Environment and Planning E

doi: 10.1177/25148486231153303pmid: N/A

Moulton, Alex A

doi: 10.1177/25148486221103757pmid: N/A

The English colonial plan of converting Jamaica into a settler colony was challenged by the Maroons who established communities in the interior of the island. Living in the forests at the edge of the expanding plantation system, Maroons were feared by aspiring white settlercolonists. The zone where the plantation and white settlements met the Maroon de-facto territory became a frontier zone, where race, belonging, and freedom were contested. The Maroons inspired Black revolt and dreams of freedom, but after signing treaties ending their war against the English in the mid-18th century, the Maroons became dreaded by non-Maroon Blacks in Jamaica. Fear of the Maroons had productive and protective effects on the physical environment; the conservation of much of Jamaica's interior was one of these effects. The paper uses colonial era admissions of this fear as openings for showing how Jamaican conservation was shaped by the Maroons as spatial actors. The paper proposes conceptualizing the afforesting outcomes of marronage as arboreal side-effects, geographical and ecological consequences that are denied in foremost accounts of colonial forest conservation. The paper illustrates the importance of considering Black spatial thought, race and the geographic imaginary (Black Geographies) alongside the connections between antiblackness, the exploitation of nature, and the imperatives of ecological justice (Black ecologies). Reading Maroon practices and histories through and as Black geographies, the paper argues for a subaltern environmental history of Jamaica that affirms Black spatial agency and epistemologies. Consequently, the paper helps clarify marronage as a material-ecological as well as social-political process that is always shaped by the morphology of power and the landscape.

Ojani, Chakad

doi: 10.1177/25148486221101458pmid: N/A

In coastal Peru, conservationists and scientists attend to fog as something that may be captured and transformed into water. This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork among Limeñan conservationists who tapped into this atmospheric phenomenon as an alternative water source for use in fog oasis ecosystem reforestation. As I demonstrate, experimental engagements with fog had reconfigured conservationists’ and other experimenters’ understanding about the connections between the atmosphere, vegetation, and the underground, thereby bringing into view a hitherto imperceptible environmental infrastructure of groundwater production. The infrastructural potentials of the landscape were in turn foregrounded by the conservationists through comparisons with other geographies well-known for their capacity to produce water. Against this backdrop, the article argues for renewed attention to the infrastructural as a comparative effect resulting from simultaneous fore/backgrounding. Rather than mere grounds for second-order processes, infrastructural relations can be understood as situated between foreground and background. As environmental calamities complicate the infrastructure–environment nexus, it is no longer clear what infrastructures consist of, nor what they are capable of doing. In this context, an understanding of infrastructures as comparative effects is useful for describing and speculatively amplifying potentially more sustainable infrastructural alternatives.

Wilson, Nicole J; Montoya, Teresa; Lambrinidou, Yanna; Harris, Leila M; Pauli, Benjamin J; McGregor, Deborah; Patrick, Robert J; Gonzalez, Silvia; Pierce, Gregory; Wutich, Amber

doi: 10.1177/25148486221101459pmid: 41909771

Assumptions of trust in water systems are widespread in higher-income countries, often linked to expectations of “modern water.” The current literature on water and trust also tends to reinforce a technoscientific approach, emphasizing the importance of aligning water user perceptions with expert assessments. Although such approaches can be useful to document instances of distrust, they often fail to explain why patterns differ over time, and across contexts and populations. Addressing these shortcomings, we offer a relational approach focused on the trustworthiness of hydro-social systems to contextualize water-trust dynamics in relation to broader practices and contexts. In doing so, we investigate three high-profile water crises in North America where examples of distrust are prevalent: Flint, Michigan; Kashechewan First Nation; and the Navajo Nation. Through our theoretical and empirical examination, we offer insights on these dynamics and find that distrust may at times be a warranted and understandable response to experiences of water insecurity and injustice. We examine the interconnected experiences of marginality and inequity, ontological and epistemological injustice, unequal governance and politics, and histories of water insecurity and harm as potential contributors to untrustworthiness in hydro-social systems. We close with recommendations for future directions to better understand water-trust dynamics and address water insecurity.

