Abstract This study presents an analysis of the German discourse on peatland rewetting based on a data corpus of 1,957 newspaper articles published between January 2019 and July 2023. Because of the large scope of the analysis, we used structural topic modeling (STM) to identify the regionality of discursive features and meaning structures. We divided the corpus into four discourse strands (national, northeast, northwest, south) and show that the distribution of topics differs significantly between these strands. However, we also present a hegemonic discourse pattern of peatland rewetting as a climate protection strategy. Moreover, we contribute to a deeper understanding of barriers to the large-scale rewetting of drained and agriculturally utilized peatlands in Germany by identifying two dispositives: the drainage dispositive and a nature conservation dispositive, shaping peatland-related practices and activities.
Abstract This article aims to bring to mind the material narrative of the planet, working on the fluctuation of scale between the vastness of the earth’s mantle and the direct encounter with sandstone rocks on its surface. It is an auto-ethnographic investigation into a suburban garden and the stones therein. This article uses “noticing” as a methodological principle of engagement with the world, examining the intra-actions of human activity and movement and planetary agency. The focus is on sedimentary rock, residues of an ambulant underground flow from a nearby quarry, and how they imbricate the garden with the modern socioeconomic processes of suburbanization, colonization, and extractivism. The article thus provokes a rethinking of “ground” as transient and ephemeral yet entangled with the cultural politics of cultivation.
Stephen Most. 2024. River of Renewal: Myth and History in the Klamath Basin . Corvallis: Oregon State University Press. James Scott. 2025. In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life it Brings . New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Christopher Morris. 2024. Biotraffic: Medicines and Environmental Governance in the Afterlives of Apartheid . Berkeley: University of California Press. Alex K. Gearin. 2024. Global Ayahuasca: Wondrous Visions and Modern Worlds . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Abstract It is a mistake to characterize tracts of public land as mere quantities of physical space. Parcels of public land are complex artifacts comprised of individual and cultural perceptions, ecological factors, technologies, legal-institutional stipulations, and socioeconomic relationships. This article is an interdisciplinary interpretive analysis of scholarship dealing with the concepts of self, place, and political agency and their application in US multiple-use land policy and planning. Given the centrality of political agency within the liberal democratic tradition, I argue that recognition of self- and place-constructs may be elemental to the enactment of legitimate land management policy regimes and explore how these constructs can be better reflected in the policy process, focusing on Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service land use planning activities.
It is a mistake to characterize tracts of public land as mere quantities of physical space. Parcels of public land are complex artifacts comprised of individual and cultural perceptions, ecological factors, technologies, legal-institutional stipulations, and socioeconomic relationships. This article is an interdisciplinary interpretive analysis of scholarship dealing with the concepts of self, place, and political agency and their application in US multiple-use land policy and planning. Given the centrality of political agency within the liberal democratic tradition, I argue that recognition of self-and place-constructs may be elemental to the enactment of legitimate land management policy regimes and explore how these constructs can be better reflected in the policy process, focusing on Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service land use planning activities.
This article aims to bring to mind the material narrative of the planet, working on the fluctuation of scale between the vastness of the earth's mantle and the direct encounter with sandstone rocks on its surface. It is an auto-ethnographic investigation into a suburban garden and the stones therein. This article uses "noticing" as a methodological principle of engagement with the world, examining the intra-actions of human activity and movement and planetary agency. The focus is on sedimentary rock, residues of an ambulant underground flow from a nearby quarry, and how they imbricate the garden with the modern socioeconomic processes of suburbanization, colonization, and extractivism. The article thus provokes a rethinking of "ground" as transient and ephemeral yet entangled with the cultural politics of cultivation.
