Global climate, local forest

There is finally a site for environmental questions on the Middle East: On Earth Day, April 22, Jadaliyya, e-zine of the Arab Studies Institute, has launched its Environment page. "The Jadaliyya Environment Page is a forum for innovative, critical, and incisive analysis and reporting on environmenta...

Since I wrote a first post about flying in academia almost a year ago, the discussion has spread widely. We have started to collect ideas on how to make our own research more climate-friendly, in my own institution and among researchers from the social science and humanities in Berlin. In this debat...

Seit Dezember streiken in Frankreich weite Teile der Arbeiter:innen und Angestellten, von der Bahn über die Schulen bis zu Museen und Operhäusern. Der Protest richtet sich gegen die Rentenreform von Präsident Emmanuel Macron, der sich bisher geweigert hat, die Reform aufzugeben und nur zu einzelnen...

The 1st Annual Conference on Mediterranean Studies: Renewable Energy and the Environment: Social, Political and Economic Dimensions, will take place at Yaşar University Center for Mediterranean Studies, 4-5 June 2020. "As energy politics remains a contested issue in the Mediterranean Basin, what pol...

I recently came across the Political Ecology reading list Julian Bloomer shared on the blog Undisciplined Environments. Though from 2016 and thus missing the latest publications, this may be of great help to all preparing courses or looking for an overview of the most important publications in the f...

The Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS), Philipps University Marburg, is organizing a symposium on climate change and disasters in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, with a focus on Iran. The aim of the conference, according to the invitation, is to provide a venue for presen...

ASLE, the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, has created a useful online database for teaching resources (syllabus, texts...) where people can find inspiration for their classes but also upload and share their resources with other lecturers: https://asle.org/teach/teaching-reso...

POLLEN, the Political Ecology Network, is calling for its third Biennial Conference, taking place in Brighton, UK, 24-26 June 2020. The conference theme is 'Contested Natures: Power, Possibility, Prefiguration. Proposals for sessions can be submitted until 31 Oct 2019.

Anläßlich des Klimastreiks am 20. September - das jüngst veröffentlichte Video von Scientists4Future. Danke an alle, die dazu beigetragen haben! https://youtu.be/4ZYh0aTSvBA Die internationale Stellungnahme von S4F kann weiterhin hier unterzeichnet werden. Wir sehen uns morgen auf den Straßen oder i...

Update: The deadline has been extended until November 15, 2019 - find now also a french version of the call here. We welcome contributions to our workshop on climate change in the Middle East and North Africa (and beyond) next june in Berlin! Feel free to forward our call to more people who might be...

Just a few days left until the deadline for abstracts: a workshop in Barcelona bringing together social science research on climate change and conservation, Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), 29-30 October 2019: "Conservation, Clima...

In June 2019, the EnJust network - a new network dealing with questions of environmental justice - organized its first workshop on "Narratives and Practices of Environmental Justice" in Kiel, Germany (see a report here). Now, the call for the next meeting in 2020 is out: “Bridging research, policy a...

Flying in academia and the climate crisis - english version here Seit bald einem Jahr streiken jeden Freitag Schüler*innen für mehr Klimaschutz - das hat auch in der Wissenschaftslandschaft einiges ins Rollen gebracht. Auch Wissenschaftler*innen haben begonnen, die eigenen Strukturen in Bezug auf Kl...

An interesting workshop at Goldsmiths, London, September 22-23, covering the relation between new discussion on 'financialisation' and the legacies of colonialism... Deadline to register is August 20th http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/colonial-debts-extractive-nostalgias-imperial-insolvencies-re...

Since almost a year students are demonstrating every Friday for actions adressing global warming. This has led to the creation of new networks, like Scientists for Future (S4F), supporting this movement, but also to new discussion within academia about our  own climate impact. CO2 emmissions are dir...

The Forschungswerkstatt Kritische Geographie/Critical Geography Research Workshop took place in Berlin this year, june 14-16 - and we participated with a workshop entitled "Critical Geography and New Materialism". To our surprise there was a huge interest in the workshop - we had to change the room...

Why is it so expensive to access the results of publicly-funded research - a fact that makes research much more difficult if not inpossible in remote areas or poor countries? A new documentary shows the role of publishers in "business of scholarhips" works - and a new initiative by european research...

Vor zehn Jahren habe ich eine Reportage geschrieben über den Plan Puebla Panamá (PPP), einen "Entwicklungsplan" für den Süden Mexikos. Er sollte einen "Korridor" für Energie und Waren vom Norden Mexikos bis nach Mittelamerika schaffen und gelangte auch deshalb zu einer gewissen Bekanntheit, weil die...

Bruno Latour, französischer Wissenschaftssoziologe und Mitbegründer der Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie, ist gerade in Rente gegangen - und befindet sich auf einmal inmitten eines zweiten "Krieges" um Wissenschaft und Wahrheit. Als "Science wars" wurde in den 1990er Jahren der Disput bezeichnet, den Latour...

Alles wird zur Ware, und was Ware ist, ist (ver)handelbar - auch grundlegende Rechte. Der Blog Klima der Gerechtigkeit der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung verweist auf ein neues Gesetz zur Nachhaltigkeit in Gabun (Sustainable Development Law, SDL), das die Regierung dort am 1. August 2014 beschlossen hat. Di...

Noch bis Ende dieses Jahres findet im Haus der Kulturen der Welt das 'Anthropocene Project' statt, mit Konferenzen, Theater, Publikationen und Ausstellungen, die sich an der Genze von Wissenschaft, Politik und Kunst mit der Diagnose des Anthropozäns beschäftigen. HKW | Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Der Sammelband Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa (2011) enthält es einen interessanten Beitrag von Leila M. Harris. Er basiert auf Feldstudien, hauptsächlich ausführlichen Interviews mit der lokalen Bevölkerung im Südosten der Türkei, in jenem Gebiet, das im Rahmen des um...

In his lecture at the University of Sheffield, "Put a price on nature? We must stop this neoliberal road to ruin", (manuscript published online by The Guardian) journalist and environmental activist George Monbiot talked about what he called the Natural Capital Agenda: "[...] As Thomas Piketty, a na...