Geo-Geography and Environment最新文献

The Pacific Islands find themselves at the crossroads of the polycrisis of environmental injustices. From dramatic changes in their food system and livelihoods to environmental degradation and climate change, Pacific Islanders are navigating both slow and rapid socio-ecological shifts which impact people in uneven ways. Building on critiques of environmental justice and its reliance on a universalist Western framework, this paper points to the need to expand the recognition dimension of environmental justice to bring forth haptic and sensorial dimensions of justice. Critical island and indigenous scholarship on dimensions of knowing with/through the body, alongside insights from political ecology of the body, help theoretically frame what we can learn from feeling for justice. Moving beyond simplistic victimisation or hero narratives, in this paper I draw from ethnographic vignettes on emotional, haptic and embodied experiences of environmental change as experienced by women gleaning for food in mangrove forests in the Solomon Islands. Through these vignettes, I showcase multi-scalar and temporal dimensions of environmental (in)justices, particularly highlighting what a bodily orientation can illuminate about ongoing and uneven legacies of environmental change. Through re-centering recognition of the body and also the dimension of pleasure which emerges through/with the mangroves, the article foregrounds how feelings for justice can point to which environmental futures are desired. Importantly, I argue that knowing through the body is a type of knowing differently that muddies questions about not only who is recognised in environmental justice struggles, but also which values and practices should be taken into account.

In this paper, we use a spatiotemporal axis of analysis to unpack the governance and management of two pressing yet diverse types of subterranean hazards: earthquakes and nuclear waste repositories. In each case, decades, centuries, or millennia of slow movement run up against the fast movement of disastrous moments. These contrasting spatiotemporal relationships are emblematic of the different temporal and spatial horizons researchers, scientists, and hazard managers must grapple with as they assess past, present, and future catastrophes. We explore how thinking across multiple, overlapping spatiotemporal horizons unfolds in different governance contexts to influence quotidian decision-making processes. Our examination of each hazard reveals two very different perspectives on the subterranean, the risks contained within, and the fears they produce. For residents in high seismicity areas, awareness and anticipation of earthquake risk are both constant and ubiquitous. Technologies are deployed to bring the subsurface to life and animate the underground, thereby conjuring emotional responses to future risks. Meanwhile, the case of nuclear waste management highlights how technologies are used to keep the underground inanimate, effectively burying risk beyond human consciousness. These different realities are produced and experienced, in part, through a process of quotidian fragmentation where people live simultaneously in material (present), remembered (past) and imagined (future) worlds. We hope that highlighting these dynamics can help hazard management professionals better understand how different governance techniques fragment the public's experience with potential hazards and shape their understanding of societal risks.

It is now widely acknowledged by many academics, practitioners and policy-makers that working across the boundaries of disciplines, sectors, and institutions is vital if we are to effectively address the challenges of sustainability in practice. Geography has always prided itself in being a discipline that has this way of working in its blood. Indeed in 2014 and 2021, the geography and environmental studies sub-panel for the UK Research Excellence Framework described geography as a ‘post-disciplinary’ subject. This commentary outlines and seeks to continue the conversation regarding the ability of those working within and close to geography to cross the boundaries between disciplines and between research and practice. The paper describes two of author's experiences of working within policy-practice settings where he has brought geographical, environmental and sustainability thinking to bear, aiming to achieve impact. Drawing on previous work exploring the question of disciplinarity in geography and understandings related to models for and effectiveness of the interface between science and policy, this paper offers some suggestions on what might it take to be more effective in working across disciplinary and policy-practice boundaries.

In 2017, the Alberta Geological Survey published an extension to the game Minecraft that allows players to virtually mine bitumen in Peace River, one of the three bitumen deposits in Alberta that together form the fourth largest oil reserve on Earth. This article uses the Minecraft extension to advance a novel synthesis of environmental and digital geographies, and to understand how they combine in settler knowledge infrastructures—the networks, institutions and practices through which geoscientific knowledge is constitutive for claims to territory by settler states. To advance these ideas, I show how the data used to create the virtual world within Minecraft are connected to real-world extraction, especially environmental harms that Alberta's provincial regulator sought to address in Peace River. That data, however, does not stand alone. It was interpreted through, and itself extended, knowledge practices that stretch back to early-twentieth century mapping and the on-going collection of extractive data by the state. The Minecraft model also extends Alberta's settler knowledge infrastructure as part of international collaborations with other geological agencies. Set in this broader context, the article pushes digital geographies to attend to how environments—geologic pasts, extractive presents, virtually played—prove constitutive for state claims to territory.

