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Paper short abstract:

Based on critical reflections on sustainable livelihoods within multi-species assemblages, this paper discusses a conceptual framework for researching post-fossil futures, expertise practices and climate advocacy within ecologies of planetary care while referring to ethnographic examples.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the future orientations and environmental care practices of climate advocates in Singapore. Based on critical reflections on sustainable livelihoods within multi-species assemblages, this paper proposes a theoretical perspective for researching post-fossil futures, expertise practices and climate advocacy within ecologies of planetary care. Local cosmologies shape the manifold relationships between humans, technologies and nature. A theoretical point of departure is the concept of landscape. Mountains, valleys, rivers, plants, technologies, oceans, humans and animals are central sub-components of rural and urban landscapes (Povinelli, 2021). Ecological approaches to expertise practices foreground the design of environments and landscapes within translocal regimes of truth-making (e.g., Tsing, 2015). The undoing and redoing of knowledge on ongoing planetary crises and environmental preservation is embedded in far-reaching expert systems and ethical regimes (Ong, 2005; Mody, 2020). The researched Singaporean landscape experts are entangled in various interconnected publics. Extreme weather and environmental devastation have accelerated the circulation of anthropogenic imaginaries which primarily describe how the Anthropocene is discursively produced while perpetuating forms of ecological inclusion and exclusion (Mostafanezhad & Norum, 2019). While the researched communities of practice envision future environmental disasters, their main orientations towards urban futures include anticipation, expectation, speculation, potentiality, hope and destiny (Bryant & Knight, 2019). Future orientations manifest themselves in narratives about climate change scenarios that shape the present everyday life. Assessing future orientations illuminates the expertise cultures of landscape experts who cope with increased uncertainty about the future of urban greening.

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Paper short abstract:

Park rangers play a crucial role in sustaining life and biodiversity. Based on ethnographic research in two Chilean national parks and interviews with several park rangers, this article examines their mediating, translating, and caring practices to the production of environmental conservation.

Paper long abstract:

Park rangers play a crucial role in sustaining life and conserving biodiversity. They undertake tasks such as nurturing and restoring environmentally damaged areas, safeguarding park boundaries by facilitating access and maintaining trails, serving as the visible representatives of NGOs and the state to local communities, and managing relationships with neighbors and wildlife. They also provide guidance and information to visitors, gather scientific data on endemic flora and fauna, and conduct environmental education for schools and public institutions, among other duties. Despite their multifaceted contributions essential for life's reproduction (Skewes, 2019), park rangers often do not receive adequate recognition. This lack of recognition (Honneth, 2016) is evidenced by strikes and protests for improved working conditions, as well as conflicts with neighbors or tourists who neglect park preservation. Understanding how park rangers navigate these frictions (Tsing, 2011) is critical for comprehending how conservation, as a socio-material practice, unfolds in specific territories. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives, this paper employs ethnographic materials and interviews conducted with park rangers at two national parks—Alerce Costero and Pumalín—to elucidate their roles in mediating, translating, and contributing to conservation efforts. Particular attention is paid to their motivations and professional identity. We argue that despite facing adverse working conditions, park rangers in Chile often exhibit high levels of motivation, especially when engaged in nature preservation activities, exercising autonomy in their tasks, and working outdoors. Their role as mediators and producers of conservation is vital for infusing their work with significance and purpose.

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Paper short abstract:

Diverse global crisis can be characterised through lost land forcing people to move and establishing of protective borders. This paper focuses on the anticipated futures of nuclear energy in context of Estonia, and how thematic discourses imagine relations between the energy matter and society.

Paper long abstract:

Diverse global crisis can be characterised through lost land forcing people to move and establishing of protective borders. Also the sense of terrain shifts, and space has become part of agitated geohistory (Latour). Matter of energy plays important role in maintaining freedoms of humans and simultaneously accelerating earth related transformations. This paper focuses on the anticipated futures of nuclear energy in context of Estonia, and how thematic discourses imagine relations between the energy matter and society. I analyse the ways temporality, care and volumetric terrains become entangled to energy transitions. The theoretical framework is elaborated together with analysing public discourses and situated stories. This perspective would contribute in bringing planetary care and spheres of ignorance down to earth along particular dynamics of transformations and related encounters.

