Socio-ecological Justice Research Articles

Going Back to the Roots

Given growing human influence on the earth system's functioning, caring for nature has never been this critical. However, whether for economic interests or ‘wilderness’ preservation, attempts to save nature have been grounded on a Western scientific philosophy of separating it from people's ways of living, especially through ‘protected areas'. Under the banner ‘convivial conservation', which advocates socio-ecological justice and structural transformations in the global economic system, an alternative idea called ‘promoted areas’ has been proposed, advocating for conservation which promotes nature for, to, and by humans. Here, we argue that ‘promoted areas’ are best fitted with decolonial thinking in conservation science and practice. In southern Africa, one available ‘decolonial option’ is Ubuntu philosophy, which is anchored on the ethical principle of promoting life through mutual caring and sharing between and among humans and nonhumans. Ubuntu disengages from western ways of knowing about human–environment interactions, as it is predicated on promoting the many links between humans and nonhumans. From this, we argue that instituted through Ubuntu, ‘promoted areas’ re-initiate a harmony between human beings and physical nature, as practices of individualistic, excessive extractions of nonhuman nature are discouraged, and human–nonhuman relationships based on respect, solidarity, and collaboration are celebrated.

Selective border permeability: Governing complex environmental issues through and beyond COVID-19

COVID-19 has changed the permeability of borders in transboundary environmental governance regimes. While borders have always been selectively permeable, the pandemic has reconfigured the nature of cross-border flows of people, natural resources, finances and technologies. This has altered the availability of spaces for enacting sustainability initiatives within and between countries. In Southeast Asia, national governments and businesses seeking to expedite economic recovery from the pandemic-induced recession have selectively re-opened borders by accelerating production and revitalizing agro-export growth. Widening regional inequities have also contributed to increased cross-border flows of illicit commodities, such as trafficked wildlife. At the same time, border restrictions under the exigencies of controlling the pandemic have led to a rolling back and scaling down of transboundary environmental agreements, regulations and programs, with important implications for environmental democracy, socio-ecological justice and sustainability. Drawing on evidence from Southeast Asia, the article assesses the policy challenges and opportunities posed by the shifting permeability of borders for organising and operationalising environmental activities at different scales of transboundary governance.

Geography and the present conjuncture

Anthropogenic global heating is accelerating, with dramatic implications for the long-term prospects of humans and many other species, underwritten by the logics of Euro-centric capitalism compounded by the colonialism, racism, patriarchy, and commodification of nature that has accompanied it. Nationalism is re-emerging, as are socio-cultural divisions within national societal assemblages. Global capitalism faces a series of crises stemming from the consequences of these relations. Critics are quick to argue that non-capitalist alternatives can advance socio-ecological justice, but how? Geography is ideally suited to making sense of this conjuncture, critiquing the processes facilitating its emergence, and realizing alternatives. Yet we are far from achieving our potential, caught up in our own philosophical, ideological, and substantive silos. I argue that five priorities must be taken up if geographical thinking is to be suited for the present moment. We must be more historical in our thinking (integrating the temporal with the spatial). We must pay more attention to the macro-scale: to how local events are complexly bound-up in spatially differentiated planetary processes? We must be socio-ecological: incentivizing productive collaboration across earth science, social science, and humanities sub-fields. We must deconstruct our disabling quantitative–qualitative methodological divide, incentivizing training in multi-methods. We must work harder to diversify the perspectives and socio-spatial positionalities incorporated into geographical thinking to decenter White male, Anglophone, and settler geographies. Excitingly, the potential for all this exists within Geography today.

Twenty Important Research Questions in Microbial Exposure and Social Equity.

ABSTRACTSocial and political policy, human activities, and environmental change affect the ways in which microbial communities assemble and interact with people. These factors determine how different social groups are exposed to beneficial and/or harmful microorganisms, meaning microbial exposure has an important socioecological justice context. Therefore, greater consideration of microbial exposure and social equity in research, planning, and policy is imperative. Here, we identify 20 research questions considered fundamentally important to promoting equitable exposure to beneficial microorganisms, along with safeguarding resilient societies and ecosystems. The 20 research questions we identified span seven broad themes, including the following: (i) sociocultural interactions; (ii) Indigenous community health and well-being; (iii) humans, urban ecosystems, and environmental processes; (iv) human psychology and mental health; (v) microbiomes and infectious diseases; (vi) human health and food security; and (vii) microbiome-related planning, policy, and outreach. Our goal was to summarize this growing field and to stimulate impactful research avenues while providing focus for funders and policymakers.

