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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
Convergence of bioregioning and commoning
“Isabel Carlisle is a leading figure in bioregional education and action who has a great term for describing the planetary eco-mayhem now underway — ‘Gaia on the move’. Carlisle sees cues for how to move forward. The disruptions ‘reveal where the fragility is, and that’s where to focus attention. By working into those points of fragility, we think we can flip them around and make them leverage points for change’, she said.
“Carlisle founded and now directs the Bioregional Learning Centre (BLC) in Devon, England, in 2017. Over the past eight years, she and a modest team have taken a leading role in mobilizing bioregional action at practical, strategic, and policy levels.
“I was curious how can activists and commoners really work with the state to improve bioregional resilience when history shows that the state’s is far more interested in fueling capitalist investment and growth? Carlisle agreed that that’s a problem, but she noted that a rare opportunity is afoot to shift governance toward a bioregional frame.
“The UK’s Labour government is proposing that regional governments and county councils be disbanded. BLC sees a devolution of centralized state authority to local and bioregional players as a great way to unleash creative energies at the frontlines of the climate crisis.
“This is where bioregioning and commoning converge. Both are focused on dynamic relationships among living entities. They both reject the humanity / nature divide that moderns take as self-evident, and instead embrace the interconnectedness of the human and more-than-human.” More at:
Pakistan flooding worsens
“Punjab, [Pakistan] is facing one of the worst flood emergencies in recent years, with the Chenab, Ravi, and Sutlej rivers swelling dangerously after weeks of torrential rains and upstream water releases. More than 1.8 million people have been displaced, including half a million evacuated in recent days.
“Nearly 3,900 villages in Punjab have been inundated. Roads, bridges, and rural connections have been washed away, leaving thousands stranded. Province’s farmlands have been devastated by floodwaters. Transport disruptions are also hampering the supply of essential goods.
“Similarly, Sindh [Province] is expected to experience intermittent downpours, raising fears of urban flooding in Karachi, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Sukkur, Larkana, Thatta, and adjoining districts.
“Authorities confirmed that India has released a fresh wave of 550,000 cusecs (cubic feet per second) from Marala Headworks. The surge, expected to reach Multan by Sept 8-9, may intensify flood vulnerability across southern Punjab.” More at:
“We Will Be Jaguars” book review (1st in a series)
“This post covers six books I read (and/or listened to) over the summer. Loosely speaking, the theme revolved around gaining a better anthropological sense of who we really are as a species. Some paved the way to others in a memorable story of its own.
“Nemonte Nenquimo wrote We Will Be Jaguars, a story of her youth among the Waorani people of Amazonian Ecuador. It’s an evocative account of the diametrical forces experienced by people trying to hold onto their cherished and sustaining traditions, in the face of modernity’s trap-door temptations and associated irreversible destruction.
“Especially in the early part of her life, Nemonte wrestles mightily with desires for ‘Western’ goods and appearances, while being perfectly happy to remain barefoot. As one example plucked from a fabulous wealth of insightful vistas into Waorani experience, Nemonte describes a confusing disconnect in dealing with the cowori (outsiders).
“You see, Waorani people know their life and technologies through and through. Thus, when they encounter cowori flying airplanes, it is natural to assume that these god-like creatures are able to do almost anything. She puts it like this: ‘How did the white people make planes and radios and chainsaws if they didn’t even know how to wash clothes or catch shrimp with their own hands?’
“Compounding this is the cowori incompetence at very simple matters like knowing how to exit a canoe or walk down a trail at night. How, indeed, can such powerful people be so individually clueless? Something just doesn’t add up, (Hint: externalized brains).” More at:
Making productive use of idle lands
“They arrived just before midnight, carrying machetes and hoes, hammers and sickles, with plans to seize the land. When the 200 activists and farm workers got there, the ranch was vacant, overgrown with weeds, and the farm headquarters empty, except for a stray cow.
“Now, three months later, it is a bustling village. On a recent Sunday, children rode bicycles on new dirt paths, women tilled soil for gardens and men pulled tarps onto shelters. About 530 families have already joined together to plow and plant the field with beans, corn and cassava. The siblings who inherited the 370-acre ranch want the squatters gone. The new tenants say they aren’t going anywhere.
“The uninvited settlers are part of the Landless Workers Movement, and after 40 years of sometimes bloody land occupations, a major political, social and cultural force in Brazil. The movement organizes hundreds of thousands of Brazil’s poor to take unused land from the rich, settle it and farm it, often as large collectives. They are reversing, they say, the deep inequality fed by Brazil’s historically uneven distribution of land.
“Group organizers and outside researchers estimate that 460,000 families now live in encampments and settlements started by the movement, suggesting an informal membership approaching nearly two million people, or almost 1 percent of Brazil’s population. It is, by some measures, Latin America’s largest social movement.” More at:
Plastic “high tunnel” greenhouses contaminating soil, water
“The term ‘Mar de Plastico’ or ‘Sea of Plastic’ might bring to mind the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. That’s icky enough, but it’s the wrong sea of plastic. The ultra-icky actual Mar de Plastico sits on solid ground along the southern edge of Spain. It’s the greatest concentration of plastic greenhouses on Earth and an unnatural, resource-intensive way to grow some tomatoes.
