Seasonalight

Tag: migration

  • The Real Threat

    Sometimes, the tragedy is in words. 

    Caroline Lucas’s latest series for “The Rest is Politics” podcast is a case in point: “When Nature becomes a Security Threat.”* 

    Perhaps it’s the “genius stereotype” or “brilliance bias” towards the Intelligence Community that is supposed to move people to act. Shock tactics? Why demonise Nature? If we are not moved by science, then threat to Nationhood ought to do it. How very Nationalistic.

    The Labour Government’s 13-page DEFRA-commissioned report upon which this series is based was published earlier this year, and apart from the drama of its Downing Street redactions and ultimate public release, researchers from MI5 and MI6 appear to have raised it on previous iterations of standard, modern, and extreme (Western) Anthropocentrism. Nature’s Contributions to People are central, acronym NCP applied (as you might imagine), and include ecosystem “services”, value = growth economy, and externalities to “Nation,” mainly, the Savannah-isation of the Amazon Rainforest and Inter-State competition for “resources.”

    Nature is not coming for anyone, and particularly the British. There is no intent. The real threat is human actions towards Nature, making it into the report as a small byline, and with no detailed critique of values and consequent behaviours.

    Our entrenched culture of mental separation from Nature deepens.

    References include quantitative measurements—taxa and tipping points (Natural History Museum), Natural Capital (The Dasgupta Review), IPBES “ecosystem services” inter-governmental agenda, and various scientific papers on exceeding Rockström’s 9 planetary “boundaries” (hint: they are not particularly separate)!

    Emphasis is on uncertainty and risk to the United Kingdom as a nation-state, threats largely “external” ~ food imports forcing dietary change, and, of course, “migration”. Risks generated by collective values and behaviours are absent, and a question largely left literally to “customers” who might use the document for legislative decision-making (but they do find moments to mention pro-growth AI, laboratory-grown meat, and insect proteins)!

    This highlights just how devoid of understanding our collective role within nature remains. Mentally separate, we are agents for catastrophic and rapid change of the complex system upon which all life depends, with ignorant cultural and social responses to those rapid changes on top.

    Again, serious discussion on values and ethics falls down the deep, deep chasm that still exists between science and politics.    

    Ethical framing matters; readers and interpreters should be aware that these conclusions ARE A CHOICE, and bad ones at that. They shape how the report is used, nudging along all the same-old corrupt and Earth-damaging e-motivators without a whiff of critical thought.

    I’m not going to critique the paper line by line here. Many of the risks it identifies have been predicted and observed for a very long time, and the geopolitical map of power now shifts too quickly for a fixed security reading to hold for long. As I say, my concern is instead with the report’s ethical foundation: treating ecological collapse chiefly as a “national security” problem, while leaving the deeper ethical questions of value, power, agency, and human separation from Nature largely untouched. Here, read it for yourself.

    Recognising barriers of language and value is only the beginning, because those barriers are sustained by power. They determine which harms become visible, which causes remain unnamed, and which responses feel politically possible. The harder question is who holds the power to define values, protect them, and turn them into collective behaviour.

    Critically, disproportionate power via capital has accumulated through markets, competition, and institutions that reward extraction. These systems protect values that shape planning laws, trade priorities, food systems, energy choices, land ownership, finance, and the distribution of risk. To remain uncritical is to intensify behaviours across anthropocentric society — extreme competition, expansionism, colonialism, and highly extractive industries among them — a continuity despite the exclamation! An endangering of all Nature, with the greatest harms falling on the most vulnerable lives and communities, locally and globally. The result is not a marginal side-effect but a widening spiral of cause and consequence, with many effects already unfolding and others still unknown.

    Recognising root causes means naming the actual structures of power and agency that shape value priorities and behaviours. A national-security frame may generate “flash” public interest, and the risks involved are numerous and serious, but it can also narrow attention towards state protection, territorial interest, and crisis management rather than the hierarchies, core values, and behaviours driving ecological collapse. The fact that evidence has been suppressed or redacted only underlines how central those hierarchies of control remain.

