’ is empirically unrealistic—a fantasy, some would call it—many maintain that we should begin transitioning toward an economy capable of thriving without needing any more economic growth at all.
This philosophy takes form under the banner of ‘degrowth,’ a constellated, rapidly-growing movement advocating for the reduction of humanity’s overall resource and energy consumption, as well as the redistribution of income and resources. ‘In short,’ the organiser and activist Jamie Tyberg writes, ‘degrowth tells us to care for the earth’s systems, to care for the people, and to redistribute any surpluses back to the land and the people,’ with the ultimate goal of ending ‘capitalism-colonialism on a global level.’
Rethinking progress
In the span of less than a century, our search for social progress has been all but completely outsourced to an abstract measurement of ‘the economy’—which is itself a relatively recent abstraction of life itself. Leaning on metrics and abstractions isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Coordinating complex, interconnected societies would be unthinkable without them. But it becomes an issue when ever-expanding domains of human activity become folded into the pursuit of a problematic and inhumane conception of life.
Perhaps it’s time to stop trying to sculpt our societies into an image of the economy from a bygone era. Maybe we should rethink our metrics, measurements, and very meanings of progress, and start reorganising our economies in ways that celebrate human and non-human nature, rather than constrict it.
Further resources
Clifford Cobb, Ted Halstead, and Jonathan Rowe, ‘If the GDP is Up, Why is America Down?’ The Atlantic (October 1995). Although it’s pretty dated, this 1995 Atlantic article is still a great introductory critique of GDP.
Daniel Abramson Hirschmanm, Inventing the Economy Or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the GDP (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2016). A deeper exploration into the conception of our modern-day fetishism for GDP and the economy-at-large. Go here if you’re interested in how a vague idea became a world-swallowing reality.
Maristella Svampa, Development in Latin America: Toward a New Future (Nova Scotia: Fernwood, 2019). A thorough account of how contemporary narratives of economic development via GDP have enabled countries in the Global North to extract land, resources, and cheap labour from Latin America.
Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, and Alberto Acosta, Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2019). A beautiful compilation of cultural visions, life philosophies and alternatives to GDP-centric development from across the globe that growth-based economics has either repressed or actively oppressed.
Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save The World (London: Penguin Random House, 2020). An accessible introduction to degrowth, with some really useful sections on the past and present of GDP growthism and how it incentivises human exploitation and ecological devastation on a mass scale.
Doug Banks is an Australian researcher, strategist, and writer exploring language, economics, culture, and the places they intersect. He is currently head of research & narrative at ArtRebels, a Copenhagen-based collective of cultural researchers and designers.
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 month’s list is a little shorter than usual, but maybe that’s not a bad thing! In April, we read stories about India’s Covid catastrophe, the dangers of the concept of net zero, toxic USA, an Aboriginal family beating back a fossil fuel conglomerate, the death and post-Covid comeback of “third spaces”, as well as a fact-check of the new Netflix documentary Seaspiracy and a general critique of nature documentaries, to name a few. There’s also been quite a bit of discussion around Malmology — a very serious term we coined to describe Andreas Malm’s work. And, as you probably know by now, degrowth, global environmental justice struggles, radical municipalism, and new politics are recurring themes in our readings.
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Uneven Earth updates
We hit 5k followers on Twitter this month — join the party!
Is green growth happening? | The answer is no. Decoupling will not be enough to ensure ecological sustainability without a downscaling of production and consumption.
The commons | The commons opposes and transcends the logic of capitalism by building relations based on cooperation, solidarity, mutualism and direct democracy
How value weaponises the machine. In Breaking Things at Work, Gavin Mueller reminds us that the new antagonism between consumer and platform over data capture is not unlike the struggle between worker and capitalist over wages and the working day.
The death and post-Covid rebirth of ‘third places’. “Third spaces” like coffeeshops, gyms and libraries are critical for building community ties and boosting social cohesion. What happens when they almost disappear for more than a year?
The commons is a concept originally used in England during the Middle Ages to designate shared areas (mostly woods and pasture lands) that peasants collectively managed to access basic resources such as firewood, foraged food or grazing for their cattle. In a mostly rural society, peasants relied on the commons for survival. In fact, the appropriation and plunder of the commons by the nobility starting in the 12th century—a process known as enclosure—marked the beginning of a transition to capitalism. Common people were excluded from using the land, and were forced to either move to towns and become waged workers or establish serfdom relationships with landowners.
The concept of the commons was popularised in academia in the late 20th century by a group of scholars (that we will call the ‘institutionalists’) who saw many similarities between the commons from feudal England and the ways in which communities all over the world interacted with their environment. The institutionalists aimed to find efficient and sustainable ways of managing natural resources. Elinor Ostrom, who was the most prominent figure of this current, dismantled liberal myths and prejudices against communal land tenure by presenting commons as a viable property regime. According to Ostrom, common property regimes were especially suited for resources with specific economic features: low rivalry and easy accessibility. She believed that the main drivers of success for commons were their internal design principles, namely the set of relations and strategies adopted by a community that would lead to the sustainable management of a specific resource.
Elinor Ostrom dismantled liberal myths and prejudices against communal land tenure by presenting commons as a viable property regime
The turn of the 21st century saw an upsurge of the alter-globalisation movement, which opposed globalized trade and its social and environmental consequences. ‘Alter-globalizationist’ scholars and activists took an interest in the commons, but they were critical of the limitations of the ‘institutionalist’ perspective. George Caffentzis, for example, pointed toward the influence that the outside world has on the success of commons. Specifically, he argued that the ability of a commons to sustain itself is determined heavily by the distribution of power in a given society and the relationship that a commons has with external actors, such as private companies or public institutions. During this time, the work of Peter Linebaugh brilliantly captured a feature of the ‘alter-globalisationist’ understanding of the commons: a shift from commons as resources to ‘commoning’ as a practice. More than just an efficient way to manage resources, the commons became a political antagonist to the logic of capital. In the last few years, authors like Massimo de Angelis and Amanda Huron have suggested that the tension between the ‘institutionalist’ and the ‘alter-globalisationist’ approaches needs a productive articulation in order to generate a better understanding of the survival and expansion of the commons. The internal management of particular commons and how it relates to the structure of the outside world are factors that affect and modify one another.
Commons can be crucial tools in imagining a world after capitalism, but in order to do so, they need to be devised as forms of social organisation opposed to capitalism and the state. Under capitalism, the propertied class reproduces its wealth by exploiting nature, Indigenous people, women, workers, and landless people around the world but especially in the Global South. This exploitation is legitimised by the laws of the market, which understand the maximisation of economic profit as the motivating force behind human life, and normalise values such as individualism, competition and greed. The commons oppose this logic and mobilise cooperation, solidarity and mutualism as core values, which in turn affect the way people relate to each other and to the environment.
The commons mobilise cooperation, solidarity and mutualism as core values, which in turn affect the way people relate to each other and to the environment
The development of capitalism advanced in parallel with the creation of a new institutional arrangement, that of the nation-state: a centralised accumulation of political power which has complete sovereignty and the monopoly of violence over a territory. The state is supposed to protect its citizens and act in their interests, but the last centuries have shown us that, whether in liberal democracies or in authoritarian political settings, it often ends up defending the interests of the elites and oppressing the majority of the population. The commons provide an alternative to centralization, the accumulation of power, and representative democracy. Regardless of the specific arrangements of particular commons, power always flows from the bottom up, which means that all commoners are entitled to directly affect the management of a commons. In short, the commons is based on practices of direct democracy, the horizontal distribution of power, and collective decision-making.
Although their core values are in direct opposition, commons currently exist alongside capital and the state. In fact, the three forms are codependent. Let’s take the example of a community garden organised as a commons. Commoners will need tools to work the soil. Those tools have probably been produced in capitalist factories, and they need to be purchased according to their exchange value (an arbitrary quantification based on the maximisation of price according to market laws). Also, even if things go well and the garden is productive, it might not be enough to fulfill the basic needs of the commoners involved (their social reproduction). They will probably need to complement their commoning activities with waged work for a capitalist enterprise. Moreover, the land where the community garden is sited might be public, or in other words, managed and owned by the state. Therefore, commoners can either squat (risking eviction which would undermine their garden), or negotiate the use of the land, accepting the regulations and rules imposed by the state (or its representative institutions). Deciding how to interact with external actors (in this case, the state) will be crucial to determining the longevity of the community garden. It is important to keep in mind, though, that commons are also threatened by their internal politics. What if members decide to divide the land into individual plots and reduce cooperation? In that case, we could claim that the garden is not a commons any more, since inherent commoning values such as collective management and mutualism would not be enacted.
The commons is based on practices of direct democracy, the horizontal distribution of power, and collective decision-making
Relationships of dependency between the commons and capitalism can lead to cooptation by the state or private actors, who may instrumentalise the commons in order to reproduce themselves. Going back to the case of the community garden, landowners and developers could see its pull as an opportunity to raise the rents of surrounding properties, develop new commercial ventures and, in short, make profit. This would in turn spark a process of gentrification, displacing the commoners who were involved in the garden. Cooptation can also be exercised by the state. For example, the austerity policies implemented by many countries since the 1970s, which were intensified after the 2008 crisis, instigated a gradual retreat of the state from the provision of basic social services. In many cases such as healthcare or education, this void is impossible to fill through community-based response in the short term, so communities suffer an immediate impoverishment of their well-being. In others, state functions are replaced by volunteer labour. In the UK, for example, it has become commonplace to see public libraries run by volunteers. However, we should be wary of celebrating these examples, as they emerge out of need, are imposed by urgency, and are usually closely monitored by institutions. Under the argument that they are using public buildings, communities usually need to follow strict rules and protocols imposed by the government. Lacking autonomy and decision-making power, these volunteer efforts fail to become emancipatory post-capitalist alternatives.
Autonomy refers to the capacity of a given system to self-manage. In other words, the more autonomy that a commons has, the less dependent it will be on external inputs. The issue of autonomy opens up another important discussion: that of scale. As we have seen in the case of the community garden, it is almost impossible for a specific commons to have a high degree of autonomy (commoners need tools, land, wages, etc). However, if several commons form what Massimo De Angelis calls a ‘commons ecology,’ it is much easier for them to collectively gain a certain degree of autonomy. What if the members of the community garden decide to expand their project and include a community kitchen? The kitchen will be able to use the produce from the garden, and gardeners will be able to get their food from the community kitchen, thus reducing their dependency on capitalist supermarkets and restaurants, or social services managed by the state. And what if they decided to add a tool recycling workshop and other projects to the newly formed commons ecology? They would be able to gradually reduce their dependence on capital, and therefore, their self-management capacity would expand. In conclusion, for the commons to become a viable alternative that can resist cooptation and offer a path to communities’ emancipation from capital and the state, they need to avoid isolation and come together in collaborative networks that allow for greater commons’ autonomy.
Further resources
George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici, Commons against and beyond capitalism (2014) In this article, the authors encapsulate the discussion of how commons interact with capitalism. They also list the features that characterize the anticapitalist—and potentially emancipatory—commons.
Massimo de Angelis, Omnia sunt communia: on the commons and the transformation to postcapitalism (2017) This book is probably the greatest effort in trying to articulate both commoning perspectives to date. It deals extensively with autonomy and social reproduction, and introduces the idea of commons ecologies.
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the commons (1990) This is Ostrom’s most popular book, in which she distilled her decades of research about common property regimes. It inspired a new generation of commons scholars, who continue to develop the topic into the present day.
Sergio Ruiz Cayuela is a member of Cooperation Birmingham, Plan C, and other self-organised community groups and organisations. Sergio is also a militant researcher interested in the expansion of the commons as a post-capitalist form of social organisation.
What does Left radicalism look like in an age of climate breakdown? Should the state assume control of subsoil resources to fund social spending and reduce inequality, or oppose extractive development at all costs? Such questions are interrogated in Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador by Thea Riofrancos, where we are invited to contemplate the tensions emerging between the ‘left-in-power’ and the ‘left-in-resistance’ through the lens of Ecuador’s recent political history.
The triumphant election of socialist president Rafael Correa in 2006, on a promise to end the ‘long night of neoliberalism’ and reverse regressive structural reforms with support from the country’s powerful social movements, turned sour after the new government abandoned proposals to leave oil in the ground and accelerated mining projects. A discourse of radical resource nationalism, which decried US imperialism and the control of oil, gas and minerals by foreign corporations, previously united social and political movements and helped propel the Left to power. However, new cleavages opened up between a state seeking revenue to fund spending on infrastructure, public services, and cash transfers to the poor, and erstwhile indigenous and environmentalist allies who opposed the deepening structural dependency on ‘extractivism’ as a betrayal of their cause. Riofrancos, a political scientist at Providence College, draws on ethnographic and archival data to illuminate the ways in which these struggles unfolded, with lessons that hold relevance across Latin America and for the world at large.
