Biophysical World Research Articles

Towards new ecologies of automation: Robotics and the re-engineering of nature

Climate/ecological breakdown and automation are two defining challenges of the current era, yet there is little research on their conjunctural intersection. Across experimental landscapes from agriculture to conservation to mining to weather modification, automation technologies are increasingly being presented as the key to fixing, managing and even transcending the turbulent ecologies of the Anthropocene which threaten social and economic reproduction. This emerging set of visions, experiments and uses rest on the systemic capabilities of bundled robotic and autonomous system technologies (e.g. advanced sensors machine vision, artificial intelligence, robotics) to see, know and intervene in the biophysical world in new ways. This, we argue, potentially represents a shift beyond logics of mitigation and adaptation towards engineering nature in the face of converging environmental threats. Synthesising insights from existing literature, we develop a conceptual framework for understanding the ‘new ecologies of automation’ and diverse, site-specific applications across what we call ‘operational ecologies’. We then explore a range of diverse exemplars, creating a typology of operational ecologies before discussing key logics, themes and directions for critical research. Overall, the paper makes a significant and original contribution to knowledge in critical geography, and the under-researched intersection between political ecology and automation studies.

Toni Morrison and the Natural World: An Ecology of Color. By Anissa Janine Wardi

“The fusion of history onto the natural world is the very bedrock of African American ecocritical thought” writes Anissa Janine Wardi in the introduction of Toni Morrison and the Natural World (5). Few writers exemplify the inextricability of Blackness and the environment like Toni Morrison, whose works—including Sula (1973), Tar Baby (1981), and Beloved (1987), among others—deal explicitly with the complex intermeshing of Black and natural histories. Building on a long tradition of ecocriticism that has largely ignored African American literature, Wardi applies a new method focused on the interrelationality between community and environment. In her analysis, the biophysical world is as important as Morrison’s novels: from connecting the etymological roots of diaspora, to seed spreading, to analyzing the life cycle of regeneration through fire, Wardi’s writing is focused, well-researched, delightfully critical and prompts further curiosity and study. Toni Morrison and the Natural World is comprised of four chapters and a conclusion, each of which centers a particular color (e.g. “Orange Ecology, Death, and Renewal: Fire, Ash, and Immolation in God Help and Sula”). Drawing also on the five senses—taste, touch, smell, sound, and sight—as an organizing concept, Wardi engages the reader through their own observations, marrying the personal to the political through the book’s signal colors (brown, green, blue, and orange) and all of the various overlaps among these hues.

Dramaturgies for Re-imagining Murray-Darling Basin governing

ABSTRACTHistorically, governing, and thus planning, the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) has been framed in a plethora of ways. Seemingly, ‘the plan’ and planning has to be all things to all people, but the reforms, instituted in the Water Act 2007 (Cwlth), have resulted in greater complexity, uncertainty and controversy. Effective governing of the Basin along an unfolding, viable trajectory within an Anthropocene-world seems more elusive than ever. In this context, we propose a research and praxis agenda for dramaturgy as an initiative that seeks ‘effective’ water governance in the MDB. A dramaturge is someone,group, body or process who writes/adapts a play, brings forth a particular type of performance set in an ever-changing audience/context. Dramaturges engage in praxis. Two exemplar dramaturgies , developed through ex poste and ex ante analyses, are outlined. Each can be refined or consolidated in an on-going deliberative inquiry-process that generates social learning and effects concerted action for future MDB governance. Our research inquiry is exploratory but is based on a choice to frame governance from a cyber-systemic perspective, a praxis continually enacted through the interactions of actors, their symbols and frames and feedback dynamics between the social and biophysical world. We show how a dramaturgical framework can be used to analyse a policy process to reveal the important symbolic and performative dimensions, which are usually unrecognised.

Money, soils and stewardship–creating a more fruitful relationship?