Arnall, Alex

doi: 10.1177/25148486221101461pmid: N/A

In the last few decades, hard coastal protection structures, such as seawalls and groynes, have become increasingly commonplace around the world. Conventionally, the effects of such structures have been considered within a modernist framework that evaluates the degree of human control over the land–sea interface. However, this dominant viewpoint overlooks the central role that sea defences play in the ongoing production of coastal communities, particularly in small island states. This paper responds to these issues by revealing how coastal protection structures, as contingently performed material configurations, are devised and come into being and the social relations that these structures create and influence. Drawing on empirical research undertaken on a small island in the Maldives over a period of 6 years, the paper demonstrates not only the challenges that coastal communities face in attempting to exert control over the unruly sea but also the thing-power of the protection measures themselves that are made and unmade as part of this process. These findings suggest the need for sensitivity towards the social roles and effects of hard coastal protection structures when devising approaches and policies that might see the decommissioning of such structures in favour of softer, ‘nature-based’ responses to the vitality of the non-human world. As structures with their own unique material complexities, hard defence measures are deeply involved in the production of multinatural island futures.

Mathez, Andrea; Loftus, Alex

doi: 10.1177/25148486221101541pmid: N/A

In 2008, in the aftermath of the World Food Crisis and in a context of an unfolding New Green Revolution for Africa, Morocco launched the Green Morocco Plan to ‘modernise’ its agricultural sector, thereby making the latter the main driver for economic growth and for the alleviation of rural poverty. Yet, the technicist-productivist rationale of the Green Morocco Plan, characteristic of New Green Revolution modernisation schemes, renders any positive socio-ecological outcome unlikely. Hence, recent studies of the Green Morocco Plan have focused on its impacts on food security, inequality and environment. However, how the Green Morocco Plan's rationale is (re)produced within a given set of socio-ecological, material relations has to date attracted relatively little attention. This study, therefore, explores the power-knowledge dynamics of the modernisation discourse within the Green Morocco Plan as a driver of socio-ecological change. Bringing together insights from political ecology, critical development and agri-food studies, we show how the entangled set of ideological, material, political and technical processes embodied within the Green Morocco Plan favours a reductionist view of agricultural development as increasing yields and profits. In so doing, such a view perpetuates efforts to ‘modernise’ smallholder/family farming.

Staunstrup, Jan Kloster; Hjalager, Anne-Mette; Steffansen, Rasmus Nedergård; Sørensen, Michael Tophøj

doi: 10.1177/25148486221101554pmid: N/A

While water consumption and water conservation have been issues in the discussion of sustainable tourism for many years, the residual part of the water cycle, the management of wastewater, lacks attention in tourism and planning research. This study addresses the wastewater challenges in Danish second home tourism. More than 200,000 second homes represent an important touristic resource both for owners and for short-term renters, and increasingly, the accommodation capacity is used over the whole year. Data from the building and housing register (BBR) show that only 54% of second homes are connected to public sewage and purification utilities. The remaining second homes rely on individual solutions such as septic tanks. A substantial regional variance can be partly explained by differences in the spatial layout and location of second homes, but mainly the dissimilar priorities in the responsible municipalities are the result of systemic factors following semi-privatized governance structures. The intensified use of second homes, rising ground water levels, more frequent climate incidences and EU and national quality obligations for the environmental standards of waterways and seas are and will in the future be challenges for the municipal wastewater management. A mobilization of second home owners and users to support updated wastewater infrastructures is hampered by the principles laid down in the governance structures.

