Unfolding scientific expertise and security in the changing governance of Ecosystem Services

Within the past few decades, the idea of global Ecosystem Services (ES) has moved center stage in environmental and sustainability debates. The academic and policy discourse behind Ecosystem Service protection appears to have changed from a more ecological focus on habitat restoration to a predominantly economic one revolving around human well-being. The aim of this paper is to unfold the coupling between scientific expertise and security in the changing governance of ES. We employ a ‘securitization’ lens to advance our understanding of the recent change in the governance of ecosystems, as we reflect on the role of scientific expertise at the boundary between science and security. Empirically, we analyze how scientific experts, as securitizing actors, frame the degradation and loss of ES as an existential threat to human security thereby justifying measures to reverse these trends. In order to trace how the voices of scientific experts shape policies to govern ES we apply bibliometric analysis and an opinion-based survey to first identify who produces the scientific knowledge published, and then follow how key scientific experts link to policy-making arenas and use security framings. Lastly, we discuss the implications of the shifting discourse surrounding ES, and we reflect on our own positionality and approach, as we string together our findings to contribute to the debate about environmental expertise and governance, and the authority of scientific knowledge.     

Exporting the Saemaul spirit: South Korea’s Knowledge Sharing Program and the ‘rendering technical’ of Korean development

This article provides a critical intervention into South Korea’s recent effort to promote its 1970s authoritarian-era rural modernization program, Saemaul Undong (New Village Movement), as the ‘iconic’ model of its international development assistance. To better understand how this movement has been represented, this article examines the policy narratives that have been produced by the Korean government’s Knowledge Sharing Program (KSP) and circulated through multiple development cooperation initiatives. These narratives portray Saemaul as the key to Korea’s developmental success: a mental revolution in values that inculcated the ‘can-do’ spirit in poor rural villagers and allowed them to escape poverty and stagnation. We argue that the emphasis of this narrative on the spiritual, voluntary, and value-oriented nature of the movement has been used to ‘render technical’ Korea’s development experience: i.e. to reduce it to a question of how development experts successfully cultivated the spirit of development in the Korean people and, by extension, how developing countries might do the same. We show how this narrative neglects the contested history and Cold War context of Saemaul, raising questions about the ‘brand’ of development assistance that has been built upon it.     

Rethinking rewilding: A response to Jørgensen

In this article we respond to and challenge Jørgensen’s criticisms of the concept of rewilding in her paper ‘Rethinking rewilding’, published this year in Geoforum. Jørgensen argues that ‘rewilding’ has become a ‘plastic word’, one that has been stretched to the point where it lacks definitional precision, at risk of becoming ‘the go-to blanket solution to environmental problems’. She also argues that the practice of rewilding is premised upon the dissociation of humans from the rest of nature and reproduces anti-human Nature–Culture binaries, rightly lambasted by critics of wilderness narratives in conservation practice. In response to these criticisms we challenge Jørgensen on two points. Firstly we argue that the problems of ‘plasticity’ and definitional imprecision can be rectified by highlighting and foregrounding the quality that we believe is at the core of all rewilding definitions and efforts: non-human autonomy. Secondly, we challenge Jørgensen’s broad claim that sees the collapse of ‘rewilding’ into anti-human wilderness management. We do so by reflecting on two points; the dynamic human–non-human entanglements embedded within rewilding practice(s) and by arguing for rewilding as a ‘wild experiment’. We make these points through the examination of two actually existing examples of rewilding.     

Bovine biopolitics and the promise of monsters in the rewilding of Heck cattle

In the early 1980s the Dutch ecologist Frans Vera began an ambitious ecological restoration experiment on a polder in the Netherlands. He introduced herds of ‘back-bred’ Heck cattle and other large herbivores and encouraged them to ‘de-domesticate’ themselves and ‘rewild’ the landscape they inhabit. His intervention has triggered a great deal of interest and controversy. It is being replicated and adapted across Europe as part of a wider interest in ‘rewilding’ in nature conservation. This innovative approach rubs up against powerful and prevalent practices of environmental management. This paper examines these frictions by mapping the character and exploring the interface between different modes of nonhuman biopolitics – in this case the powerful ways in which modern humans live with and govern cattle. Focusing on the story of Heck cattle and the bovine biopolitics of their rewilding it attends in particular to the character, place and promise of monsters. It first outlines a conceptual framework for examining nonhuman biopolitics and teratology (the study of monsters), identifying fertile tensions between the work of Haraway, Derrida and Deleuze. It then provides a typology of four prevalent modes of bovine biopolitics – namely agriculture, conservation, welfare and biosecurity – and their associated monsters. This paper identifies rewilding as a fifth mode and examines frictions at its interfaces with the other four. Developing the conceptual framework the paper examines what these frictions tell us about the understandings of life that circulate in the ontological politics of contemporary environmentalisms. In conclusion the paper critically examines the monstrous promise of rewilding, in relation to tensions between the convivial aspirations of Haraway and Deleuze.     

