Environmental Narratives Research Articles

Adapting to climate change: lessons from Chile’s coastal communities

Purpose This study aims to examine the intricate relationship between Chile’s coastal communities and the increasing effects of climate change, with a focus on Caleta Lenga as a case study. Chile’s extensive coastline is closely linked to the country’s economic well-being and the livelihoods of millions of people. The mounting threats posed by climate change require immediate action. To strengthen resilience and reduce risk, adaptive measures are imperative. However, effective adaptation is hindered by numerous barriers, including adaptive capacity and governance challenges. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a case study approach, which centres on Caleta Lenga’s unique socio-environmental and demographic context. This study used semi-structured interviews and historical reconstruction to reveal a socio-economic and environmental narrative that was influenced by significant events and transitions. Findings The residents’ perception of climate change impacts was viewed through the lens of industrial activities and changing weather patterns. This study emphasizes the community’s resilience in the face of changing socio-environmental dynamics. It highlights the importance of informed decision-making, community cooperation and the preservation of ancestral knowledge in promoting adaptive strategies based on community solidarity and collective decision-making. The findings underscore the need for effective adaptation measures that address both adaptive capacity and governance challenges to bolster climate resilience in vulnerable coastal communities. Originality/value The findings underscore the need for effective adaptation measures that address both adaptive capacity and governance challenges to bolster climate resilience in vulnerable coastal communities.

Breaking from the past? Environmental narratives, logics of power, and the (re)production of food insecurity in South Sudan.

Skyrocketing commodity prices and conflict-induced mass hunger in recent years have resuscitated discussions about why famines frequently reoccur in specific spaces of vulnerability. Intervention efforts still too often isolate food (in)security from its interwovenness in the political economy of water and energy and from the role of ideas in forging these interconnections across long time periods. Using (South) Sudanese history to rethink the causes of recurrent food insecurity, we underscore the need to analyse how political elites imagine the role of the water-energy-food nexus and associated environmental narratives in consolidating power. South Sudan's 2011 secession (from Sudan) marked the culmination of a struggle against a state that insurgents regarded as having starved its citizens. However, since independence, its leaders have replicated the nostrum they once combatted: Sudanese resources must 'feed the world'. A fixation with inserting water, energy, and food resources into global markets infuses their strategy, even if such an approach will not engender food abundance.

“Here” Versus “There”: Authoritarian Populism, Environment, and Scapegoat Ecology Among Loggers of Northwestern Russia

This case study contributes to the research on the environmental beliefs of extractive industry workers in an illiberal populist regime. This research is based on semi-structured interviews with logging sector workers of the Russian Northwest—a severely understudied population directly involved in resource extraction. The data shows that these workers understand forestland as two separate localities: the northwestern region of Russia, in which the loggers have expertise and knowledge, and the rest of the country, in which workers don’t have any work or travel experience. This division facilitates a process of hybridization of populist environmental narratives on one hand, and loggers’ science-supported knowledge and experiences on the other. This hybridization of the workers’ beliefs is anchored in, and perpetuated by, Russia’s state-controlled media and its modern authoritarian populist regime. This research offers policy implications and encourages future studies on the politicization of the environment and resources in authoritarian populist states.

