News Feeds | ecology.iww.org (2024)

Undisciplined Environments - Thu, 04/25/2024 - 03:00

By Alexandre Molina Sourdat, Isabeau Ottolini and Kathleen Uyttewaal

While living through and learning about wildfires, we’re also learning more about how to take care of ourselves and others beyond the confines of academia.

Introduction

Wildfire disasters are often important catalysts for reflection and change. In our case, as three social science-oriented wildfire researchers, we recurrently observe and participate in these processes of changes. Recent wildfires in very different parts of the world, such as in Chile, a Hawaiian island, and the south of Spain, have prompted us to sit together and reflect on our personal relationships to these fire events, the limitations of wildfire research, as well as how we as researchers can create more meaningful work in service of others while taking care of ourselves, and maintaining hopeful, grounded engagement beyond our role in academia.

Through this blogpost, we reflect on our personal experiences of living in wildfire-prone territories, critically reflect on current wildfire research paradigms, offer considerations for care-oriented research, and plant some seeds of hope in times of uncertainty and global change. For this, we are guided by a quote from Eduardo Galeano and Fernando Birri: “Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I’ll never reach it. So what’s the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.”

A path winds through a recently burned forest in Vall d’Ebo, Spain. Still, utopia encourages us to walk toward the horizon. Author: Isabeau Ottolini

Converging geographies in flames: from Chile, to Hawai’i, to Spain

What do Chile, a Hawaiian island, and a rural area in Spain have in common? Despite the geographical distance, our personal experiences and reflections create a shared sense of proximity.

This year started with catastrophic news. During the first week of February, a wildfire devastated the Valparaíso Region in central Chile. In just a few days, over 9,000 hectares of rural, agricultural, forested, bush, and urban soil were severely damaged. In the municipalities of Viña del Mar and Valparaíso, nearly 35% of the total surface was affected by the fire. In the human domain, more than 100 lives were lost while thousands of people lost their homes and had to be evacuated and potentially relocated. The severe dry season and high temperatures, in combination with highly informal settlements – which lacked proper evacuation plans and presented high levels of ecological, infrastructural and social vulnerability – catalyzed this disaster. Despite the increase of wildfires in the last decade in Valparaíso and around the country, this catastrophe still caught many local populations and authorities unprepared.

As a Chilean fire researcher recently relocated in Spain, Alexandre is challenged by this distance. Not only as he has been away from his country in these difficult times, but he has witnessed the distance between integrative perspectives on wildfires promoted by Global North academia versus the mainstream discourses heard in Chile. Media narratives in Chile have focused on political and professional negligence and responsibilities, but as social scientists we recognize that broader conclusions must be drawn to mobilize social and political change. In Valparaíso, thousands of dwellings are located in unregulated sectors, exposing a large population not only to critical climate conditions but also to a lack of basic services, evacuation accessibility and minimal infrastructure to combat fire. It is these same marginal material conditions that perpetuated fire risk: light and flammable construction materials were an important factor in the spread of fire in Valparaiso’s periurban contexts. While this problem had already shown in the big fires of 2014 in the same region or 2017 in the Maule region, political action has remained insufficient to properly address wildfire risk, focusing on suppression measures while avoiding real institutional landscape and territorial management.

While wildfire risk is known in places like Chile, let’s consider the town of Lahaina in Maui, Hawai’i. Having lived through wildfires growing up in California, Kathleen feels both a closeness and a distance while working with communities on wildfire issues in Catalonia (Spain). When Lahaina burned in August 2023, she found herself asking through a mixture of grief and anger: how is it that this place experienced the deadliest US wildfire in 100 years ?

Out of innumerable international conferences, oceans of papers, highly detailed models and risk assessments, this area hardly registered on the pulse of current wildfire research. Climate change tells part of the wildfire story in Maui. Meteorological conditions aligned so that a significant drought met hurricane wind conditions and enabled the fire to rip through the landscape. But Hawai’i has battled hundreds of invasive grass species for decades: these fast-growing annuals seed in harsh conditions (including lava rock), offering fodder to fire where vegetation may not have existed before. Earlier, monoculture sugarcane and pineapple production dominated wetland soils. Once these areas were abandoned due to declining soil fertility, the local economy pivoted toward the tourism industry and vegetation growth went unchecked.

Compounding all this, Maui faces a serious housing crisis: locals can no longer afford to live there as real estate prices skyrocket and vacation rentals are reserved for visitors. The familiar linchpin of settler colonialism connects all these hazardous conditions that have accumulated over decades, as the FireGeneration Collaborative asserts. Indigenous populations in Hawai’i were replaced with an invasive settler society that asserts state sovereignty and juridical control. Today, this is embodied by Native Hawaiians’ loss of their rights to steward land and water, and waves of greedy land speculation which have destroyed ecosystems that are not adapted to fire.