    Isn’t this just the expected politics of adversarial opposition? I’m afraid there are no sides, no “heroes”, no “saviours” or “leaders” who are going to singularly turn things around – these cultural ideas, particularly Eurocentric in origin, are also constructions by a minority, like Nationhood itself – a body, decapitated — to separate us from each other and the rest of Nature. 

    I’d like to see the full list of the 81 rationalist “experts” who contributed, voting and consulting through various workshops and meetings, because I suspect most of them are men, and none of them is widely versed in the broad canon that is “Environmental Ethics.”  Most of them probably still consider it “religiosity.” Blah!

    Answers are deeply interconnected, and in no way final. Human food “security” is more about localism as embodied nature than any intellectualised, separate planetary boundaries, and real change far more about inclusiveness, collective knowledge sharing (causes, effects, imagining outcomes, correcting trajectories), REAL care, and responsibility for ALL life.

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  • An appeal: Adopt Endemism (Andemism)

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    Indigenous. The word is powerful, there is no doubt ~ a descriptive adjective that evokes strong concepts of ancestral roots, cultural and historic sensitivities as well as endemic ties to place, species and habitats. It represents ancient peoples who, more often than not, have been usurped in the image of a European trail wagon, tallship, or CAT 60 Tractor. The problem continues.

    Globalised capitalist markets persist in nothing short of gargantuan theft. The people who constitute these markets use false utilitarian arguments (supply for the greater good), in trying to justify fossil fuel extraction, deforestation, damming, and other planet-wrecking pursuits for profit. The reality is that they enlist proselytes to conjure most of these markets from thin air. Consumer-junkies keep the process alive in forms of novelty-addiction that seem hard to break, when all we really need, in terms of material things at home, are good organic food, pure water, recyclable clothes and shelter designed for locale from local materials.

    Right now, the Standing Rock Protests, one of the biggest gatherings of First Nation peoples in decades, unite to stop brazen neoliberal arrogance manifesting in the form of the Dakota Access Pipeline, snaking its way across spirit-lands like a bad omen.

    All over the world, we are seeing indigenous authenticity rising to fight for these sacred ties to land and seas, when, often, biodiversity rich areas selected for Western systems of conservation are only in a good ecological state because of eons of successful co-existence of indigenous peoples.

    At least, a notional global postcolonial respect for the Rights of Indigenous exists more soundly in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) , but how sad it is that rights need to be enforced in the first instance. No one should need the “right” to flourish. All should be able to simply… flourish.

    Those of us who revere the one biosphere we call home, and truly understand the stress it’s now under, may thank these peoples for trying to stem the blood loss, the profound inequality and environmental destruction which flows from Western growth-greed. The growth mantra is the instrument of harm, and the gash in our collective psyche needs to heal, fast.

    Now, what if you, like me, are of Western ancestral heritage and cannot be classed as indigenous under such a UN Declaration? Moreover, if you are not endemic, have no ancestral attachment to a particular bioregion, is it still possible or even respectful, to suggest that one may engender a sense of indigenous belonging and, therefore, legitimacy in feeling sanguimund and eutierria with the immediate environment in which you have made your home?

    We need time, intimacy and knowledge to assimilate.

    For when we feel that true belonging, we love, and what we love, we are motivated to protect.

    Perhaps we need a new word, beyond indigenous, to articulate, at least, the potential for this kind of belonging, belonging that is colour/race-blind, discernable in whatever timeframe we each need as individuals.

    I call it ANDEMISM.

    There is no intent here to devalue endemism, rather, to increase the value of adopted endemism via kinship between peoples.

    The adopted endemism generates a fully human response to economic oppression materialized as growth-greed. As Bill Neidjie says in Gagudju Man (2002),

    “Language is different,
    Like skin.
    Skin can be different,
    but blood same.
    Blood and bone,
    all same.
    Man can’t split himself.”
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    A moment on the words ‘tribes’ and ‘tribal’… An interesting discussion here at the BBC World Service.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Has the world gone mad?