The interactions between climate information producers and local decision-makers have remained largely underexplored. The processes of building a local climate research agenda and informing adaptation policies are still unknown in many Global South countries. In this context, we discuss from a Human Geography and Environmental Social Studies of Science and Technology (STS) perspective how the climate knowledge geographical divide operates and encounters ruination politics that serve to keep climate impacts unknown and adaptation policies missing. Through the empirical case of national climate scenarios making in Mexico and its political consequences, this paper advances the literature on climate knowledge infrastructures. From interviews with scientists and former public servants, this paper argues that underfunding science, unbuilding climate institutions and keeping knowledge under a commissioned model are slow ruination processes that result in strategic environmental ignorance. These conditions have shaped the scientific climate and political agenda in Mexico. Through a multiscalar analysis, we explore the production processes of the national climate scenarios for the National Communications on Climate Change. Thus, we discuss the power of climate funds influencing the country's climate research agenda and the national institutional designs constraining the development of usable climate information.

Low-carbon energy futures increasingly focus on improving the energy efficiency of homes to reduce emissions and living conditions. Energy efficiency can represent a justice-led intervention supporting those most in need, living in the least efficient homes or with the least capacity to act, including many households relying on the private rental housing sector. This paper provides an empirically grounded intervention to argue for the necessity of future scholarship and interventions in United Kingdom energy and social policy to pay closer attention to seaside towns. We use the case of seaside towns to argue for broader geographical conceptualisations of energy peripheries, beyond rurality. Recently described as ‘the salt fringe’, seaside towns are important political and cultural sites: often symbolising processes of deprivation and communities being ‘left behind’. They also represent distinct geographies of energy poverty and inefficiency contingent on a range of socio-economic and historical factors, including property tenure. Through analysis of Energy Performance Certificate data for England and Wales, we highlight how seaside towns can be characterised as new energy peripheries, identifying statistically significant clusters of energy-inefficient private rentals. We reflect on the importance of understanding place-based context and stories—closing with a profile of the Fylde, a stretch of coastline in the north-west England. These findings advance scholarship on low-carbon transitions by illuminating important links between energy peripheries and energy efficiency; highlighting seaside towns as important peripheries; and detailing the complex factors defining such peripherality both today and in future energy transitions.

The academic geographical community is well acquainted with the reality of the current climate and environmental crisis. As such, geographers, higher education institutions and geographical organisations arguably should take a greater lead in responding to this crisis. This raises concerns about how such responses fit into academics' ‘core’ job activities, especially given concern about escalating workloads. What mix of activities could or should constitute academic success? This article is based on a dialogue between five UK-based academic geographers spanning different academic career stages. Drawing on our personal and professional experiences, both in the United Kingdom and overseas, we present an edited version of an online dialogue that addresses three questions: (1) How do we define academic success in the context of the climate and environmental crisis? (2) Given the routine and, in some cases, escalating demands of our jobs, do we feel that we have the capacity to address whatever the appropriate measures of success may be? (3) Do we feel that the measures of success are appropriately valued by our colleagues and by modern university management procedures? Our collective reflections on the key points extracted from the dialogue will likely have resonance beyond the United Kingdom (and university) context. These points include: adjusting and adapting how we portray academic success for different audiences; contemplating broader definitions of academic success; considering where public engagement sits within the portfolio of academic responsibilities; deciding how to respond to multiple pressures; choosing how to prioritise different academic demands; and asking whether work to tackle the climate and environmental crisis is adequately valued. We provide some practical suggestions for redefining academic success that require consideration by the academic geographical community. Wider discussion and implementation should contribute to enhancing job satisfaction and career progression for individual geographers and strengthen academic geography as a discipline.

