Gina Caison. 2024. Erosion: American Environments and the Anxiety of Disappearance. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Jonathan Staal. 2024. Climate Propagandas: Stories of Extinction and Regeneration. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Abstract Amid accelerating environmental and socioeconomic shifts, cultural landscapes and Indigenous lifestyles form a dynamic, reciprocal system, continuously reshaping each other. This article presents a conceptual framework exploring how transformations in cultural landscapes influence Indigenous practices, which in turn shape future landscape evolution. The framework operates across three interconnected levels: external forces, landscape changes, and community effects, emphasizing interaction pathways and feedback loops. Through systematic application to the Balinese Subak system, this study demonstrates the framework’s utility in decoding complex transformation processes. Key findings reveal that communities maintain cultural continuity through dynamic knowledge integration combining traditional wisdom with modern innovations. Rather than simple replacement, hybridization processes create social-ecological arrangements maintaining both cultural integrity and adaptive capacity, informing policy and conservation strategies for cultural landscape management.

Abstract This article develops a theoretical framework for trust in science. The framework is created to facilitate analysis of the growing environmental youth movement’s trust in and relation to climate science. This article provides a critical review of previous theoretical discussions of trust in science–public relations and recontextualizes and continues the discussion. This is accomplished by adopting a discourse analytical perspective on trust, knowledge production, and the construction of social order. The study shows how trust and the assessment of trustworthiness lie at the core of knowledge production and the construction of social order as well as how a problematization of trust as a truth-accepting practice is essential to understanding the growing environmental youth movement and its relation to science.

Abstract This article aims to explore the assumptions and implications of the iconic representations of human–geosphere intersections using geopolitical theology concepts to overcome the current mathematization of space as the main impediment to achieve spatial justice. Based on the ideas of noosphere and pneumatosphere, developed by the prominent Slavic figures of the 20th century, V.I. Vernadsky and P. Florenski, the authors suggest that geoethical dilemmas as backcasting prospective modeling may help to explore contingent scenarios that go beyond institutional frameworks and political ecology analysis. The article describes the current situation in human–geosphere intersections and explores the problem of mathematical models as a scapegoat to deal with ontological uncertainty, and finitude as the main problem of the Anthropocene based on the cultural paradigm of Technopoly.

Abstract Pewen ( Araucaria araucana ) and Pewenche (people of the pewen) have been affecting each other’s ecology and survival for centuries. Pewenche have been shaping pewen forest ecology by moving seeds, planting trees, protecting them from threats. In turn, pewen is fundamental in Pewenche economy, culture, and spirituality. The meaning of pewen for Pewenche people is related to their historical and reciprocal interactions, or living with pewen. In this article, I am going to argue that by living together, pewen and Pewenche have been making each other, or engaged in a process of becoming-with. Also, this interaction shapes how pewen conservation is understood. Pewen and Pewenche entanglements challenge conservation efforts rooted in a human–nature dichotomy. Ignoring this relationship reinforces social inequalities and reproduces colonialism through conservation.

Debra J. Davidson. 2024. Feeling Climate Change: How Emotions Govern Our Responses to the Climate Emergency. London: Routledge. Jade Sasser. 2024. Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Abstract This article engages with the concept of multi-species justice as an avenue toward incorporating justice and recognition for the more-than-human world. It identifies several elements crucial to a debate on multi-species justice. Sentience and the animal turn in political philosophy have brought a novel dimension to the discussion of political rights. From this follows a discussion on whether a rights-based approach to multi-species relations is a step toward just representation for the more-than-human world. This is juxtaposed with the rights of nature approach and a focus on legal personhood. The conclusion drawn in this article is that a rights-based approach to multi-species justice offers potential for integrating multi-species concerns into political representation but that there is also a need for integrating recognitional justice.

Abstract This essay addresses the objectification facing the Central Valley region of California in the context of settler colonialism and of native ways of life which characterized it prior to settlement. The region was once famous for its wetland ecosystem and has since seen the entirety of its water rerouted for agricultural use. Environmental and political factors defining the region’s contemporary condition are inherited from settler attempts to mitigate the effects of the natural ecosystem on the identity of the native peoples that lived there, particularly by undermining the living relation with water once held by these communities. Various aspects of the ecosystem continue to exert an unsettling effect on local peoples. Educational institutions in the region ultimately reinforce the separation between the local communities and their ecosystem, reestablishing settler structures.

Abstract Climate change forces farmers and agriculturists to reconsider and reform their relations with rural landscapes and their more-than-human dwellers. This article considers to what extent visions of futures seriously engage with agencies of non-humans to produce more sustainable agricultural sites and practices. It shows how reforms that begin with such engagements can end up reproducing pre-existing harms and injustices. By engaging with Tsing’s hopeful term “the arts of noticing,” we analyze the plans put forward by agricultural engineers, farmers, industrialists, and the Turkish government to reform olive agriculture in the face of climate change in the Aegean region of Turkey. We argue that while the arts of noticing foreground certain sensibilities, they are not sufficient on their own as a means to radically challenge existing rural relations.

Abstract As the climate crisis accelerates, negative emissions technologies (NETs) are increasingly being explored as a supposed climate technofix. Synthetic biology, by which engineering principles are applied to biological systems, recently emerged as a potential NET, exemplifying how proposed responses to the crisis are overly determined by hubris, rather than humility. However, the gravity of the crisis requires a deeper problematization of the dichotomy between hubris and humility. Nevertheless, debates on mitigation strategies cannot ignore that the—highly dubious—likelihood of averting runaway climate change has become dependent on the efficacious implementation of NETs. As such, the pursuit of hubris, or the acquiescence to humility, will, in turn, constitute entirely different pathways for the long-term future of life on Earth.