Ambivalent climate of opinions: Tensions and dilemmas in understanding geoengineering experimentation

Due to the fear of the consequences of climate change, many scientists today advocate the research into—but not deployment of—geoengineering, large-scale technological control of the global climate, to reduce the uncertainty around its efficacy and harms. Scientists propose in particular initiating field trials of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). This paper examines how the meanings of geoengineering experimentation, specifically SAI field trials, are reconfigured in the deliberation of the lay public. To this end, we conducted focus groups with Japanese citizens in June 2015 on the geoengineering concept and SAI field trials. Our main findings are as follows: the ‘climate emergency’ framing compelled the lay public to accept, either willingly or reluctantly, the need for ‘geoengineering research’; however, public discourse on SAI field trials was ambiguous and ambivalent, involving both tensions and dilemmas in understanding what the SAI field trial is for and about. Our results exhibit how the lay public wrestles with understanding the social, political, and ethical implications of SAI field trials in multiple dimensions, namely, accountability, controllability, predictability, and desirability. The paper argues that more clarity in the term ‘geoengineering research’ is needed to facilitate inclusive and pluralistic debates on geoengineering experimentation and not to preemptively arrive at a consensus that ‘we need more research.’ We conclude that ambivalence about both the pros and cons of geoengineering experimentation seems to be enduring; thus, instead of ignoring or repressing it, embracing ambivalence is required to keep the geoengineering debate democratic and inclusive.     

The green economy in Tanzania: From global discourses to institutionalization

The purpose of this paper is to examine the transfer of the green economy from a global discursive level to institutionalization at the national level in Tanzania. While there is a growing amount of research discussing technological aspects of the green economy, less attention has been paid to policy implications and governance aspects, especially in developing countries. There is an increasing emphasis on technological and market-based solutions to environmental challenges globally and in the developed part of the world. However, in developing countries, ‘green growth’ often implies transformed control over natural resources – under schemes that are often driven from abroad. Over the last five to ten years, investments aimed at increasing productivity in the rural agricultural sector in developing countries have become a focus area of the green economy, but various concepts of green have become confused. Such (mis-) interpretation of the green economy has consequences for implementation and outcomes of various ‘green’ projects. Drawing on governmentality as well as the concept of institutional bricolage, I examine how the green economy discourse and policy at the global level have been re-shaped and re-interpreted to fit the existing agri-business initiative of the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT), which has been championed as a model for green economy implementation in Africa. I discuss how the green discourse has been ‘grabbed’ as an opportunity to ‘greenwash’ SAGCOT in its establishment and institutionalization.     

Reimagining rewilding: A response to Jørgensen,Prior, and Ward

This article continues and expands the conversation initiated by Jørgensen on the need to rethink rewilding, which elicited a response from Prior and Ward. To spur further conversation, my response to both papers argues for two modes of discourse expansion: geographical and disciplinary. Although both articles gesture toward global rewilding sites, their discussions remain focused on European geographies. I offer James Feldman’s environmental history of the Apostle Islands to extend a geographical purview beyond European contexts. Secondly, I take up these papers’ implicit call for humanities scholars to join this conversation, and I argue for the relevance and importance of fictional writings to a debate regarding rewilding. I briefly introduce two recent fictional works and argue for their place in rewilding conversations based on the ability of imaginary writings to develop empathy.     

Extensible, not relational: finding bodies in the landscape of electronic information with wireless body area networks

This article examines a medical biotechnology known as a wireless body area network (WBAN) as a way to discuss how electronic information infrastructure is spatially extending human bodies into physical landscapes. The term extensible body is introduced, framed by the object-oriented philosophy of Graham Harman. WBANs are sensors placed on or inside of the human body to measure, record, and transmit data about the biological processes of a medical patient. I argue that these body-data should be considered components of bodies themselves, not representations of them. Further, I argue that the geographical discourse on relationality should be less about object relations and more about object extensions. Harman’s explication of the “quadruple object,” and specifically his use of real and sensual objects makes this possible. This questions the spatial beginnings and ends of categorical objects such as bodies and information, the implications of which could have profound impacts on how policies are framed in sectors such as public health, environment, planning, and medicine. The notion of extensibility is crucial in theorizing how, and where, the Geoweb exists as a spatial-technical assemblage of objects and information. The case of WBANs shows that a theorization of the Geoweb must include the built infrastructure of data storage as a spatial extension of being human.     