This study presents an analysis of the German discourse on peat-land rewetting based on a data corpus of 1,957 newspaper articles published between January 2019 and July 2023. Because of the large scope of the analysis, we used structural topic modeling (STM) to identify the regionality of discursive features and meaning structures. We divided the corpus into four discourse strands (national, northeast, northwest, south) and show that the distribution of topics differs significantly between these strands. However, we also present a hegemonic discourse pattern of peatland rewetting as a climate protection strategy. Moreover, we contribute to a deeper understanding of barriers to the large-scale rewetting of drained and agriculturally utilized peatlands in Germany by identifying two dispositives: the drainage dispositive and a nature conservation dispositive, shaping peatland-related practices and activities.
This article engages with sustainable tourism as an excessive form of consumption that needs to be further interrogated through "limitarianism," a philosophy and ethics for an upper limit of wealth. It critically examines the role of sustainable tourism in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) 30 & times; 30 initiative, which aims to conserve 30 percent of the Earth by 2030. Sustainable tourism is often presented as a financial mechanism for local conservation and cultural preservation that benefits Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs). However, this disregards structural issues, including the wealthy's contribution to climate change, global biodiversity reduction, and socioeconomic inequalities (including through land dispossessions), while often leading to a further marginalization of IPLCs. To fully address these issues, limitarianism should be interrogated to achieve redistribution and justice.
Abstract Climate change forces farmers and agriculturists to reconsider and reform their relations with rural landscapes and their more-than-human dwellers. This article considers to what extent visions of futures seriously engage with agencies of non-humans to produce more sustainable agricultural sites and practices. It shows how reforms that begin with such engagements can end up reproducing pre-existing harms and injustices. By engaging with Tsing’s hopeful term “the arts of noticing,” we analyze the plans put forward by agricultural engineers, farmers, industrialists, and the Turkish government to reform olive agriculture in the face of climate change in the Aegean region of Turkey. We argue that while the arts of noticing foreground certain sensibilities, they are not sufficient on their own as a means to radically challenge existing rural relations.
As the climate crisis accelerates, negative emissions technologies (NETs) are increasingly being explored as a supposed climate technofix. Synthetic biology, by which engineering principles are applied to biological systems, recently emerged as a potential NET, exemplifying how proposed responses to the crisis are overly determined by hubris, rather than humility. However, the gravity of the crisis requires a deeper problematization of the dichotomy between hubris and humility. Nevertheless, debates on mitigation strategies cannot ignore that the—highly dubious—likelihood of averting runaway climate change has become dependent on the efficacious implementation of NETs. As such, the pursuit of hubris, or the acquiescence to humility, will, in turn, constitute entirely different pathways for the long-term future of life on Earth.
This article engages with the concept of multi-species justice as an avenue toward incorporating justice and recognition for the more-than-human world. It identifies several elements crucial to a debate on multi-species justice. Sentience and the animal turn in political philosophy have brought a novel dimension to the discussion of political rights. From this follows a discussion on whether a rights-based approach to multi-species relations is a step toward just representation for the more-than-human world. This is juxtaposed with the rights of nature approach and a focus on legal personhood. The conclusion drawn in this article is that a rights-based approach to multi-species justice offers potential for integrating multi-species concerns into political representation but that there is also a need for integrating recognitional justice.
Debra J. Davidson. 2024. Feeling Climate Change: How Emotions Govern Our Responses to the Climate Emergency. London: Routledge. Jade Sasser. 2024. Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
This article develops a theoretical framework for trust in science. The framework is created to facilitate analysis of the growing environmental youth movement’s trust in and relation to climate science. This article provides a critical review of previous theoretical discussions of trust in science–public relations and recontextualizes and continues the discussion. This is accomplished by adopting a discourse analytical perspective on trust, knowledge production, and the construction of social order. The study shows how trust and the assessment of trustworthiness lie at the core of knowledge production and the construction of social order as well as how a problematization of trust as a truth-accepting practice is essential to understanding the growing environmental youth movement and its relation to science.