Ecocriticism

Abstract Over the last two decades, the Anthropocene and its calamitous signatures of climate upheaval, species loss, and biocultural fragmentation has garnered dedicated attention from ecocritics, ecologists, and the public. As the culmination of a fifteen-year scientific process, however, in early 2024, the International Union of Geological Sciences, or IUGS, rejected the Anthropocene as a unit of geological time in favour of a view of the Anthropocene as a temporally transgressive event. Prominent within the year’s work are trajectories in empirical ecocriticism, ecocritical ageing studies, intermedial ecocriticism, and blue ecocriticism, all of which place emphasis on agency, narrativity, and temporality. As the example of the blue humanities reveals, explored in this essay’s conclusion, intersections between ecocriticism and emerging areas of the environmental humanities continue to generate novel directions. The expansion of interdisciplinary research engaging ecocritics, social scientists, ecologists, and geoscientists is a potential outcome of the IUGS decision. As ecocriticism evolves in the era of the Anthropocene as an event, concerns of more-than-human agency, expression, and creativity will likely attract greater focus. In addition to presenting a broad overview of publications, each of the sections below hones in on one specific work. This review of ecocritical publications in 2023 comprises six sections: 1. Introduction: The Anthropocene from Epoch to Event, which contextualizes the IUGS’s refusal to ratify the Anthropocene as an official geochronological designation; 2. Ecocritical Directions: Towards More-than-Human Agencies, which focuses on the special issue of the journal Anthropocenes, ‘Life Out of Place’; 3. Empirical Ecocriticism: Appraising Environmental Narratives, which considers the landmark edited collection Empirical Ecocriticism; 4. Ecocritical Ageing Studies: Rethinking Narratives of Decline, which turns to the edited collection Aging Studies and Ecocriticism; 5. Intermedial Ecocriticism: Diversifying Anthropocene Narratives, evaluating Jørgen Bruhn and Niklas Salmose’s monograph Intermedial Ecocriticism; and 6. Conclusion: Ecocritical Agency and the Environmental Humanities, which reflects on developments in the blue humanities.

Teaching and learning about race, culture, and environment in a predominately white institution

The environment and natural resource fields have traditionally centered western science, the scholarship of white men, and land conservation strategies that neglect historical inhabitants. These tenets have led to a narrow view of how conservation is defined and created challenges for BIPOC students and professionals to see themselves as full and equal participants in the environmental sciences. The Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources has worked to address these shortcomings through courses designed to address issues of systemic racism and exclusion in the environmental field. In our student’s first year, we pair a fall course focused on communication skills with a spring course that addresses issues of racism and social justice in the environmental fields. We use the fall semester to create a learning community where students build relationships of trust, mutual regard, and care and develop a deeper understanding of their relationship with the environment. In the spring, we present students with a variety of frameworks to think critically about equity, inclusion, positionality, privilege, racism, and diversity. A key learning outcome is to help students consider how historical and present-day dynamics of race and racism have shaped the environmental field. Importantly, we focus on the voices and messages of environmental leaders who have historically been left out of popular environmental narratives. We outline lessons learned in the integration of diversity, equity, and inclusion into our environment and natural resources curriculum and ways to further enhance our centering of equity and inclusion in the curriculum.

Book Review: Empirical Ecocriticism: Environmental Narratives for Social Change

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Industry sector’s influence on the narratives in environmental disclosures in the opinion of reports preparers. Evidence from Poland

The narrative phenomenon in accounting concerns, i.e., the disclosure of environmental information and the impression management of stakeholders. The study examines and assesses the dependence between the company’s industry of activity and the narration perception adopted by the preparers of environmental reports, in particular, the impression management techniques used. To achieve the purpose of the article, an in-depth survey was conducted covering a non-random sample of the employees of Polish enterprises involved in the preparation and reporting of environmental information. Contingency tables and association measures for categorical variables were used in the statistical analysis of the survey data. The analysis results of the collected empirical data confirmed that the company’s industry of activity impacts the way report preparers evaluate the scope and apply narrative strategies, especially impression management techniques. The research expands knowledge on the perception of the importance of environmental disclosures and the issue of environmental narrative practices from an enterprise perspective. The results of the analysis indicated a level of pro-environmental awareness and confirmed the knowledge of narrative strategies and techniques. This study contributes to the discussion on the effects of environmental narrative in accounting, offering yet another element of the current practice diagnosis in this area in Poland.