Elite environmentalism is inspired by Malthusian overpopulation scenarios, advocating for authoritarian action through top-down conservation policies and celebrating ecomodernist climate adaptation/mitigation projects. In doing so, hegemonic mainstream environmentalism (HME) fails to address its colonial, authoritarian, saviorist foundations, which continue to motivate much of environmentalism. But there are also ongoing challenges to this by the work of Indigenous, feminist, anti-racist, anti-casteist, anti/de/post-colonial thinkers and doers. In this work, we build upon such provocations, and through ethnographic stories of non-elite communities, envision an alternative to HME. We propose a temporary analytical frame that advocates for non-elite visions of environmentalism—non-elite and more-than-colonial environmentalisms (NEMCEs). We witness the labour and aspirations of non-elite communities (Indigenous and peasant) from Mato Grosso, Brazil, and Uttarakhand, India, as they pursue lives of defiance and dignity. Their stories reveal the unresolved contradictions at the heart of the capitalist, colonial and scientific worldview. Exploring the contentious identity positions of caste, class, indigeneity and gender, we examine land-use change and ecological governance with the A'uwe Indigenous community in the agrarian heartland of the Brazilian cerrado and with lower-caste agrarian families navigating the powerful manifestations of Hindu nationalism and neoliberal territorial management in the Indian Himalayas. These stories help us present a response to HME. They challenge its insidious reproduction of certain elite aspirations and institutions while claiming to support planetary visions of ecological well-being. Additionally, these moments of non-elite agency provide moments of hope.

The coastal region of North Java is increasingly vulnerable to climate change, as evidenced by worsening tidal flooding driven by accelerated land subsidence and rising sea levels. Various risk management strategies have been implemented, often incorporating local community participation. Drawing on political ecology and post-politics frameworks, this study examines how expert and authoritative knowledge shape these strategies through discursive processes. Using case study methods, we analyse the role of knowledge production in disaster management. The study's findings reveal a fundamental divide in knowledge systems: while government agencies and experts emphasise rational, technical and large-scale infrastructural solutions, local communities derive their understanding from lived experiences and the direct impacts on their livelihoods. Disaster management discourse remains dominated by Western-centric, technocratic paradigms, reinforcing decisions that prioritise infrastructure development and decentralised governance. However, these top-down interventions often produce unintended consequences for vulnerable communities. The discourse surrounding climate change is couched in terms of an urgent crisis, thus further legitimising large-scale interventions while sidelining community-driven adaptation strategies. In response, local communities assert their own expertise through daily adaptation practices and traditional knowledge. This study highlights the need for a more inclusive approach to disaster governance; one that integrates diverse knowledge systems and empowers local actors. We argue that scientific and institutional frameworks should evolve to support alternative perspectives and sustainable, localised responses to climate-related disasters.

Humans and ornamental plants have a long relationship that could explain why ornamental gardening has been one of the main reasons for intentionally introducing and spreading plants worldwide. In Southern Africa, a significant part of the alien flora was introduced for ornamental purposes. Some species have become invasive, with ecological and socio-economic impacts that can create conflicts between stakeholders, depending on their relationships with the species. This paper unpacks how the ornamental industry in Southern Africa operates as well as people's preferences for ornamental plants and practices to highlight links between the industry and plant invasions and to help address potential conflicts. Drawing on empirical data primarily collected in 2022/23 in Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe (and other Southern African countries), our results show that Southern Africa's ornamental industry is highly influenced by the global industry, especially South Africa. The sector provides ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ jobs to people in urban areas, especially middle-aged women from ethnic majorities. The sector's operation and gardening practices show expressions of the typical cultural hybridity of postcolonial states where hegemonic and subaltern practices coexist and mix. Alien plants and foreign styles often symbolise higher social status, but controversially, socially privileged groups are publicly leading shifts towards more geographically contextualised practices and native plants. We conclude by arguing that recognising the influences that historical processes have on the sector's operation and its links with alien plants is essential for a more ethically sound and fair stakeholder engagement in preventing and managing plant invasions from the ornamental industry in Southern Africa.