Climate crisis, art, and landscape. Case study: El Pescado stream basin, Argentina

Introduction Amidst ecological collapse and environmental catastrophe, humankind is surrounded by indications that our habitat is turning against us in monstrous ways. The very environments we live within now evoke existential terror, and this state of ecological monstrosity has permeated popular media, including video games. Such cultural manifestations of planetary catastrophe are particularly evident in video game monsters. These virtual figures continue monsters’ long-held role in reflecting the socio-cultural anxieties of their particular era. The horrific figures that monsters present play a culturally reflexive role, echoing the fears and anxieties of their social, political and cultural context. Media monsters closely reflect their surrounding cultural conditions (Cohen 47), representing “a symptom of or a metaphor for something bigger and more significant than the ostensible reality of the monster itself” (Hutchings 37). Society’s deepest anxieties culminate in these figures in forms that are “threatening and impure” (Carroll 28), “unnatural, transgressive, obscene, contradictory” (Kearney 4–5), and abject (Kristeva 4). In this article I ask how the appearance of the monstrous within contemporary video games reflects an era of climate change and ecological collapse, and how this could inform the engagement of players with discourse concerning climate change. Central to this inquiry is the literary practice of ecocriticism, which seeks to examine environmental rather than human representation in cultural artefacts, increasingly including accounts of contemporary ecological decay and disorder (Bulfin 144). I build on such perspectives to address play encounters that foreground figures of monstrosity borne of the escalating climate crisis, and summarise case studies of two recent video games undertaken as part of this project — The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo EPD) and The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog). An ecocritical approach to the monsters that populate these case studies reveals the emergence of a ludic form of ecological monstrosity tied closely to our contemporary climatic conditions and taking two significant forms: one accentuating a visceral otherness and aberrance, and the other marked by the uncanny recognition of human authorship of climate change. Horrors from the Anthropocene A growing climate emergency surrounds us, enveloping us in the abject and aberrant conditions of what could be described as an ecological monstrosity. Monstrous threats to our environment and human survival are experienced on a planetary scale and research evidence plainly illustrates a compounding catastrophe. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a relatively cautious and conservative body (Parenti 5), reports that a human-made emergency has developed since the Industrial Revolution. The multitude of crises that confront us include: changes in the Earth’s atmosphere driving up global temperatures, ice sheets in retreat, sea levels rising, natural ecosystems and species in collapse, and an unprecedented frequency and magnitude of heatwaves, droughts, flooding, winter storms, hurricanes, and wildfires (United Nations Environment Programme). Further human activity, including a post-war addiction to the plastics that have now spread their way across our oceans like a “liquid smog” (Robles-Anderson and Liboiron 258), or short-sighted enthusiasm for pesticides, radiation energy, and industrial chemicals (Robles-Anderson and Liboiron 254), has ensured a damaging shift in the nature of the feedback loops that Earth’s ecosystems depend upon for stability (Parenti 6). Climatic equilibrium has been disrupted, and growing damage to the ecosystems that sustain human life suggests an inexorable, entropic path to decay. To understand Earth’s profound crisis requires thinking beyond just climate and to witness the interconnected “extraordinary burdens” placed on our planet by “toxic chemistry, mining, nuclear pollution, depletion of lakes and rivers under and above ground, ecosystem simplification, vast genocides of people” which will continue to lead to the recursive collapse of interlinked major systems (Haraway 100). To speak of climate change is really to speak of the ruin of ecologies, those “living systems composed of many moving parts” that make up the tapestry of organic life on Earth (Robles-Anderson and Liboiron 251). The emergency that presents itself, as Renata Tyszczuk observes, comprises a pervasiveness, uncertainty, and interdependency that together “affect every aspect of human lives, politics and culture” (47). The emergence of the term Anthropocene (or the Age of the Humans) to describe our current geological epoch (and to supersede the erstwhile and more stable Holocene) (Zalasiewicz et al. 1036–7; Chang 7) reflects a contemporary impossibility with talking about planet Earth without acknowledging the damaging impact of humankind