scholarly journals Racial geographies of the Anthropocene: Memory and erasure in Rio de Janeiro

Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572110264
Author(s):  
Mariana Reyes-Carranza
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Black Studies ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Port Area ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
History Of ◽  
Geographical Space ◽  
Ecological Catastrophe

This paper interrogates the extent to which imaginaries of climate and ecological breakdown attend to the memories, knowledges, and experiences of communities already impacted by histories of racism, colonialism, and poverty. Drawing on insights from Black studies and decolonial thinking, the article reflects on how the causes and effects of anthropogenic climate change can be mapped onto geographies of racialised violence and social dispossession. Specific emphasis is given to Rio de Janeiro, notably its port area, a geographical space where future-oriented narratives remain oblivious to the city’s history of anti-Black violence and Indigenous genocide. In parallel, the paper looks at the recently built Museum of Tomorrow and its public representations of the Anthropocene. Overall, the article contends that pluralising accounts of the Anthropocene might offer alternative epistemic entry points for understanding and interrupting the mounting ecological catastrophe.

scholarly journals The future of pastoral farming in a changing climate

2009 ◽  
pp. 69-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.A. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Regulatory Environment ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Changing Climate ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pastoral Farming

Pastoral farming in New Zealand has always been a dynamic and uncertain business. Climatic conditions, market forces and the regulatory environment confronting pastoral farmers each have a long history of change, often rapidly and markedly. It is not surprising then that pastoral farmers are a resilient bunch. It is also not surprising that in respect of anthropogenic climate change some farmers are sceptical of what they see as another passing fashion in science, public policy and environmentalism - change to be weathered.

scholarly journals Legacy participation and the buried history of racialised spaces: Hypermodern revitalisation in Rio de Janeiro’s port area

Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110088
Author(s):  
Abigail Friendly ◽  
Ana Paula Pimentel Walker
Keyword(s):  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Global Competition ◽  
City Image ◽  
World Cup ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Port Area ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Scholars have documented how financial capital has produced displacement driven by hypermodern urban spaces characterised by luxury and exclusivity. In this article we highlight how hypermodern public–private partnerships (PPPs) often re-write history, creating a futuristic global city image. Our case study of Porto Maravilha’s PPP reviews a dualistic narrative in the context of changes in Rio de Janeiro in preparation for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Porto Maravilha aimed to position Rio de Janeiro as a centre of global competition and capital. However, this narrative re-framed the history of the transatlantic slave trade through discursive tactics that diluted and undermined the brutality of slavery in Rio’s port. Furthermore, this hypermodern PPP reinforced the post-abolition discriminatory urban planning policies that dislodged Africans and Afro-Brazilians from their places of residence, work and culture in the port district. The result is the erasure of the experiences of Black Brazilians in the port area for touristic consumption, selling the city on the world stage. Given this contradiction, we develop the concept of ‘legacy participation’ to secure the rights of Afro-Brazilians and their organisations to make decisions about their own territory.

scholarly journals Being-in-the-Anthropocene: A Place-Based Understanding of Anthropogenic Climate Change

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-18
Author(s):  
Kavita Reddy
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
History Of ◽  
Radical Shift

Using Marcuse’s reconciliation of Marx’s historical material critique of capitalist relationships with a phenomenological approach, this paper aims to develop a better understanding of the conceptualization of reason in the era of anthropogenic climate change. Along with reference to Marx and Freud, Marcuse employs Heidegger’s phenomenology in his analysis of the dynamic interrelation between capital and the historical development of civilization, which I argue creates a comprehensive analysis of reason within the context of capitalist technological progress. The intersection of phenomenological analysis and the history of capital creates a moment, through the resurgence of the slumbering potentiality within place, for a radical shift in perspective.

Perdre la mesure… Or, The Ecologics of Extinction

CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Stefan Herbrechter
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Solar System ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Current Level ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Human Race ◽  
World Picture ◽  
Adequate Measurement ◽  
Ecological Catastrophe

The article takes its cue from Olivier Rey's recent book Une question de taille (a question of size) and develops the idea of humanity ‘losing its measure, or scale’ in the context of contemporary ecological catastrophe. It seems true that the current level of global threats, from climate change to asteroids, has produced a culture of ambient ‘species angst’ living in more or less constant fear about the survival of the ‘human race’, biodiversity, the planet, the solar system. This indeed means that the idea of a cosmos and a cosmology may no longer be an adequate ‘measurement’ for scaling the so far inconceivable, namely a thoroughly postanthropocentric world picture. The question of scale is thus shown to be connected to the necessity of developing a new sense of proportion, an eco-logic that would do justice to both, things human and nonhuman. Through a reading of the recent science fiction film Interstellar, this article aims to illustrate the dilemma and the resulting stalemate between two contemporary ‘alternatives’ that inform the film: does humanity's future lie in self-abandoning or in self-surpassing, in investing in conservation or in exoplanets? The article puts forward a critique of both of these ‘ecologics’ and instead shows how they depend on a dubious attempt by humans to ‘argue themselves out of the picture’, while leaving their anthropocentric premises more or less intact.