This paper examines the complicated linkages between money, soils, and ethical land stewardship. Law and policy reform is important, but the many impediments to voluntary soil stewardship that exist must be dealt with. To expect that people will do things that are not financially feasible for them is to invite failure.The paper focuses on the economic capacity of volunteers to ‘do the right thing’. It initially uses a “coupled systems” framework to examine the ecological, social and institutional system that must be managed to achieve soils sustainability. The paper then considers the role of money, including in voluntary stewardship. Finally, the paper considers how to address the financial impediments to voluntarism, and possible policies to make land stewardship more feasible, efficient and equitable.We discuss “soil” as a unit, “soil systems” when considering soil's components, and “terrestrial systems” when considering the surrounding landscape or biological system. We canvass some unique aspects of soils that are challenging for governance and management. We also consider ‘socio-ecological’ and ‘social-ecological-economic’ systems to help us understand human interactions with the biophysical world. These system perspectives show that soils governance also interacts with the governance of agriculture, biodiversity and other relevant topics.The discussion draws on theory, international examples, and Australian evidence. Systems thinking involves observation to identify patterns to explain the dynamic relationships between the components of what is being studied (e.g. machines, nature, soils or society). We apologise to readers who may find this approach daunting, but some complexity is inevitable.

The implications of digital visual media for human–nature relationships

The implications of digital visual media for human–nature relationships

Marxism and the logics of dis/integration

Marxism is a large and diverse body of thought that has weathered many storms over the last 150 years. While its explanatory and political relevance to today's world is enormous, Marxism lacks mass appeal and largely resides in universities (notably, the social sciences and humanities). While this is, in one sense, a sign of defeat, in another sense it's been productive insofar as it's offered exponents space and time to make sense of capitalism's ever-changing configurations. This article homes-in on classical Marxism and its enduring importance as a tool of analysis and political thinking. It focuses on the author's attempts to understand how the biophysical world is entrained in the dynamics of capital accumulation, especially during the period of neoliberal political economy that began around 35 years ago. Marxist geographers continue to offer important insights into capitalism in a more-than-capitalist world that is, nonetheless, utterly dominated by the contradictory logics of growth, economic competition, endless technological innovation, uneven development, accumulation by dispossession and crisis. For me, classical Marxism's attention to capitalism as an expansive ‘totality’ is critical, obliging us to attend to how different places, people and political projects are brought into a single, if exceedingly complex, universe. The article reflects on how the embrace of classical Marxism necessarily folds the professional into the personal, though in ways that inevitably highlight some of the contradictions that Marx and Engels identified. It's to be hoped that a new and talented generation of Marxist geographers will continue the work initiated 50 years ago by David Harvey and others. The article suggests that a key research frontier for Marxist geography is normative: what sorts of political visions and proposals will gain traction in a variegated yet tightly connected world where capitalism is so manifestly dangerous for people and planet?

A new way forward for ocean-climate policy as reflected in the UNFCCC Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue submissions

ABSTRACT The ocean plays a central role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, climate and ocean policies have been historically siloed. After decades of slow convergence, the Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue, decided at COP25 and launched online in December 2020, was the first forum for Parties and non-Party stakeholders to the UNFCCC to give their perspectives on how the climate regime should address ocean-related mitigation and adaptation. The Ocean Dialogue was informed by 47 prior open submissions provided by a broad swath of actors from across the UN system and from civil society, including traditional and youth voices. Our analysis of the submissions demonstrates a political evolution towards the nexus among climate, ocean, and biodiversity regimes. The submissions uniformly acknowledge that ocean and climate systems are inextricably linked, and that consideration of ocean-based action will strengthen climate action and vice versa. Salient themes of the submissions include changing ocean impacts, carbon sinks and blue carbon opportunities, and the need for ecosystem resilience, biodiversity management and improved understanding of normative and institutional frameworks. There is a strong call to recognize the interconnectedness of the biophysical world. Similar themes emerged during the actual Ocean Dialogue and the subsequent informal meeting on next steps. The main message conveyed is the dire necessity to implement strong stewardship and good governance of the blue planet in a disrupted climate using cooperative and concrete actions. This analysis highlights the need for a continued transdisciplinary international dialogue on the ocean and climate change which elevates the ocean-climate-biodiversity nexus via collaborative science, finance, and policy. Key policy insights Ocean and marine ecosystem impacts of climate change were widely acknowledged, and referenced by ninety-one percent of submissions. After decades of slow integration of ocean into climate policy, the Ocean Dialogue submissions acknowledge that climate policy must address linkages with the ocean and its biodiversity. Concerns include changing ocean impacts, carbon sinks and blue carbon opportunities, and the need for ecosystem resilience, biodiversity management and increased institutional interactions. Continuation of this Dialogue, with strengthened collaboration between States and non-state actors, may give rise to multilateral and multilevel decision-making toward sustainable climate, ocean and biodiversity action.