Dance and wellbeing in Vancouver’s ‘A Healthy City for All’

Through the lens of the dancing body, this paper examines practices of health and wellbeing produced in response to City of Vancouver urban governance policies. In particular, it calls attention to the legislative onslaught by city government in the years abutting the 2010 Winter Olympics to cultivate and manage healthy people, communities, and environments. In an effort to sell Vancouver’s ‘liveability’, I argue City of Vancouver endorsed a new legislative alliance that merged a conspicuously Anglo-American wellbeing lexicon, favouring individual responsibility and self-governance, with the performing arts industries. Drawing upon interviews and performance-based research, the paper illustrates how Karen Jamieson’s community dance project Connect, created for the In the Heart of the City festival, embodies Vancouver’s tri-level legislative ambitions to nurture A Healthy City For All. This materialised through the crafting of a dance-health body practice (healthy people), by choreographing a sense of belonging among ‘at risk’ communities (healthy communities), and in the uniting of the arts and health professions in the process of ‘cleaning up’ disenfranchised neighbourhoods (healthy environments). In bringing together scholarship on cultures of wellbeing and creative dance practice, the article contributes to understandings of how the health-seeking subject is embodied and performed. It also offers a productive critique of the exclusionary nature of urban health legislation, and of the contested role artists and arts festivals can play in nurturing urban wellbeing and normalising inequalities.     

A grievable life? The criminalisation and securing of asylum seeker bodies in the ‘violent frames’ of Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders

The life of those seeking asylum from persecution and other human rights abuses has become interminably precarious. As minority world governments deploy various apparatuses of security to govern the circulation of ‘unruly’ populations, the world’s most vulnerable people have been reconstituted as security threats. In this paper I trace this ‘transfer of illegitimacy’ and criminalisation of asylum seeker bodies in the context of the Australian government’s newly deployed Operation Sovereign Borders. Drawing on Foucault’s governmentality as a domain of security and Butler’s articulation of recognition, precariousness and grievability, I explore both the subjectivities formed as a function and technique of securing Australia’s borders and the way this framing produces a certain governed reality that ‘acts upon the senses’ to delimit public discourse. I argue that the range of discursive and non-discursive practises that make up Operation Sovereign Borders has dire implications for those seeking asylum in Australia. Not only do these practises constitute a social crafting where conditions for a flourishing life are diminished, but this crafting of precarity is carried out in the name of securing citizens lives. The life of the asylum seekers is a life unrecognised in the violent frames of Operation Sovereign Borders.     

The choreography of sacrifice: Market environmentalism,biopolitics and environmental damage

Market environmentalism, and, arguably its exemplar carbon forestry, has been engaged within human and economic geography by drawing from the Marxist tradition, and to a lesser extent, utilising post-structuralist lines of enquiry. A direct focus on how practices and transformations related to carbon forestry could be construed as ‘sacrifical’, however, is lacking. This article seeks to remedy this by attending to the biopolitics of climate security discourse and interventions as they localise in an ‘assemblage of market environmentalism’ in Uganda. It charts a choreography of sacrifice that emerges under a neoliberal environmentality within this entity, namely, where the activities and ‘moves’ of both state and non-state actors constitute the grounds for forms of both direct and circuitous bio-cultural sacrifice. Here both surplus populations of people, the non-commercial component of Ugandan forestry, and those forest areas which are not amenable to having ‘nature pay for itself’ through carbon sequestration, are written off through direct violence and degradation, on the one hand, and through the naturalisation of broader processes of deforestation, on the other.     

Commodity conservation: The restructuring of community conservation in South Africa and the Philippines

The world over, neoliberal modes of conservation are hybridising with, or even replacing, other forms of conservation. Under the banner of ‘win–win’ policies, planners actively work to commoditize natural resources and the social relations that determine the use and conservation of these resources. While these general processes seem to hold sway globally, it is crucial not to lose sight of the context specific ways in which neo-liberalism influences conservation practice and local outcomes. The paper examines how neo-liberalism’s global pervasiveness becomes manifest across different levels and scales in South Africa and the Philippines. The conclusion suggests that as a result of these neoliberal pressures, emphasis is shifting from local constructions of ‘nature’ by communities to what the environment should mean for communities in terms of commodified resources and growing capitalist markets.     