Invisibility and vulnerability of tenements: disputes over centrality in the port area of Rio de Janeiro

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Orlando Alves dos Santos ◽  
Larissa Lacerda ◽  
Mariana Werneck
Keyword(s):  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Port Area

Political Preferences, Personality Traits, and Environmentalism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Soutter ◽  
René Mõttus
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Personality Traits ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Environmental Attitudes ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Party Voting

Although the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change continues to grow, public discourse still reflects a high level of scepticism and political polarisation towards anthropogenic climate change. In this study (N = 499) we attempted to replicate and expand upon an earlier finding that environmental terminology (“climate change” versus “global warming”) could partly explain political polarisation in environmental scepticism (Schuldt, Konrath, & Schwarz, 2011). Participants completed a series of online questionnaires assessing personality traits, political preferences, belief in environmental phenomenon, and various pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours. Those with a Conservative political orientation and/or party voting believed less in both climate change and global warming compared to those with a Liberal orientation and/or party voting. Furthermore, there was an interaction between continuously measured political orientation, but not party voting, and question wording on beliefs in environmental phenomena. Personality traits did not confound these effects. Furthermore, continuously measured political orientation was associated with pro-environmental attitudes, after controlling for personality traits, age, gender, area lived in, income, and education. The personality domains of Openness, and Conscientiousness, were consistently associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, whereas Agreeableness was associated with pro-environmental attitudes but not with behaviours. This study highlights the importance of examining personality traits and political preferences together and suggests ways in which policy interventions can best be optimised to account for these individual differences.

The Historiography of Environmental History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. McNeill
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Industrial Pollution ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses the emergence of environmental history, which developed in the context of the environmental concerns that began in the 1960s with worries about local industrial pollution, but which has since evolved into a full-scale global crisis of climate change. Environmental history is ‘the history of the relationship between human societies and the rest of nature’. It includes three chief areas of inquiry: the study of material environmental history, political and policy-related environmental history, and a form of environmental history which concerns what humans have thought, believed, written, and more rarely, painted, sculpted, sung, or danced that deals with the relationship between society and nature. Since 1980, environmental history has come to flourish in many corners of the world, and scholars everywhere have found models, approaches, and perspectives rather different from those developed for the US context.

scholarly journals What Stymies Action on Climate Change? Religious Institutions, Marginalization, and Efficacy in Kenya

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Lauren Honig ◽  
Amy Erica Smith ◽  
Jaimie Bleck
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Vulnerability To Climate Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Critical Link

Addressing climate change requires coordinated policy responses that incorporate the needs of the most impacted populations. Yet even communities that are greatly concerned about climate change may remain on the sidelines. We examine what stymies some citizens’ mobilization in Kenya, a country with a long history of environmental activism and high vulnerability to climate change. We foreground efficacy—a belief that one’s actions can create change—as a critical link transforming concern into action. However, that link is often missing for marginalized ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious groups. Analyzing interviews, focus groups, and survey data, we find that Muslims express much lower efficacy to address climate change than other religious groups; the gap cannot be explained by differences in science beliefs, issue concern, ethnicity, or demographics. Instead, we attribute it to understandings of marginalization vis-à-vis the Kenyan state—understandings socialized within the local institutions of Muslim communities affected by state repression.

scholarly journals Economic damages from Hurricane Sandy attributable to sea level rise caused by anthropogenic climate change

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin H. Strauss ◽  
Philip M. Orton ◽  
Klaus Bittermann ◽  
Maya K. Buchanan ◽  
Daniel M. Gilford ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
East Coast ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hurricane Sandy ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Economic Damage ◽  
Sea Levels

AbstractIn 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the United States, creating widespread coastal flooding and over $60 billion in reported economic damage. The potential influence of climate change on the storm itself has been debated, but sea level rise driven by anthropogenic climate change more clearly contributed to damages. To quantify this effect, here we simulate water levels and damage both as they occurred and as they would have occurred across a range of lower sea levels corresponding to different estimates of attributable sea level rise. We find that approximately $8.1B ($4.7B–$14.0B, 5th–95th percentiles) of Sandy’s damages are attributable to climate-mediated anthropogenic sea level rise, as is extension of the flood area to affect 71 (40–131) thousand additional people. The same general approach demonstrated here may be applied to impact assessments for other past and future coastal storms.

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