The what, who and how of socio-ecological justice: Tailoring a new justice model for earth system law

Since modernity, the mechanistic paradigm has determined how Western and Westernised societies live, produce knowledge, and regulate their interactions and institutions, profoundly influencing law and undermining ecological integrity. This paradigm's key features induce the adoption of a reductionist notion of justice by international law, here called mechanistic justice. Following ecological approaches to law, earth system law offers innovative strategies to overcome mechanistic law. To be consistent with its objectives, this legal scholarship must adopt an alternative notion of justice. In this paper, we explore the synergies between earth system law and socio-ecological justice, analysing if the latter fits the purposes of earth system law. To this end, we present the three initial axes of socio-ecological justice, assessing its potential as a tool to support the shift to earth system law. Results show that socio-ecological justice is aligned with earth system law and could be adopted as a guiding legal principle.

Stepping into STS literature: Some implications for promoting socioecological justice through science education

Stepping into STS literature: Some implications for promoting socioecological justice through science education

Exploring the Analytical, Normative and Transformative Dimensions of Earth System Law

In this article we argue that international environmental law cannot continue to exist in its present form for the purpose of the Anthropocene. We show that analytically, international environmental law and its lawyers are unable to fully understand and respond to the complex governance challenges arising from a complex Earth system. Normatively, international environmental law has failed to provide appropriate norms to prevent humans from encroaching on Earth system limits. In a transformative sense, international environmental law has not been sufficiently ambitious to achieve the type of radical transformations necessary to ensure planetary integrity and socio-ecological justice. We need a new legal paradigm that is better suited for the purpose of the Anthropocene that must address international environmental law’s analytical, normative and transformative concerns. We call this new paradigm earth system law. Building on our recent work, we offer here some preliminary thoughts about what we think the analytical, normative, and transformative dimensions of earth system law could and should entail, and why they would be more appropriate for the purpose of governing a complex Earth system in the Anthropocene.

Can Reflective Diary-Writing Increase Sufficiency-Oriented Consumption? A Longitudinal Intervention Addressing the Role of Basic Psychological Needs, Subjective Well-Being, and Time Affluence

Sufficiency is a sustainability strategy aiming for (1) a decrease in absolute resource consumption on individual and societal levels, and (2) for socio-ecological justice and the fair distribution of costs and benefits of resource use to meet every human’s basic needs. This study examined a longitudinal intervention to foster individual sufficiency orientation (i.e., a multidimensional construct including both attitudes towards the sufficiency sustainability strategy and corresponding behavioral intentions). We recruited N = 252 participants who participated in a one-week reflective diary-intervention to increase sufficiency orientation in everyday life and assessed sufficiency orientation, basic psychological need satisfaction, self-reflection, subjective well-being, and time affluence before (T1), directly after (T2), and four weeks after the intervention (T3). Contrary to our predictions, there was no significant difference between the experimental and the control group. Sufficiency orientation increased across groups. Basic psychological need satisfaction was the strongest predictor of sufficiency orientation. There were positive relations with subjective well-being. Targeting basic psychological need satisfaction, as a potential underlying driver of sufficiency orientation, seems to be a promising avenue for designing interventions. Employing a need-based, humanistic approach to designing psychological interventions is in line with the aims of sufficiency to meet every human’s basic needs, in a socio-ecologically just world.

Beekeeping in, of or for the city? A socioecological perspective on urban apiculture

Abstract The term ‘urban beekeeping’ connotes a host of meanings—sociopolitical, commercial, ecological and personal—beyond the mere description of where bees and beekeepers happen to coincide. Yet, these meanings are seldom articulated explicitly or brought into critical engagement with the relevant fields of urban ecology and political ecology. Beginning with a brief account of the history of urban beekeeping in the United States, we draw upon urban ecological theory to construct a conceptual model of urban beekeeping that distinguishes beekeeping in, of and for the city. In our model, beekeeping in the city describes the mere importation of the traditionally rural practice of beekeeping into urban spaces for the private reasons of the individual beekeeper, whereas beekeeping of the city describes beekeeping that is consciously tailored to the urban context, often accompanied by (semi)professionalization of beekeepers and the formation of local expert communities (i.e. beekeeping associations). Beekeeping for the city describes a shift in mindset in which beekeeping is directed to civic ends beyond the boundaries of the beekeeping community per se. Using this framework, we identify and discuss specific socioecological assets and liabilities of urban beekeeping, and how these relate to beekeeping in, of and for the city. We then formulate actionable guidelines for maturing the practice of urban beekeeping into a beneficent and self‐critical form of urban ecological citizenship; these include fostering self‐regulation within the beekeeping community, harnessing beekeeping as a ‘gateway’ experience for a broader rapprochement between urban residents and nature, and recognizing the political‐ecological context of beekeeping with respect to matters of socioecological justice. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Assessing African Energy Transitions: Renewable Energy Policies, Energy Justice, and SDG 7