A different kind of emancipation? From lifestyle to form-of-life

The modern outlook on emancipation has made its quest inseparable from a quest for endless enhancement, based on an ever-more intensive exploitation of the biophysical world. This accounts for how unsustainable ways of living are reiterated worldwide, in spite of evidence of their deleterious effects. The underpinnings of unsustainability, and a major impediment to conceiving alternatives, come from an account of the human as ontologically indeterminate, crushed on doing, both vulnerable and powerful towards the world. The impasse of such ambivalence hampers social theory critique, from post-humanist ontologies to the case for degrowth and lifestyle politics. The article outlines a different take on emancipation. An account is provided of form-of-life as a doing tailored to being – not as a self-enclosed monad but as a result of the encounter between own ‘inclination’ and the world. This theoretical perspective discloses a research program on emergent mobilisations.

Co‐producing a fire and seasons calendar to support renewed Indigenous cultural fire management

AbstractIndigenous knowledge emphasises the importance of cultural connections between humans and the biophysical world. In the face of threats to the maintenance and transfer of Indigenous knowledge, novel approaches such as seasonal calendars are emerging as tools to share knowledge and guide management of natural and cultural resources. The renewal of Indigenous cultural fire management in southeast Australia provided an opportunity to explore whether the co‐production of a fire and seasons calendar, using Western and Indigenous knowledges, can support cultural fire management. We present a case study of cross‐cultural collaboration between scientists and the Banbai Aboriginal rangers at Wattleridge Indigenous Protected Area, New South Wales. We reviewed literature from various disciplines (archaeological, ethnohistorical, Indigenous and ecological) and undertook participatory action research and interviews to collate relevant information. This was synthesised in Winba = Fire, the Banbai Fire and Seasons Calendar, which is used by the Banbai rangers to guide cultural burning, share cross‐cultural knowledge and increase awareness of Indigenous cultural fire management. The process of co‐producing knowledge, revitalising culture, caring for Country, working together and supporting self‐determination is relevant for many Indigenous communities around the world.

Social memory and niche construction in a hypervariable environment.

Communities in southwest Madagascar have co-evolved with a hypervariable environment and climate. The paleoclimate record reflects major fluctuations in climatic conditions over the course of Holocene human settlement. Archeological evidence indicates short-term occupations of sites, suggesting that frequent residential mobility and flexible subsistence strategies have been central features of life on the southwest coast for millennia. Today, despite rapid changes linked to globalization and increasing market integration, mobility and subsistence flexibility remain key to the lives of communities of the region. In this article, we advocate closer consideration of the social dimensions of the human niche, and their inextricable links to the biophysical world. Specifically, we explore the theoretical implications of applying a Niche Construction Theory framework to understanding the role of social memory in constructing the human niche of SW Madagascar. We look at how social memory facilitates mobility, resource use, and the creation and maintenance of social identities and ties among communities of foragers, farmers, herders, and fishers living under hypervariable climatic conditions. We conducted an extensive oral history survey in SW Madagascar between 2017 and 2018. We interviewed over 100 elders from 32 different communities. Our analysis of the oral history archive resulted in the development of a theoretical model of human niche construction centered on the maintenance and transmission of social memory. We argue that social memory and the ability to transmit oral histories of exchange, reciprocity, and cooperation, as well as ecological knowledge are key adaptive mechanisms that facilitate mobility and access to resources in a hypervariable environment. The preservation and transmission of oral histories and ecological knowledge are thus critical to future resilience and sustainability.