Why Delhi cannot plan its ‘new towns’: The case of solid waste management in Noida

Indian metropolises have witnessed the growth of ‘new towns’ on their peripheries over the past two decades, which have attracted investment as well as affluent residents. Most research on new towns examines the contentious politics of land acquisition and development, but less is known about urban governance and everyday life. This article focuses on solid waste management in Noida, a new town on the periphery of Delhi that has been unable to develop a large-scale waste management system, and we have two main foci. First, we show that the municipal government has sought to regulate waste collection, while waste processing and disposal have remained unregulated and this has discouraged the entry of medium and large-scale private enterprises. Second, we explore the contentious politics surrounding actually existing waste management practices that have emerged in the absence of significant public or private investment. Most waste is managed by small- and medium-sized enterprises in the informal sector, so associations that represent the so-called ‘new’ middle class must interact with informal-sector waste workers. These interactions result in moderately high levels of waste collection but waste disposal remains haphazard and this exposes the limits of the new middle class’ control over urban space. Ultimately, we show how municipal governance and the actually existing politics and practices of waste management contribute to the production of Noida’s socio-spatial landscape.     

Contested diamond certification: Reconfiguring global and national interests in Zimbabwe’s Marange fields

This study examines the political uses of “conflict diamond” discourse in global debates about commodity certification and socially responsible mining in Zimbabwe. Engaging critical literature on “conflict-free” corporate branding initiatives, the study focuses on representations of conflict in Marange, in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands. In 2006, a diamond rush in Marange drew in tens of thousands of artisanal miners from across Zimbabwe as well as foreigners, and the government initiated military crackdowns in 2008. In a highly contested vote in 2009, the international government delegates who comprised the voting members in the Kimberley Process Certification System (KPCS) ruled that conflict in Marange did not meet the KPCS definitions of “conflict diamond.” The study examines discourses of key stakeholders in the multinational diamond industry, human rights organizations, policymakers as well as artisanal miners in Zimbabwe between 2006 and 2014. The article argues that advocacies against diamond certification as well as advocacies favouring certification both tended to overlook the interests of artisanal miners, focusing narrowly on certain forms of conflict while associating artisanal mining with illicitness. The Marange case illustrates how conventional discourses on “conflict diamonds” not only obscure the complex nature of conflicts in contemporary capitalist accumulation processes; they also risk contributing to new forms of structural violence. This analysis highlights the need to pay careful attention to how global commodity certification discourses inter-relate with political agendas at multiple scales. The study draws attention to dilemmas for geographers when portraying the interests of marginalized groups in – and affected by – the diamond mining sector.     

Thinking like a geologist: The culture of geology Mawson lecture 1996∗

Geology plays a crucial role in both the scientific and the popular culture; it has transformed the way ordinary people look at the world over the last two centuries. Much of this transformation is understood in terms of information about the age of the earth, the disposition of the continents, and the evolution of living things. The two main concerns of this paper are with geology as education, and geology as a system of thought, a way of thinking about the world. My central question is how does a grounding in geology affect the cast of mind, the way one thinks, perceives and behaves? What is the culture of geology? Conclusions are of two kinds. Some of the propositions advanced about the nature of geology in relation to the other sciences and our general culture are: (i) there is no hierarchy of the sciences; (ii) geology is a Romantic science rather than a Classical one; (iii) there is no such thing as the scientific method; (iv) geologists often attempt to reconcile competing hypotheses; (v) geological phenomena are often of an almost irreducible complexity and their investigation is beset by problems of scale, both spatial and temporal; and (vi) the concept of ‘universality’ has a distinctive application in geology. Among the non‐professional uses of geology are: (i) human history is incomplete without environmental history; (ii) geology has application in environmental planning and management, but this requires judgement and experience as knowledge of the geology is not enough, it is equally important to know when it can safely be overridden, when it is useful background, and when it is critically important to decision‐making; and (iii) an awareness of the geology of a region enhances the sense of place—our sense of our individual and communal identities owes much to an awareness of place.     

Wasting the rural: Meat,manure, and the politics of agro-industrialization in contemporary China

This paper uses pork as a lens on China’s rural transformations. Taking the industrialization of pig farming in the reform era as a trace on broader processes of social and environmental change, it advances three arguments. First, the massive increase in pork production and consumption since 1978 has been propelled by an industrial meat regime. A party-state led and agribusiness-operated regime, it articulates modernist notions of meat-as-progress with the relentless drive for capital accumulation. Second, using Marx’s concept of metabolic rift, the paper examines how processes of concentration in the industrial meat regime are at the same time processes of separation. This dialectical approach highlights the contradictions inherent in ongoing attempts to disembed capitalist production from biological and social relations. Finally, while official party-state discourse conceptualizes “the rural” as a production base for surplus value, and/or as a site for preserving environmental integrity, the paper’s analysis reveals a further unofficial recasting of the rural: in the process of agroindustrialization, the rural is also a sink for offloading capitalist crises. Between the rivers of manure that flow from industrial livestock operations and contaminate rural waterways; the loss of soil nutrients and food calories in the inefficient conversion of grains and oilseeds into industrial meat; the erosion of agricultural knowledge and practice that accompanies the dispossession of China’s farmers; and the shifting values of pigs, pork, and manure, this is a system that “wastes” the rural in service of capital.     