A discourse of radical resource nationalism, which decried US imperialism and the control of oil, gas and minerals by foreign corporations, previously united social and political movements and helped propel the Left to power
Departing from conventional state-centric analyses of resource governance, Resource Radicals foregrounds the collective agency of grassroots actors, pointedly rejecting an image of the state as a ‘monolithic dispenser of public policy’, unencumbered by internal division or broader popular support. The book also challenges the ‘resource curse’ thesis which has dominated scholarship, in which the revenues accrued from abundant resource wealth allows corruption and mismanagement to flourish, with detrimental effects for democracy and broader societal wellbeing. Instead, the book investigates how successive waves of social mobilisation and protest, spearheaded by Ecuador’s powerful indigenous movement, sought to challenge oil, gas and mining projects. Rather than transcending extractive capitalism, critics accused Correa of perpetuating Ecuador’s colonial status as an exporter of raw materials and its subordinate position within the world system, delivering ‘redistribution without structural change’. Resistance from indigenous communities, environmentalists, labour and anti-mining activists coalesced around an emergent discourse of anti-extractivism, juxtaposing the government’s radical rhetoric with its insistence on the development of indigenous territories, disregard for ecosystems, and repression of dissent. Drawing on indigenous philosophies of Sumak Kawsay or Buen Vivir (living well), activists rejected intensive exploitation of natural resources in favour of a radical, post-extractive civilisational model: ‘a total reordering of the relationship between individuals, communities, and nature, based on the principles of reciprocal collaboration’ (p.30).
At the centre of contestations was the status of Ecuador’s 2008 constitution, an ‘ambivalent document’ that both included provisions for citizen participation, Buen Vivir and the ‘rights of nature’, and simultaneously asserted the ultimate authority of the state over subsoil resources. Despite such tensions, it was subsequently embraced by anti-mining activists as a tool to legitimate their claims. Riofrancos provides a vivid account of how the constitution was invoked at key moments of political struggle, including the ten day long ‘March for Water, Life and the Dignity of Peoples’ that brought thousands to the streets for a 700km march from the Mirador copper mine in the Amazon to the Andean capital city of Quito. This discursive struggle to legitimate or contest extractive development elevated local communities as central protagonists through their constitutional right to prior consultation and consent, referencing Ecuador’s status as a multi-ethnic ‘pluri-nation’, and catapulting resource conflicts to the heart of political debate.
Riofrancos provides a vivid account of how the constitution was invoked at key moments of political struggle, including the ten day long ‘March for Water, Life and the Dignity of Peoples’ that brought thousands to the streets for a 700km march from the Mirador copper mine in the Amazon to the Andean capital city of Quito
The latter half of the book discusses how the process of community consultation was gradually diluted, as accusations and counter accusations erupted between the government accusing foreign NGOs of manipulating communities on the one hand, and critics accusing the government of violating collective rights on the other. The Correa administration embraced the language of technocracy, mirroring the discourse of mining companies by discussing conflicts over resource extraction as a ‘technical’ matter that could be solved by supplying the ‘correct information’ to ‘misinformed’ communities. The authority of the state was itself contested by indigenous communities, who rejected the image of passive compliance and contrasted their own intimate knowledge of their territories as ‘a living ecological and cultural landscape’ (p.140) with the unreliability of official data, which was ‘systematically biased’ and reliant on corporate estimations of mineral reserves. Riofrancos offers important insight into internal conflicts that beset the state itself, with Correa’s vociferous pro-mining position moderated by critical bureaucrats more sympathetic to the anti-extractivist cause. Ecuador’s development trajectory was thus moulded by both external constraints, internal state dynamics, and pressure from below.
As Ecuador elects a new president, there is much to be learned from Riofrancos’ account of how these events unfolded, which sheds light on the tense relationship between the state, social movements, and diverse political constituencies that all claim the mantle of the Left while offering starkly different visions of the future. Riofrancos avoids the pitfalls of binary thinking, providing an honest assessment of strengths and weaknesses of both state policies and social movement strategy. The book recognises the significance of rapid drops in poverty and inequality that occurred under the Correa administration while remaining alert to its failures, as it pursued development ‘without transforming the model of accumulation or the class relations that it generates’ (p.182). The vulnerabilities of this model – oil financed approximately one third of the state budget – were exposed with the abrupt end of the commodities boom that had generated resource rents, and contributed to the justification for austerity measures imposed under Correa’s successor Lenin Moreno. Yet as demand for metals and minerals intensifies to drive the renewable energy transition, mining remains an enticing prospect for future governments.
There is much to be learned from Riofrancos’ account of how these events unfolded, which sheds light on the tense relationship between the state, social movements, and diverse political constituencies that all claim the mantle of the Left while offering starkly different visions of the future
Resource Radicals marks an important contribution to burgeoning literature on resource politics and democratic practice, interrogating how ideological fragmentation exposed underlying ecological contradictions, evolving relationships between the state and citizens, and limits of prevailing development models. Despite the fallout between them, Riofrancos ultimately concludes that both ‘left-in-power’, and ‘left-in-resistance’ are essential to address the current planetary crisis in all its ecological and political dimensions. Rather than view ‘socialism’ and ‘anti-extractivism’ as two irreconcilable political projects, the book gestures to another possibility: ‘a political programme that demanded both the redistribution of oil and mining revenues and a transition away from the extractive model of accumulation that generates those revenues.’ In doing so, it offers lessons on how to navigate politically difficult terrain as resource struggles intensify, bringing nuance and insight to debates that will shape the world to come.
Benjamin Brown is a researcher and activist based in Edinburgh, Scotland, with an interest in land rights, extractivism, and climate justice. He tweets at @_dead_reckoning.
Bangalore was once called the city of lakes. In recent years not only has it been called the city of burning lakes due to dumping of toxic waste in the lakes, but also predictions show that severe water crisis will turn the city uninhabitable by 2025. Despite this, the overexploitation of groundwater and its socio-ecological consequences are overlooked by policy makers and users alike. The Mannu Vaddar community, with their traditional well-digging skills, can improve the urban resilience against water scarcity and offer a solution towards the shrinking groundwater levels of the booming city.
This essay presents a glimpse into the water woes of one of Asia’s fastest growing cities, dubbed as India’s Silicon Valley, with a perspective on groundwater. It thereby seeks to highlight the interconnectedness of the urban and rural space by addressing traditional well-digging in the context of sustainable water management. A photographic documentary is added to witness the work of the Mannu Vaddar. Even though Bangalore might seem to be an isolated case, it is only one tiny piece of the whole struggle to cope with an exploitation driven growth agenda, demographically as well as economically, incompatible with finite resources.
Historically, Bangalore was once considered a city of lakes with 285 lakes until hit by reckless urbanization fueled by the ever-growing IT industry. In comparison to the Bangalore of ten years ago, almost half of the lakes have dried up and been taken over as new spaces for modern settlements. The lakes which were originally made for irrigation helped to recharge groundwater levels. The metropolis does not lack rainfall at all, with about 972mm of average annual precipitation during April and November and around 60 rainy days in a year. The crucial point here is the city’s inability to make the rainwater percolate back into the ground. Unfortunately, an immense amount of rainwater that could recharge the aquifers, instead flows down the buildings and roads of Bangalore, which became a concrete jungle over the years. It is estimated that 93% of the city has been paved.
Bangalore’s water lifeline is the Cauvery river located 100km south of the city. The river supplies nearly 1,900 million liters of water on a daily basis for a growing population of around 13 million citizens. Nevertheless, about 3 million people struggle to access the municipal water supply especially during the severe dry months. As construction continues at an alarming pace, there is no assurance of either drinking water provision or other basic amenities in new building complexes. Consequently, the number of private borewells increased especially in the more populous periphery of the city, which is mainly suspended from the municipal water supply system. Groundwater, accessed through the digging of borewells, became the primary source of water for rapidly growing districts in the periphery and some parts completely depend on it already. At least 40% of the current total water demand of Bangalore is met by groundwater resources. But as the demand for groundwater increases borewells must dig deeper, since the water levels shrink to zero. In addition, there is no data to keep track of the number of borewells. It is estimated that the amount of borewells lies above 400 000 with a lot of wells that have already dried out.
At the moment, Bangalore tackles its water scarcity with (private) tankers that supply water often at a high price and with a questionable water quality. In many areas of Bangalore groundwater is contaminated by industrial pollution, sewage, and high nitrate levels. But millions of citizens heavily rely on the truck delivered water. In conclusion, the mentioned dynamics contribute to a large extent to the depletion of groundwater and easily result in political conflicts with residents competing over access to the dwindling resource.
In this context where the (ground)water crisis makes the social consequences exceed the environmental costs; it is time to shift the focus from the urban to the rural landscape. Not even 50km away from Bangalore, quite on the outskirts of the megacity, live the Mannu Vaddar, a community of well-diggers, that traditionally provided people with the access to groundwater. For generations, the Mannu Vaddar are the keepers of the knowledge of how and where to dig wells. The tradition of well-digger communities in India, as well as the cultural well heritage, can be traced back more than 1000 years. Back then the first open wells allowed humans to explore inland away from the dependency on rivers and other water resources. However, in the early 1980s Cauvery water supply along with borewells replaced the culture of open wells in Bangalore, which at that time had been the main source of drinking water.
This shift towards modern water management allowed the city to expand geographically, as well as economically, since more water was pumped. But the dramatic drop of overall water levels in the region in the past years has led to a corresponding decline in the demand for well-digging. In the current situation people are in a rush to dig deeper borewells to extract the last bits of water from the aquifers with mechanic pumps. The human-environmental gap widens and the disconnect between urban spaces and their water flows intensifies.
How could the revival of traditional well-digging contribute to solve Bangalore’s water woes?
The ability of the Mannu Vaddar comes into play exactly where Bangalore’s capacity to store rainwater ends. The low water levels correlate with too much concrete jungle, hence the fact that there is not enough rainwater percolating back into the ground. This is where the well-diggers enter the arena of urban water management. Wells, dug in the right location, can recharge the groundwater levels by connecting them to the shallow aquifers. These aquifers are an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock through which water can be stored in the ground. Hence, the Mannu Vaddar help to make water move through these different types of rocks and soil, which is crucial to tackle the depletion of groundwater resources.
Therefore, the Mannu Vaddar’s skill comprises more than mere physical labor. It includes the crucial knowledge on soil types, rocky layers, and other traits of the region’s aquifers to successfully strike water. ‘We feel and smell it in the soil’, says Venkatesh a 23 years old well-digger, who belongs to the Mannu Vaddar community. Mannu literally means soil. There is no doubt that their craft requires a deep knowledge and sensitivity to work the natural element. It is physical work combined with the human senses that make them reach the natural source of water under the surface. The technique and knowledge are passed on across generations when the young well-diggers work alongside with skilled elders.
Pedhanna (52), an experienced member of the Mannu Vaddar, has been digging more than 3000 wells in his life. His son, Venkatesh (23), surpassed the sheer number of 1000 by the age of 23. Many young well-diggers do not seek for labor or a career in the metropolis, even though the constant fear for jobs is present. During the week, the Mannu Vaddar migrate from the rural outskirts to the city to look for work by knocking at the doors from house to house. Although the job opportunities today lie within Bangalore many young men still appreciate the natural surroundings of the village and prefer this way of life from the urban hustle.
Their work is done by hand and with simple tools. With nothing but shovels and metal skewers the well is dug deep into the earth by one Mannu Vaddar. When the soil is softened by the skewer, two well-diggers pull it up with a bucket attached to two thick ropes. This process takes place even under hot climatic conditions. The Mannu Vaddar know very well when they are about to strike water. The smell of the soil and its consistency changes and when it lumps, the well-diggers can be sure that they reached for the edge of a shallow aquifer. Just a few centimeters deeper and water will fill up the dug pit. However, the security and the insurance of the well-diggers is poor, regarding the risk climbing up and down inside the wells.
Unlike the extractive borewells, the wells of the Mannu Vaddar are not narrow, but open with the ability to recharge and access the higher aquifers. The aquifers in turn can fill up rapidly under Bangalore’s rich precipitation. The so-called recharge wells, typically 20ft. deep with 3 diameters, collect rainwater and revive the shallow aquifer. Apart from well-digging the Mannu Vaddar community is cleaning and maintaining all types of wells across Bangalore. The input of the well-diggers supports the creation of a river below us in areas with aquifers in the city.