on its ecosystems (Bulfin 142). This recognition of human complicity in the existential crisis engulfing our planet once again connects ecological monstrosity to the socio-cultural history of the monstrous. Monsters, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen points out, “are our children” and despite our repressive efforts, “always return” in order to “ask us why we have created them” (20). Ecological monstrosity declares to us that our relegation of greenhouse gases, rising sea levels, toxic waste, species extinction, and much more, to the discursive periphery has only been temporary. Monsters, when examined closely, start to look a lot like ourselves in terms of biological origins (Perron 357), as well as other abject cultural and social markers that signal these horrific figures as residing “too close to the borders of our [own] subjectivity for comfort” (Spittle 314). Isabel Pinedo sees this uncanny nature of the horror genre’s antagonists as a postmodern condition, a ghoulish reminder of the era’s breakdown of categories, blurring of boundaries, and collapse of master narratives that combine to ensure “mastery is lost … and the stable, unified, coherent self acquires the status of a fiction” (17–18). In standing in for anxiety, the other, and the aberrant, the figure of the monster deftly turns the mirror back on its human victims. Ecocritical Play The vast scale of ecological collapse has complicated effective public communication on the subject. The scope involved is unsettling, even paralysing, to its audiences: climate change might just be “too here, too there, too everywhere, too weird, too much, too big, too everything” to bring oneself to engage with (Tyszczuk 47). The detail involved has also been captured by scientific discourse, a detached communicative mode which too easily obviates the everyday human experience of the emergency (Bulfin 140; Abraham and Jayemanne 74–76). Considerable effort has been focussed upon producing higher-fidelity models of ecological catastrophe (Robles-Anderson and Liboiron 248), rather than addressing the more significant “trouble with representing largely intangible linkages” between micro-environmental actions and macro-environmental repercussions (Chang 86). Ecocriticism is, however, emerging as a cultural means by which the crisis, and restorative possibilities, may be rendered more legible to a wider audience. Representations of ecology and catastrophe not only sustain genres such as Eco-Disaster and Cli-Fi (Bulfin 140), but are also increasingly becoming a precondition for fiction centred upon human life (Tyszczuk 47). Media artefacts concerned with environment are able to illustrate the nature of the emergency alongside “a host of related environmental issues that the technocratic ‘facts and figures’ approach … is unlikely to touch” (Abraham and Jayemanne 76) and encourage in audiences a suprapersonal understanding of the environmental impact of individual actions (Chang 70). Popular culture offers a chance to foster ‘ecological thought’ wherein it becomes “frighteningly easy … to join the dots and see that everything is interconnected” (Morton, Ecological Thought 1) rather than founder before the inexplicability of the temporalities and spatialities involved in ecological collapse. An ecocritical approach is “one of the most crucial—yet under-researched—ways of looking into the possible cultural impact of the digital entertainment industry” upon public discourse relating to the environment crisis (Felczak 185). Video games demand this closer attention because, in a mirroring of the interconnectedness of Earth’s own ecosystems, “the world has also inevitably permeated into our technical artefacts, including games” (Chang 11), and recent scholarship has worked to investigate this very relationship. Benjamin Abraham has extended Morton’s arguments to outline a mode of ecological thought for games (What Is an Ecological Game?), Alenda Chang has closely examined how games model natural environments, and Benjamin Abraham and Darshana Jayemanne have outlined four modes in which games manifest players’ ecological relationships. Close analysis of texts and genres has addressed the capacity of game mechanics to persuade players about matters of sustainability (Kelly and Nardi); implicated Minecraft players in an ecological practice of writing upon landscapes (Bohunicky); argued that Final Fantasy VII’s plot fosters ecological responsibility (Milburn); and, identified in ARMA III’s ambient, visual backdrops of renewable power generation the potential to reimagine cultural futures (Abraham, Video Game Visions). Video games allow for a particular form of ecocriticism that has been overlooked in existing efforts to speak about ecological crisis: “a politics that includes what appears least political—laughter, the playful, even the silly” (Morton, Dark Ecology 113). Play is liminal, emergent, and necessarily incomplete, and this allows its various actors—players, developers, critics and texts themselves—to come to

