Featured image courtesy of Abhijit Mohanty via Unsplash
When facing environmental crises, why do some people bear more burdens than others? In collaboration with the Environment and Society Portal at the Rachel Carson Center, Seeing the Woods has contributed to the compilation of a digital resource on topics of environmental justice and environmental racism.
These resources interrogate the connections between colonial regimes, slavery, and other historic injustices, and the disproportionate environmental burdens shouldered by Indigenous peoples and other peoples of color around the world.
As a complement to this growing resource page, Seeing the Woods is open to blog post submissions covering relevant topics and themes. Contribute to the series and continue the conversation!
By Hanna Straß-Senol In late 2013, an Australian newspaper reported that a man from Kiribati “stood to make history as the world’s first climate refugee.” The New Zealand High Court, before which the man appeared, rejected the claim because the category of climate refugee was not included under the United Nation’s provisions for refugees.
By Rodrigo Salido Moulinié The reports said they wanted to kill the turtle. They surrounded the research station and refused to let supplies go through to the 33 people—and the colony of reptiles—inside the building. Yet the fishermen went on strike and took the building not because they hated that turtle (they did not even…
By Teresa Millesi Covid-19 has had a devastating impact on Indigenous groups in Latin America, especially in Brazil, where the president Jair Bolsonaro has downplayed its severity, with his ministers calling it an “opportunity” for illegal logging in the Amazon. Horrifying videos of hospital corridors lined with corpses and pictures of mass graves in Manaus,…
By John R. Eperjesi Outdoor Afro is a national non-profit organization that uses things like canoe paddles, hiking poles, and tents to help break down the racist stereotype in American culture that says that Black people don’t enjoy the great outdoors. This stereotype was routinely proved false every time Christian Cooper, an amateur birdwatcher, entered…
By Lauren LaFauci and Cecilia Åsberg In the wake of the righteous movement protesting police violence and the murder of Black people in the United States, environmentalist Leah Thomas (@greengirlleah) posted an image to Instagram of text repeating 16 times, “Environmentalists for Black Lives Matter.”
By Marcílio de Freitas Amazonia is one of the planet’s last utopias. Even before the New World was “discovered,” it existed in the imaginary of foreign travelers and governments. Yet the future of Brazil’s Amazonia region is fast becoming a tragedy in the making, which is calling out for international attention.
Sule Emmanuel Egya on “‘Contemporary Nigerian Literature: An Ecocritical Reading,” Thursday, 10 January 2019
Kate Wright on “Decolonizing Archives: Grounding Anticolonial History in a Community Garden, ” Thursday, 25 July 2019.
Malcom Ferdinand on “A Decolonial Ecology – Voices from the hold of Modernity,” Amsterdam, 29 February, 2020.
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