Coming back to the bigger picture the linkage between the overexploitation of groundwater and the recharge of the aquifers is fundamental to cope with Bangalore’s water woes. By law groundwater rights are attached to the land, so that the owners can extract as much water as desired without limitations. Apart from the right institutional response, wells, not borewells, can play a crucial role in the rejuvenation process of groundwater. An interview with a young well-digger makes it clear how the change in demand of work goes hand in hand with the water crisis in Bangalore. As the demand for typical open wells declined over the past years, recharge wells became increasingly important, since its owners want to recharge the borewells that already ran dry.
In this context the Mannu Vaddar can play a crucial role towards rainwater harvesting and water self-sufficiency. The city’s capability to make the water percolate to the ground is crucial for a sustainable water management in the long run and the Mannu Vaddar bear the ancient knowledge to move towards this goal.
Dennis Schüpf is a Master student in International Development studies with a focus on socio-environmental conflicts related to water resources. Based in Germany, his work as a documentary photographer spans from urban to rural perspectives on environmental and social issues with an emphasis on the stories of people.
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.
Our March reading list is ready for you to enjoy, be inspired by, learn from, and use in your teaching and activism! This month, we’re featuring a call by the late David Graeber for a better post-pandemic future, evidence that reducing inequality and solving our ecological crisis go hand in hand, and a beautiful multimedia piece on the ecological imagination of Hayao Miyazaki. We also collected quite a few articles rethinking and offering different insights or perspectives on science from various angles. And, as usual, you’ll find quite a bit of material on radical municipalism and cities, Indigenous struggles, food politics, and COVID-19.
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Uneven Earth updates
Slow violence | This harm is slow, ill-defined, and often perceptible only in retrospect, when its perpetrators are long gone, if they were ever physically present at all
Permaculture | A design system that offers a radical reimagination of the possible
Top 5 articles to read
After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep. In an essay penned shortly before his death, David Graeber argued that post-pandemic, we can’t slip back into a reality where the way our society is organized — to serve every whim of a small handful of rich people while debasing and degrading the vast majority of us — is seen as sensible or reasonable.
Ideology and far right ecologism. An episode of the Right Rising podcast in which Balsa Lubarda discusses the history and connections between environmentalism and Far Right ideology.
Slow violence: Suffering, degradation, and pain inflicted upon people and communities by impersonal, dispersed forces; spread across time and space, with no defined point of impact, but nevertheless the result of a perpetrator/s’ actions.
In the Niger delta, the glowing flames of oil refineries rob the people of night. In northern Thailand, months of endless smoke seep silently through lungs and into bloodstreams. On the island of Tuvalu, the gentle waves creep implacably up the shoreline, set to consume it into the ceaseless ocean.
These are all forms of slow violence: induced environmental conditions that cause active harm to the people they affect. But this harm is slow, ill-defined, and often perceptible only in retrospect, when its perpetrators are long gone, if they were ever physically present at all.
There is a difficulty in conceptualizing, or locating, slow violence when compared to its ‘fast’ counterpart, and one of its most insidious aspects is that it is often not recognized as violence at all. When oil companies create populations so heavily poisoned their home becomes known as ‘Cancer Alley’, it is violence. But legally, if recognized at all, the act is not seen as an assault on the health of its victims, nor do those that suffer often perceive it as such. Even if the perpetrators come to justice, it will be for their negligent industrial practices, not for carcinogens they put into living bodies.
There is a difficulty in conceptualizing, or locating, slow violence when compared to its ‘fast’ counterpart, and one of its most insidious aspects is that it is often not recognized as violence at all
For the victims of slow violence, there is no punctual moment of disaster, there is no discernable beginning to their suffering and there is no end to hope for. The harm is environmental, their lifeworld becomes a weapon inflicted upon them. Furthermore, like the steady accumulations of poison in bloodstreams, slow violence is “not just attritional but also exponential” as Rob Nixon – the originator of the term – points out. It acts as “a major threat multiplier; it can fuel long-term, proliferating conflicts in situations where the conditions for sustaining life become increasingly but gradually degraded.”
Rob Nixon is a professor of English, and the importance of this becomes clear as one explores slow violence. It is ultimately a concept of narratives: what is harm? Who decides if it is or not? And who gets to claim it? In the neoliberal world, the story of progress is all pervasive, environmental issues are side effects to be managed, fixed, or superseded by innovation and entrepreneurship. This is a specific narrative at play, a framework which we use to piece the facts of reality into a coherent story. Silicone Valley and Peruvian lithium mines are both facts of global capitalism, but which one is the focus of the narrative? The poisoned waters and collapsing communities, or the shiny Tesla’s cruising financial district streets?
Nixon’s book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor is constructed on a series of mediations on different books or literary genres all focused on environmental degradation and the people caught in its wake. Whilst covering real world examples at points, it is largely a discussion of fictional – though by no means unrealistic – literature. At first glance, this focus on the narration of environmental disaster, rather than its empirical basis, might discourage us from its usage as a tool of political ecology. But as Erik Swyngedouw points out, environmental policy requires the choice of one narrative over another; so, to be acquainted with the narratives of slow violence, how they are constructed, viewed, or ignored, is one of the most integral lessons to be learned from Nixon’s work.
This narrative understanding is important because slow violence defies most conventional understandings of harm. Whilst its victims and perpetrators may be human, the way it plays out is environmental, it does not neatly fit into news cycles, election seasons, or economic quarters. Environments act on many timescales: seasonal, biological, hydrological, or geological, they are often connected, but not synchronized. Environmental phenomena rarely occur at ‘humans speeds’, and causes may not render their effects for decades; or they may manifest themselves slowly and unevenly, an imperceptible drip of the past into the present. Neither do they follow the pathways we are accustomed to. Ecological materials do not transmit through markets or cultural exchange, they dissolve through webs of interconnections until they appear hidden, only to rejoin and accumulate again far from their source in both space and time. When applied to environmental pollutants, the difficulty of connecting the human scale of polluters and polluted with the twisting ecological pathways that connect the two becomes plain to see.
Slow violence defies most conventional understandings of harm. Whilst its victims and perpetrators may be human, the way it plays out is environmental, it does not neatly fit into news cycles, election seasons, or economic quarters.
The last military spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam, for example, was in 1971, yet its poisonous effects persist half a century later, killing, maiming, and deforming thousands. It lingers, percolating, pooling, and welling in muds, soils, and water, biomagnifying through food chains and into populations. The cancers it inflicts can be as deadly and debilitating as any instantaneous bomb or bullet, but they act slowly and implacably, when the aggressions have long since disengaged, and (for some, at least) the political story has moved on. Agent Orange is a pertinent example of slow violence, but it is amongst the easiest to recognize. From the poisoned waters of Flint to Pacific Islanders living in the wake of nuclear testing, long-term, proliferating violence constructs and blights their futures in hidden and pervasive ways.
Narratively novel it may be, we must be careful not to depoliticize slow violence as some ethereal, inexplicable force. Rob Nixon often speaks about the ‘out of site’ character of slow violence, but as has been pointed out by Thom Davies, ‘out of sight’ is a relative term; to those afflicted by slow violence it is rarely unnoticed. What consigns it to the category of ‘out of sight’ is its lack of political recognition in the mainstream narrative; whether implicit or purposeful. News cycles come and go, but the poisons, cancers, and broken socioecological systems remain, as do the communities that bear them witness.
‘Out of sight’ is a relative term; to those afflicted by slow violence it is rarely unnoticed. What consigns it to the category of ‘out of sight’ is its lack of political recognition in the mainstream narrative; whether implicit or purposeful.
Nor, for that matter, should we take ‘out of sight’ to mean perpetrators of slow violence are only ever guilty of ignorance. When, in a confidential memo from the then-president of the World Bank Lawrence Summers, he describes the ‘impeccable… economic logic’ of “dumping toxic waste in lower wage countries”, there is not ignorance at play. When Summers described higher wage nations as ‘over-polluted’, he was implicitly acknowledging the negativity of pollution, but the narrative constraints of his worldview did not permit him to rally against it, but simply to manage it. The harm was acknowledged, but it was going to be put out of sight, rather than simply find its way there. The reason Summers could propose inflicting toxic waste upon faraway communities, even when all agreed upon its danger, was the narrative. In this way, it is not violence, but simply rational decision making; whether inflicting a substance that can harm, main, or even kill someone is construe as ‘violent’ all depends on who is telling the story.
Slow violence is a tool for overcoming these long-imposed barriers on what we can claim to be right or wrong, violence or not. It is a particularly important device for political ecologists in the era of the ‘Anthropocene’, where the seeming abstractness of global issues like climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution can be used by the biggest perpetrators to forgo responsibility for the harm they inflict. If we are to strive for a more just ecological future, then recognizing what is to be overcome is one of the first challenges.
Further resources
Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor by Rob Nixon (2011) The original source of the term, it explores examples, both real and fictional, to help the reader understand the concept and its implications for environmental justice in the globalized world.
The Environmentalism of the Poor by Joan Martinez Alier (2002) Exploring the parallel, but initially unconnected environmental justice movements of the Global South and how they differed from those the North.
Promises of the Political: Insurgent Cities in a Post-Political Environment by Erik Swyngedouw (2018) Environmental questions are inherently political, but increasingly they are consigned to technocratic decision making. This book looks at how to overcome this thinking and bring back the democratic voice to our shared environmental futures.
The Political Ecology of the State: The Basis and the Evolution of Environmental Statehood by Antonio Ioris (2014) This book is dense and philosophical, but if you want to understand why and how states theorize environmental issues (and those affected by them) in the way they do, then it’s worth the effort.
Permaculture is a design system that mimics the patterns of flourishing ecosystems to create ecologically regenerative human societies. First developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970s, permaculture takes inspiration from Indigenous and ‘traditional’ agrarian practices. Mollison and Holmgren created a philosophy and a set of principles for producing diverse and dynamic ecosystems in which humans play a positive role.
Permaculture is strongly associated with specific practices, such as planting perennial polycultures. However, its most distinctive aspect is a focus on ecological design that is based on careful observation and deep interconnection. Through this design process, permaculturalists co-create, with non-human nature, spaces and lives that restore soil, build biodiversity, and allow for the flourishing of multiple species, including humans.
Permaculture emphasises that the Earth is full of abundance, not in commodities, but in energy from the sun, wind, water, food, and life itself. According to permaculture ethics, this abundance should be shared with other people, non-human animals, and the Earth. Permaculturalists do not view humans as inherently destructive or greedy. Within healthy ecosystems, animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria form cooperative, rather than competitive relationships, and humans can be an integral part of these ecosystems. As a system based on cooperation and solidarity among humans and non-human nature, permaculture offers a radical reimagination of the possible.
As a system based on cooperation and solidarity among humans and non-human nature, permaculture offers a radical reimagination of the possible
Permaculture has spread from Australia throughout the world and been interpreted in a variety of ways. This has led to some important debates within the international permaculture movement. Some proponents of permaculture aim to keep it de-politicized and professionalized as a system of ecological design only, while others seek to align with other social justice movements. The established way to become a permaculture practitioner is to attend a Permaculture Design Course (PDC). PDCs in North America are typically $800-1500 16-day immersive programs. People usually travel to attend PDCs and often live on-site for the duration. This limits PDCs to people who can afford the fee, the travel costs, and to be away from family or work for more than two weeks. After passing the course, one of the ways to be a permaculture practitioner, strongly emphasized in PDCs, is to start an ecological design business or farm.
Some argue that permaculture should be professionalized in this way to establish mainstream legitimacy, respectability, and influence for a movement which has often been on the fringes of society. However, if only those with the time and money to obtain PDCs can practise, promote, or teach permaculture, then the transformative potential of the movement is greatly limited. Most working-class people do not have the capital to start small businesses or buy increasingly expensive farmland. Permaculture has thus been criticized for excluding racialized people, the poor, and the working class, as well as for the presence of sexism, especially since permaculture certification relies heavily on a teacher/student model with potential for serious abuses of power.
Lack of access to land can be a barrier to participation in permaculture. Land ownership in many parts of the world—both rural and urban—is prohibitively expensive. Creating perennial gardens, food forests, major earth works such as berms, swales, and cob structures, all require land ownership or, at least, long-term land access. In urban centres, where public land can be sparse and highly contested, the creation of such projects necessitates sustained activist campaigns grounded in the complex connections between urban land, race, class, and gender. There is also the danger that such permaculture projects could displace long-term residents from their neighbourhoods.