Climate change and loss of biodiversity are advancing rapidly, making a transition to a more sustainable society one of the most pressing tasks facing humanity. This special section shines a spotlight on how emotions shape and are shaped by the climate and biodiversity crises, and how they intersect with pro-environmental behavior. To this end, leading sustainability scholars and policy makers articulate what they believe are the most important questions that emotion research should answer to support a sustainable societal transition. Here, we first provide an overview of the articles in the special section, which include a wide range of topics including global analyses of distress related to climate change and biodiversity loss, case studies on emotional experiences toward locally specific instances of climate change consequences and adaptation or mitigation efforts, discussions of the motivational functions of emotions and their potential to drive pro-environmental action, and reflections on how we can make affective science more salient to policy makers in the sustainability domain. In the second part, we summarize the emerging overarching themes that point to promising research objectives and questions for affective sustainability science. Finally, we discuss how the study of sustainability can also be beneficial for the affective sciences. Our hope is that this special section will put sustainability on the research agenda of emotion researchers and stimulate more research in affective sustainability science.

The climate crisis is worsening, and agricultural extraction is exacerbating the effects of these changes. The U.S. Congress has authorized conservation-minded programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) to mitigate the impacts that agriculture has on the environment, yet the climate and land-health crises persist. A Systems Thinking-focused Agent Based Approach (ABA) reveals the system of EQIP perpetuates a culture of competition and conflict that stifles innovation. Remedying the wicked problems that persist in the EQIP system may be critical to creating a culture of sustainable-minded agriculture that this country needs to fight the larger battle against climate change.

The climate crisis is a global and urgent ecological problem facing humanity that cannot be avoided. The various ecological and environmental catastrophes caused by the current climate crisis lead to the politics of developing science and technology to solve them. However, the climate crisis is also rearranging human society in the midst of environmental changes that cannot be predicted by science and technology. This article begins with a critique of the science-technoism, anthropocentrism, colonialism, and developmentalism of the mainstream climate crisis discourses by asking: whose crisis is the climate crisis, and whose responsibility is it? This article calls for a deconstruction of the science-technoism discourse surrounding the climate crisis and a reconstruction of the relationship between humans and nature, especially through ecofeminism and new materialist feminism. By elucidating ecofeminism's decolonization theory of the climate crisis and new material feminism's becoming-climate debate, this study critically examines the issue of women's victimization in the climate crisis and considers whether nature can become a public subject in our society. Based on the analysis of feminist politics surrounding the climate crisis, this study proposes becoming ecological citizens as a new feminist citizenship in the era of climate crisis through the case study of women peasants' ecological citizenship practices based on interspecies relations.

Democracy is on trial in the climate crisis. It is charged with having failed to prevent dangerous climate change. To its critics, the very same features of democracy praised as its defining virtues—popular sovereignty, the accountability and responsiveness of elected officials, public debate and deliberation—are handicaps that impede effective climate action. However, this trial is not over and it would not be safe to deliver a verdict at this stage. The case for authoritarian regimes is flawed in both theory and practice and while it is late for preventing the worst impacts of climate change, there is still a window to provide a climate-safe future. Here, it is overwhelmingly democratic nations that are taking the lead. With this in mind, this Report focuses on democracy and the climate crisis in the Asia and the Pacific region. A regional approach based on case studies has been chosen to contextualize the challenges to democracy arising from this crisis. The Asia and the Pacific region is significant for several reasons—it is the most populous in the world; it is a region that will be disproportionately affected by climate change and where many countries are considered highly vulnerable; and, as this Report makes clear, it is also a place where there have been vibrant innovations to democratic institutions and practices for dealing with the climate crisis.