Renewable energy has made significant inroads in addressing growing energy demands on the African continent. However, progress towards SDG 7 is still limited and difficult to trace. Furthermore, the results-oriented rationale of the SDGs means that both policy change and the dimension of environmental justice are not covered properly. We argue that the energy justice concept may provide a powerful tool to offset looming trade-offs and enhance the co-benefits of SDG 7 within broader transition endeavours. In doing so, we assess African energy transition processes based on a comparative mapping of African renewable energy policies in 34 countries. We investigate the scope of policy frameworks in order to analyse their contribution to greater energy justice along different justice dimensions. We then identify four transition scenarios, which reflect the challenges of integrating the justice dimension into renewable energy policies. In comparing these scenarios, we argue that SDG 7 tracking needs to consider the justice dimension to arrive at a more holistic implementation that is in line with socio-ecological justice and takes account of people’s energy needs.

Earth system law and the legal status of non-humans in the Anthropocene

Who belongs to communities of justice in the Anthropocene? While Western and non-Western traditions alike have typically afforded legal recognition primarily to humans and secondarily to some non-human entities under limited conditions, arrival of the Anthropocene suggests a new approach is needed in order to address the range and origins of injustices occurring within the Earth system. Beginning with a discussion of Earth system law and how its expansive scope accommodates non-traditional legal subjects, the essay proceeds with an overview of the rights of nature movement. I then present a comparative analysis of rights of nature cases adjudicated in Ecuador, Colombia, and India. From the foregoing evidence I argue that both theory and practice support broadening the universe of entities capable of qualifying as legal subjects eligible for legal rights to include both natural and artefactual non-humans, a move integral to obtaining socio-ecological justice under Earth system law.

The Just Transition and its work of inequality

Changing our relation to the environment in a democratic way implies questioning models and methods of socioecological relations—including work relations. This article critically discusses the notion of a “just transition” toward democratic sustainability as developed at the intersection between climate justice and labor politics. We invite an expansion of ideas of socioenvironmental and labor justice based on Jacques Rancière’s “method of (in)equality,” which problematizes justice theories and the politics of identitarian-group recognition. Our argument is that since both ecological and social crises are produced via inequalities a just transition can be a transition out of the logic of unequal relations—rather than just out of fossil fuels. We posit that socioecological justice in political action can be based on the assumption of equality, the “scandalous” democratic principle according to which political agency belongs to subjects without them having to prove any particular subjectivity worthy of recognition. We thus invite connecting sustainability discourses with a critique of the processes through which subjects become subaltern in the first place, being ascribed unequal positions mostly via violent means such as dispossession and subordination.

Food justice for all?: searching for the \u2018justice multiple\u2019 in UK food movements

In this paper, we examine diverse political philosophical conceptualisations of justice and interrogate how these contested understandings are drawn upon in the burgeoning food justice scholarship. We suggest that three interconnected dimensions of justice—plurality, the spatial–temporal and the more-than-human—deserve further analytical attention and propose the notion of the ‘justice multiple’ to bring together a multiplicity of framings and situated practices of (food) justice. Given the lack of critical engagement food justice has received as both a concept and social movement in the context of the United Kingdom (UK), we draw upon empirical research with practitioners and activists involved with heterogenous food movements working at the local, regional and national level and apply the justice multiple concept to the interview data. We highlight the diverse ways that justice is discussed in terms of access, fairness, empowerment, rights and dignity that reflect established organisational discursive framings and the fragmented nature of food system advocacy and activism. Based on this insight, we argue that a plurivocal, relational conceptualisation of socioecological justice can help enhance the multiple politics of food justice, pluralise UK food movement praxis and nurture avenues for broader coalition-building across the food system.

Feeling Environmental Policing: Possibilities and Challenges for Socio-Ecological Justice.

This is a conceptual paper that merges collaborative acts of storying with theoretical contributions from the affective turn (Clough, 2008) to illustrate ways by which mainstream forms of environmentalism (Klein, 2015) may inscribe normative ways of feeling and being with environments while policing others. Methodologically, we draw on our personal and collective storying-while-walking (Springgay & Truman, 2019) in and around the University of British Columbia (UBC) during the Canadian Society for the Study of Education 2019 conference. We consider how our encounters with/in nature are often disciplined by popular environmentalist discourses (e.g., recycling, greening, contaminating). In our walks/storying, we centre material agents (e.g., trash receptacles, kombucha bottle, tree) as part of affective economies (Ahmed, 2013) that align us to particular ways of feeling (with) nature, for example, embarrassment from not knowing how to recycle a kombucha bottle. We attune ourselves to this hegemonic environmental imaginary, in which certain humans assume control and dominion over nature and reinforce that control via green economies. This compels us to ask: in what ways do environmental efforts for cultivating more response-ability towards nature (Wallace, Higgins & Bazzul, 2018) come to exceed our response-ability with each other as part of nature? How might we follow affective economies that discipline how we value, manage and save nature, and how might this open up pedagogical possibilities for relating differently with each other/nature? With science and environmental education and research in mind, we suggest staying with emotions that make visible acts of environmental policing for socio-ecological justice.