Permaculture has also been criticized for playing a role in continued colonialism toward Indigenous people and the Global South. Mollison and Holmgren, by their own admission, gleaned knowledge and skills from Indigenous and ‘traditional’ communities to create the principles of permaculture. Some of the knowledge and skills they gathered were developed by specific, identifiable communities and people, who are rarely acknowledged by practitioners. Practices and ideas associated with permaculture can then become commodities that are sometimes sold back to the Indigenous groups they were borrowed from. And when White permaculture practitioners from the Global North set up businesses and farms in poorer countries of the Global South, there is a danger that these initiatives will contribute to the dispossession of local people, a very similar danger to the urban projects discussed above. It is essential that permaculturalists acknowledge the origin of practices associated with permaculture, and support struggles for Indigenous land rights, globally and within their own region.
Permaculture has transformative potential when practitioners move away from promoting it as a depoliticized set of ecological design practices and principles. It should, instead, be viewed as a dynamic social movement that can provide a vision for radical transformation of human societies. The permaculture movement must explicitly concern itself with social and environmental justice, actively confronting racism, colonialism, classism and sexism within dominant society andwithin permaculture communities. The permaculture movement must find ways to become accessible and participatory. This entails decreasing the emphasis on land ownership and entrepreneurship.
Permaculture should be viewed as a dynamic social movement that can provide a vision for radical transformation of human societies
There are already many initiatives that attempt to do this. Some of the most promising involve attempts to reclaim the commons, spaces governed collectively and democratically for the use and benefit of all. These include community food forests, community gardens and urban farms, reclaiming abandoned buildings as solidarity spaces, neighbourhood-based mutual aid and sharing initiatives, and worker-owned and neighbourhood-based cooperatives. These projects and initiatives can complement and strengthen activist organizing, creating what Adrienne Maree Brown describes as communities that are ‘miles deep and inches wide.’
A useful permaculture principle for understanding social change and transformation is ‘use edges and value the marginal.’ When applied to ecosystems, this principle reminds us that marginal life such as ‘weeds’ can play a role in healing soil and nurturing our bodies. It also highlights how ecological change often happens in the spaces in which two ecosystems meet and overlap. Within human societies, ways of living and organizing that have transformative potential are often marginalized when they threaten dominant power structures. These marginal spaces, the edges of capitalist society, are often where activists organize against capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. It is scary to be at the edges of society, risking or facing marginalization. It seems safer to be viewed as respectable and unthreatening by the status quo. Yet it is at the edges that the permaculture movement can have the most impact, joining with other social and ecological movements to create joyful and vibrant spaces in which people experience what it feels, sounds, smells, and tastes like to live differently with one another and the Earth. It is in these spaces that people can collectively imagine radical possibilities beyond capitalism, an essential step in allowing other worlds to take root and flourish.
Further resources
The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature by Starhawk (HarperOne, 2005). This is the book that introduced me to the concept of permaculture. Starhawk gives a description of permaculture philosophies and principles that is grounded in activism and feminist spirituality.
Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009). One of the most useful and practical books for designing permaculture spaces in urban and suburban areas.
Farming while Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Landby Leah Penniman(Chelsea Press, 2019) An essential resource for anyone interested in socially just farming as well as a much-needed correction to attempts to ignore the contributions of Black farmers and farm workers in the creation of agricultural knowledge and innovation. Penniman makes very important critiques of racism and colonialism within permaculture.
Embers of Hope: Embracing Life in an Age of Ecological Destruction and Climate Chaos by Bonita Ford (LivingEARTH, 2020) A meditative book that gives guidance for creating a permaculture life within theuncertainty of ecological destruction and climate breakdown.
The Re-enchantment (formerly Permaculture for the People) This is my podcast and blog, where I present permaculture as part of a larger political project.
Rebecca Ellis is a permaculture practitioner, community activist, and beekeeper in London, Ontario, Canada. She is currently completing her PhD dissertation in Geography at Western University and working on a book about capitalist agriculture and pollinator health. In her spare time she likes to play the banjo, ride her bicycle and commune with bees.
A woman gets the coronavirus vaccine, at a vaccination centre in Westfield Stratford City shopping centre, amid the outbreak of COVID-19, in London, UK [File: Henry Nicholls/Reuters], via Al Jazeera
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.
Welcome to our first newsletter in 2021! It has been a slow few months here at Uneven Earth, but we’re back with a fresh list of environmental justice readings and resources for you that we’ve collected in the new year. Highlights include stories on extractive tourism, global vaccine justice, and the power of mutual aid, as well as a brilliant podcast series on social ecology.
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Rewilding | A growing movement repurposes the term rewilding to be a political and cultural project that is more than merely conservation biology
Blue neocolonialism | The Nature Conservancy is promoting “Blue bonds”—a market-based solution to fund conservation—as a new wave of neocolonialism in the Seychelles
Who owns the city? Cars and COVID-19 | Car-centred urbanisation is tied to the growing threat of deadly epidemics. Solutions lie beyond technocratic policy, instead we must look to the soul of the city.
Texans were casualties in Republicans’ war on green energy. “Against an elemental force and a state that failed them, they recognized that the best way to survive was to band together, and practice mutual aid — supporting one another with what little they had.”
On social ecology. A Srsly Wrong podcast series that explores what a post-capitalist future might look like from a social ecology perspective, and how we might get there. Check out part 1, part 2, and part 3.
Socialism without growth. “People appear to understand the abstract concept of “limitless”, but it is more difficult to understand that the concept cannot and should not be applied to growth. Even socialists must shake off the idea that quantity can improve, when only quality counts.”
Introduction to political economy. A podcast hosted by Noaman G. Ali that looks at how politics and economics interrelate, but also how political economy can encompass a lot more than just politics and economics.
No job, no rent. A 30-page report by the Stomp Out Slumlords tenants rights project on 10 months of organizing the tenant struggle during a pandemic.
West Lodge Towers in Toronto, owned by Hazelview, formerly known as Timber Creek Asset Management. The financialization of the rental market in real estate is a key component of the asset economy. Photo: Neal Rockwell.
by Neal Rockwell
Earlier on in the pandemic there was a good deal of talk about what letter best represents the economic crisis that resulted from the COVID-19 virus. The first (and overly optimistic) suggestion was the letter V – that is to say a rapid decline of the economy followed by a rapid rebound. Other suggestions were a U (like the V, but a little more drawn out), the W (two back to back Vs) and an L (steep drop off, slow recovery).
None of these seemed, however, to accurately explain what was going on, so finally pundits and commentators introduced the idea of the K shaped recovery. This one is somewhat more difficult to understand than the others, partly because only the two diagonal strokes play into the visual metaphor, with the vertical stem being extraneous, but more importantly because it stretches the meaning of the word recovery itself.
Essentially, it divides the economy into two portions, one which has seen its fortunes dramatically increased, the other which continues to slide further into poverty. For the former category there has effectively been a boom without crisis, for the latter there has been an ongoing crisis without recovery. The stock market and home prices are increasing rapidly, while many people watch their financial troubles multiply with alarming speed. It seems obvious that this should not qualify as a recovery at all, but what then is taking place?
The Asset Economy, a new monograph published by Polity Books may help shed some light on the economic structures that could provoke this unusual K-shaped economic phenomenon. This slim volume, written by three Australian sociologists, Lisa Adkins and Martijn Konigs of the University of Sydney and Melinda Cooper of the Australian National University, focuses on the way asset ownership—primarily stocks and property—has become central to our economic system, but also to the ordering of social relations within our society.
The central argument of the book is that asset price inflation (especially property) has been the main driver of wealth since about the beginning of the 1980s. As wages have stagnated, rising stock, property, and notably home equity has allowed net worth to increase, at least for those who have access to asset ownership. That idea by itself is not novel, nor even controversial. Since the election of Margaret Thatcher all governments in the English-speaking world (and many others) have pursued this policy of ‘asset based welfare’.
In essence, this is a very individualistic strategy where social welfare programs are cut, unions are broken and people’s needs are met either by owning a stock portfolio or a home whose value increases over time, providing funds for retirement as well as life’s other needs.
The downside to this welfare strategy, of course, is that it requires the constant inflation of asset prices in order to remain viable. Its value creation strategy is entirely dependent on inflating asset prices specifically in relation to the prices of consumer goods overall, and more importantly in relation to wages. That means that as time progresses this form of “welfare” becomes more and more unattainable to larger and larger numbers of people, increasing the poverty of non-asset owning people, and making cities ever more unliveable.
Class is just not the same as it used to be
What is novel about the authors’ approach is the level of detail and attention they lend to this subject. One of the authors’ main ideas is that since the 1970s there has been a shift, where the main class antagonism in society is no longer centred around employment, i.e.: between people who labour and those who own the means of production, but instead between those who own assets and those who do not. As they state “[t]he key element shaping inequality is no longer the employment relationship, but rather whether one is able to buy assets that appreciate at a faster rate than both inflation and wages.”
The main class antagonism in society is no longer centred around employment but instead between those who own assets and those who do not.
This may seem a little like Thomas Piketty’s now famous r > g (return on investments is greater than GDP growth). Piketty’s formula suggests that if return on investments is higher than growth, then investment incomes for the wealthiest are based on syphoning money from the rest of the population, more than they are grounded in actual new wealth creation. This necessitates widening income inequality.
The authors explain, however, that Piketty tends to focus mainly on the very top of the economic hierarchy—those most heavily invested in the stock market, whereas their asset economy is more insidiously distributed throughout the upper and middle classes. Home ownership is particularly vital for entry into the asset economy by people below the very top of the wealth spread and as such “housing has become a significant generator of inequality.” The authors therefore argue that asset ownership is the primary engine of class distinction and inequality in the 21st century.
The authors also take care to distinguish the asset economy from rentier capitalism (which they claim focuses too much on the very top) and financialization (which they think focuses too heavily on making assets liquid, when a large part of the asset economy involves taking on large amounts of debt to buy illiquid housing assets).
Rentier capitalism, for quick clarification, is the idea that as the economy becomes more monopolistic, the owning class makes more if its income from parasitically charging rents and fees for access to services, rather than producing actually valuable goods and services. A good example of this would be increasing bank service fees – they do not actually improve a customer’s experience, but act like a kind of private tax.
Financialization refers to the growing way that financial activities and speculation have come to dominate the economy since the 1970s, replacing industrial production as the central driver of capitalism. In short this means that much more energy is devoted to playing the stock market, and loan markets in relation to investing in producing and selling products. A good example of this is how in the last ten years companies have invested profits into buying back their own stocks to drive up their prices, rather than investing in other more concrete, productive aspects of their businesses.
The authors also downplay the worker / boss relationship in relation to contemporary capitalist exploitation, in favour of the asset / no-asset dichotomy, partly because they believe the role of commodity production is now less important to the economy than long-term asset speculation, and also because class identity is now confused. There are white collar workers like journalists, magazine editors, NGO employees, etc… who are precarious and own no assets, while at the same time there are working class people who have managed to ascend on the asset-owning ladder (though they point out that this is rarer and rarer).
Inflation is sneaky
For some time I have been puzzling over the way economic and business people tend to talk about inflation. Analysts and commentators frequently explain that we live in a period of very low inflation.
This has always seemed somewhat absurd to me because the biggest expense in almost everyone’s life—the cost of housing—has seen prices skyrocket stratospherically in the past several decades. The authors make the same observation, noting that asset price inflation should today be considered part of inflation. As they state:
[T]he official story is that we live in a world without inflation… But this obscures the fact that inflation elsewhere has been central to the making of the neoliberal asset economy. Of course, we tend not to think of asset price inflation as inflation, but that is itself the product of a particular historical conjuncture and discursive configuration. It is therefore important to understand the transition from the Keynesian to the neoliberal era as a shift from price inflation towards asset inflation.
The authors observe that in the 1970s there was an opposite dynamic at play: wage and price inflation was high and asset prices were stagnating. As they explain “[t]he wage and consumer price spiral of the 1970s was the symptom of an undecided struggle between different social groups who sought to maintain their respective shares of the national income.”
What is most illuminating here is the idea that inflation is not simply a blunt process which either is or is not happening. On the contrary, as the authors show, it is a strategic battle between different actors in society. Different types of inflation benefit different portions of the population. Inflating asset prices is an indirect form of appropriation from those who do not hold assets because it erodes the value of their earnings, while increasing the value of asset owners’ holdings.
Inflation is not simply a blunt process which either is or is not happening, but a strategic battle between different actors in society. Different types of inflation benefit different portions of the population.
In a crude sense this inflationary process is like printing money out of nothing. While overall it diminishes the value of everybody’s individual dollars it transfers a greater and greater portion of those dollars into the hands of the asset owning minority. The value that asset holders create for themselves outpaces whatever debasement of buying power this process may engender.
The authors of the book are therefore at pains to show how asset wealth is different in character from other kinds of wealth. Key to this insight is the fact that assets don’t produce goods and services or surplus themselves. Rather, when the value of assets experience inflation, those who own assets are able to capitalise on them, while those who don’t see their buying power eroded.