Women tend to be objects and victims of climate change impact. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 2020 found that gender-based violence was aligned with climate and environmental crises in various developing countries. In addition, 9.9 women were affected heavily by natural disasters in Indonesia (BPS, 2017). Meanwhile, only 20% of women's leadership constitutes the entire energy sector (WEF, 2022). Another important statement from the IPCC (2022) said that women (particularly pregnant women) became highly impacted by the climate crisis. The Assessment Report on the State of Gender Equality and Climate Change in ASEAN (2022) built evidence on the importance of recognising women’s roles in climate action in ASEAN countries. In light of this background, this paper will analyse the critical complexities of ASEAN women's leadership towards climate action in order to evaluating the implementation of SDGs goal 5 and 13. To have further deep analysis, this paper will explore the case study of Balinese and Cambodian women who have best practices of climate action, locally, nationally and globally, which also enhance ASEAN countries' commitment to SDGs. Some of the best practices in Cambodia include a Renewable Energy (RE) programme that actively engages with and promotes women-led energy enterprises by implementing “The Smoke-Free Village” approach and training women as champions for gender-transformative Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). Meanwhile, in Bali, Balinese women play an important role in climate action by establishing the Bali Women Climate Entrepreneur Project which encourages 10 start-ups to join the program and many other best practices to be explored further. As a methodology, the best practices of women leadership in both countries will be collected through literature reviews, interviews, statistics from the Balinese and Cambodia government/SDGs centres, and other relevant documents’ review. From those sources, this paper is expected to be the guide to mapping women leadership in climate action and also become a guide on how to develop effective communication for women in the ASEAN region on climate change.

In the last several years, disaster insurance programs around the world have experienced disruptions that many observers interpret to be a primary symptom of "climate crisis" (Bittle 2024). Governments have responded to these disruptions through disjointed and at times contradictory measures: they treat disasters, alternately, as "Acts of God" that should be a collective responsibility, or as the result of decisions that can be attributed to individual agency. This article argues that such shifts between mutualism and individualization in disaster insurance are symptoms of an "irrationalization" of disaster policy. The concept of irrationalization, derived from the Marxist state theory of Claus Offe (1973), describes the process of goal identification and policy formulation of contemporary states as they navigate simultaneously valid but ultimately contradictory principles of political morality and governmental rationality. Through case studies of two disaster insurance programs in the US-the National Flood Insurance Program and property insurance in California, which covers wildfires-the article shows that irrationalization processes are becoming more marked as disasters grow ever larger and costlier, fueled by climate change and other anthropogenic causes. It also suggests that the concept of irrationalization offers insight into the emerging forms of "climate crisis" that are unfolding in disaster policy and other domains. The concept of climate crisis is frequently invoked to designate the ruptural change that will follow from global warming, and to both summon and justify radical action to address problems that are attributed to a particular causal or moral agent. But in the context of the irrationalization of disaster policy, technical and moral attributions are uncertain and disputed. Disasters generate political conflict and crisis-driven reorganization rather than decisive courses of action.

The fossil fuel non-proliferation agreement comes in response to the escalating climate crisis threatening Vanuatu, which was raised by the President of Vanuatu at the 77th General Assembly of the United Nations. This article analyzes the failure of international agreements as an effort to prevent environmental crimes that cause the global climate crisis, especially those felt by Vanuatu, as well as the extent to which international agreements can play a role in addressing these problems, as well as safeguarding the well-being of people in affected countries. The use of fossil fuels, which is still the primary energy in various countries, has become a focus in the context of environmental crimes because of its negative impact on the environment, including the climate crisis. Although these efforts are considered a step in the face of environmental crimes, their implementation is still limited. From a criminological perspective, the restriction of action through the law is a common approach to tackling crime. However, the issue of environmental crimes and international agreements shows the complexity involving many stakeholders. Taking into account the urgency of addressing the climate crisis and its impact on human rights, countries are expected to prioritize people's well-being. Through literature analysis, this article concludes that international treaties will not be effective in tackling environmental crimes without the support of domestic laws and policies, as well as the commitment of state leaders.