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    Statue of Sir Peter Scott, London Wetland Centre, by Ginny Battson © 2014

     

    “The world has gone mad.”

    I am hearing this often in my particular sprachraum (the Anglosphere, at least), off-line and on-line, an almost daily occurrence from one quarter or another. Along with a sharply rising global temperature mean, record breaking norm-shattering meteorology and ice-melt across consecutive months, we are witnessing regressive steps in socio-political relationships; intolerance and prejudice gaining traction as some kind of reactive protest against uneven wealth distribution and increasing migration of the dispossessed. The far right have their heads up for the main-chance. This is deeply worrying to those with a conscience.

    Yet still, so few engage with what all urgently need to discuss ~ our relationship with Planet Earth, our home amidst a sixth mass extinction, the source of our very existence and our ultimate survival kit, regardless of who or to what our perceived moral community extends. Moreover, the intrinsic value of life, all life, and the processes and interconnections between all.

    Never have we been so vast in number. Never have we, or any other living being, witnessed such unbridled ecocybernetic change. One cannot simply call this era the ‘new normal’, because it is highly dynamic. Each dataset combined appears as a new abnormal.

    We exist in a falsely-assumed human realm, an evolutionary cul-de-sac, into which we are all symbolically corralled by our own global media and techno-markets. The truth is that we are so interconnected to all living beings and all inorganic phenomenon that we shall never fully understand it entirely. Humans are simply part of the whole. Despite what science and scientists may imply, the uncertainties are vast. Just to understand that we shall never fully understand the ultimate complexity is a humility. It is to inject some wisdom back into our times, when all else seems lost to our own arrogances.

    The irony is that so many problems are made worse by delusional and fragmented ways a dominant Western pedagogy view the Earth, its systems and unfathomable complexities. Purely anthropocentric “utility” of nature (servitude and subordination to humans) still reigns supreme in UK conservation circles, indeed UNEP. It is no panacea, as if nature is inert and placed here for one purpose only. Sometimes, I find it is these individuals and organisations who make me more angry than the just plain greedy. Given their privileged status of being educated, they ought to know better. Some are even ecologists, studying some of these very interconnections.

    I think, as others do, many are limited to a narrow field of vision, disjointed fragments of connections, encouraged by the rationalisation of Western education tied to a career-plan ~ the training of specifics, cognitive biases towards the familiar, a lack of the cross-disciplinary, rendering many blind to the peripheral vision required upon the ‘whole.’ Or is it desperation? On the frontline, they may be tired of a fight, susceptible to caving in to global financial ambitions towards exponential growth on a finite planet. Those dark forces are, indeed, strong. But giving in is not pragmatism. Giving in is simply giving in.

    I have written before on the dangers of so-called Natural Capital valued by a single unit of financial measure. Now the WWT have released their latest policy document on economic value into the very heart of the neoliberal centre-line in Westminster, subjecting nature to the same volatile economic paradigm that favours the rich and acutely fails to ‘trickle down.’ How can we legitimately and morally divide into financial units that which is hugely interconnected and that we do not fully conceive? We too are nature, the moon and the stars. Where does this end?

    This is on top of the widespread eco-illiteracy of even the most basic of underlying cybernetic principles of the ecosphere. WWT were, and are, leaders in voluntary environmental education. I revere them in this sense, utterly. Peter Scott’s beautifully altruistic ambitions have influenced many across the globe, ~ no mean feat. In his wake, I wish this respected organisation would expand education into the mainstream, not enter the fray on economics as if there were no economic alternatives than to subject nature to the language of commerce and government ~ the corporates, lobbyists, hedge funds and bankers. Investment in support of nature (including us), is important, that the flow of resources towards habitat restoration and integrated protection is generously provided via better understanding. But to value non-human life in packets of currency is another matter, I don’t care how desperate things may seem! A 25 year plan along these lines makes me suffer from eco-anxiety. I am imagining the abuses possible by a hedonistic, self-regulating City of London as I write. Many new Cabinet members don’t even acknowledge climate change as a real and present threat, leave alone that a sixth extinction is underway, and between them a small to non-existent understanding of functional ecology. Money is not an ecological educator. No matter how ‘regulated’ this new order may seem, entrepreneurial spirit and diligent accountants will find the gaps in order to take advantage at a profit. There can be no guarantees all will be for the good. This is the nature of free commerce right now. The whole paradigm needs to shift.