Half a world apart, many of the dynamics that led to disaster in Chile and Maui can also be found in the south of Spain, including territorial inequalities materialized through land abandonment in rural regions, housing crises and touristification in urban areas, and an increasingly deeper disconnect between humans and the environment as past ways of relating to, and caring for the land disappear.

Isabeau lives in a territory with many recurrent wildfires, and works as a researcher with citizen initiatives that emerge in response to wildfire events (particularly, Pego Viu). In 2022 she experienced the Vall d’Ebo wildfire close to home and the community she does her research with. As such, Isabeau’s relationship with wildfire is entwined with many, oftentimes contradictory, emotions. For one, she acknowledges the role of fire in the ecosystem she lives in, and she marvels over the incredible adaptability of many non-human beings to wildfires. At the same time, she witnesses and feels a strong sense of loss over transformed landscapes and impacted communities, as well as anticipatory grief and anxiety over future devastating wildfires that are likely to come.

Each of us engages with fire from a complex mixture of emotional, social, and geographical distance or closeness. We recognize both the singularities and commonalities between our research interests, positionalities, and the places and people we care deeply about. As we learn from past experiences, we also see how situations resemble one another and how critical social and material conditions remain largely unaddressed. Our challenge as a new generation of researchers is that we are learning from, engaging with and experiencing climate change and disasters as an everyday embodied matter.

During the wildfire, pinecones started opening to release the seeds and allow a new generation of pines to grow. Author: Isabeau Ottolini.

Critical reflections on wildfire research

A grim paradox about our line of work is that once a tragedy happens, lots of new research will reflect on the conditions leading up to it and the post-disaster effects. Of course, important lessons will be learned and hopefully inform policies and actions to prevent similar events from repeating. Academic and political careers will flourish, hundreds of millions of dollars will pour in for recovery and creativity will blossom. But so many people’s lives have been lost or forever scarred where so much preventative work could have been done around urban planning, sustainable landscape management, and emergency preparedness. Indeed, the multitudes of innovative technologies, illustrious scientific papers, and well-thought policy briefs the world-over did not stop other high-intensity and deadly wildfires from happening like the Camp Fire (USA, 2018), Pedrógão Grande (Portugal, 2017), Mati (Greece, 2018), or the Black Summer fires (Australia, 2019-2020).

More worrying still, some research can exacerbate many unjust dynamics, as it can be based on “extractive, transactional, competitive, and exploitive relationships” between researcher and researched. For instance, wildfire survivors can sometimes experience a flurry of interest from well-meaning scholars who collect stories and relive difficult experiences with them, leading to a feeling of fatigue as they volunteer their time without necessarily receiving results in return from research teams. Furthermore, the wildfire issue is predominantly problematised from an expert perspective: scientists and practitioners seek to rapidly define what the problem is and then provide solutions. But the inhabitants of wildfire-prone territories can rarely obtain the space and time to share their insights, perspectives, and knowledges to build more just ways of coexisting with fire from the bottom up.

The limits are clear: research outputs are too-often driven by funding and power dynamics that tend to primarily benefit research interests (as well as neoliberal, corporate interests seeking product-based results). This is a form of disaster capitalism expressed through research, and it ignores a deeper cry for socioenvironmental justice. As researchers, this can make us feel dread, rage, powerlessness and even numbness in our work. But we must engage with and work through these emotions as we are also people invested deeply in wildfire research in the communities where we live.

Wildfire research continues to be conducted in separate silos of expertise and tends to leave out the most important voices: those of people living in wildfire-prone territories. Often, projects aim to develop partial solutions in disaster prevention, like creating fire breaks, improving fire detection, and firewising homes. However, these solutions are not likely to facilitate the profound socioenvironmental transformations needed to decrease wildfire disasters. For one, wildfires are often merely the visible manifestation of deeper social, political, historical and environmental dynamics. As seen in Chile, Hawai’i and Spain, such dynamics are an entanglement of local, regional and global factors: from rural depopulation, loss of local traditional knowledge and land management practices, and housing crises – all of which increase vulnerabilities to wildfire events, to biodiversity loss and climate change exacerbating extreme wildfire conditions.

“Restoring our relationship with fire and the land it burns on is not a journey with an end destination- it’s an ongoing process of adaptation to a changing world” – Laurel Kays. Author: Isabeau Ottolini.

Wildfire events will continue to increase in frequency and intensity around the world – in some places already as part of the landscape, and in others as a new element. When the question is not if, but when a disaster will happen, it can feel challenging to not fall into despair, anxiety and fatalism. Not just for the general population, but also those of us who are juxtaposed between inhabiting fire-prone territories, working with local people on wildfire topics, while navigating varied levels of distance and proximity. It is in this space where the ethics of care in disaster research, paired with deliberately cultivating a practice of hope, have inspired us to reach toward a brighter horizon.

Towards more respectful, reciprocal and caring disaster research

So what can we as researchers do to make disaster research more respectful, reciprocal and caring? Many people share this concern, and have done great work to further research based on such principles.