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Paper short abstract:

In this paper I explore how different scales of planetary care are being negotiated, in the context of seagrass restoration in England. This draws from ethnographic research among volunteers and marine scientists working together on surveying, harvesting, and planting seagrass.

Paper long abstract:

A number of organisations are planting seagrass meadows on the south coast of England. Mostly these are charities that employ marine biologists and rely on volunteers. The need for restoration is framed by a history of decline, and shifting baselines after a mass die-off in the early 1900s. As well as actively restoring seagrass meadows, local charities aim to increase the coastal literacy of those living by the sea, to engender a care for sensitive habitats and an ownership of restoration projects. The hope is that training local people to survey, plant, and generally champion seagrass will extend projects beyond their limited timescales and funding. At the same time, volunteers provide an effective but temporary labour force in a context where scaling seagrass restoration may ultimately require mechanisation.

Drawing on ethnographic research on the south coast of England over an 18 month period, I explore how volunteers were engaged in a back-and-forth sharing of speculative ideas, often on the margins of organised restoration activities, in which they developed their own thoughts about the future of the coastline. This includes what a restored coastline might look like, who it is for, and who is responsible for bringing it about. At times these ideas challenged those of the projects in which they were engaged. In particular, I discuss the idea of scale, in whether seagrass restoration is for local or global benefit, and scaling, where future expansion is seen to risk people's ability to becoming personally involved.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper takes up the challenging work of Indigenous / Settler collaborative interventions in post-growth food and livelihood systems via earth responsive relationality, proposing ways to activate such interventions – against extractivist, colonizing impulses – via Grassroots decolonial alliance making, treaty ecologies with all beings.

Paper long abstract:

The cry to transition from the vicious cycles of capitalist destruction has hit ever higher fever pitches. This paper will offer proposals on grassroots Indigenous-Settler interventions in political and earth relationality -- ones that aim to be taken seriously and which also support Indigenous rightful positions on their relational Territorial Authority, in response to mounting eco-social crises of our current moment. In particular I will discuss the invitation by various land-based peoples and sustainable food networks, to join in relational survivance and land-water-inter-species-human reciprocity praxes captured in such terms as Netuklimk (Mi’kmaw), Aloha ‘Aina (Kanaka ‘Oiwi), and indeed in the Gaelic philosophy/praxis of Dùthchas. Such local praxes are abundant, complex, integrated, diverse and resonant, and transformative, presenting a rising, potent movement of movements in planetary care.

I will take up the challenge of activating such engagements both in Research Initiatives and in Grassroots struggle through decolonial alliance making – by way of conjoining praxes for inter-peoples eco-social treaty ecologies – a line of flight in what Stengers has called etho-ecology, away from and displacing the vicious cycles of capitalist / consumer extractivism. Having just completed a Fulbright supported Research visit at the University of Hawai'i, and about to launch a partnership project on Food Commons, sustainable inter-peoples relations and livable eco-social futures, the paper will make some modest proposals on assuring Indigenous Peoples, and local peoples land-based protocols and techno-legal practices are best engaged.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how local peoples' environmental knowledge is often overlooked by externally-led participatory monitoring in community-based conservation in Ghana.

Paper long abstract:

Participatory monitoring activities often go hand-in-hand with community-based conservation initiatives, providing important opportunities to measure ecosystem change over time. However, despite their participatory nature, they often remain externally-led and fail to engage with local peoples’ existing approaches to environmental monitoring, and knowledge of environmental change. Based on 7 months’ research with participatory monitoring teams at two community-based conservation initiatives in Ghana, this paper explores how monitors’ modes of environmental knowing are shaped by the processes and epistemologies they are trained in, and how these reconfigured ways of relating to their environments often disregard rangers’ pre-existing knowledge and experience, which - though unacknowledged - they often bring to bear on their work. Additionally, the research is situated within a wider context of increasing top-down and remote ways of generating environmental knowledge, which often have real-world implications for communities engaged in conservation initiatives.