Environmental scientists are acutely aware of the increasing dangers posed by the climate crisis, and this professional awareness is linked to raised levels of climate anxiety. In this paper we explore the use of group therapy as a tool to create a safe space for researchers to share their feelings on climate change. We examine the transcripts of a 2-day group therapy session provided to seven environmental scientists based in the United States by a professional therapist. We analyse more than 12 hours of anonymised audio transcripts to identify patterns, observations and shared experiences. Our results suggest that group therapy may provide positive and cathartic experiences for environmental scientists through sharing emotions and experiences with peers, both about the challenges of their professional lives and difficulties in processing feelings about their work subjects and the climate crisis. Further, results indicate that participants benefited from sharing strategies for coping with the emotional toll of the climate crisis.

The escalating impacts of climate change represent one of the most significant challenges of our era, affecting not only the environment but also social, economic, and political systems globally. This chapter examines the complex relationship between climate change and crisis management, focusing on how societies can adapt to the “new normal” of environmental disruptions. It explores the critical components necessary for effective climate crisis management, including policy development, global cooperation, and leadership. It aims to answer key research questions: How can policy framework be structured to foster climate resilience, particularly in vulnerable regions? and What role does international collaboration play in enhancing the effectiveness of climate crisis management? Case studies and examples such as Germany’s Energiewende, the Paris Agreement, and the adaptation strategies in Kiribati provide practical insights into addressing these questions. Chapter concludes by offering specific recommendations for policymakers and areas for further research to enhance crisis management strategies for climate resilience.

The climate crisis is one of the most disastrous global phenomena, and developing countries are the most affected by it, even though they contribute to it the least. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world with an economy highly reliant on farming. However, rapid changes in the climate have negatively impacted their agriculture. Our research focuses on how the climate crisis affects farmers in Nepal, leading to poverty and food insecurity. The research paper includes six sections: the literature review, methodologies, case study, results, discussion, and conclusion. Through our research, we explore a link between climate change in agriculture, food insecurity, and poverty by analyzing the opinions of professors and farmers in Nepal. For the methods, we examine a case study on the Terai region, interviews, and a questionnaire. Our research aims to fill gaps in existing research by investigating the relationship between rural farmers and the government to execute solutions that help farming communities. Additionally, this paper addresses how the impacts of climate variability contribute to deep-rooted societal issues of poverty and food insecurity in Nepal. Ultimately, our paper illuminates the problem of the influence of the climate crisis on agriculture worldwide for future generations.

WHO Report Calls for Ambitious Climate Commitments as the only Path to Long-Term Recovery from Pandemic
 
 Geneva, 11 October 2021 - The Philippine Journal of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery joined more than 300 organizations representing at least 45 million nurses, doctors and health professionals worldwide – about three quarters of the global health workforce – and signed an open letter to the 197 government leaders and national delegations ahead of the UN climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow, UK, warning that the climate crisis is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, and calling on world leaders to deliver on climate action.1
 The letter’s publication coincided with the October 11, 2021 release of a new report by the World Health Organization (WHO), which argues that countries can only ensure a long-term recovery from the pandemic by implementing ambitious climate commitments. The report delivers ten high-level recommendations, backed up by action points, resources and case studies, including the need to place health and social justice at the heart of the UN climate talks.2
 
 The letter states: “Wherever we deliver care, in our hospitals, clinics and communities around the world, we are already responding to the health harms caused by climate change.” It further says “Those people and nations who have benefited most from the activities that caused the climate crisis, especially fossil fuel extraction and use, have a great responsibility to do everything possible to help those who are now most at risk.”
 
 José Florencio Lapeña, Editor-in-Chief of the Philippine Journal of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery echoed the statement:
 
 “Wildfires, flooding, heatwaves and droughts impacting people’s health have been on the rise around the world, compounding other health challenges such as the pandemic. In the Philippines, we are already seeing heightened El Niño and La Niña phenomena, with flooding and rising sea levels.
 