    And it is not by accident that our consumption-driven culture is stealing the human cumulative brain-force that could be working on better solutions. And as the shopping malls hum with either those with cash to buy or those eternally unhappy people with unrequited aspirations and no cash, the planet burns. The 1% percent skim it all off and walk away scot free. Leopold spoke of land as community to which we should belong, not chattels to be owned. Pricing nature implicitly commodifies, even if unintended, like a serious side-effect to be listed on pharma labels. And let us not forget that slavery is immoral. Ownership of all living beings follows (even domestic animals – an argument for another day).

    I am being blunt here, because I feel blunt is required. “The world has gone mad?” It is the human world that is mad. The majority of Earth is probably trying to regain homeostasis despite us. There are better ways to induce care for one another, our non-human kin and the inorganic phenomenon which are integral to life. Egalitarian eco-education/mentoring has not yet been tried, not least in the corridors of the City of London and Westminster, indeed any centre of power in great force! There’s huge room for engendering respect and reciprocity, love ~ I have not and will not give up on the ultimate power of love ~ and, with a will and a way, a return to the ecosphere perceived by the majority as sacrosanct.

    I will write again on the sacrosanct, the return and the sacred, soon. And with love!

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  • Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

    Around 55.8 million years ago, huge quantities of carbon dioxide were suddenly released into the atmosphere, and temperatures climbed around 5°C. No-one knows exactly why. Vulcanism, wildfires, & feedback loops of methane on the sea-floor released & CO2 from melting permafrost on top? Extinctions quadrupled, global migrations exploded, intense storms raged and lasted for over 1000 years at a time.

    This period is known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum and has been the most rapid rise in CO2 release, ocean acidification and global temperature range ever recorded in science…. until now.

    We’re beating it.

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  • Brave swallows

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    “One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.” Aristotle

    I’ve just returned from a short stay on the Channel Islands. We made our sea crossing in a fast catamaran ferry which departed from a distinctly sunny St Helier to a particularly cloudy Weymouth. About mid-journey, mid April, as I leaned on the portside railings to brace myself from high winds, I noticed we had just passed a small sailing yacht also bearing north, bobbing in and out of a medium swell. Just above the inky water, between the two moving vessels, I glimpsed a pair of small dark birds, wing tip to wing tip, flying faster than the yacht and slower than the ferry.

    Their flight style, recorded deep in my childish memories of common land and sweet hay meadows, gave their instance away as “barn swallows”, regardless of the unfamiliar backdrop. They were perhaps a little seasonally late in their Northward ventures over crested waves.Their usual glossy feathers were dulled, I imagined, by red Saharan dust.

    Breathtaking.

    Here were two seemingly fragile passerines determined to cross yet another vast stretch of water, with tiny beating hearts and a heritable timing for their arrival somewhere on British terra firma to nest. I was mesmerized, so happy, but my failing eyesight tracked them for only a minute before losing them as we ploughed on towards Portland rock. I’m unsure anyone else on deck noticed them. Maybe the crew on the bridge.

    Migration of whichever species, horizontally, vertically, all around Spaceship Earth, fills me with Carson’s “sense of wonder” and beyond, with empathy and concern for our fellow time travelers . Two little birds out at sea and a massive volume of life all around the planet making tracks.

    I noticed the catamaran was throwing up sea spray, which the wind spun into webs by the ton, drifting across the swallows’ path. One of the many unexpected hazards they face. I hoped they coped.

    Hope as the plasticity of the mind, the flip side of fear, is all I have.

    Much later, by the time I reached home in the Welsh Borders, a few Southern African swallows had already completed their Spring journey; a stunning feat in all manner of ways. They swooped and dived, I do believe, in a “sense of wonder”. Brave swallows, with the hearts of lions.

    BTO Spring Migration