It’s in this sense that finance, banking, and the asset economy are actually part of a privatized system for creating money. This affords the asset-owning minority a greater and greater ability to leverage this ‘money creation’ power over the structure and direction of the real economy—the actions people perform and things people make, that are the actual measure of wealth. People who hold assets then have a unique kind of power over others, because they are able to capitalise on this specific form of inflation (which is at odds with traditional wage and price inflation), while the rest of the population is excluded from the means for a stable and secure future. The book is extremely useful in clarifying this dynamic.
Overstating assets
One of the weaker aspects of the book is to perhaps overstate the role of what the authors term the asset economy somewhat to the exclusion of the other frames that they outline their position against: rentier capitalism, financialization, and labour relations.
To take one example, one of the major drivers of financialization is cheap debt. Loading up on low interest loans is one of the drivers of asset price inflation as the authors observe, but it also allows real estate to arguably become much more liquid. These loans help make ever more expensive housing accessible to investors, fast growing equity makes it easy to sell these properties quickly and painlessly. Stories of condos being sold multiple times before they are even built are a testament to this process.
I would argue, somewhat against the assertions of the authors, that the asset economy is financialization. They are both part of a privatized money creation scheme (money is created in the form of cheap loans, inflating property prices, stocks, etc…), that shifts a greater and greater portion of the money (or if you prefer value) supply into the hands of a select few.
This is maybe an argument for a basic income of some sort—not that it would not create inflation, in the long term it likely would—but that it would increase inflation in the right direction, away from the hands of the private money creation industry and into the pockets of poor and working people. Since asset inflation, banking and finance are part of a privatized system of money creation—one that benefits mainly the people who own and control it, state monetary policy can act as a counterweight to this process. Similar to the question surrounding inflation, the issue at stake around money creation is not simply how much is too much, but who has the right to do it and for the benefit of whom? At any rate there is certainly more to consider in how these processes relate to contemporary class struggles.
Work relationships, assets, finance, rentier capitalism and other dynamics, I believe, all exist concurrently in a way that is somewhat more complicated than the vision laid out in this book. That said, the asset economy frame outlined by the authors is nonetheless very timely and does provide necessary clarification that gets missed from some of these other more widely discussed analyses.
Understating production
This leads me to what I think is perhaps a bigger weakness in The Asset Economy: understating the role of production. The authors quite correctly observe that there is no “natural” way to measure prices—markets are contingent, arbitrary, socially constructed objects. They assert that inequality in society “works less and less through extraction and appropriation, and increasingly through the inflation and deflation of temporally situated claims.”
This single sentence manages to capture both what I consider the strongest and weakest elements of the book’s argument. Personally I would not set these two dynamics against each other. I would state, to the contrary, that it is inflation and deflation of specific forms of value that drive extraction and appropriation in the 21st century.
People doing and making things is still the basis of everything we consider valuable. The asset economy, like finance, has not supplanted real wealth. What it does is reorder cash distributions across different populations.
Further, some confusion arises from the way that the authors downplay the real economy and labour. People doing and making things is still the basis of everything we consider valuable. The asset economy, like finance, has not supplanted real wealth. What it does is reorder cash distributions across different populations.
Organizing against the K-shaped recovery
Recently, housing has grown as a novel site for working class struggles—above and beyond traditional sites like factories or other workplaces. Since the pandemic, we have seen the building of tenants’ unions and neighbourhood groups organizing against evictions and rent increases. These groups themselves explicitly identify housing as a target of working class organizing. This is partly because the precarious, gig and service economies make workplace organizing more challenging versus, say, organizing a centralized factory, but also because rents and housing costs have become a main point of extraction of working people’s wealth. It is a major point of 21st century exploitation.
This is a testament to the authors’ claim that neoliberalism has reordered traditional class relations. In the neighbourhood where I live, for example, many of the buildings where organizing is taking place are owned by asset management companies. This is not incidental, and it is part of why COVID-19 has been a crisis for some and a boon for others.
It may be worthwhile at this juncture to reiterate that a K-shaped recovery is no recovery at all. The image simply highlights the widening gulf of inequality between people who own assets and those who do not. We could think of the present-day wave of organizing around housing and rent as being a direct challenge to the inequality being wrought by asset price inflation.
A K-shaped recovery is no recovery at all. The image simply highlights the widening gulf of inequality between people who own assets and those who do not.
This transformation in class identity warrants greater consideration. At the same time, we must be cautious not to overstate this conversion. It’s true that there is significant overlap between people who own assets and own businesses where people work. On the other hand, many non-asset owning people are also low-paid workers. While asset prices have reorganised monetary value and who controls it, the work done by people is still the backbone of our collective wealth.
This book offers an important and timely analytical lens by which we can better theorize the growth of contemporary inequality and exploitation. There is a good deal more work to be done. I think the answer lies not in setting asset price inflation against a labour theory of value and exploitation, but in exploring how these dynamics intersect and work together, which will give us, amongst other things, a deeper understanding of why housing has become so central to 21st century working class struggle.
Neal Rockwell is a writer, photographer and filmmaker. He is currently completing a masters’ degree in Documentary Media at Ryerson University where he is exploring the effects of financialization on rental housing, as well researching the use of documentary power in the economy and the law, with the goal of strengthening documentary practice as a form of radical truth-telling.
The origins of the academic use of the term rewilding are in conservation biology. This interdisciplinary field is oriented towards the management of species, habitats, and ecosystems with the aim of protecting them. Current extinction rates are so high that we are likely living through the sixth mass extinction in the history of the planet, rivaling the one that snuffed out the dinosaurs. Rewilding was turned to as a way to mitigate the stunning rates of biodiversity and habitat loss. Fundamentally it seeks to aide and allow natural systems to regenerate their processes through methods novel to conservation paradigms. So, what does rewilding mean to conservation biology?
In conservation biology, rewilding was turned to as a way to mitigate the stunning rates of biodiversity and habitat loss
First, its view is large in scale, to account for the connectivity and size necessary for supposedly intact ecosystems to flourish. Many animals travel thousands of kilometers in their natural rhythms. The fragmentation of the landscape resulting from industrial agricultural, extractive, and settlement activities have radically impacted their lives, cycles, and needs.
Second, this is often coupled with the reintroduction of predators at the top of food chains, and other (keystone) species that structure entire ecosystems. Many of these have been extirpated from their previous range. Often these are predators that have been perceived to compete with, and complicate, settled societies.
Third, sometimes nature cannot ‘auto-rewild’ as quickly or easily as desired, so restoration and engineering projects are used in its aide. The goal is to facilitate conditions which, to the eyes of the conservation biologist, will not require human management so that the environment can eventually return to being self-regulated.
Essentially, the notion is to let, encourage, and help, non-humans to return to living their self-willed lives, in large, and regenerating, ecosystems. This idea might appear to be yet more meddling by human beings in the environment, which has often resulted in degradation. However, rather than engineering or designing the landscape, the central motivation is to aide nature in its own direction towards rejuvenation and resiliency, through specific targeted actions. These kinds of rewilding projects are undertaken not only by scientists and states at large scales. Committed people all over the world, from communities to guerrilla rewilders, use methods like reintroducing native plant species or removing invasive ones to rejuvenate the landscapes they live within, and love best.
Yellowstone
The most cited example in North America is Yellowstone National Park. By 1926, settlers succeeded in exterminating and driving out the wolves from the park. In their absence, the numbers of browsers and grazers like elk reduced the vegetation dramatically, changing the landscape in radical ways that were only revealed again with the reintroduction of wolves in 1995. Their renewed presence in the park led to not only the reduction of elk population, but a shift in their behaviour. They now avoided places where they were most at risk of being predated upon, like valleys. The absence of their sustained feeding led to the regeneration of forests and vegetation. This then welcomed birds, and also beavers who dammed parts of the river, further changing the landscape. The river’s course also shifted because of the recovery of vegetation which stabilized the banks and led to a less meandering watercourse. This is called a trophic cascade, in which changes at the top of a food chain tumble all the way to the bottom.This almost hundred-year ecological saga shows how easily the baseline of what is perceived as ecologically normal, or ‘untouched’, can shift in a short period of time.
Conservation and coloniality
The history of Yellowstone is also deeply colonial. In 1872 President Ulysses S. Grant wrote the park into existence while simultaneously excluding the multiple groups of native peoples living there seasonally, like the Nez Perce, members of the Blackfoot confederacy, the Crow, and the Shoshone. In 1868 the latter negotiated a treaty with the United States government in which they ceded their lands in exchange for hunting rights. However, the government never ratified the treaty, nor formally recognized the Shoshone’s claims, merely taking the land and removing the Shoshone people. This theft was the end of 11,000 years of sustained human inhabitation of the area.
The notion of nature as a separate bounded entity that only flourishes in the absence of human touch prevented settlers from recognizing that what they saw as ‘wilderness’ was actually landscapes deeply shaped by people.
This context of conservation engenders a central criticism of this kind of rewilding. Conservation paradigms generally seek the removal of human impact on nature. This is an extension of an imagined separation of nature and culture within the Western mind that reaches, at least, as far back as the period dubbed the Enlightenment. Its colonial importation to what became the Americas therefore cast human impact on the stunning ‘new wilderness’ as negative. Therefore, the millions of inhabitants were either depicted as not human, or in need of removal, and often both. This deeply colonial and racist ideology led to the removal of both predators and millions of native peoples from their landscapes. The notion that nature is a separate bounded entity that only flourishes in the absence of human touch prevented settlers from recognizing that what they saw as ‘wilderness’ was actually already landscapes that were deeply affected, and shaped, by people. This revelation, that all the living beings that make up the landscape might flourish more because of human involvement is part of why the concept of rewilding has been taken up much more broadly outside of conservation sciences.
Rewilding for humans: what is our niche?
This forces us to ask the question: what is the appropriate place for the human animal in an ecology? We certainly are an ecosystem engineer like a beaver; and at times a top predator, like a wolf; and have cascading effects within any landscape we live in. With the aide of skills like symbolic language and technological capacity, we have been able to live in essentially every region and climate available, and have done so for millennia in sustainable ways. Yet, starting 10,000-12,000 years ago, many of us have lived in comparatively new agricultural civilizations based upon the settlement, and the domestication of animals and plants. That change in trajectory, in which the majority of humans shifted their relationship with nature and each other from a form of relational trust, to one of domination, accumulation, and instrumentalization, has built towards our present planetary crises. In the face of these conflicting histories, what might be the proper ecological role, the appropriate niche for human beings? What qualitatively set apart the way the Shoshone in Yellowstone lived from that of the colonialists and their descendants?
The question of how we might live in a manner that is mutually enhancing with the natural world is not only one of pressing survival, but of justice for humans and the rest of the living world.
These questions open onto long-standing debates about human nature (see the first contribution to this Resources series by Eleanor Finley) that are fraught with histories of colonialism, racism, and dispossession. Debates about human nature are deeply political and have been used as justification for a whole host of contradictory, and often disturbing, projects. However, the questions as to how we might live in a manner that is mutually enhancing with the natural world is not only one of pressing survival, but of justice, for humans, and the rest of the living world.
There is a growing movement, largely allied with anarchist, radical environmentalist, and decolonial practice, repurposing the term rewilding to be a political and cultural project that is more than merely conservation biology, one that thinks about nature with the people in. Many Indigenous peoples have been exemplars of sustainable lifeways, whose relation to nature has achieved durable ecological balance. Settler societies are beginning to glimpse this as they face burning forests and collapsing fisheries. Taking cues from, and in alliance with, Indigenous peoples, political and cultural rewilders are trying to enact decolonial practices by applying the ideas of rewilding to human beings. This is not looking backwards to an essentialized past but to a hybrid and flexible future of self-willed more-than-human communities, outside of, and after anthropocentric systems of domination.
Further resources
Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution by Caroline Fraser (2010) This book gives a broad overview of the work being done all over the world in conservation that is inspired by the rewilding approach.
Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding by George Monbiot (2013) This is a more personal account of what rewilding might mean for the land, and for a modern Western person.
Rewild or Die: Revolution and Renaissance at the End of Civilization by Urban Scout (2008) This book is a series of essays on the political and theoretical underpinnings of rewilding as a project much beyond merely conservation, expanding on what is written in the second half of this article. You can also visit rewild.com.
The Trouble With Wildernessby William Cronon (1995) This is a seminal essay on the problematic Western conception of ‘wilderness’ and its implications for how we manage and treat the natural world.
How maverick rewilders are trying to turn back the tide of extinctionby Patrick Barkham (2020) A recent article in The Guardian describing the growing movement of those rewilders who are “secretly breeding endangered species and releasing them into the wild. Many are prepared to break the law and risk the fury of the scientific establishment to save the animals they love.”