Think Piece: Working for Living - Popular Education as/at Work for Social-ecological Justice

Drawing on the working lives of popular educators who are striving for socioeconomic and socio-ecological justice, we demonstrate how popular education is a form of care work which is feminised, often undervalued and unrecognised as highly skilled work. It is relational work that aims to forge solidarity with communities and the environment. Given the state of the planet, the radical transformations that are needed, and the future projection of ‘work’ as including the care economy in large measure, we argue that popular education is a generative site for further exploration of research into work and learning. However, to move popular education as work from the margins means to rethink the current economic system of value. Addressing the contradiction that undervalues work for life/living, popular education engages transformative action motivated by a deep sense of solidarity and a focus on imagining alternatives as an act of hope.Keywords: work and learning, popular education, care work, solidarity

Access and allocation in earth system governance: lessons learnt in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals

Researching socio-ecological justice issues in earth system governance can be operationalized through an Access (securing minimum needs) and Allocation (allocating the remaining resources, responsibilities and risks) framework. This paper synthesizes the review articles in this special issue. It concludes that (a) although international trade, investment and aid aim to enhance access, efficiently allocate resources and reduce risk, in practice the volume of trade and investment, the geographical distance between production and consumption, the pursuit of competitiveness and use of market instruments have concentrated wealth at great cost to socio-ecological justice; (b) research on food, water, energy, climate change and biodiversity reveal multiple linkages among the sustainable development goals, underlining the limitations of sectoral and incremental approaches to socio-ecological justice, for example, for smallholders; (c) while access issues are becoming difficult for politicians to ignore, allocation issues are being side-stepped because they draw too much attention to the underlying causes of inequality and poverty, (d) corrective justice is not enough, substantive justice approaches are needed emphasizing a rights-based framework and allocation cannot be exclusively left to market forces and mechanisms when it concerns public and merit goods; and (e) the terms access and allocation, although individually used, are not popular as a paired framework in the socio-ecological justice literature, but remain highly salient and cover the key justice issues for improving earth system governance.

Author Biographies

Author Biographies

Living on a prayer: neo-monasticism and socio-ecological change

ABSTRACTNeo-monasticism, including the desire to live in Christian intentional community, is increasingly popular in the United States. Communities are structured around a rule or shared covenant that outlines the parameters of living in community. Daily prayer is often a central feature to neo-monastic life as is an emphasis on socio-ecological justice. Drawing on recent Christian theology about gardens, a popular neo-monastic book of common prayer, interviews with practitioners of neo-monasticism, and fieldwork conducted with a nascent neo-monastic community in the southeastern United States, this article argues that prayer acts as a religious technology of the self for socio-ecological change. Through prayer, participants of intentional communities change, and this in turn leads to acts that alter the socio-ecological worlds around them.

The Politics of Land Grabbing: State and corporate power and the (trans)nationalization of resistance in Cameroon

AbstractApproaching land grabbing as a site of politics wherein power functions in the challenge and/or stabilization of agrarian socioecological injustices, we capture agrarian relations in Cameroon in 2 fundamental ways. Drawing on Laclauian insights, we discuss power as a “counter‐hegemonic” practice, to characterize the resistance strategies of local NGOs, in terms of their articulated discourses around the socioecological effects of land grabs, on the one hand, and the political possibilities that this articulatory practice opens, in terms of (trans)nationalizing resistance across social identities and space, on the other hand. Here, the analysis adopts a Foucauldian‐inspired critique with strong commitments towards agrarian socioecological justice, in a context where policies to protect democratic access to land are absent. Second, framed as a hegemonic/governmental “form of rule,” we capture how state and diplomatic actors sought to override dissent and stabilize the contentious land deal. We also show how a moment of presidential “nondecision,” characterized by a hyper‐centralized bureaucracy conjoined with these hegemonic forces to disempower local administrative and judicial leverage, thereby fostering corporate power. The article thus contributes to debates on state and corporate powers, as well as the strategies of, or possibilities and constraints for resistance “from below” to irradiate and structure into a compelling force.

Canadian mining in Latin America (1990 to present): a provisional history

Since the early 1990s Canadian mining companies extended their presence in Latin America in unprecedented numbers and ways. This article presents a historical synthesis of this phenomenon. It shows Canadian overseas mining as predominantly focused on exploration and precious metal mining; traces its origins in the nexus between new techniques and hubs of speculative capital; and shows the political innovations produced by this commodity frontier, both in the deployment of new forms of corporate governmentality and in the emergence of locally-based movements for resource sovereignty and socio-ecological justice.