In both disaster research and beyond, incorporating an ethics of care can guide more meaningful engagement. Feminist researchers Ravera, Fernández-Giménez and Oteros highlight the importance of feminist practices, such as reflexivity, embodiment, reciprocity, and care. In practice, this includes reflecting on our own life histories and how these relate to the research we conduct, designing research that engages with bodies, feelings and emotions, and cultivating environments of care and support. These practices foster awareness of the power dynamics in research and give researchers the tools to identify and address asymmetrical or extractive relationships that can occur, for instance, when researching wildfire-affected communities. Another essential practice is taking the time to ask questions and listen to the answers from people who experience the wildfire issue first-hand. Often referred to as a ‘Slow Science’, approach, this allows pluralising our understandings of an issue like wildfires, and informs more holistic and socially beneficial science, rather than seeking to provide quick fixes to a societal problem like wildfires.

To investigate our own priorities, values and relationships when doing disaster research, the Disaster Studies Manifesto and Accord prompts us to ask questions like: “Who researches disaster? What gets researched and why? When the research happens, how it is designed, conducted, shared, and followed up on?”. The FireGeneration Collaborative engages with similar underlying reflections regarding Hawai’i, and invites us all to ask ourselves: “Do we know whose land we are on? Do we know about the settler-colonial history of this place? Do we talk with our friends and communities about these issues? What tribes and Indigenous-led organizations are in the area? And how can we support and resource these efforts?” These reflexive questions provide small steps toward more just disaster studies, and supporting more empowered Indigenous futures.

Importantly, in wildfire disasters an ethics of care is not just for research participants, but also implies a practice of care for ourselves as researchers. Though rarely addressed when talking about research ethics, secondary traumatic stress occurs amongst those doing research with communities affected by disaster. Whilst the source of trauma differs from Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome (by listening to or caring for someone traumatized, vs experiencing it firsthand), the symptoms are similar and can deeply impact the researcher’s life. Speaking from their lived experience in traumatic wildfire research, authors like Eriksen and Ditrich encourage us to “facilitate cultivation of ‘wise attention’ within the research encounter through a deeper awareness, reflection, understanding and acceptance of ever-changing, interdependent processes of life”. Cultivating these kinds of care in academic environments may both help us build resilience in the face of traumatic events and steer us away from extractive and competitive models of research that sacrifice mental health.

Wild blackberry resprouts weeks after the passing of fire.Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us that even a wounded world can feed us and give us moments of wonder and joy: “I choose joy over despair.” Author: Isabeau Ottolini.

Closing remarks on the role of hope

“All that these transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope. To hope is to gamble. It’s to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk” (Solnit, 2016).

In wildfire-prone territories, it can be challenging to keep hope alive. Yet, amid this challenge, it is essential to not let it paralyze us into inaction. Instead, we can learn and decide to engage with these complex, confronting and at times heart-wrenching emotions, and decide every day to stand up and contribute our little grain of sand reaching toward a different world. A lot of change is needed, so perhaps we can consider this as an open invitation for our own diverse actions – through research, and especially beyond it.

It is also important to remember that many disasters are being avoided through concerted “symphonies of action,” though they rarely make it to the headlines. Through our research, we have also learned of many inspiring efforts to decrease wildfire risk while providing cascading benefits to various communities. Ramats de Foc in Catalonia revalues traditional rural shepherding livelihoods, reduces wildfire risk, and invigorates sustainable local food systems. And trainings like WTREX (hosted in USA, South Africa and Portugal) amplify the role of women and their allies in integrated fire management. Such trainings increase global capacities for prescribed fire while uplifting Indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge. These local and global efforts remind us of authors and thinkers like Mariame Kaba, and Howard Zinn, who urge us to see that hope is a practice rather than a feeling.

“And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory” (The Optimism of Uncertainty, 2004).

By recognizing and engaging with our struggles (both through our research and shared humanity), though we may not see the fruits of our labor in our lifetimes, we choose to create a better world. We, too, will grow and change thanks to taking action over the course of our lifetimes. Jenny Odell encourages us to stay open, relational, listening and learning and willing to change ourselves. Although this can make us more vulnerable to grief – for we acknowledge that we have something to lose and we risk losing what we love – it also means that we are alive, changing, and form part of a larger collective navigating the wide spectrum of emotions that fire generates, including grief and love.

What keeps our hope alive even in the darkest times is our connections to this longer story of human and planetary history, and the knowledge that we must cherish and rise for what we love and hold dear. Darkness, then, is also a place of action, as Solnit also says: “The future is dark, with a darkness as much of the womb as the grave.”

Gathering around the fire, we jointly reflect on kindling hope and forming part of meaningful change. Author: Isabeau Ottolini.

Alexandre Molina Sourdat is an Early Stage Researcher at the Open University of Catalunya (Spain). After studying and researching in Chile, his present interests focus around suburban wildfire risk and methodologies for community engagement in different geographical contexts.