Putting the Anthropocene into Practice: Methodological Implications

The foundational premise of the Anthropocene, constant across the range of proposed definitions, is that the biophysical world is now profoundly social. This carries substantive methodological implications: If the environment is ecosocial, surely the way it is studied must be, too. Yet, as our bibliometric analysis demonstrates, the bulk of academic articles on the Anthropocene published between 2002 and 2019 focus on its conceptual implications rather than embracing its analytical consequences. Further, of the subset of articles that engage the Anthropocene empirically, fewer than a quarter employ interdisciplinary methods at even a cursory level. In response, we outline an alternative approach, critical physical geography (CPG), which enables researchers to pick up the methodological and conceptual gauntlet thrown down by the Anthropocene. Work in CPG begins from the premise that all biophysical questions are also social, but it goes beyond a simple mixed methods approach to emphasize the politics both of how knowledge is produced and of how it is taken up outside academia. We illustrate the utility of a CPG approach for analysis of the Anthropocene via succinct examples of research in critical dendrochronology, geomorphology, and remote sensing.

Nature, Labour, and the Making of Ecological Peripheries

AbstractThis article briefly considers how the integration of the biophysical world into our analyses of the past can enhance our understanding of the socio-economic inequalities of the modern world. Taking Ulbe Bosma's The Making of Periphery as its central reference point, it argues that the process of “peripheralization” – generally treated as an economic or social phenomenon – can also be usefully approached as an interaction between human and non-human forces. It uses the example of Southeast Asian rubber production to show how the different arrangements of people, plants, soil and water on European estates and indigenous smallholdings gave the latter distinct ecological advantages that boosted their oft-cited economic competitiveness, and that consequently forced plantations to extract even more value from cheap labour. In this sense, the environmental history of Southeast Asian rubber offers further evidence for Bosma's core theses about the heterogeneity of peripheralization processes and the importance of demography and labour relations in shaping them.

The Role of Hybrid Methodologies in Understanding Complex Environmental Issues and Promoting Social Justice

AbstractClimate adaptation research often ignores the broader socio-cultural human sphere within which climate change takes place. Dominant viewpoints on climate adaptation derive from the biophysical world that often excludes social, economic, and political contexts that also connect to biophysical changes. Hybrid methodological mixed methods approaches to climate adaptation provide paradigmatically different questions. This perspective is useful for identifying socio-cultural aspects of climatic adaptation. To demonstrate the power of a hybrid approach for interconnecting human and non-human factors implicated in climate adaptation, we deploy an in-depth case study of N. Benin, West African farmers who increasingly must configure their farming methods to tackle erratic changes in weather. The case study examines the role gender dynamics play in climate adaptation that found few gender differences in the ways male and female farmers perceive the biophysical aspects of climate adaptation on their subsistence farming lifestyle from their initial village climate survey. However, the qualitative components of their study uncovered significant gender differences in socio-cultural adaptation challenges, vulnerabilities, and future lifestyle opportunities. We discuss the transformative policy implications about ignoring gender difference and the importance of taking an intersectional approach to variation in climate adaptation policy making.

Indigenous Security Measures in Can-eo and Talubin, Northern Philippines

This paper showcases the indigenous security measures practiced in Barangay Can-eo and Barangay Talubin at Bontoc, Mountain Province. This qualitative research used interviews in gathering data that were supported with library research. This study explored on the effectiveness and contributions of the ritualistic and non-ritualistic security measures to individual safety and security of the community. It also exposes the relationship of the identified indigenous security measures to the Bontoc indigenous world view. It was found in the study that the ritualistic and non-ritualistic security measures in Barangay Can-eo and Barangay Talubin are effective and some are still being used and observed until today. The indigenous security measures are part of the relationship they have with nature, their environment and towards each other. It is a composite understanding and respect on how they deal with peace and order. It is concluded in this study that “Rituals emphasize the relationships between [Bontoc] farmers, the biophysical world, the social world and the supernatural world,” June Prill-Brett (2016, 101-111). Despite the changing dynamics of safety and security in the present time due to the sophistication of technology, education and modernity, the indigenous security measures still exist in Barangays Can-eo and Talubin because of the deep-seated respect that the people demonstrate on the rituals and non-ritualistic symbols and archetypes. The indigenous security measures reinforce community trust in relation to property and individual protection as well as community fortification.

