scholarly journals Mother Earth, Mother Africa and Biblical Studies : Interpretations in the Context of Climate Change

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul L. Leshota ◽  
Ericka S. Dunbar ◽  
Musa W. Dube ◽  
Malebogo Kgalemang
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
African Women ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Climate Crisis

Climate change and its global impact on all people, especially the marginalized communities, is widely recognized as the biggest crisis of our time. It is a context that invites all subjects and disciplines to bring their resources in diagnosing the problem and seeking the healing of the Earth. The African continent, especially its women, constitute the subalterns of global climate crisis. Can they speak? If they speak, can they be heard? Both the Earth and the Africa have been identified with the adjective “Mother.” This gender identity tells tales in patriarchal and imperial worlds that use the female gender to signal legitimation of oppression and exploitation. In this volume, African women theologians and their female-identifying colleagues, struggle with reading and interpreting religious texts in the context of environmental crisis that are threatening life on Earth. The chapters interrogate how biblical texts and African cultural resources imagine the Earth and our relationship with the Earth: Do these texts offer readers windows of hope for re-imagining liberating relationship with the Earth? How do they intersect with gender, race, empire, ethnicity, sexuality among others? Beginning with Genesis, journeying through Exodus, Ruth, Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of John, the authors seek to read in solidarity with the Earth, for the healing of the whole Earth community.

scholarly journals ECO-PESANTREN AS THE PANACEA FOR GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: LESSONS FROM NURUL HARAMAIN NW LOMBOK ISLAMIC BOARDING SCHOOL INDONESIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-121
Author(s):  
Abdul Quddus
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Boarding School ◽  
Environmental Conservation ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Ecological Concept ◽  
The World ◽  
Ecological Values ◽  
Climate Crisis

This paper examined the ecological concept and its implication at Nurul Haramain NW Lombok Islamic boarding school in response to the world climate crisis. Boarding schools have the potentials to bridge the environmental conservation initiative amid the secular science phenomena. This study employed a descriptive-explorative approach using a qualitative methodology. Thus, theoretically, this study was anchored in Mary Evelyn Tucker and Vasudha Narayan's theories of eco-theology in addressing the climate crisis. The findings showed that Nurul Haramain NW Lombok Islamic boarding school had implemented a sustainable lifestyle based on the ecological values in the Al-Quran and Hadith, in which Tuan Guru as the environmental conservation foreman.   Keywords: Eco-Pesantren, Climate Change, Environmental Crisis, Educational Theology, Eco Theology

scholarly journals Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ Call to Ecological Conversion: Responding to the Cry of the Earth and the Poor—Towards an Integral Ecology

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 136-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ileana M. Porras
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Integral Ecology

The recent Encyclical by Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, On Care for our Common Home, is a remarkable document, both original and continuous within the tradition of Catholic social doctrine. Emerging from and grounded in a very specific religious tradition and constrained by the peculiar encyclical literary form, the document nonetheless seeks to open a dialogue with “every person living on this planet,” about care for our common home. Using the urgency of addressing global climate change as its point of departure, the Encyclical does a superb job summarizing the scope of the present environmental crisis and the disproportionate harms suffered by vulnerable populations of the poor and excluded. It also provides a careful analysis of the root causes of environmental degradation, mapping out the complex linkages and tensions between globalization, economic growth, liberalized trade, unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, environmental degradation, involuntary migration, immiseration and growing inequality. In this respect, the Encyclical, may well come to serve as a useful position paper for the upcoming Paris climate change negotiations or as a background text for a course on climate change or sustainable development. Yet, properly understood, this is not its true purpose. Rather, in its deepest sense, the Encyclical is an appeal to all of humanity to listen to “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor,” to reject the “throwaway” culture of consumerism, and to embrace a culture of care and a commitment to pursue integral ecology. It is, in other words, a call to ecological conversion: a call addressed not only to individuals but also to individuals-in-community.

scholarly journals Can the Earth be Sacred Once Again? Christianity and Climate Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-123
Author(s):  
Sean McGrath
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Technological Revolution ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
Climate Crisis

The following paper takes Pope Francis’ Encyclical on Climate Change as an opportunity to re-open the debate, begun in 1967 by Lynn White Jr., on the theological origins of the environmental crisis. I note that the Pope’s critique of consumerist modernity is strong, but his lack of a genealogical account of modernity remains a weakness of the text. I argue, with White, that the technological revolution which has caused climate change would not have been possible without Christian assumptions. The original disenchantment of the world was the Abrahamic revelation which disjoined divinity and nature, and contra to appearances, the disjunction was only exacerbated by the doctrine of the incarnation. With climate change, modernity is returning to this revelation in the form of the sobering experience of the precarity of the planet. Nature is now experienced as finite once again, and it includes us. Modernity, however, cannot be disavowed any more than disenchantment can easily be forgotten. A return to the Christian roots of disenchantment might help us to remember what we have forgotten: the virtue of contemplation, which could qualify modern attitudes of control and domination, and engender a Christian experience of reverence for nature. While this is a Christian response to the climate crisis, other religious traditions will need to come to analogous forms of earth-centered ethics if we are to achieved the integrated ecological pluralism needed for the future of civilization.