Isabeau Ottolini is a PhD candidate at the Open University of Catalonia (Spain) and the European project PyroLife. Her research focuses on community-led wildfire communication, which she explores in collaboration with Pego Viu, a citizen initiative born from the ashes of the Vall d’Ebo wildfire in 2015.

Kathleen Uyttewaal is a PhD candidate at Wageningen University (Netherlands) through the European project PyroLife. Her research is primarily based in Catalonia, developing transdisciplinary approaches to wildfire issues with the Pau Costa Foundation. Born in France, raised in California, and living in Catalonia, her passion for Mediterranean ecosystems, their people, cultures and languages runs deep.

The post Kindling hope: wildfire social science and forming part of meaningful change appeared first on Undisciplined Environments.

Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

Ecologist - Thu, 04/25/2024 - 02:00

Categories: H. Green News

For much of its 53-year history, the Environmental Protection Agency let civil rights complaints languish. From Flint, Michigan, to the industrial corridors of the Deep South, communities attempting to use federal civil rights law to clean up the pollution in their neighborhoods were largely met with years of silence as their cases piled up in the agency’s backlog. That changed in 2020, after a federal judge ruled that the EPA must conduct timely investigations of civil rights complaints, and staffers began looking into cases where they identified potential discrimination.

Now, a slate of red-state attorneys general are trying to stop the EPA from taking race into account at all. Twenty-three Republican attorneys general filed a petition with the Biden administration’s EPA last week asking the agency to stop using Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to regulate pollution. Advocates described the move, spearheaded by Florida’s Ashley Moody, as an attempt to strip the EPA of an avenue for tackling environmental justice, which the agency defines as “the just treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of income, race, color, national origin, tribal affiliation, or disability, in agency decision-making.” In their petition, the Republican attorneys general argued that in practice, environmental justice “asks the states to engage in racial engineering.”

The petition “reads as the next step in a series of actions designed to undermine our civil rights laws,” said Debbie Chizewer, an attorney at Earthjustice leading the organization’s efforts on Title VI. She described petitions to the EPA as important legal mechanisms to compel the agency to act. “It’s a real tool,” she said. “This is an abuse of that tool.”

Moody’s office told the Associated Press that the attorneys general would sue the EPA if it didn’t change its ways.

The most recent high profile civil rights complaint submitted to the EPA came from residents of Cancer Alley, the stretch of land on the lower Mississippi River in southeast Louisiana home to hundreds of industrial facilities, including a notorious plant owned by the Japanese chemical giant Denka. Starting in the fall of 2022, the EPA spent months negotiating with Louisiana’s environmental and health regulators about how to ease the toxic pollution around Denka and other plants that surround the region’s predominantly Black towns. But the whole process was called off after then-Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (now the state’s governor) filed suit in May 2023.

Landry’s lawsuit attacked decades-old policies on environmental racism, challenging the EPA’s authority to regulate under Title VI. Even though the EPA dropped the complaint in June, the state pursued its litigation, and a federal judge ruled in Louisiana’s favor in January. Judge James Cain said that Louisiana and its “sister states” had found themselves “at the whim of the EPA and its overreaching mandates.”

Considered one of the most important provisions of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in any program that receives funding from the federal government. This includes state agencies, which use federal dollars to administer pollution prevention laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Chizewer described the provision as vital, because “our environmental laws are not protecting all communities. ZIP codes determine your exposure to environmental harms and Title VI provides a backstop to eliminate that.”

Recent attacks on the EPA’s use of Title VI can be traced back to the final days of the Trump administration, when the Department of Justice attempted to push through a rule that would have changed the interpretation of Title VI to only cover intentional discrimination. For decades, federal agencies like the EPA have interpreted Title VI to include in their definition of discrimination “disparate impacts,” the idea that a policy or an agency decision can disproportionately hurt a specific group of people, regardless of whether it’s deliberate. The legal argument underpinning the Trump administration’s rule, as well as the Louisiana lawsuit and the most recent petition, is based on the Supreme Court case Alexander v. Sandoval. The 2001 decision, written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, said that private citizens do not have the right to sue parties under Title VI, meaning the law’s protections could only be advanced by agencies like the EPA. The Republican attorneys general now want to peel back the agency’s ability to use Title VI, too.

Claire Glenn, a criminal defense attorney with a background in civil rights law, told Grist that the disparate impact interpretation of Title VI is necessary for keeping communities safe, since companies are wary of appearing discriminatory.

“We’re in an era where intentional discrimination is increasingly hard to prove, but discriminatory impacts are not going away,” Glenn said.

Title VI is one of a handful of federal regulations that can be used to protect communities from toxic pollution. The Clean Air Act requires states to regulate plants by industry, with each type of facility required to abide by certain standards that limit their emissions. But when companies try to build plants in already polluted areas, Title VI can be used to stop local governments from granting them permits. Over the past five years, the chemical industry has made a concerted effort to expand its footprint in Louisiana. Since the EPA dropped its Title VI case there, residents and advocates have had to find new ways to fight the expansion.