“Grump Mountain”: Viewers’ Attributions of Agency to a Climate Fiction Film

Environmental narratives—such as the genre of climate fiction—have been the topic of much theorization and discussion for their potential to enrich human ways of thinking about the nonhuman environment. In this paper, we discuss the responses of a small sample of participants who watched a short climate fiction narrative, the trailer to a documentary called Not Ok: A Little Movie about a Small Glacier at the End of the World. Using discourse analysis, we focus on how participants construct agency for the nonhuman narrator of the story—a mountain and former volcano named Ok that was once the site of Okjökull (Ok glacier). Participants’ responses reveal how simple nonhuman agency becomes woven into more complex constructions when the narrative form is discussed. Our analysis shows that only participants who took the perspective of the mountain narrator were able to attribute complex forms of agency to the figure of the mountain and the story it told. Participants who did not relate to Ok mountain as narrator relayed simpler forms of nonhuman agency. Representing nonhuman agency in the subject of the mountain and animating that figure with a human voice (of narration) is a particular narrative strategy; in this study, we were interested in understanding how such a figure might challenge simple tropes of nature’s agency and invite more complex ways of conceiving of nonhuman agency. The climate fiction/documentary trailer also led viewers to ponder the destructive anthropogenic impacts on nonhuman environments. Some participants took the material to be merely an environmental message without engaging the nonhuman narrative aspects. The anthropomorphizing of Ok mountain’s story, as in the video material in our case study, may, we argue, limit interaction-oriented accounts of the entanglement of (non)human agencies. Finally, we conclude, many participants’ tendency to understand environmental stories as (solely) moral messages presents a challenge to both climate fiction and narrative communications.

Ecological Resilience in the Anthropocene: A Case Study of Netflix Series Kaala Paani and its Environmental Narrative in Trauma Studies

Ecological resilience is a concept within ecology that refers to the ability of an ecosystem to absorb disturbances, recover from those disturbances, and adapt to changing conditions while maintaining its essential structure, function, and feedbacks. In simpler terms, it’s the capacity of an ecosystem to bounce back and persist in the face of changes or shocks. Key features of ecological resilience include Ecological resilience is often considered in the context of the Anthropocene, which is the current geological era characterized by significant human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems. Human activities, such as deforestation, pollution, and climate change, can challenge the resilience of ecosystems.

The Far Right and the ‘Gifts of Nature’ in Rural Spain

Vox, a rising far-right party, plays on concerns about the emptying Spanish countryside to promote its authoritarian version of traditional values. Lately it has developed an environmental narrative portraying rural life as under threat from progressive policies.

“We have our own cultural ways of being in nature”: New perspectives on African Americans’ relationships to U.S. National Parks

Explanations for why African Americans are under-represented in U.S. national parks tend to focus on socioeconomic barriers, cultural norms, socialization practices, and discrimination. There exist, however, counternarratives that challenge prevailing notions that African Americans lack strong connections to national parks focusing on their environmentalism and offers new directions for further research. Using focus groups and qualitative methods, this study explored how African Americans perceive national parks. Our findings revealed nuanced and critical Black-centered themes. One encapsulates resurgent fear of racial oppression in nature driven by the current political climate. We also found a desire to reclaim and recreate a Black-centric environmental narrative. We conclude that applying a historical and cultural lens and recognizing environmental values among African Americans provide a basis for the National Park Service and other agencies to build stronger relationships with African Americans.

Particulate Matters: Air Pollution and the Political Ecology of a Boundary Object

Air pollution now affects 92 percent of the global population and is responsible for one out of nine deaths, nearly two thirds of which occur in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. Emerging work on the political ecology of air pollution examines how its noxious effects are unevenly distributed across social categories such as race and class. Geographers know much less about the social mechanisms through which air pollution and its risks and mitigation efforts are calculated, however. Situated within northern Thailand’s haze crisis and its broader agrarian transitions, we employ ethnographic and geospatial methods to theorize air pollution as a boundary object. Throughout the region, uncertainty over the causes and constitution of air pollution and its flexible interpretation have driven the development of civil society sensor networks and the adoption of portable Air Quality Index monitors and hot spot locating apps. These increasingly widespread technologies not only democratize data but also play a growing role in shifting environmental narratives of seasonal air pollution. By homing in on the boundary work of air pollution, however, we argue that although new, more widely accessible modes of knowledge production can seemingly reduce uncertainty and shift environmental policy, they can also obscure the long-standing political-economic inequalities on which environmental problems are based. This article advances current debates at the nexus of political ecology and science and technology by demonstrating how particulate matter matters differently within and between social groups and the role of sociality in environmental change and the production of political space.