From Principles to Practice: A Place for Stories

From Principles to PracticeA Place for Stories Paul Hirt (bio) "We inhabit an endlessly storied world." —William Cronon, "A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative" Storytelling is the most ancient and arguably the most effective form of learning-based communication that humans employ. Stories make meaning out of an overwhelmingly complex world. They draw connections between events, ascribe significance, and offer lessons. As William Cronon observed in 1992, "Narrative is a peculiarly human way of organizing reality."1 By placing an observer at the center of the narrative, stories make our world legible. They allow listeners to identify; they appeal at an intellectual and emotional level. Scholars steeped in the scientific method can easily lose sight of this when communicating their research. Humanities scholars more consistently understand and embrace narrative, but even they can drift far from shore if their only intended audience is a small group of like-minded specialists. Committed to reaching a broad audience and hoping to make an impact in the world, the Humanities for the Environment collective fully embraced storytelling as a central part of its practice and as a practical means for illustrating principles. The Humanities for the Environment (HfE) project facilitated an extraordinary conversation among a diverse group of humanists and social scientists about the relationship between human societies and the biophysical world we inhabit. One key aspect of our intellectual work was to explore the emerging concept of sustainability, which clearly unites the social and biophysical worlds in important ways. Sustainability [End Page 74] discourse regularly addresses environmental problems but usually in economic, political, social, and technological contexts. Being mostly humanities scholars, we lamented how sustainability discourse is too dominated by material considerations like technological innovation and economic development, when cultural elements such as values and worldviews were so obviously fundamental to sustainability challenges and solutions. A related conversation centered on the degree to which environmental problem-solving efforts often ignore affiliated problems of social injustice. All of us hoped to find a way to merge concerns for the environment with concerns for social justice within sustainability discourse. Indeed, this desire to articulate a combined discourse of environmental sustainability and social justice became the overarching theme of our West Cluster work on HfE. As Sally Kitch mentioned in "Experimental Humanities and Humanities for the Environment," the process of working together across disciplines and intellectual paradigms was facilitated by our decision up front to seek tangible, socially relevant outcomes for our collaboration. One of those outcomes was the Archive of Hope and Cautionary Tales,2 which was born during our conversations about the role of narrative in articulating the connection between environmental sustainability and social justice. A ubiquitous global catchword nowadays, sustainability originated in natural resource management science in the nineteenth century but became virtually a household word after 1987 with the publication of Our Common Future by the UN Commission on Environment and Development (also known as the Brundtland Commission report).3 This report defined sustainable development as that which "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."4 Authors of the report argued that economic development would not be successful or sustainable if it did not integrate environmental, technological, political, social, and cultural considerations. By the twenty-first century "sustainability" became the most common term to describe efforts to achieve a proper balance between economic development, environmental protection, and social justice. Nowadays sustainability can mean almost anything, like another ubiquitous and often-abused term "green." The HfE workshop participants debated whether we should ignore, resist, embrace, or seek to redefine sustainability. In the end, we chose to explore its social meanings [End Page 75] through real-world stories of people and communities struggling to integrate development with environmental protection and social justice. Focusing on the medium of narrative, we committed to generating stories rich in the experience of human beings trying to live more responsibly with each other and among our fellow species in the diversity of life—stories that would reveal the complexity of the struggle as well as the alternatingly anxious concern for the future and hopeful embrace of problem-solving...

Embracing the sacred: an indigenous framework for tomorrow’s sustainability science

Mahalo (thank you) for reading our paper. What you will find is an attempt to synthesize and compare the strengths and weaknesses of Indigenous and Western perspectives on sustainability and a proposed path leading to the integration of these two perspectives into a sustainability framework that considers resources as much more than commodities. We enter into this discussion with 50 years of experience between us, both of us products of our experimentation with the integration that we are advocating. From this experimentation, we have concluded that sacred relationship must be the foundation of any successful sustainability effort, with success achieved only when resource management practices and policies engage the spirit and are aligned with equitable and respectful interactions among human and non-human. By sacred, we refer to those sentiments, actions, and commitments that emerge from spirit-based relationships that are founded on love, respect, care, intimate familiarity, and reciprocal exchange. By spirit, we refer to that which gives life to the material body, the enigma that is our collective conscious, subconscious, and unconscious beings. In formulating this paper, we made three assumptions: (1) the need to shift our spiritual selves, and our collective weight and resulting ecological footprints, is fully evidenced by the failure of purely Western approaches to sustain the social and biophysical world around us; (2) each and every citizen of our planet contributes to both sustainability’s advancement and its demise; and (3) by engaging the spirit and reclaiming sacredness in all our relationships, we can help move the Earth community towards her fullest potential of wellbeing. Our hope here is that we are able to grow the connections among a nascent but rapidly evolving transformational vision for sustainability, the enlightened thinking of contemporaries, and inspired ancestral knowledge. To facilitate the continued emergence of this transformative vision, we marry Western sustainability concepts to an Indigenous sacredness framework.

