Paper short abstract:

Ethnography of the debates around a project to save the sabra in Israel/Palestine from an 'invading' aphid with the help of a 'natural enemy' beetle; outlines competing environmental futures of different actors on the way to preserve the ecology and land in an era of environmental crises

Paper long abstract:

In the era of increased globalization and climate crisis, are required huge and cross-border efforts to eradicate transformations of species. However, the practice to deal with them continue to be hotly debated topics.

Despite having been introduced relatively recently from the Americas, the prickly pear (sabra) is viewed, rather ironically, by both Palestinians and Jews as symbolizing their nativity in the land of Israel/Palestine respectively. More recently, an aphid has been causing devastating mortality among prickly pears. In order to fight the invader, a small group of scientists import from Mexico a small beetle, which is considered a 'natural enemy' of the invading aphid, but they encounter resistance from other scientists who consider 'natural enemies' as invasive species.

Using ethnographic research, I will focus on the analysis of the discourse and practices surrounding the "Saving the Sabers" project, which reveals debates about the ‘environmental futures’ (Mathews and Barnes, 2016), as it contains questions of fear, care, risk and the future imagination of environmental and human ecology in the Anthropocene era. Specifically, I will refer to the fear and care of the various human actors towards the non-humans (the insects and plants), and how these interpretations and feelings motivate them to act or avoid it. I will show how despite both approaches see invasive species as a danger to the future of the ecology, they differ on the way to defend against them, and also in the political meaning of the context in which this environmental future is imagined.