By Mariarcangela Augello This summer, like any other summer since I was a kid, I often spent my days at the beach. Living close to the sea, I have the luck to get to beautiful beaches in a reasonable time. As the place is becoming more and more known, nationally and internationally, increasingly more beach clubs, hotels and resorts are popping up where once there were wild small bays or endless strips of sand. On the sandy beaches, colourful parasols, rows of chairs, restaurants, and kiosks with music are appearing. Meanwhile, the sections of free beach that can be accessed without paying are ..read more

Codes of conduct and contracts for scientific research should protect vulnerable populations, such as Indigenous peoples, from exploitation and promote their role in research. But with the San in Southern Africa, I have found that they can also backfire and even oppress them. By Stasja Koot Ethical rules for scientific research are important to prevent research from being conducted in a way that would never be accepted domestically (‘ethics dumping’), or when scientists from high-income countries conduct their research without involving local scientists or communities (‘helicopter research ..read more

A bustling, bright, and modern conference room. Panorama windows overlooking green plains. People seem nervous, rehearsing their lines — even Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. The light in the conference room dims. Members of the team look up. Tim turns to the window. Outside, the trees sway in the wind. Mother Nature, played by Octavia Spencer, suddenly sits at the table By Wanecek Wilhelm Every year the same: as the leaves turn yellow, tech bros crowd for the Apple Event, where the company presents its new line-up of products. While less of a media spectacle than in the age of Steve Jobs and the ..read more

Urbanization processes in Malmö create uneven soundscapes and associated health risks for the urban poor. A tale of the distributive injustice of urban road traffic noise. By Kim Wölper, Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS) I’m strolling home from work through Malmö on a weekday afternoon. On the last stretch, I must switch to one of the city’s arterial roads that is funnelling numerous cars from the city centre out into the suburbs and back every day. I speed up my pace, stressed by the revving of engines and hurry around the corner to my home one block over from the roa ..read more

Geopolitical Ecology of Extractivist Empire-Making  For many in the global military-security apparatus, the Anthropocene is an era of approaching apocalypses and cascading ‘threat multipliers’ – from climate to migration chaos and war. Unsurprisingly then, as global temperatures skyrocket, military spending is also reaching record levels. This all comes in the backdrop of fresh conflict in Israel-Gaza, and protracted wars in Ukraine and Myanmar. While links between war, ecology and green ‘extractive empire-making’ – capital-intensive practices laid against both people and the planet ..read more

Market-based conservation instruments’ continual “failing forward” exposes the naked emperor of an unsustainable capitalism. Post-capitalist degrowth is our only salvation. By Robert Fletcher, Wageningen University A recent Guardian article claims that the vast majority of forest caron offset projects managed by one prominent firm, Verra, have, despite more than one billion euros of investment over more than a decade, produced no “genuine carbon reductions”. This is merely the latest in a long line of similar concerns raised about such so-called “market-based instruments” (MBIs) for biodiversi ..read more

Lützerath has become a battlefield, where police forces defend fossil capital at all costs, enforcing climate catastrophe and destroying habitats. By: Andrea Brock Photograph by UNWISEMONKEYS The eviction of Lützerath, the last village to be destroyed by coal mine operator RWE to get to the thick layer of lignite coal underneath, is officially over – all protesters evicted, trees houses torn down. Pinky and Brain, the two tunnellers who blockaded a tunnel underneath the village, left voluntarily, after spending several days underground. But while the village might have been lost, the fight con ..read more

Cebuan Bliss, Radboud University Conservation, culture, and consciousness: awakening to a re-imagined vision of nature co-existence Do you have a personal ritual in nature? A place where you feel particularly connected and in awe of the intricacy of it all? Perhaps there is a special tree under which you seek solace, or a walk you take at sunrise just to hear the dawn chorus of birds. This is not unusual, as humans we have revered the natural world in our cultural and spiritual traditions throughout time. Nature is recognised as essential for our physical and psychological health (White et al ..read more

By Alexander Dunlap  This is a lightly edited and expanded testimony made at the European Parliament PETI Hearing, “Environmental and Social Impacts of Mining Activity in the EU,” on December 2, 2021. It confronts the European Commission for publicly funding practices organized to persuade publics to accept mining operations. This funding stream, it is argued, should be re-directed to degrowth research and development schemes. I want to frame this intervention by stating something obvious, but largely neglected in public policy. While this hearing is about mining today, it is really about ..read more

By Stasja Koot, Lubabun Ni’am, Chantal Wieckardt, Roderick Buiskool, Nadya Karimasari, Joost Jongerden Introduction Ecotourism in Sumatra, Indonesia, is driving processes of privatization and commodification. Here we explore how and why this happens by analysing recent ecotourism developments in the buffer zone to the east of the Mount Leuser National Park (MLNP). The close interaction with nature, and some specific charismatic animals, provide for spreading neoliberal values and practices through tourism to otherwise remote places (see Duffy 2013). First, we address privatisation at the Green ..read more