Silver linings and wishful thinking? More than human geographies of the coronavirus

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated worldwide lockdown measures have several implications for geographical understandings of society–nature relations and of animal life. For some, the temporary lowering of carbon dioxide emissions during the lockdown has been cause for hope for a silver lining to the pandemic. Some commentators have even adopted the misanthropic diagnosis that humanity is the virus, a stance that invokes racialised assumptions about which parts of the global population should be reduced in order for ‘nature’ to survive. Animal geography has a tradition of addressing the ways in which supposedly improper relationships with non-human animals can serve to racialise specific groups of people. This has been useful in criticising the media fascination with wet markets and Chinese eating habits. However, when pointing to spectacular examples of the ways in which wild animals have responded to lockdown conditions, some geographical commentators have too readily accepted the notion that humans have ‘abandoned’ urban areas. They have been less attentive to the fact that the lockdown was experienced in very different ways by different social groups. This opinion piece concludes by setting out what an approach rooted in ecological Marxism might offer these debates and how it points to the more systemic changes needed to forge a more socially just relationship with the rest of nature.