The EPA has not yet acknowledged Florida’s petition publicly. Chizewer said that the agency could choose to reject it out of hand, or accept it and start a process to change its own regulations.

“I think it’s a test for the EPA,” Chizewer said. “The EPA needs to stand firm and show the importance of this tool.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Republican attorneys general mount a new attack on the EPA’s use of civil rights law on Apr 25, 2024.

Categories: H. Green News

Green European Journal - Thu, 04/25/2024 - 01:43

Apesar da sua longa história na Europa e de ser a maior minoria étnica, os ciganos continuam a ser vistos como o “estrangeiros perpétuos” e sofrem violência, marginalização e exclusão. Um verdadeiro sentimento de pertença para os ciganos europeus só pode ser construído com base no reconhecimento das relações de poder em jogo.

Embora os ciganos estejam na Europa pelo menos desde o século XI, são frequentemente vistos como eternos migrantes ou “estranhos”, como descrito pelo sociólogo alemão Georg Simmel. Eles vivem ao nosso lado, mas não os conhecemos realmente, eles estão próximos e distantes ao mesmo tempo. E o que pensamos que sabemos – a partir de retratos midiáticos e encontros fugazes – muitas vezes não passa de estereótipos e preconceitos.

Em seu artigo de 2012 “A Europa inventa os ciganos: o lado sombrio da modernidade”, o teórico literário Klaus-Michael Bogdal argumenta que, como os ciganos não conseguiram escrever sua própria história, ela foi escrita por outros – cujas percepções influenciaram fortemente a narrativa. Ele acredita que os ciganos são uma invenção europeia moderna e que a imagem que os representa é marcada por distorções. Em seu livro Roma na Europa, de 2007, o sociólogo e especialista em ciganos Jean-Pierre Liégeois observa que as atitudes em relação aos ciganos podem ser definidas por uma medida de “simpatia romântica”, mas que os estereótipos mais negativos são revividos assim que a tensão social surge. As crenças generalizadas sobre as comunidades ciganas podem ser igualmente distorcidas. A opinião de que os ciganos levam um estilo de vida nómada ou seminómada é muitas vezes injustificada, uma vez que muitos ciganos estão agora de facto assentados, enquanto as alegações que ligam a cultura cigana a um desrespeito geral pelas regras desmentem o facto de a vida cigana ser regida por normas complexas de comportamento social.

Alteridade e subversăo

Numa tentativa de explicar a falta de ciganos pertencentes às sociedades não ciganas com as quais vivem, o antropólogo cultural romeno Vintilă Mihăilescu identifica três elementos da “condição cigana”. A primeira é a relação dos ciganos com a terra. Mihăilescu afirma que não há exemplos de um número significativo de ciganos que se tornaram camponeses ou agricultores, com suas raízes e recursos dependentes da terra. Isso fez com que os ciganos fossem percebidos como um “outro absoluto” pelos moradores locais. Mihăilescu propõe que a mobilidade dos ciganos foi, na verdade, impulsionada pela busca de recursos de subsistência. Além disso, ele se refere ao período de escravização cigana no território da atual Roménia (discutido com mais detalhes abaixo), quando a maioria dos ciganos levava uma vida sedentária, e postula que o nomadismo foi inventado pelas “sociedades anfitriãs” e funcionava como um operador explícito ou implícito de categorização social e estigmatização.

O próximo elemento da “condição cigana” é a sua relação com o espaço. O espaço em geral, e a terra em particular, não oferecem aos ciganos um sentimento de identificação ou de pertença. Não subscrevendo um “culto ao território”, os ciganos não têm hesitações em violar os interesses patrimoniais de outras pessoas e, por isso, estão dispostos a instalar-se em qualquer terra disponível. Privados da terra e desinteressados por ela, os ciganos referem-se a outra categoria de recursos – nomeadamente o seu próprio artesanato, com o qual ganham a vida diariamente. Mihăilescu observa que isso muitas vezes tornou os ciganos parte integrante de suas “sociedades anfitriãs” e de seu funcionamento económico – o que significa que a inclusão social dos ciganos era muito mais profunda do que geralmente se acredita.

O terceiro elemento da “condição cigana” é a sua relação com a propriedade. Salvo raras exceções, os ciganos tendiam a não acumular bens significativos; seus bens mais valiosos eram geralmente transportados nas carroças. Como resultado, sua atividade econômica foi predominantemente orientada para a sobrevivência e não para o crescimento. Isso levou à ideia de que os ciganos tinham uma “economia de resíduos”, o que contribuiu significativamente para a reprodução de seu status marginal.

Curiosamente, Mihăilescu sugere que esses três elementos – a falta de apego ao lugar, a falta de propriedade e a prática de uma economia de serviços oferecidos de forma peripatética dependendo das oportunidades disponíveis – facilitam uma espécie de rito de reversão que, ao apresentar uma imagem espelhada da sociedade não-cigana, vira de cabeça para baixo a dominação explícita das sociedades anfitriãs e permite a subversão do status quo.