Climate change trends and environmental impacts in the Makonde Communal Lands, Zimbabwe

During the last century, climate has increasingly become variable and changeable, with significant deviations from the observed normal averages, which often leads to disruptive consequences to ecosystems and livelihoods. Climate change induced environmental challenges are viewed to be particularly severe to economically challenged tropical societies including the Zimbabwean rural communities. We sought to determine local level climate change trends and associated biophysical implications in the Makonde Communal Lands of Zimbabwe. Our findings suggest that there has been significant climate change in the Makonde Communal Lands since 1962. The climate change observed has induced the deterioration of ecosystem productivity, diversity and services, to the detriment of human livelihoods. We provide insights into how to better understand local level dynamics between climate change and local ecosystem goods and services as the basis of livelihood in marginalised rural communities. Among the key reasons for concern about impacts of anthropogenic activities on climate is the fact that changing climate has direct impacts on the biophysical world, which in turn is a vital asset for human livelihoods, economies and general well-being.

Navigating through an “ecological desert and a sociological hell”

Purpose– The governance of the relationship between humans and the biophysical world has been based on a paradigm characterized by dualistic thinking and scientism. This has led to the Anthropocene. The purpose of this paper is to reframe human-biosphere governance in terms of “cyber-systemics”, a neologism that is useful, the authors argue, not only for breaking out of this dualistic paradigm in human-environmental governance but also of the dualism associated with the use of systems and cybernetics.Design/methodology/approach– In this paper the authors draw on their own research praxis to exemplify how the intellectual lineages of cybernetics and systems have been mutually influencing their doings, and how new forms of governance practices that explore different framing choices might contribute to building innovative governance approaches attuned to the problematique of the Anthropocene, for instance through institutional designs for cyber-systemic governance.Findings– The growing popularity of the Anthropocene as a particular framing for the circumstances, if it is to transformative and thus relevant demands informed critique if it is to help change the trajectory of human-life on earth. The authors offer arguments and a rationale for adopting a cyber-systemic perspective as a means to avoid the dangers in pursuing the current trajectory of our relationship with the biophysical world as, for example, climate change. The essay frames an invitation for a systemic inquiry into forms of governance more suited to the contemporary circumstances of humans in their relationships with the biophysical world.Research limitations/implications– The research essay challenges many taken-for-granted epistemological assumptions within the cybernetics and systems intellectual communities. A case for radical change is mounted; the means to effect this change, other than through changes in discourse remain unclear though it is apparent that changes to praxis and institutional forms and arrangements will be central.Practical implications– Cyber-systemic capabilities need to be developed; this requires investment and new institutions that are conducive to cyber-systemic understandings and praxis.Originality/value– Understanding the global environmental crisis as an emergent outcome of current commitments to dualistic governance choices demands a reframing of much of what humans have done, re-investment in cyber-systemics offers a moral and practical response.

Political ecology II

This report provides an update to Peter Walker’s 2005 report that questioned the degree to which political ecologists substantively incorporate ecology in their analyses. Since the publication of this article, a range of scholars have characterized political ecology as unengaged with ecology. This report documents a range of engagements with ecology (or the nonhuman biophysical world more generally) by work strongly influenced by or aligned with political ecology in the realms of environmental politics and the political economy of environmental change. This brief review demonstrates that, while representing a minority of political ecology scholarship, work variously engaging with ecology remains an active and fertile area. The report concludes with a cautionary note that portrayals of political ecology as inhospitable to ecological engagement could actually lead to an erosion of such scholarship. Such an erosion would have severe consequences for the human-and-environment field more generally since political ecology (along with cultural ecology) remains the field’s major place-based approach.

Michael Raupach (1950–2015)

Michael Raupach (1950–2015)