Birkenholtz, Trevor

doi: 10.1177/25148486221100386pmid: N/A

This paper examines the relationship between the diffusion of drip irrigation technology, state subsidy programs to encourage its adoption by farmers, and gendered labor dynamics. Drip irrigation is promoted globally as a water conserving agricultural innovation that enhances water-use and productive efficiency by increasing yields with less water, while freeing up “saved” water for other uses. India leads the world in its rate of expansion and in total area. Relying on analyses of government drip irrigation policies and ethnographic field research conducted between 2015 and 2020 in the Indian state of Rajasthan, I find the successful diffusion of drip irrigation is dependent upon state subsidies, farmer adoption decisions and the availability of female labor. I engage conceptual work on water conservation technologies, and from feminist political ecology and infrastructure studies to argue: (1) the diffusion of drip irrigation is better understood as a gendered process of infrastructuring; which (2) is an ongoing process of the assembly of state subsidies, the aggregation of decentralized individual farmer adoption decisions, and the availability of on-demand, underpaid female labor; where (3) female laborers provide a “feminine labor subsidy” that produces productive efficiency gains and lends drip irrigation infrastructure its durability. Conceptualizing drip irrigation as a gendered process of infrastructuring, renders visible its emergent and gendered material politics. The conclusion discusses prospects for reassembling drip irrigation infrastructure in more materially just ways and its implications for the political ecology of water infrastructure.

Hein, Jonas; Thomsen, Jannes

doi: 10.1177/25148486221098825pmid: N/A

The ongoing fairway adaptation of the Elbe Estuary is one of the most contested infrastructure projects in Germany in recent years. After a 17-year, highly contested planning process, delayed by a number of court proceedings, the dredging works started in 2019. The dredging aimed to establish a depth of at least 17.40 m below mean sea level, permitting the port to handle larger container vessels independent of the tide. Environmental NGOs, fishers and the riverine municipalities claim that the dredging will lead to habitat destruction, terminate the fishery in the estuary, and that it violates the European Water Framework Directive. The conflict illustrates that knowledge production, political economy and power are closely intertwined and provides evidence that some planning conflicts go even deeper than this. They are ultimately rooted in different ‘estuary ontologies’, in the different ways in which nature is enacted, and in different imaginations of possible futures for the Elbe estuary and its riverine population. Based on qualitative interviews with the actors who are involved in, observe or fight against the intervention, and on a content analysis of press articles and webpages, we unravel the complex relations between political economy, knowledge production and the different performances of reality which characterize the ongoing conflict over the fairway adaptation. We relate competing narratives, knowledge claims and ontologies to the actors promoting and challenging the fairway adaptation. Finally, we identify multiple estuary realities, which are enacted by specific practices performed by fishers, port authorities and environmental NGOs.

Mosurska, A; Clark-Ginsberg, A; Sallu, S; Ford, JD

doi: 10.1177/25148486221096371pmid: N/A

Attempts to shift the ways disasters have traditionally been managed away from authoritarian, top-down approaches toward more bottom-up and inclusive processes often involve incorporating viewpoints from marginalised and vulnerable groups. Recently as part of this process, there have been calls for greater inclusion of Indigenous peoples in disaster management. In theory, this also suggests a shift in power structures, towards recognising Indigenous peoples as experts in disaster management. However, in popular imagination and policy Indigenous peoples often appear to be caricatured and misrepresented, for instance through tropes of Indigenous peoples as custodians of the environment or especially vulnerable to environmental change. These framings matter because they can result in disaster management policies and practices that do not capture Indigenous peoples’ complex realities. However, these framings have not been analysed in the context of disasters. In this article, we aim to better understand these framings through a critical discourse analysis of how Indigenous peoples in disasters are represented in the expert news media. We identify five discourses, including a dominant one of disasters as natural phenomena to be addressed through humanitarianism and technocratic interventions. Such discourses render Indigenous peoples helpless, depoliticize disasters and are justified by framing governments and NGOs as caring for Indigenous peoples. However, we also identify competing discourses that focus on systems of oppression and self-determination in disaster management. These discourse recognise disasters as political and include discussion of the role of colonialism in disaster creation. As care emerged as a means through which intervention was justified, we conclude by asking questions of who is cared for/about in disasters and how that care is performed.