Escravidão, emancipação e migração para o oeste

De acordo com o especialista em comunidades minoritárias e marginalizadas Aidan McGarry, a construção da identidade dominante geralmente designa um estranho – alguém que não pertence – como um contraponto. Um espaço social é construído, e aqueles que se dignam a não pertencer são posicionados fora dele, tanto física quanto conceitualmente. Na Europa, os ciganos são colocados fora do espaço pertencente aos não-ciganos, tanto física como conceitualmente, e são interpretados como uma ameaça para os europeus.

O exemplo mais flagrante de exclusão é representado pela escravização dos ciganos no território da atual Romênia de pelo menos 1385 até 1856. Isso não só colocou os ciganos fora da sociedade; excluiu-os da categoria do humano. Os escravos eram como as coisas: podiam ser comprados e vendidos, doados e dados em troca de dívidas. Como nos EUA, após a abolição da escravatura cigana em 1855-1856, os dois principados romenos ofereceram compensação aos proprietários pelas perdas econômicas sofridas, mas não aos próprios escravos.

O historiador cigano Petre Petcuț afirma que a abolição da escravatura foi o acontecimento social mais importante na história moderna da Romênia. Desencadeou dois fenômenos duradouros: as tentativas estatais de integrar/assimilar esses novos cidadãos – ainda inacabadas – e a dramática desigualdade entre os emancipados e o restante da população. Políticas abolicionistas superficiais, aparentemente destinadas a integrar antigos escravos na sociedade, criaram, em vez disso, um grupo distinto de cidadãos. Muitas pessoas foram simplesmente jogadas na rua e forçadas a se tornarem mendigas, populações foram deslocadas e grupos inteiros se tornaram apátridas.

Outro fenômeno importante desencadeado pela emancipação dos ciganos foi uma onda migratória de ciganos principalmente nómades para a Europa Ocidental. Como resultado do pouco conhecimento da cultura e das práticas ciganas, esses nômades tornaram-se alvo de pressão permanente, sujeitos a controlo e suspeitos de crimes ou ilegalidades. A mistura do nómada com o delinquente por parte das autoridades públicas e da opinião pública tornou-se cada vez mais frequente nos países da Europa – com os ciganos acusados de roubar aldeias, invadir e raptar crianças – e ainda persiste.

Petre Petcuț descreve a figura do “cigano nómade ameaçador” que se torna uma imagem indeterminada num mundo dominado pela violência política e pelo racismo, onde lendas e monstros se encontram. Sublinha que a representação do “nómade cigano” que rouba, rapta crianças ou mesmo viola e assassina é o resultado do consumo cultural popular, em vez de representar um perigo real para a comunidade maioritária, sublinhando que a mobilidade dos ciganos está principalmente ligada ao exercício da sua profissão ou ofício.

Sistemas de controle, expulsão e genocídio

A partir do início do século XX, a mobilidade dos ciganos tornou-se uma questão internacional na Europa. O nacionalismo e a xenofobia começaram a influenciar os parâmetros de mobilidade dos grupos ciganos. As expulsões mútuas que ocorreram entre a França e a Bélgica, a França e a Suíça, e a França e a Itália demonstraram a dimensão dos sentimentos anti-ciganos e foram acompanhadas pelo desenvolvimento de um sistema ainda mais rigoroso de vigilância e controlo dos grupos nómades ciganos. A Suíça propôs a criação de uma comissão com poderes supranacionais responsável pelo “problema cigano” a nível europeu, mas esta iniciativa falhou – principalmente devido à Itália, que considerava os ciganos como pertencentes exclusivamente aos Estados da Europa Central e dos Balcãs, mas também devido à recusa de “nacionalização” dos ciganos por outros Estados, apanhados num turbilhão de nacionalismo e ansiedade em relação aos estrangeiros.

Após a eclosão da Segunda Guerra Mundial, a situação piorou acentuadamente. Em 1940, a polícia alemã começou a deportar ciganos da Alemanha nazista e da Áustria para a Polônia ocupada pelos alemães – principalmente para Auschwitz-Birkenau, onde um “Campo da Família Cigana” (Zigeunerfamilienlager) foi estabelecido em fevereiro de 1943. No final de 1943, 18.736 ciganos viviam no campo, dos quais cerca de 9.500 tinham menos de quinze anos. Quase 400 crianças nasceram lá.

No total, estima-se que cerca de 21.000 ciganos de 12 países tenham sido mortos em Auschwitz-Birkenau. O mesmo destino foi compartilhado por ciganos internados noutros campos de concentração. Muitos outros foram vítimas dos chamados Einsatzgruppen – esquadrões da morte paramilitares que executaram indivíduos judeus e ciganos e comunidades inteiras. O número exato de ciganos que foram mortos dessa forma não é conhecido, mas estima-se que existam 180 valas comuns na Ucrânia, Bielorrússia, ex-Iugoslávia e Polônia. Estudiosos como Angus Frazer, Jean-Pierre Liégeois e Ian Hanco*ck estimam que pelo menos meio milhão de ciganos de toda a Europa morreram durante o que ficou conhecido como o Holocausto Cigano.