‘This is my message to the western world – your civilisation is killing life on Earth’ by Nemonte Nenquimo A recent article in The Guardian written by a Waorani woman, one of the many Indigenous groups who inhabit the Amazon rainforest, addressed to the political leaders of the world. The tagline reads: ‘We Indigenous people are fighting to save the Amazon, but the whole planet is in trouble because you do not respect it’.
As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2017) Written by Anishinaabe scholar and activist Leanne Simpson, this book details the many Indigenous political resurgences as being rooted in place-based, uniquely Indigenous lifeways, and thinking.
Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources by Kat Anderson (2005) This is a thorough exploration of the ways that Indigenous peoples interacted with, managed, and lived with, the more-than-human world in what is now called California.
Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott (2017) An excellent, accessible, and engaging summary of what recent research has revealed about the earliest days of our transitions in agricultural states, with a particular focus on Mesopotamia.
Joshua Sterlin is a PhD candidate in the Leadership for the Ecozoic program at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, having been trained previously in environmental anthropology. Visit him at jsterlin.org.
Countries of the Global South are facing a modern form of economic domination from foreign interests. The story of Europeans plundering Black and brown nations to profit from their natural resources is probably a familiar one. But now that nature itself has become commodified through the tourist economy, environmentalism functions as a justification for replicating the same old colonial power dynamics.
Under the banner of conservation, green nonprofits in the United States have begun using the government debt of previously colonized nations as a bargaining chip to force governments to create new nature preserves. Just over two years ago, the U.S.’s richest environmental organization, The Nature Conservancy, partnered with big European banks to coerce Seychelles, a small island nation 1,000 miles east of Kenya in the Indian Ocean, to issue “blue bonds.” These bonds are a new debt instrument that are supposed to be good for the environment and attract investors who believe Wall Street can be a driver of public good.
Blue bonds are modelled on “green bonds,” another market-based climate solution that can enable companies to claim they are engaging in environmentally friendly solutions while actually achieving little positive environmental benefit.
On October 29, 2018, the World Bank and The Nature Conservancy announced that the government of Seychelles would issue $15 million of blue bonds, “a pioneering financial instrument designed to support sustainable marine and fisheries projects.” Blue bonds function just like regular bonds. If a government or company wants to borrow money, it issues bonds that are sold in bond markets. The government gets a lump payment upfront and then pays the money with interest over time to the holders of the bonds, which can then be bought and sold on markets just like stocks are. Bonds are considered safe investments because governments rarely default on their debts. What makes blue bonds “blue” is that the issuer of the bond is supposed to use the money on ocean conservation. In the case of Seychelles, the nation issued the bonds to pay off some of its national debt and turn 30 percent of its coral reefs into marine protected areas (MPAs).
The Nature Conservancy says blue bonds are “an audacious plan to save the world’s oceans” and “could unlock $1.6 billion for ocean conservation.” Blue bonds are modelled on “green bonds,” another market-based climate solution that can enable companies to claim they are engaging in environmentally friendly solutions while actually achieving little positive environmental benefit. For example, a Spanish oil and gas company sold green bonds to finance upgrades to their oil refineries, a project of dubious environmental benefit given that it facilitates continued greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the project was sold to investors as a “green” project because it promised to marginally reduce emissions within Spain’s existing oil industry.
While the bulk of media coverage about the blue bonds deal heralded it as a win-win for conservation and Seychelles, nobody seemed to notice that a U.S. nonprofit used a sovereign nation’s foreign debt to leverage the closing of a huge portion of its fishing grounds. We should call the move to deliver conditional aid to Seychelles premised upon reordering its economy what it is: “neocolonialism.” Neocolonialism is the extension of colonial practices through the exertion of economic, political, or cultural pressures to control or influence previously colonized nations.
In the United States, conservation initiatives have targeted small-boat seafood harvesters for decades now. Many of these small-scale harvesters are Indigenous peoples who have fished sustainably for centuries. For instance, in the 1960s, the Nisqually, Puyallup, and Muckleshoot nations had to fight the state of Washington for the right to catch salmon. Washington State’s salmon stocks had been declining since commercial fishing took off after World War II. Tribal communities had been partially blamed for the decline and were beaten and arrested by police for fishing that was guaranteed to them by treaties signed by the state. In the 1980s, environmental activist groups Greenpeace and Seashepherd targeted Indigenous tribes in Alaska and the Soviet Union for the legal harvesting of whales. When environmental groups are looking for easy victories to publicize, nonwhite people and developing nations such as Seychelles, with limited political power, seem to make for easy targets.
For Seychelles, where more than one in six people is employed in the fisheries sector, the potential hamstringing of the country’s second-most important industry could have lasting impacts on the autonomy of small-scale fisheries to determine their livelihoods and futures. It may be that Seychellian fisherfolk and the general public do prefer the creation of MPAs to limit commercial fishing, but there is nothing in the public record to indicate that they were even asked. If the people of Seychelles wanted to create MPAs, the nation already had democratic institutions to work through. Conditioning needed aid on the creation of nature preserves deprives them of their national sovereignty.
Up to its neck in debt
In 2008, Seychelles defaulted on its national debt to foreign banks. The nation owed significant amounts of money to banks in the European Union, largely to its former colonizers France and Britain. Seychelles’ debt had reached unsustainable levels due to two major factors. Firstly, the island nation has been on the losing end of uneven foreign trade in which it imports expensive goods such as oil and yachts while exporting relatively inexpensive natural resources such as tuna for canning. Secondly, Seychelles has been limited in its ability to generate revenue because of overly generous tax breaks offered to foreign investors during its transition to a tourism-based economy and a tax haven. When nations cannot generate revenue through taxation or exports but still must import expensive goods to finance economic development, their governments have little choice but to borrow money from foreign banks.
From the EU’s economic perspective, Seychelles’ problems have resulted not from extractive global capitalism and coercive debt relationships but from overly generous domestic programs that support the second-longest living population in sub-Saharan Africa. This sentiment is illustrated by a statement from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that socialism had “eroded the work ethic” of the Seychelles, a statement that is shocking in its obfuscation of uneven debt relations, its McCarthyite redbaiting, and its placement of value on economic growth above the wellbeing of the people of Seychelles.
In 2010, France forgave about five percent of Seychelles’ total debt, but the IMF had other plans for the remainder. In a move straight out of a playbook from Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine,” the IMF demanded that Seychelles further liberalize its economy and decrease welfare spending in exchange for restructuring its debt payments through 2017. Liberalization typically involves reducing trade barriers, rolling back financial and environmental regulations, slashing public benefits, and privatizing public resources. European countries and the United States have often strong armed developing nations to liberalize their economies in order to enable multi-national corporations to extract value from a nation’s natural resources.
As the debt restructuring deal expired, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) emerged from the nonprofit sector to leverage the debt to limit Seychelles’s fishing industry. TNC’s CEO at the time was Mark Tercek, a former managing director and partner at investment bank Goldman Sachs. Tercek wrote a book called “Nature’s Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature,” detailing how big business could profit off of environmental conservation. Blue bonds are one instance of the realization of Tercek’s vision of banks and environmental groups profiting off conservation.
The Nature Conservancy: A nonprofit with more money than some nations
TNC was founded in the United States in 1951 and is one of the largest environmental nonprofits in the world. TNC’s mission is to protect nature from human activity, an idea grounded in the belief that humans and nature cannot coexist. Its preferred tool for conservation is easements, which are restrictions on development that can attach to property through private sales contracts. These easements can provide big tax breaks for TNC’s wealthy donors and partners, which include oil companies, Dow chemical, and the charity arm of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. TNC has a presence in 79 countries and an endowment of $6 billion. In contrast, The entire GDP of the Seychelles is less than $1.7 billion. TNC is funded by grants from large foundations and membership dues, but it also generates revenue through investment income and land gifts.
In 2001, TNC expanded its focus to include “debt for nature” swaps, where it used a similar scheme in Southeast Asian and Central American forests as in the Seychelles to buy the debt of struggling nations in exchange for the creation of more nature preserves. In the Seychelles deal, TNC worked directly with the World Bank (the IMF’s sister organization) to buy some of the country’s debt in exchange for the creation of 13 new MPAs. TNC gets to claim credit for protecting coral reefs from fisherfolk, but it’s also receiving 3% interest payments on the debt from the Seychellian government.
So, if the environmental and economic benefits are dubious, then one has to wonder whether this deal is really supposed to benefit the Seychellian people. The Nature Conservancy and the big European banks holding their debt could simply have forgiven the Seychelles’ debt, but in the words of colonist Winston Churchill, that would have let a good crisis go to waste. With less debt pressure on its economy, Seychelles would have been more free to use its natural and financial resources how it sees fit.
As the largest environmental nonprofit in the United States, TNC controls large swaths of land and brings in revenue at levels comparable to small nations, in part thanks to interest payments by Seychelles and other nations in the Global South. TNC’s money and its influence give it considerably greater options than other environmental nonprofits to influence the direction of environmental protection. When TNC embraces “market-based solutions,” politicians and other environmental groups begin to see those tactics as appropriate and effective. In other words, TNC’s considerable political and economic clout increases the perceived legitimacy of market-based solutions and directs others to jump onto the bandwagon.
If MPAs don’t protect against climate change or development threats and may not even enhance fishery production, then blue bonds start to look a lot like coercive conservation designed to benefit wealthy outsiders. We also know that real estate development damages coral reefs, so it’s safe to assume that the hotels built during the tourism boom also played a role in the destruction of coral reefs that helped create the justification for issuing blue bonds. Ironically, one of the economic selling points of blue bonds is that protecting the reefs will keep the tourist economy afloat, which could create the demand for more hotels that would further damage the reefs. This creates a feedback loop where conservation may actually put more pressure on the environment, as documented in places such as Machu Picchu in Peru and in several U.S. national parks.
A history of extraction
The World Bank’s description of blue bonds as “pioneering” is telling. The word “pioneer” evokes a history of European colonial expansion, resource extraction, and domination of darker skinned people. For several centuries, Seychelles functioned as a European outpost that used the archipelago’s natural resources to benefit Europeans. It was supposedly uninhabited until it was colonized by the French in the 1700s. As first a French and later a British colony, Seychelles was primarily a source of spices, coconuts, and other agricultural products that were produced on plantations with slave labor. Today, most of its people are creole, or of mixed European and African descent.
The original colonization of Seychelles occurred during the heyday of triangular trade, which was an early economic model of globalization in the 17th and 18th centuries. European and North American slavers extracted people from Africa for the slave market and sent them to the colonies in the so-called New World. The colonists used this forced labor to process the vast natural resources of North America and send value-added products back to Europe where they would command a higher price. European slavers could then trade these manufactured products in Africa for more slaves. The entire system was financed by European banks. It was in this context that Seychelles was colonized. The same model of resource-based extraction and plunder of Africa continues to this day through coercive conservation.
In 1971, Seychelles was still under direct colonial control. The British constructed an international airport and tourism quickly replaced agriculture and fishing as the number one industry. Hotels sprouted all over the archipelago and soon dominated the local economy. In 1976, a socialist-led independence movement gained popular support, and (with the blessing of the United States government which was building a military base on one of the islands at the time), Seychelles finally broke free politically from the United Kingdom.
The economy, though, continued to depend on support from foreign tourists and investment. By 2019, services such as tourism and banking accounted for more than 72 percent of Seychelles’ GDP. However, very little of the money stayed in Seychelles. From the beginning of the boom, profits from the tourism sector were captured by foreign hotel companies and booking agencies.
The future of conservation?
The blue bonds model may not be limited to the Seychelles for long. TNC continues to tout the benefits of blue bonds and marine reserves, but blue bonds could also play an increasing role in the climate and oceans policy of the next President of the United States. Heather Zichal, who was the vice president of corporate affairs for The Nature Conservancy when the blue bonds were first issued, advised the Biden campaign on environmental policy. She was also briefly the executive director of Blue Prosperity Coalition, an organization dedicated to limiting fishing to 30 percent of the oceans.
The Nature Conservancy’s unholy alliance with fossil fuel companies and big banks represents everything that’s wrong with modern environmentalism.
Now that Biden is President, Zichal has been hired to head a new renewable energy lobbying firm that will seek to use her connections to the new administration to push for more support for wind and solar. Zichal’s career is a perfect example of the “revolving door” of politics, where high level government officials can leave administrative work for prominent positions in the corporate nonprofit/consulting world while also serving on the board of some of the world’s worst polluters.
The Nature Conservancy’s unholy alliance with fossil fuel companies and big banks represents everything that’s wrong with modern environmentalism. A corporate approach to environmentalism that perpetuates systems of domination is not just flawed; it is doomed to fail in the long term because it continues to empower the very forces that view “nature” as something that can be used up until it’s no longer profitable.