 By integrating health and equity into climate policy, the Philippines has the opportunity to protect peoples’ health, maximize returns on investments, and build public support for the urgently needed responses from governments to the climate crisis.”
 
 Both the letter and the report argue that health and equity must be at the center of climate change response; while the letter calls for action, the report provides the blueprint for delivering climate action that will protect the health of people around the world.
 
 The letter, which has been signed by diverse medical organizations and high profile individuals, such as WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Medical Association, the International Council of Nurses and Doctors forExtinction Rebellion Switzerland, calls on all governments to update their national climate commitments under the Paris Agreement, in line with their fair share of limiting warming to 1.5°C. A recent report by UN Climate Change (UNFCCC) found that countries’ collective climate commitments are falling far short of this goal, and would lead to a global temperature rise of at least 2.7°C by the end of the century.3,4
 
 The 45 million health professionals represented in the letter are demanding a rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels; for high income countries to provide the promised transfer of climate funds; for investments in resilient and low carbon health systems; and for pandemic recovery investments to support climate action and reduce social and health inequities. 
 
 The signatories of the open letter represent every region of the world, and include the International Council of Nurses, the World Medical Association, the International Federation of Medical Students Associations, the International Confederation of Midwives, the International Pediatrics Association as well as the Philippine Journal of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery. See full list of signatories at: https://healthyclimateletter.net/signatories/

This article analyzes Christian liturgical elements in the performance Herinner ons [Remember us] as a case study to illustrate the relevance of interperformativity and intertextuality in contemporary climate performance art. The theatrical farewell ceremony, staged by Gouden Haas in 2023, invites the audience to become part of an inclusive ecological community. This invitation incorporates various Christian liturgical elements adapted for the occasion, capitalizing on the ritual repertoire of existing (religious) traditions modified to address the current theme of the climate crisis. Using Herinner ons as a case study, this article argues that intertextuality and interperformativity are relevant in the process of meaning-making prompted by the current climate crisis. In this process, existing liturgical and ritual practices undergo transformation, acquiring new forms and meanings in response to the challenges posed by the climate crisis.

Information voids have been anecdotally marked as a precursor to outbreaks of misinformation during health and climate crises but remain an empirically untested phenomenon. Understanding the public’s information needs and identifying voids is critical if disaster risk communication must preserve lives and livelihoods during climate emergencies. This paper conceptualizes and tests a novel survey tool designed to detect information voids across four key dimensions: information quantity, quality, source, and channel. Following major climate emergencies in 2024, a series of quantitative, online cross-sectional surveys were conducted in four countries, with a total of 897 respondents. The study aimed to assess the reliability and sensitivity of the tool in identifying gaps in information during climate crises. Study 1 in Belgium (n = 202) detected information voids across all dimensions after Storm Boris ( p < .001). Study 2 demonstrated the ability of the tool to detect information voids in other geographical contexts [Germany (n = 197) and Poland (n = 191)] during similar flooding events (both p < 0.01). Study 3 confirmed the tool’s ability to detect information voids across all dimensions in the context of a different climate emergency: Hurricane Helene in Florida, USA (n = 307) ( p < 0.01). Our findings demonstrate the potential of the survey to generate rapid evidence around information gaps and deliver detailed, actionable insights to improve disaster communication during emergencies in various regions. We discuss implications for addressing misinformation and disinformation during climate emergencies, as well as strategies for enhancing flood (disaster) risk communication and management.

This article addresses the impact of the climate crisis on the mental health of young people in the context of legal education. It reviews the evidence on youth mental health regarding the climate crisis and applies it to what is already known about law student well-being. Drawing on theories of learning design, the article considers a range of pedagogical strategies that law schools can use to engage students who are committed to action on climate change through law. A case study, the Climate Justice Initiative at The University of Queensland School of Law, is presented as one example of what is possible. This article emphasises the significance of a partnership approach to student engagement and contends that this may yield benefits especially in the context of climate change-related legal work. Despite the negative psychological impact of the climate crisis on law students, it concludes that there are practical activities that law schools can and should initiate to support student well-being.