India's solar soft power

The politics of knowledge production reveals the exercise of power in societies, with narratives a key means to project national image. This article examines narratives used by Government of India representatives to frame knowledge about the nation's energy transition and to present India as an environmental leader globally. Drawing from government reports, press statements, and speeches over the last five years, this work details Indian climate change and other environmental narratives, including their emphasis on solar energy. International solar, renewable, and climate narratives are meant to project Indian strength and leadership, while also demanding finance and accountability from the nations historically responsible for the bulk of carbon emissions. Although distinct, the reviewed narratives assert India's solar soft power. Non-coercive soft power communications are a means to influence perceptions and values about a nation. If successful, soft power can amplify the power and prestige of a nation. Solar signals and actions are a means to encourage financers to invest in India, particularly the green sector. This review of Indian government's narratives and practice related to the transition away from fossil fuels unearths the planning, policies, and power structures which exacerbate existing unevenness in relation to energy.

The Green Mirage: The EU’s Complex Relationship with Palm Oil Biodiesel in the Context of Environmental Narratives and Global Trade Dynamics

In the early 2000s, biofuels like biodiesel and bioethanol were seen as renewable alternatives to petroleum, driven by rising crude oil prices and environmental concerns. Palm oil became a key biodiesel raw material, turning the European Union (EU) into a major importer. However, sustainable palm oil concerns emerged in the EU in 2014, leading to trade disputes and import restrictions, with a goal to phase out palm oil biodiesel by 2030. This research explores the EU’s palm oil biodiesel policy impact, focusing on key producers, EU imports (crude and refined palm oil, biodiesel), the EU’s role in the global biodiesel network, and alignment with a green narrative. Analyzing trade data, we find that, despite concerns, the EU has not significantly reduced palm oil-related imports, highlighting the market’s complex relationship to policy. This suggests that the EU’s commitment to environmentally sustainable economic development may not align with market stakeholders’ preferences, emphasizing the complex interdependencies between the global biodiesel market and policy areas like sustainability, economy, energy, and environment.

Interspecies Relations in the Midst of the Russia–Ukraine War

To convey the scale of destruction that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused to animals, plants, and ecosystems, analysts frequently use national-scale maps, aggregate figures, and the concept of ecocide. Although necessary, these moves risk portraying Ukraine exclusively as a zone of catastrophe, while obscuring the character of on-the-ground socioecological relations. This article enlarges the space for environmental narratives about war between catastrophe, heroism, and resilience by describing interspecies encounters along Odesa’s Black Sea Coast, in the Askania-Nova Biosphere Reserve, and in the Kharkiv Region.

Binding and Liberating: Recipes for Environmental Narratives

Crafting narratives alternative to dominant discourses of natural-cultural depletion is one of the signature goals of the ecocritical “test kitchen.” This culinary analogy highlights deeper similarities: both recipes and eco-narratives create symbolic and material connections between people and the environment, which, in turn, enable transformative practices. But how can we craft messages that are generative of positive processes of transformation? Or, put it differently, what are recipes for eco-narratives? This article proposes a versatile method to test what uses of language and dynamics elicited by texts might produce environmental action. The culinary experiment draws on Italian second-wave feminism, a theoretical “cuisine” that has engaged with language to rework dominant relationships to others and to the world. Feminist strategies, including the practice of “starting from oneself,” the reclaiming of the personal as political, and the retracing of alternative genealogies, have used language as a means simultaneously of liberation and of reconnection with the material, embodied world. This liberating binding is repurposed as a key technique to craft and identify effective eco-narratives. Here, feminist strategies intersect with the chemical and social operations of cooking through discussion of three recipes tied to the author’s Mediterranean origins: a milk pudding, eggless fresh pasta, and a type of ancient-grains bread. Through the processes of binding and softening, common to preparations that employ starch, the analysis demonstrates that a starchy language used both to bind (us to material life) and to soften (power structures) has enormous environmental potential. While primarily serving scholars in Italian studies and ecocriticism, this culinary method invites adaptations across food cultures and gender identities.