‘Seeing red’ in national parks: How visitors’ values affect perceptions and park experiences

People’s reasons for visiting national parks have been well researched. So too have their park activities and how diverse activities potentially affect visitors’ park experiences (e.g. perceptions of overcrowding). Far less research has examined how park users’ environmental values might affect their perceptions of other users and the appropriateness of different activities – a potential source of conflict. Relationships between personal environmental values and environmental and social perceptions are complex and interactive in the context of park visitation. Visitors’ encounters with other users can powerfully affect their experience and enjoyment of parks, in turn reflecting such factors as values-related expectations and judgments in the context of national parks. Personal and social values may also play an important role in influencing whether different activities are perceived as ‘out of place’ in the context of national park place meaning, yet the conceptualization of values within geographic literature on parks remains comparatively weak.This paper utilizes a definition of values, derived from a concise review of the geography and social psychology literatures, to explain the results of survey research we undertook within national parks in Queensland, Australia. We use a ‘values-behavior hierarchy’ conceptual framework to consider how the personal environmental values of a sample of park visitors (n = 404) potentially affected patterns of park visitation, user activities, and user conflicts. Findings suggest that visitors’ environmental values shaped how they perceived other park users and the appropriateness of their activities. This has international implications for geographic research and other disciplines and professions involved in national park visitation, park use, and human impacts, on and of these powerful places.     

Dentary groove morphology does not distinguish ‘Nanotyrannus’ as a valid taxon of tyrannosauroid dinosaur. Comment on: “Distribution of the dentary groove of theropod dinosaurs: Implications for theropod phylogeny and the validity of the genus Nanotyrannus Bakker et al., 1988”

There has been considerable debate about whether the controversial tyrannosauroid dinosaur ‘Nanotyrannus lancensis’ from the uppermost Cretaceous of North America is a valid taxon or a juvenile of the contemporaneous Tyrannosaurus rex. In a recent Cretaceous Research article, Schmerge and Rothschild (2016) brought a new piece of evidence to this discussion: the morphology of the dentary groove, a depression on the lateral surface of the dentary that houses neurovascular foramina. They argued that an alleged ‘Nanotyrannus’ specimen, which possesses a groove, cannot be referable to Tyrannosaurus rex, which they considered as lacking the groove, and they hypothesized that ‘Nanotyrannus’ is closely related to albertosaurine tyrannosauroids, which also are said to possess the groove. However, we show that the groove is a widespread feature of tyrannosauroids that is present in T. rex and many other specimens, and that it is an ontogenetically variable feature that changes from a sharp, deeply-impressed groove to a shallower sulcus as an individual matures. As a result, the presence or absence of a dentary groove does not clarify the validity of ‘Nanotyrannus’ or its phylogenetic position among tyrannosauroids. We consider it most parsimonious that ‘Nanotyrannus’ specimens belong to juvenile T. rex.     

Paying homage to the ‘Heavenly Mother’: Cultural-geopolitics of the Mazu pilgrimage and its implications on rapprochement between China and Taiwan

Much has been researched on tourism across (former) borders of conflict and on pilgrimage as a socio-cultural activity, but the relationship between the two remains poorly understood. Pilgrimage-tours carried out by Taiwanese devotees to the birthplace of Mazu (or Tianshang Shengmu – the Heavenly Mother) in Putian, China offer a significant platform to further our understanding of how religion can play a part in the rapprochement between China and Taiwan. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper goes beyond the conventional state-level analysis to discuss interactions and encounters forged at the levels of the temple organisations and the individual. It utilises Victor Turner’s concept of ‘communitas’ to understand how spiritual spaces are being performed through the pilgrimage rather than already existing before the pilgrimage. Importantly, the Mazu pilgrimage-tour is conceptualised not as a tourism product, but as both a social activity and a socialising one, producing opportunities for different forms of interactions between the Chinese and Taiwanese devotees. These ‘interactions along the side’ as opposed to state-level diplomatic exchanges offer insights into the ‘more-than-state’ and ‘more-than-human’ relationships that bind/divide devotees on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.