TNC is certainly not the only nonprofit that helps prop up a global economic system grounded in extraction, but it is one of the system’s largest nonprofit beneficiaries of money and land donations. And while a number of gifted scientists and advocates make up the rank and file of their 3,500 employees, the organization as a whole suffers from a lack of vision.
Unfortunately there are two major problems with TNC and a large portion of the environmental movement:
Many people within it are unable or unwilling to recognize that unfettered extraction of environmental resources is intrinsic to capitalism.
Many environmentalists still hold Malthusian notions that human beings are incapable of coexisting with nature.
TNC and similar groups’ missions to protect nature in its “wild” state is itself a problematic notion rooted in indigenous erasure. Prior to the rise of European colonization and triangular trade, hundreds of nations of people lived on the American continent. They lived, hunted, farmed, fished, and built things from the Arctic Circle to Patagonia.
When we set up a society that says some places are for people and some places are for “nature,” we reinforce the idea that it’s okay to trash the places that are for people. It also justifies the expulsion of the people from spaces set aside for “nature”, and the denial of relatedness and kinship between the two. Instead, we need to recognize that humans and our habitats are inherently a part of nature and rebuild our systems accordingly.
If the people at TNC and other environmental nonprofits are truly interested in living in harmony with nature, they would have to radically transform their own organizations to focus on disrupting an economic system that relies on exploiting natural resources. After all, it was the global imbalance of power and extractive model that originally generated Seychelles’ dependency on foreign tourists, foreign exports, and foreign fishing interests.
But until TNC and the World Bank reckon with capitalism itself, blue bonds will just help reinforce the unequal global order that makes Seychelles reliant on foreign aid and debt. Whether the bonds are blue or green, neocolonialism with an environmental justification is still just neocolonialism.
Kendall Dix works on climate policy and lives on a farm outside of Charlottesville, VA.
Claiborne Avenue underneath Interstate-10 in New Orleans. Photo: New Urbanism.
by Rob Persons
The degradation of the city by the car has come to a head as the lack of pedestrian space in urban centres has prevented safe social distancing throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Cities including Paris, San Francisco, London, New York City, Athens, Lima, Bogotá and many more are implementing plans to restrict and/or ban cars in designated areas to enable people to get outside, and to go spend money. In Milan, the Strade Aperte plan announced in April, will transform 35km of roads into cycling and walking space, including 8km of the Corso Buenos Aires, one of Milan’s main commercial streets. The deputy mayor of Milan said this is intended to make more room for people, especially people who shop. A similar plan is being mulled in New Orleans by Mayor Cantrell in concert with the city’s powerful business associations in an effort to ‘recoup revenues lost to the coronavirus’ in the historic French Quarter.
Recently, major publications have been publishing think pieces exalting the benefits of car free cities, lamenting the wasted space, pollution and accidents. In July, The New York Times Sunday Review ran such apiece as a cover article. It made some good points, especially as it rejects ride-sharing and electric cars as realistic solutions to climate change, but was misleading in that it portrays car centred development as a series of mistakes by urban planners or the unconscious result of ‘ethically neutral markets.’ A feature in Bloomberg on the ‘15-minute city’ is even more reason for hope as it focuses on the need for social equity and affordable housing in the transition to ecological cities. Missing from this growing discourse, however, is an examination of the political and economic factors which brought about this car-centred-world in the first place, and how those forces are still in power. In the past, seemingly progressive urban reforms have been used to further cement racial and economic hierarchies. In the United States, epidemics in the 19th century inspired reformers to establish municipal garbage collection, water waste systems, and public health boards meanwhile utilizing xenophobic and classist narratives blaming immigrants (especially Chinese communities), poor people, and the ‘morally corrupt’ for the outbreaks in the first place. Therefore, calls for car free cities should be celebrated with moderation, for if they lack a reconstructive egalitarianism and fail to address the root causes that led to this dubious status-quo, the underlying issues of social and ecological domination will continue to be left for future generations. As we will see, the same extractive economy that brought us the car-centred-world is also behind the growing ecological threat of deadly viruses in what could be a future of global pandemics.
Cars and COVID-19: a political ecology
Viral infection expert Rob Wallace explicitly points to capital backed agriculture, specifically monoculture plantations and livestock feedlots, as the driving proponent in the modern development of zoonotic diseases (like coronavirus) because they homogenize the world’s most biodiverse biomes thereby reducing resilience to disease transmutation. Though the threat of viral pathogens lies most pressingly in the deforestation of tropical regions, Wallace et al. warn,
‘Focusing on outbreak zones ignores the relations shared by global economic actors that shape epidemiologies. The capital interests backing development- and production-induced changes in land use and disease emergence in underdeveloped parts of the globe reward efforts that pin responsibility for outbreaks on Indigenous populations and their so-deemed “dirty” cultural practices.’
We must reject the nationalistic and sinophobic narratives employed by right-wing con artists and duplicitous finger pointers around the world hoping to hide their own complicity. It is vital that we investigate how the capitalist economy drives similar ecological simplifications wherever we are.
We must end our dependence on cars and irrational patterns of urbanisation because the arrogance of the extraction economy is leading us toward climate chaos and a potential future of global pandemics.
The car-centred-world perpetuates unsustainable land use and loss of natural habitat analogous to industrial agriculture. Compared to public transit or bicycles, the speed and individuality of the automobile requires an enormous amount of space to accommodate, as visualized here. From three lane roads, street parking, expansive parking lots, interstate highways, gas stations, and personal driveways, our built environment becomes an urban sprawl centred around the needs of the car. For example, between 1950 and 1995 land coverage increased by 165 percent in the Chicago metro area despite a 48 percent population increase; meanwhile on the United States eastern seaboard, a continuous sprawl now stretches from Boston all the way down to Washington DC. The car has clogged up and swollen the city, enabling the suburbs to proliferate and deforest the countryside. This type of development fractures ecosystems and communities, leading to a myriad of ecological consequences. The number one irrigated crop in the United States is currently suburban lawn grass, as homeowners are compelled to replace indigenous ecologies with non-native and unproductive grass. Thus suburbs not only increase distances, but also squander the invaded land as the lawn, home, and car consume heretofore unknown quantities from supply chains that stretch the globe. Modern cities and suburbs are designed for cars, rendering alternative transportation either seriously inconvenient or utterly impossible, thus creating a positive feedback loop where increased distances make more people reliant on cars which then require ever more space to accommodate and so on and so forth. Today, many jobs are not even accessible without a car so owning one becomes all but compulsory.
Urban sprawl driven by the automobile, like the plantation and feedlot, leads to fractured ecosystems, reduction of biodiversity, pollution and resource waste. The monoculture, slaughterhouse, city, and suburbs are materially linked by the goods produced at these inhumane institutions which furnish urban supermarkets and stores. But, more fundamentally, they operate under the economic assumption that land and animals are mere resource pools from which to extract value rather than a larger ecology of which humans are a part. Just as we must end the agricultural-industrial-complex, we must end our dependence on cars and irrational patterns of urbanisation because the arrogance of the extraction economy is leading us toward climate chaos and a potential future of global pandemics.
Cars and capitalism: a political economy
One of the most fundamental properties of capitalism is that growth and profit are necessary for its survival. Car-centred transportation is the opposite of cost-effective in terms of aggregate resource use, but it makes better business sense to sell individual cars than to maintain a robust public transit system from a growth and profit standpoint. Since protecting the environment is external to the profit motive, modern development lets the environment be damned. For the capitalist economy, the auto industry is a golden goose affecting so many different markets between steel, rubber, oil, glass, service/repairs, bank loans (debt), and insurance (auto and health). From the consumption standpoint, cars are ever-consuming as the tank must be refilled every 350 or so kilometres, the oil must be changed every 4000, insurance payments are due monthly, vehicle financing collects interest, leasing prevents outright ownership, and god forbid the driver gets into an accident. Much profit to be made.
Cars are useless without roads, making the auto-industry dependent on state funded infrastructure for its basic viability.
The state has played a major role in the creation of the car-centred-world. People often misunderstand the place of governments in the establishment and maintenance of capital markets, for it is commonly assumed that state interference is an opposing force to the so-called free market. In fact, free markets could never have been established without the state’s organization of violence and its funding of infrastructure and high-risk technological research that private firms seeking short-term profit would never undertake on their own. Most famously described by Karl Polanyi, the state plays a vital role in the process of enclosure and dispossession, in which Commons and other pre-capitalist relations are violently crushed and replaced by economic value exchange. In order to create consumers, alternative means of meeting needs must be liquidated.
Cars are useless without roads, making the auto-industry dependent on state funded infrastructure for its basic viability. Ted Steinberg details how the automobile enclosed cities in the United States through a coalition of the state and capital. In the 1930’s, General Motors put New York City’s trolley system out of business before forming National City Lines along with Standard Oil, Firestone Tire and Rubber, and other corporations that profit from car sales. Over the course of several years, National City Lines bought and sabotaged 40 transit companies across 14 states, stifling that ‘healthy competition’ mass transit presented to the automobile. In 1947 NCL was grand juried under the Sherman Antitrust Act and were found to have ‘entered into a “collusive agreement” to monopolize the transit market,’ though the consequences were innocuous fines. Meanwhile, the New Deal doubled road coverage throughout the 1930’s, outspending on roads over public transit 10:1, again tipping the scale of the market. Then in 1956, the Federal-Aid Highway Act sunk $25 billion taxpayer dollars to construct thousands of miles of interstate highways, all but solidifying the car’s spot as number one. These highways were often built on top of prosperous Black communities, likeClaiborne Avenue in New Orleans where the I-10 expressway destroyed hundreds of homes and Black owned businesses in the Tremé neighborhood.
David Harvey draws a parallel between this effort to usher in the age of the car and Baron Haussman’s redesign of Paris as they both used the state to prevent dissent by creating jobs building infrastructure that also functioned to isolate the working class. Robet Moses, a major architect of the modern New York metropolitan area, studied Haussman in detail and in his own words ‘took a meat axe to the Bronx’, dividing and isolating many politically active Black and Latinx neighborhoods with the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Harvey points out that the Paris Commune of 1871 repudiated Haussman’s efforts. Today, we are eagerly anticipating a movement to surpass its magnitude in repudiation of capitalist modernity of the likes of Robert Moses.
The commodified city
Two metres of social distancing has exposed how little space there is left for people in cities. Andre Gorz points out in a 1973 essay that while the automobile may appear to provide the individual with transportation independence, it actually makes them more dependent than ever before on the global economy and harmful infrastructure. Many people who drive cannot even identify the basic components of the engine, a far cry from independence. The motorist resembles a perpetual consumer rather than an owner. Now it is not just the worker’s labor, but their very means of existence from which capital seeks to extract value in its unceasing quest for growth. Such commodification would have seemed unimaginable just 100 years ago.
In the city, the car encloses vast space, relegating pedestrians to the literal margins with the physical threat of being run over. Whereas in the past, enclosure of city space took the obvious form of legal segregation or extreme policing to keep the ‘unwashed masses’ out of rich neighborhoods, now obvious repression is obscured by car traffic and commodification (though racialised policing still plays a major role, especially in the United States). Dorceta Taylor explains that once elites realized their methods of racist and classist exclusion through restrictive covenant and court procedure were no longer as effective, ‘businessmen and [elite] urban planning activists collaborated on developing a comprehensive vision for city planning.’ Built infrastructure such as congested roadways and interstate highways were one of the tools used to spatially segregate the rich from poor, Black from white, thereby abstracting individual responsibility for segregation and inequality into the annals of bureaucracy. Systematic intentionality remains camouflaged as dysfunctional policy and poor planning. These impacts are still felt today as many cities in the US are effectively segregated. Now, downtowns are often places of driving, commercial administration, prohibitively expensive apartments (or de facto hotels with Airbnb), and shopping, since the elites who guarded them have moved out to mansions and gated communities in the outskirts of the suburbs. The carceral state enforces this social exclusion by, often racially, criminalizing homelessness, jaywalking, loitering, street art, partying, and other forms of human existence that do not conform to buying or selling. The comprehensive nature of this transition works to conceal alternative systems from the depths of public consciousness, as the niches where counter-hegemonic culture is reproduced like the street corner, independent bookshop, and DIY venue, are increasingly dispossessed by monopoly capital and state regulation (the Bezos and the boot).
We can flip the script and create culturally vibrant, equitable, and ecological cities where human beings can flourish in participation with the natural world.