How global narratives shape local management: A history of fire in the tropical savannas of Belize and Guyana

AbstractThe suppression of anthropogenic fire is an important legacy of European colonisation worldwide. Fire suppression has undermined human livelihoods and fire‐dependent ecologies. Belize and Guyana are the only former British colonies on the mainland of Central and South America. Both countries have fire‐dependent tropical savanna ecosystems, where fire is used within local livelihoods, for example, for hunting. We compare the creation and implementation of savanna fire suppression and management policies and projects by agencies in twentieth to twenty‐first‐century Belize and Guyana, and the extent to which global environmental narratives have shaped this process. In both countries, a picture emerges of weak state efforts to control fire, largely driven by economic concerns. In colonial Belize, the state made intermittent attempts to suppress or manage savanna fires in limited areas, owing to interest in pine forestry. In Guyana, the colonial state did not attempt to control fires, given economic interest in cattle ranching, and the remoteness of the savannas. Since 2000, both states have developed new fire policies, and state agencies, conservation non‐governmental organisations and Indigenous advocacy groups have won funding for fire‐related projects. We show that these contemporary policies and projects, like those of the colonial period, primarily financed by inconsistent international funding, continue to lean heavily on international discourses about fire that make assumptions about fire problems and propose solutions incompatible with local realities. Understanding the local geography, ecology and politics, and recognising the ways colonial fire legacies altered, and continue to impact these places, could inform more just and productive approaches to working with local fire users in Belize, Guyana and beyond.

Ocean Literacy and Marine Environmental Narratives: Interpretations of Sustainability in the Deep Sea

Ocean Literacy and Marine Environmental Narratives: Interpretations of Sustainability in the Deep Sea

Expanding Nature's storytelling: extended reality and debiasing strategies for an eco-agency.

Communication in sustainability and environmental sciences is primed to be substantially changed with extended reality technology, as the emergent Metaverse gives momentum to building an urgent pro-environmental mindset. Our work focuses on immersive econarratives, supported by virtual and augmented realities, and their potential to favor an improved relationship with the environment. Considering social aggregation dynamics and cognitive bias, this article intends to (1) make the case for a new environmental narrative; (2) position extended reality as privileged settings to sustain this narrative; and (3) suggest that this storytelling should be informed by Nature's empirical evidence, i.e., ecosystem data. We see this as a chance to think this Metaverse with an embedded environmental consciousness, informed by behavior-change research.

REINTERPRETATION OF ECOLOGICAL VERSES TO IMPLEMENT ECO-ETHICS IN ISLAMIC EDUCATION

Modern commentators and intellectuals have begun to explore studies that link the position of humans and plants as a unity of living things created by God's holy creation. Generally, when talking about ecology, humans are used as the main character in caring for nature. Many verses in the Qur’an talk about how the human spirit is metaphorized with ecological elements. As a religious principle, Islam describes monotheism as a syajarah thayyibah whose roots reach the ground and its branches reach the sky (QS: 14:24). This research is qualitative descriptive-analytical research. Researchers will collect data related to this research. Furthermore, the data was analyzed to find a solution with the Maqashidi Interpretation method then relate it to how ecological ethics lives in Islamic education. This research focuses on QS. Al-Fatihah: 1 and Ar-Rum: 30. The result of this research show that the redaction of rabb al-'alamin in QS. Al-Fatihah shows the closeness between Rabb and 'alamin. On the other hand, the Qur’an explains that natural damage occurs due to human activities (QS.30:41). The implied meaning in the two verses is that humans, nature, and other creatures need each other and are encouraged to respect each other. An understanding of comprehensive ecological verses will have a good effect on ecological ethics in the world of Islamic education. The educational process provides knowledge about how nature works and how to interact with the natural world. The growing eco-Islamic movement utilises Islamic educational institutions, both traditional and modern as centres of environmental learning and teaching. The Islamic educational landscape remains essential in broadcasting environmental narratives that present ethical and educational visions relevant to contemporary ecological movements.