“The size of the Mar de Plastico is mindboggling. The main blob of greenhouses sports a perimeter of 106 miles (170 km) and an area of 123 square miles (~32,000 hectares). Five ‘satellite’ Mars de Plastico and plenty of other concentrations of greenhouses more than double the 123 square miles of plastic-coated land.
“This region of Spain, the Poniente Almeriense, comes wrapped in plastic. Who knows? Maybe the cucumbers grown under all this plastic are the same ones that end up in the produce section of Trader Joe’s, wrapped in plastic to seal in the flavorlessness.
“The thermal and wind-blocking benefits of the plastic, intensive irrigation, and industrial agriculture techniques have enabled the region to grow an estimated 2.5 to 3.5 million tons of fruits and vegetables per year.
“But the land management is beholden to short-term financial decisions, and all that plastic acts as a poison like no other that will degrade into micro- and nano-plastic bits and contaminate the biosphere for eons to come.” More at:
Resistance to extractivism in the global south
“Today we discuss a new book, Geopolitics of Green Colonialism, which critiques the promoted solutions to the polycrisis, and also explores alternatives. In discussions, especially in the United States and Europe, we were struck by the continued invisibility of the Global South, and the assumption that critical minerals and land for ‘green growth’ would simply come from ‘somewhere’.
“We are concerned that official documents focus on ‘green alliances’ and ‘sustainable raw materials’, without explaining how extractivism would become sustainable, or how North-South relations would become less asymmetrical. It seemed to be more a concern about supply chains.
“The first part is entitled ‘Hegemonic Transitions and the Geopolitics of Power’, a critique of colonialism that prevails in green transition policy. The second part delves into ‘Analysing Green Colonialism: Global Interdependencies and Entanglements’, and explores how every alternative to green colonialism is shaped by structural conditions institutionalized within the neoliberal world system.
“The third section focuses on alternatives, entitled ‘Horizons Towards a Dignified and Habitable Future’. Examples include agriecology, women-led SID sovereignty movement in Bangladesh, national energy transition process in Colombia, eco-feminist alternatives in Africa, reimagining degrowth from a feminist perspective, and reimagining the world of work and labour in ecosocial transitions.” More at:
Antarctic iceberg A23a rapidly disintegrating
“An iceberg that was once the size of Rhode Island and the biggest in the world has lost about 80% of its mass since May, scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) report. Known as A23a, the ‘megaberg’ has been rapidly disintegrating since becoming trapped in a current flowing counterclockwise around South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic Ocean.
“A23A first broke away from Antarctica’s Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf in 1986. It hovered close to the southern continent for about three-and-a-half decades uneventfully until the last couple years when it drifted north. Earlier this year the iceberg was the size of Rhode Island and weighed in at a trillion tons. Now it’s down to the size of Houston and shrinking fast.
“In January, A23a weighed almost 1.1 trillion tons (1 trillion metric tons) and measured 1,418 square miles (3,672 square kilometers), CNN reported. Now, the megaberg is not so mega anymore, measuring 656 square miles (1,700 square km), or about one-fifth of its size just eight months ago.” More at:
Which coastal cities are most at risk from climate disruption?
“Allan Hsiao’s paper attempts to quantify the impact of sea level rise on cities by 2100 at different degrees of climate change. Hsaoi summarises his conclusions at the start of the article: ‘I quantify this exposure worldwide with a focus on urban infrastructure. I document three facts. First, Asian cities are highly exposed. Second, poorer cities and neighborhoods are less exposed. Third, exposure accelerates as sea level rise passes 1.5 meters’.
“The killer table summarises it like this: ‘Analysing satellite data, I rank the 30 largest cities by the percentage of infrastructure at risk from sea level rise. The table shows that for a sea level rise of 1 meter, Osaka, Jakarta, and Tokyo face the largest possible loss of infrastructure’.
“But once you go to 2 meters or 3 meters sea level rise, the cities that are much more at risk are Chinese and Southeast Asian cities, such as Bangkok and Shanghai.” More at:
Beavers foster climate resilience
“‘Beavers are just incredible little engines of climate resilience’, says Joe Mouser from Beavers Northwest (BNW), a Seattle nonprofit. ‘A lot of the biggest issues that I think we’re going to face all across the globe are related to water and water as a resource’, Mouser explains.
“He describes how beaver dams naturally regulate water systems, creating wetlands that store floodwaters during storms and slowly release moisture during dry periods. A single beaver family can create up to 2.5 acres of wetland habitat, supporting hundreds of species while filtering pollutants and sequestering carbon.
“A 2023 survey revealed widespread ‘eco-grief’ — a sense of environmental loss and anxiety — among immigrant and refugee communities. ‘Beavers are these … interesting, fun little critters, super charismatic’, Mouser says. Their appeal transcends cultural barriers, making them perfect ambassadors for environmental education.” More at:
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