O genocídio dos ciganos raramente é mencionado no discurso público e ainda não foi suficientemente investigado.

Em 15 de abril de 2015, o Parlamento Europeu adotou uma resolução que reconhece o genocídio e estabelece o dia 2 de agosto como o Dia Europeu em Memória do Holocausto Cigano. A data foi escolhida em memória do massacre dos quase 3000 homens, mulheres e crianças ciganos no campo de concentração pelas tropas das SS na noite de 2 de agosto de 1944. (De acordo com algumas fontes, o número de mortes foi superior a 4000.) No entanto, o caminho para o reconhecimento não foi fácil: os ciganos tiveram de lutar para serem reconhecidos como vítimas do Holocausto. Haviam sido excluídos dos julgamentos de Nuremberg sob o argumento de que sua perseguição era baseada em critérios sociais e não raciais, como era o caso dos judeus.

Na Sexta-Feira Santa de 1980, numa tentativa desesperada de levar o Estado alemão a reconhecer a perseguição aos ciganos por motivos raciais, ativistas dos direitos dos ciganos liderados por Romani Rose – chefe do Conselho Central dos Sinti e Ciganos alemães desde a sua fundação – recorreram a uma greve de fome. Em março de 1982, graças aos seus esforços, o chanceler Helmut Schmidt reconheceu oficialmente o genocídio e enfatizou a obrigação de indenizar as vítimas. As vítimas ciganas do Holocausto começaram a receber pagamentos de indenização em meados da década de 1980.

Apesar destes esforços, o genocídio dos ciganos raramente é mencionado no discurso público e ainda não foi suficientemente investigado. Os investigadores neste tema centram-se principalmente nos seus aspectos administrativos e organizacionais, destacando o papel das autoridades locais na categorização e deportação dos ciganos, e dão menos ênfase ao pensamento subjacente a esta campanha europeia de limpeza étnica.

A ciganofobia na Europa de hoje

A ciganofobia continua a ser generalizada na Europa, com os ciganos estigmatizados em massa como criminosos. Em França, por exemplo, o governo decidiu deportar migrantes ciganos que detinham a cidadania de outros países da UE no Verão de 2010 – por vezes à força. Esta campanha foi acompanhada por uma retórica anti-cigana, com toda a comunidade cigana a ser acusada de comportamento criminoso. Outro exemplo é a linguagem infeliz usada por alguns candidatos nas eleições italianas de 2008, que resultou em terríveis incidentes de violência contra os ciganos e seus acampamentos. Da mesma forma, o assassinato de seis ciganos, incluindo uma criança de 5 anos, na Hungria foi cometido em um ambiente inflamado pelo discurso de ódio.

Os ciganos continuam a ser os excluídos, os bodes expiatórios da Europa que são culpados em tempos de crise quando ninguém está disposto a assumir a responsabilidade pela situação. O exemplo mais recente é a pandemia de Covid-19, durante a qual o discurso de ódio e a incitação ao ódio contra os ciganos – e até mesmo atos de violência contra eles – aumentaram visivelmente.

Até à data, o impacto das políticas públicas para os ciganos na sociedade europeia tem sido limitado.

A história dos ciganos no espaço europeu é de violência, marginalização e exclusão. Eles eram considerados inferiores e explorados. Ao longo dos séculos, desenvolveu-se todo um conjunto de imagens, cristalizando estereótipos coletivos sem levar em conta as relações de poder que se formaram entre ciganos e não ciganos.

Iniciativas políticas e relações de poder

A fim de melhorar as condições dos ciganos e de lhes conferir direitos iguais aos cidadãos europeus, foram lançadas inúmeras iniciativas políticas nos últimos 25 anos. As mais promissoras foram as estratégias nacionais para os ciganos desenvolvidas pelos governos dos candidatos à adesão à União Europeia na Europa Central e Oriental, a Década da Inclusão dos Ciganos 2005-2015, iniciada pelo Banco Mundial e pelo Open Society Institute, e o Quadro Qstratégico da UE para os Ciganos em Matéria de Igualdade, Inclusão e Participação. A última delas foi consolidada e reformada em 7 de outubro de 2020. Em comparação com o quadro anterior, que se centrava na integração socioeconómica dos ciganos sem ter em conta a sua especificidade cultural, estabelece uma abordagem mais complexa da questão dos ciganos a nível europeu.

De acordo com o novo quadro, todos os ciganos devem ter a oportunidade de realizar todo o seu potencial e de se envolver na vida política, social, económica e cultural. Esta nova abordagem coloca uma maior ênfase na diversidade entre os ciganos, a fim de garantir que as estratégias nacionais respondam às necessidades específicas de diferentes grupos, incluindo as mulheres, os jovens, as crianças, os cidadãos nómades da UE, os apátridas, as pessoas LGBTQIA+ e os idosos e pessoas com deficiência. O quadro europeu incentiva uma abordagem interseccional, tendo em conta a forma como diferentes aspectos da identidade podem ser combinados para combater a discriminação. Presta também mais atenção às medidas que prevêem uma abordagem a nível político da questão da inclusão dos ciganos, a par de ações específicas destinadas a favorecer a sua efetiva igualdade de acesso aos direitos e serviços.

