One of the most visible effects of COVID-19 in Brussels, where I live, has been the creation of a bunch of new cycle paths. Given that space in a very dense city is limited, these have tended to be overwhelmingly taken from areas previously designated for cars. In some cases, where there used to be […]
Category: political ecology
Rights + Nature = ?
I have written before about the tendency, currently enjoying gusts in its sails, to grant rights to natural environments. In practical terms, it all started in a borough in Pennsylvania, but really came to international prominence with Ecuador’s 2008 constitution, the first one in the world to grant constitutional rights to nature. These are the right […]
Habitats
Everything that lives must live somewhere. The idea of habitat, at its core, is nothing more than the designation of a home for a particular form of life. In theory, everything that finds appropriate conditions for its own life requirements has found its habitat. If we are thinking along Darwinian and ecological lines, then chance […]
Social and Ecological Justice: on a conflicted relationship
Current events keep confirming my conviction: the 21st century will be the ecological one, no matter what actually happens to the environment. Just like the 20th century was the century of wars even if you happened to live in a place that saw none, so will this century be defined by ecology, inasmuch as ecological matters will […]
The Difficulty of Slowing Down
The Great Acceleration has been proposed, with good reason, as the proper kicking into gear of the Anthropocene. Long story short, across virtually all indicators of production/consumption (energy, land use, commodities, and so on), the post-WWII world has hit the accelerator hard. Speaking about it in the past tense is misleading, as all indicators currently show […]
Ecological Depression
Ecological depression may become an acceptable diagnosis for an increasing number of people. It is characterised by feelings of impotence and despair when confronted with the massive scale of socio-environmental destruction in our world. It leads to paralysis. In today’s news cycle, not only are environmental problems under-reported, they also tend to be assimilated to […]
Rewilding Documentary
ARTE is set to air (though you can already watch it online) the first full-length documentary on European rewilding. While I was researching the reintroduction of European Bison to the Souther Carpathians (you can read about that here) I had the pleasure to meet the film crew and talk with them about my work. Some […]
Gratitude
I have spent the last three months in New Zealand, immersed in a world very different from the one that defines my usual daily life. I have had the luxury of time-to-think, something that, even though I became an academic for it, is rarer by the day. I have also had the opportunity to start […]
Moving to a town near you
In many articles on this blog I have spoken about the reintroduction of animals to areas where they have gone extinct. This practice has become common in rewilding projects, and it has many advantages, not least the publicity that comes from releasing charismatic megafauna (yes, mostly them). The public relations campaigns of conservation and rewilding […]
The Pigeon in the Coal Mine
The Côa Valley, Eastern Portugal, is dotted with thousands of pigeon houses. It is impossible not to notice the elegant structures that seem to fit timelessly within the landscape. Though they look like they’ve always been there, this is not true. For a region with a history dating back tens of thousands of years, they […]
The Civil Animal 