scholarly journals Climate Change and the Surge for Pandemics

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 138
Author(s):  
Durr e Shehvaar ◽  
Wardah Idris ◽  
Mubashira Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Corporate Goals ◽  
Climate Crisis

The pandemic of the century has caused great concern about the global environmental crisis. The article outlines the various aspects of the surge of pandemic its link to climate change along with the prospects for the nation-states and how they have seen it as a challenge as it is being seen as taking thousands of lives. In the literature review, the research problem that has been tailored is if the pandemic can create a common awareness about the global climate crisis that has destructive projections for the globe itself. A causal link between the surge of pandemics and climate change that helps spread the viruses has been created. In addition to this, we further argue that the nation-states and their exploitative corporate goals that are manipulating the environment should be curbed through decisive steps.

The Question Concerning Geo-Engineering

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byron Williston ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Species Level ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The One ◽  
Climate Crisis

The Anthropocene, as we encounter it now, is the age in which we can no longer avoid postnaturalism, that is, a view of the ‘environment’ as largely ‘built.’ This means that we exist in a highly technologically mediated relationship to the rest of the earth system. But because the Anthropocene has barely emerged this time is best thought of as a transition phase between two epochs, i.e., it is ‘the end-Holocene.’ The end-Holocene is essentially a period of ecological crisis, the most salient manifestation of which is anthropogenic climate change. Given our political inertia, some have suggested that we should we respond to the climate crisis through technological manipulation of the global climate: geoengineering. The proposal raises many questions. The one I am interested in here is whether or not geoengineering represents an objectionable species-level narcissism. Will deployment of these technologies effectively cut us off from contact with anything non-human? This is what I’m calling ‘the question concerning geoengineering.’ I show how Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, especially his concept of ‘enframing,’ can help us think about the issue with the seriousness it demands.

What we can learn from the parallels between the COVID-19 and the future climate change crises

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubén D. Manzanedo ◽  
Peter Manning
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Substantial Portion ◽  
Preventative Measures ◽  
The Future ◽  
Behavioral Norm ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Global Population

The ongoing COVID-19 outbreak pandemic is now a global crisis. It has caused 1.6+ million confirmed cases and 100 000+ deaths at the time of writing and triggered unprecedented preventative measures that have put a substantial portion of the global population under confinement, imposed isolation, and established ‘social distancing’ as a new global behavioral norm. The COVID-19 crisis has affected all aspects of everyday life and work, while also threatening the health of the global economy. This crisis offers also an unprecedented view of what the global climate crisis may look like. In fact, some of the parallels between the COVID-19 crisis and what we expect from the looming global climate emergency are remarkable. Reflecting upon the most challenging aspects of today’s crisis and how they compare with those expected from the climate change emergency may help us better prepare for the future.

scholarly journals Managing pandemics as super wicked problems: lessons from, and for, COVID-19 and the climate crisis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Auld ◽  
Steven Bernstein ◽  
Benjamin Cashore ◽  
Kelly Levin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Path Dependency ◽  
Wicked Problem ◽  
Forward Path ◽  
Resource Requirements ◽  
Climate Crisis

AbstractCOVID-19 has caused 100s of millions of infections and millions of deaths worldwide, overwhelming health and economic capacities in many countries and at multiple scales. The immediacy and magnitude of this crisis has resulted in government officials, practitioners and applied scholars turning to reflexive learning exercises to generate insights for managing the reverberating effects of this disease as well as the next inevitable pandemic. We contribute to both tasks by assessing COVID-19 as a “super wicked” problem denoted by four features we originally formulated to describe the climate crisis: time is running out, no central authority, those causing the problem also want to solve it, and policies irrationally discount the future (Levin et al. in Playing it forward: path dependency, progressive incrementalism, and the “super wicked” problem of global climate change, 2007; Levin et al. in Playing it forward: Path dependency, progressive incrementalism, and the "super wicked" problem of global climate change, 2009; Levin et al. in Policy Sci 45(2):123–152, 2012). Doing so leads us to identify three overarching imperatives critical for pandemic management. First, similar to requirements to address the climate crisis, policy makers must establish and maintain durable policy objectives. Second, in contrast to climate, management responses must always allow for swift changes in policy settings and calibrations given rapid and evolving knowledge about a particular disease’s epidemiology. Third, analogous to, but with swifter effects than climate, wide-ranging global efforts, if well designed, will dramatically reduce domestic costs and resource requirements by curbing the spread of the disease and/or fostering relevant knowledge for managing containment and eradication. Accomplishing these tasks requires building the analytic capacity for engaging in reflexive anticipatory policy design exercises aimed at maintaining, or building, life-saving thermostatic institutions at the global and domestic levels.