Pewen ( Araucaria araucana ) and Pewenche (people of the pewen) have been affecting each other’s ecology and survival for centuries. Pewenche have been shaping pewen forest ecology by moving seeds, planting trees, protecting them from threats. In turn, pewen is fundamental in Pewenche economy, culture, and spirituality. The meaning of pewen for Pewenche people is related to their historical and reciprocal interactions, or living with pewen. In this article, I am going to argue that by living together, pewen and Pewenche have been making each other, or engaged in a process of becoming-with. Also, this interaction shapes how pewen conservation is understood. Pewen and Pewenche entanglements challenge conservation efforts rooted in a human–nature dichotomy. Ignoring this relationship reinforces social inequalities and reproduces colonialism through conservation.
Gina Caison. 2024. Erosion: American Environments and the Anxiety of Disappearance. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Jonathan Staal. 2024. Climate Propagandas: Stories of Extinction and Regeneration. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
This article aims to explore the assumptions and implications of the iconic representations of human-geosphere intersections using geopolitical theology concepts to overcome the current mathematization of space as the main impediment to achieve spatial justice. Based on the ideas of noosphere and pneumatosphere, developed by the prominent Slavic figures of the 20th century, V.I. Vernadsky and P. Florenski, the authors suggest that geoethical dilemmas as backcasting prospective modeling may help to explore contingent scenarios that go beyond institutional frameworks and political ecology analysis. The article describes the current situation in human-geosphere intersections and explores the problem of mathematical models as a scapegoat to deal with ontological uncertainty, and finitude as the main problem of the Anthropocene based on the cultural paradigm of Technopoly.
Amid accelerating environmental and socioeconomic shifts, cultural landscapes and Indigenous lifestyles form a dynamic, reciprocal system, continuously reshaping each other. This article presents a conceptual framework exploring how transformations in cultural landscapes influence Indigenous practices, which in turn shape future landscape evolution. The framework operates across three interconnected levels: external forces, landscape changes, and community effects, emphasizing interaction pathways and feedback loops. Through systematic application to the Balinese Subak system, this study demonstrates the framework's utility in decoding complex transformation processes. Key findings reveal that communities maintain cultural continuity through dynamic knowledge integration combining traditional wisdom with modern innovations. Rather than simple replacement, hybridization processes create social-ecological arrangements maintaining both cultural integrity and adaptive capacity, informing policy and conservation strategies for cultural landscape management.
This article develops a theoretical framework for trust in science. The framework is created to facilitate analysis of the growing environmental youth movement's trust in and relation to climate science. This article provides a critical review of previous theoretical discussions of trust in science-public relations and recontextualizes and continues the discussion. This is accomplished by adopting a discourse analytical perspective on trust, knowledge production, and the construction of social order. The study shows how trust and the assessment of trustworthiness lie at the core of knowledge production and the construction of social order as well as how a problematization of trust as a truth-accepting practice is essential to understanding the growing environmental youth movement and its relation to science.
Pewen (Araucaria araucana) and Pewenche (people of the pewen) have been affecting each other's ecology and survival for centuries. Pewenche have been shaping pewen forest ecology by moving seeds, planting trees, protecting them from threats. In turn, pewen is fundamental in Pewenche economy, culture, and spirituality. The meaning of pewen for Pewenche people is related to their historical and reciprocal interactions, or living with pewen. In this article, I am going to argue that by living together, pewen and Pewenche have been making each other, or engaged in a process of becoming-with. Also, this interaction shapes how pewen conservation is understood. Pewen and Pewenche entanglements challenge conservation efforts rooted in a human-nature dichotomy. Ignoring this relationship reinforces social inequalities and reproduces colonialism through conservation.
This article engages with the concept of multi-species justice as an avenue toward incorporating justice and recognition for the more-than-human world. It identifies several elements crucial to a debate on multi-species justice. Sentience and the animal turn in political philosophy have brought a novel dimension to the discussion of political rights. From this follows a discussion on whether a rights-based approach to multi-species relations is a step toward just representation for the more-than-human world. This is juxtaposed with the rights of nature approach and a focus on legal personhood. The conclusion drawn in this article is that a rights-based approach to multi-species justice offers potential for integrating multi-species concerns into political representation but that there is also a need for integrating recognitional justice.