No entanto, até à data , o impacto das políticas públicas para os ciganos na sociedade europeia tem sido limitado. Uma das razões para tal, observa o especialista Iulius Rostaș, é que estas políticas não têm devidamente em conta a importância crucial da identidade étnica como factor causal essencial da exclusão social e da marginalização dos ciganos. Para reduzir estas lacunas e garantir que as políticas públicas relativas aos ciganos são adequadas à sua finalidade, a história das relações de poder entre ciganos e não ciganos e a exclusão dos ciganos devem ser tidas em conta. O poder deve ser partilhado para que pertença igualmente a todos – incluindo os ciganos. Só assim sentirão um verdadeiro sentimento de pertença à Europa – como cidadãos europeus com todos os direitos associados, não apenas os mais antigos “migrantes da Europa”, os eternos estrangeiros.

Categories: H. Green News

Audubon Society - Thu, 04/25/2024 - 01:04

Categories: G3. Big Green

Yale Environment 360 - Thu, 04/25/2024 - 00:56

The European eel, whose life cycle remains shrouded in mystery, is a staple of the continent’s cultures and cuisines. But after decades of decline in its populations, scientists are calling for a total ban on catching the iconic fish, which is facing a multitude of threats.

Read more on E360 →

Categories: H. Green News

Green Energy Times - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 23:49

Headline News:

• “A Golden Age Of Renewables Is Beginning, And California Is Leading the Way” • California has had a record-breaking string of days in which the combined generation renewable sources has exceeded demand on the main electricity grid for anywhere from 15 minutes to 9.25 hours per day. The implications are spectacular. [Scientific American]

Solar PVs (Tom Brewster Photography, CC-BY-SA 2.0)

• “Share Of Electricity Generated By Fossil Fuels In Great Britain Drops To Record Low” • Fifteen years ago, gas and coal power made up 75% of the electricity mix, while renewables were only 2%. Last year only a third of Great Britain’s electricity came from fossil fuels, and 40% from renewables. There are times when over 90% is from renewables. [The Guardian]
• “US Unveils Five-Year Offshore Leasing Plan” • US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced a new five-year schedule of offshore wind leasing rounds, with up to 12 lease sales by 2028. Four lease sales in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Pacific, and near US territories will take place this year, one each in 2025 and 2026, two in 2027, and four in 2028. [reNews]
• “US Interior Department Finalizes Rule to Streamline And Modernize Offshore Renewable Energy Development” • The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement finalized updated regulations for renewable energy development on the US Outer Continental Shelf, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said. [CleanTechnica]
• “Strict Rules Stop Green Hydrogen Production Diverting Clean Power From The Grid. What Are They?” • Green hydrogen must be made from green electricity. But its makers must ensure more than that. Renewable hydrogen is only produced when sufficient renewable energy is available, and is not diverting clean energy away from the grid. [Energy Post]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

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Audubon Society - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 19:30

Categories: G3. Big Green

On Saturday April 13, thousands of people gathered in Niamey, the capital of the West African state of Niger, demanding the dismantling of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) operations inside their country.

This demonstration represents an ongoing struggle in several former French colonies to end the economic, political, cultural and military ties to the imperialist powers.

In addition to the negative influence from Paris, the U.S. has joined their counterparts in France deploying thousands of military personnel under the guise of fighting “Islamic terrorism”. AFRICOM was launched in February 2008 from its base in Stuttgart, Germany.

The post Russians Advisors Arrive In Niger; Masses Demand Immediate Withdrawal Of Pentagon Troops appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

Renewable Energy Magazine - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 18:16

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Renewable Energy Magazine - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 18:16

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Renewable Energy Magazine - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 18:16

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Renewable Energy Magazine - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 18:16

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Renewable Energy Magazine - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 18:16

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Renewable Energy Magazine - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 18:16

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Renewable Energy Magazine - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 18:16

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Renewable Energy Magazine - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 18:16

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Renewable Energy Magazine - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 18:16

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Renewable Energy Magazine - Wed, 04/24/2024 - 18:16

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Josephine County, OR – Environmentalists are declaring victory after occupying a stand of old growth forest for three weeks to prevent trees from being logged.

Forest defenders launched a tree sit on April 1 to prevent Boise Cascade Wood Products, the timber company who bought the logging rights, from cutting a stand of mature trees which represents some of the last remaining intact old growth in the region.

For 22 days, community members occupied a patch of old growth forest that sits inside the boundaries of the Poor Windy Forest Management Plan.

The post Forest Defenders Declare Victory After 22-Day Tree Sit appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.