Introduction

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Berner
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Carbon Cycle ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Quaternary Period ◽  
Geological Time Scale ◽  
The Earth

The cycle of carbon is essential to the maintenance of life, to climate, and to the composition of the atmosphere and oceans. What is normally thought of as the “carbon cycle” is the transfer of carbon between the atmosphere, the oceans, and life. This is not the subject of interest of this book. To understand this apparently confusing statement, it is necessary to separate the carbon cycle into two cycles: the short-term cycle and the long-term cycle. The “carbon cycle,” as most people understand it, is represented in figure 1.1. Carbon dioxide is taken up via photosynthesis by green plants on the continents or phytoplankton in the ocean. On land carbon is transferred to soils by the dropping of leaves, root growth, and respiration, the death of plants, and the development of soil biota. Land herbivores eat the plants, and carnivores eat the herbivores. In the oceans the phytoplankton are eaten by zooplankton that are in turn eaten by larger and larger organisms. The plants, plankton, and animals respire CO2. Upon death the plants and animals are decomposed by microorganisms with the ultimate production of CO2. Carbon dioxide is exchanged between the oceans and atmosphere, and dissolved organic matter is carried in solution by rivers from soils to the sea. This all constitutes the shortterm carbon cycle. The word “short-term” is used because the characteristic times for transferring carbon between reservoirs range from days to tens of thousands of years. Because the earth is more than four billion years old, this is short on a geological time scale. As the short-term cycle proceeds, concentrations of the two principal atmospheric gases, CO2 and CH4, can change as a result of perturbations of the cycle. Because these two are both greenhouse gases—in other words, they adsorb outgoing infrared radiation from the earth surface—changes in their concentrations can involve global warming and cooling over centuries and many millennia. Such changes have accompanied global climate change over the Quaternary period (past 2 million years), although other factors, such as variations in the receipt of solar radiation due to changes in characteristics of the earth’s orbit, have also contributed to climate change.

scholarly journals Expanding use of archaeology in climate change response by changing its social environment

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (15) ◽  
pp. 8295-8302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcy Rockman ◽  
Carrie Hritz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Climate Response ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
Us Federal Government ◽  
Site Significance

Climate science has outlined targets for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions necessary to provide a substantial chance of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change on both natural and human systems. How to reach those targets, however, requires balancing physical realities of the natural environment with the complexity of the human social environment, including histories, cultures, and values. Archaeology is the study of interactions of natural and social environments through time and across space. As well, the field of cultural resources management, which includes archaeology, regularly engages with values such as site significance and allocation of funding that the modern social environment ascribes to its own history. Through these two approaches, archaeology has potential to provide both data for and methods of addressing challenges the global community faces through climate change. To date, however, archaeology and related areas of cultural heritage have had relatively little role in the global climate response. Here, we assess the social environment of archaeology and climate change and resulting structural barriers that have limited use of archaeology in and for climate change with a case study of the US federal government. On this basis, we provide recommendations to the fields of archaeology and climate response about how to more fully realize the multiple potential uses of archaeology for the challenges of climate change.

scholarly journals Climate Fiction and the Crisis of Imagination

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-119
Author(s):  
Chiara Xausa
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Environmental Humanities ◽  
Indigenous Australian ◽  
Environmental Racism ◽  
Slow Violence ◽  
Climate Fiction ◽  
Climate Crisis

This article analyses the representation of environmental crisis and climate crisis in Carpentaria (2006) and The Swan Book (2013) by Indigenous Australian writer Alexis Wright. Building upon the groundbreaking work of environmental humanities scholars such as Heise (2008), Clark (2015), Trexler (2015) and Ghosh (2016), who have emphasised the main challenges faced by authors of climate fiction, it considers the novels as an entry point to address the climate-related crisis of culture – while acknowledging the problematic aspects of reading Indigenous texts as antidotes to the 'great derangement’ – and the danger of a singular Anthropocene narrative that silences the ‘unevenly universal’ (Nixon, 2011) responsibilities and vulnerabilities to environmental harm. Exploring themes such as environmental racism, ecological imperialism, and the slow violence of climate change, it suggests that Alexis Wright’s novels are of utmost importance for global conversations about the Anthropocene and its literary representations, as they bring the unevenness of environmental and climate crisis to visibility.

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