The city has been partitioned and impersonalised into sectors and sections of work and consumption so many people no longer know the names of their own neighbors. Of the many paradoxes Andre Gorz points out, one of the most tricky is that in order to defeat the car we must love our cities, but the car has killed the city so it becomes almost impossible to love. Meaning, it is not enough to invest in more public transit, bike lanes or ban cars in certain areas if the city has no soul. If people don’t take joy in being outside, if the communal ties which foster a multicultural society are not repaired and extended, if speed and quantified economic value remain prioritized over ecological and social well-being, then we will continue to choose the convenience and isolation of the automobile. Things do not have to be so bleak, however. Through a democratic process that centres human and ecological well-being, we can flip the script and create culturally vibrant, equitable, and ecological cities where human beings can flourish in participation with the natural world.
Which way forward: Cul-de-sac or community democracy?
Ground has been broken on Culdesac Temple, soon to be a completely car free community of up to 1000 people in Temple, Arizona. The $140 million, 16-acredevelopment featuring 636 apartments and 24,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space is set to open in 2021. Thewebsite boasts a quaint design targeting young professionals looking for a living space without all the negatives of the automobile. Residents will have access to on campus grocery stores, hair salons, coworking spaces, retail stores, and even a wine bar. Without cars, there will be ample greenspace for residents to enjoy with access to commuter rails, shuttle busses, and bike shares making transportation easy. Located just east of the city of Phoenix, Culdesac appears to be an ecological heaven for people who want to live life to the fullest. This development shares some superficial similarities with the community described in Kate Aronoff’s visionaryarticle about the potential future of a successful Green New Deal. The difference? Culdesac represents a future for those who can afford it, while Aronoff’s community represents a future for all.
It brings me no joy to point out that much of these so-called solutions wrapped in tech-industry branding and backed by venture capital are little more than marketing gambits designed to make people who can afford them feel less guilty about their own consumption habits. Plopping a development whose ‘goal might be termed instant gentrification’ and thrives on the ‘business climate of weak trade unions’ is never going to bring about ecological equity, cars or not. While developments like Culdesac may appear to be ‘green’, it is a fool’s gold as the ecological and economically exploitative impacts of the labor, electricity, food, building materials, water waste, plastics, exclusion of poor folks, et cetera are externalized, out of sight and out of mind. Yet mainstream media never misses a chance to laud the tech bro personality cult for their ‘innovative’ approaches to further commodification. Like electric cars and ride sharing, these false solutions do not touch the structural roots of the problem. Neither is it hard to imagine future such communities built behind walls with armed guards, reminiscent of Octavia Butler’s climate sci-fi novel Parable of the Sower.
As we rethink the city throughout this pandemic, we must ask: Do we want cities designed for the rich to enjoy restaurants, parks, shops, and lush bicycle greenways while the poor serve, sanitize, and enjoy not but the scraps? While I have been critical of the recent coronavirus inspired car restrictions as they fail to present comprehensive solutions, they have also led to some positive outcomes. At their worst, we see them oriented toward further commodifying social relations and creating space only for the enjoyment of those who pay. But at their best, these open street policies have given people who faced lonely weeks cooped up in their apartments the opportunity to go out and see friends, attend socially distanced events, and enjoy their neighborhoods. It has even inspired residents that may once have been strangers who happened to live near one another to become real communities. On 34th Avenue inJackson Heights New York City, neighbors came together to organize to open up their block. Since then, they’ve connected with each other as they share skills and hobbies and just hang out, perhaps beginning to restitch the social fabric needed to overcome Gorz’s paradox to build the new world in the shell of the old.
As we move deeper into the 21st century, the increase of displaced peoples, infertile land, rising tides, severe weather events, and viral infections will create conditions which require institutions of pluralistic democracy and economic equality or else doom us to a future of climate apartheid and famine. The way we travel plays a major role in this. Shortening distances and making public transportation, cycling, and walking as convenient, reliable, and aesthetically pleasing as possible should be a central objective of urban policy. But it is more than a question of lifeless infrastructure. As space is increasingly privatized and locked away behind high-tech surveillance, reclaiming the city for all is a vital step toward a common future. Clearly, status-quo politics are perfectly happy to let the most vulnerable people suffer and die. The socio-political conditions in which an environmental disaster occurs have a significant bearing on the severity and distribution of the harm it causes, therefore we must ensure that our future hardships are dealt with by new revolutionary institutions based in social and ecological equity, integrity, and fairness. To achieve this, the city must be re-envisioned as a body politic rather than an impersonal amalgamation of infrastructure and isolated individuals in order to counter monopoly of capital as it commodifies existence and the Nation-State as it centralises and bureaucratises political decision-making for benefit of business interests over people and planet. It is imperative that we re-embed the social and productive functions of the economy back into a democratic and social realm, recovering the shards of humanity shattered by this fucked up capitalist economy with each passing day.
Rob Persons is a writer and construction worker based in New Orleans. You can find him reading books in the park.
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.
Don’t tune out yet: the year 2020 is still full of great, much-needed analysis. This month, we are featuring work that is deeply challenging: against the idea that providing good jobs and protecting the environment are in opposition to each other; highlighting the moral depravity of for-profit, industrial agriculture; and on the revolutionary demand of giving Indigenous land back. Aside from this, there were several essential analyses of current anti-racist movements, and anti-black racist movements in particular, pieces on the power of Indigenous wisdom, and guides on organizing with tenants.
A small note that the articles linked in this newsletter do not represent the views of Uneven Earth. When reading, please keep in mind that we don’t have capacity to do further research on the authors or publishers!
Uneven Earth updates
Work | Work is drudgery for a lot of people, but it can be different and meaningful, if radically reorganised
Political ecology | Like a toolbox to unpack and understand the complexity of the socio-ecological crises we live in, political ecology is dedicated to a more just and inclusive world
Development | For development to truly deliver on its promise—the betterment of life for all—it must engage a multidimensional understanding of poverty
A caring economy: What would it take? The November-December 2020 New Internationalist issue asks: With the world in the midst of a deepening crisis of care, accelerated by Covid-19, what would it mean to have an economy that valued them and the people they care for?
Indigenous languages as cures of the Earth. This article is part of the #CuraDaTerra essay series, focused on Indigenous perspectives and alternatives to industrial capitalism.
Interrelations. Julian Brave NoiseCat has called eight expert witnesses to a tribunal to examine capitalist and colonial relationships to the land and one other. These testimonies endeavor to understand what has gone awry in our human societies, as well as to inquire into what other forms of knowledge, values, and interrelation might form the basis of a more just and reciprocal relationship between land and people.
Work is drudgery for a lot of people, whether physically or mentally, as they have to work a lot to make a living. Despite this, the work we do defines how we are perceived in society, while precarity of work has become the norm. A lot of work in capitalist growth-oriented economies is also environmentally and socially destructive. However, work can be different and meaningful, if radically reorganised. In what follows I will introduce the word, then proceed to addressing the problems with work, and finish by sketching how work could be transformed.
If you look for a general definition of work, it would usually be presented as an activity that involves physical or mental effort. Such a definition includes work of different kinds, for example, wage labor, unpaid care work or subsistence farming. It is the former, however, that we usually associate work with – i.e. work as a means to earn income, taking the form of wage labor. It is this kind of work that many have to do in a capitalist economy, whether they want to or not, and despite other kinds of work co-existing with it.
What work looks like today: from modern slavery to alienation
The etymology of the word ‘work’ has negative connotations in some languages, including ‘torture’ (e.g. French) and ‘slavery’ (e.g. Russian). This is unfortunately the way work is experienced by many, metaphorically and literally.
Work is extremely unjustly distributed within and across societies, defined by class, race, gender and other divisions. The hardest and most dangerous work is today done by people in the Global South – including children – in inhumane conditions. The earnings from this work are often not enough to live on, and yet this work creates wealth for global economies and powerful corporations. Mining for minerals in Congo to make modern technological devices possible, making cheap disposable clothes for renowned brands in Bangladesh or manually recycling plastic waste in Thailand are all examples of such work.
Severe exploitation of people for commercial gain via, for example, forced labor and debt bondage, is called ‘modern slavery’. According to the ILO, about 16 million people were in forced labor in the private economy in 2016, with 51% of these being in debt bondage. Modern slavery is particularly present in agriculture, mining and extraction, construction, and some forms of manufacturing, as well as unregulated or poorly regulated service industries. New service-oriented sectors that have been expanding rapidly and relying on digital technology – epitomised by companies like Foodora and Amazon – also come with new forms of extremely tough, controlled, accelerated and low-paid work, some of which can also be characterised as modern slavery.
When work is done in safe environments and in more decent conditions, with better salaries and shorter working hours, it still remains alienating: it leads to deskilling and lacks meaning for many. As David Graeber observed, capitalism has been good at creating a lot of ‘bullshit jobs’ – the kinds of jobs that do not need to exist. Corporate rhetoric, in turn, has worked hard to promote work as attractive to potential employees. For example, glitzy graduate brochures pay attention to the employer’s brand, adventures, consumption and endless training opportunities that will come with work, rather than work itself. However, even the most prestigious and glamorous jobs often turn out to be mundane, boring and complicit in the problems of our times.
Even the most prestigious and glamorous jobs often turn out to be mundane, boring and complicit in the problems of our times.
In response to this, we see a revival of the interest in work as craft, which is laborious but fulfilling – baking, beer brewing, small-scale agriculture, running a zero-waste store. People leave their work in corporate spaces to do something both for themselves and the society. However, these interests are often restricted by the very structure of the capitalist market, with interesting work being difficult to live from.
Work has become precarious over the past thirty years, with job security having been substituted by employability in labor market policies. Zero-hour and short-term contracts become never-ending for some, and even those in permanent positions can be made redundant fairly easily. This is expected to be exacerbated by the rise of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, which will substitute many jobs done by people. Employers today can hire and fire people to adapt to the situation on the market, while state employment agencies help one to search for work, rather than to actually get it. In other words, the responsibility for one’s situation with employment has been shifted from governments and employers to people themselves.
Despite this precarity of work and many not identifying with what they do to earn a living, most societies are characterised by a culture of workerism, where people’s worth is defined by the status of the work they do. To receive financial support from the state, those who are unemployed have to engage in the often humiliating and disciplining process of proving that they are searching for work, for example, sending a particular number of job applications per week. The kind of work unemployed people have to apply for, however, is often far off from what they want to be doing.
The value of work
Beyond the ways that work is changing today, there is a fundamental problem with how and which work is valued. Wage labor is a key feature of capitalism. Most people have to engage in wage labor to survive. Following Marxist theory, what appears as value created by investors or entrepreneurs is actually built on workers’ labor. For example, a worker at a shoe factory makes the shoes, but doesn’t own the shoe she ends up making nor does she own the machines she uses to make it with. As a result the owners of “the means of production” (e.g. the shareholders and bosses) cash in on any surplus value created, while she only receives the minimum wage the bosses are required to provide. This separation of workers from the means of production drives both capitalist surplus value and alienation from work. Because of this, Karl Marx calls work the “hidden abode of production”, i.e., the source of capitalist value which is often made invisible.
As further stressed by social reproduction theory, workers also need to be sustained in spaces outside production in order to continue working. Thus, capitalist surplus value relies on yet another “hidden abode” – a vast range of reproductive activities, which are, however, invisible and are not recognised in capitalist value creation. These activities, such as domestic labor, can be paid but are largely unpaid, and mostly fall on the shoulders of women.
When products are sold, however, their exchange value comes across as independent from productive and reproductive activities – Marx referred to this as commodity fetishism. Furthermore, the capitalist system is oriented towards financial gain, rather than satisfaction of human needs, and work that brings higher profits is recognised much more than work that contributes to well-being and welfare.
As vividly demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic, work that is most essential for the daily functioning of societies – care work, nursing, driving public transport, garbage collection, etc – is valued least. At the same time, economic sectors that are destructive or churning out bullshit jobs – financial and housing market speculation, advertising that pollutes public spaces or creating distractive social media technology – enjoy extreme levels of financial gratification and social status. They are able to create jobs, employ people, and pay them well. Moreover, some industries are directly responsible for environmental destruction and health deterioration. Bue Rübner Hansen calls work in these sectors ‘batshit jobs’, to denote the madness of the contradiction when making a living is also part of unmaking life. The fossil industry, which some of the world’s richest and most powerful companies belong to, is a case in point. It gives jobs to many people, but drives destruction. Such industries have to be phased out, but the workers in those industries would also need to be ensured a just transition to meaningful jobs in sectors that would be needed in the economy of the future – care, repair, and environmental regeneration.
Abolish work or liberate it?
In response to the problems with work, anti-work theses have become popular, arguing, for example, for the abolition of work. Some believe that technology will help to liberate us from work, if only it could be reclaimed from the hands of capital an
