Transcript Mobile Worlds on Planet Earth

Redrawing Sovereignty
Home Territories and
Climate Change
Gaia – the earth as self-regulating community of living organisms
(of which homo sapiens is but one, even if a dominant lifeform)
http://ecolo.org/lovelock/what_is_Gaia.html (see Lovelock 1979)
“Here I am, floating in a tin can. Way above the World. Planet
Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do ….” (Space Oddity,
David Bowie, [1969] 1972)
What’s going on?
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Planet Earth is getting warmer i.e. the climate
has been changing (why?)
What – or who – are the main causes of this
shift? Or….
Is this a naturally occurring phenomenon over
time ( a very very long time)
Debates in natural and social sciences, and
philosophy pivot on definition, evidence (and
methodologies used), and geological/historical
timelines.
What is Changing?
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Metabolē (Greek for change) - vernacular usage is METABOLISM i.e.
a term for how physical (organic) as well as systems (e.g.
planetary, infrastructures) manage change
At stake? Whether observed evidence of changes in the planet’s
metabolism happen anyway but whether in fact they are
increasingly as a result of human culture and society
Contemporary debates: Environmental activists vs. sceptics
(politicians and scientists) argue over definitions, evidence, and
what to do at a global level
Political, economic, and cultural implications for national
sovereignty (climate refugees?), international law of the sea/land as
territory (rising sea levels), and world economic system and way of
life based on extractive, non-renewable resources
Banksy, 2009: Image from A climate activist's guide to
climate sceptics (Ramsay, openDemocracy, 2015)
Contentious Terms of Debate:
Climate Change or Global Warming?
“Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the average
weather… over a period of time ranging from months to
thousands or millions of years… Climate Change refers to a
change in the state of the climate that can be identified,
…and that persists for an extended period, typically
decades or longer” (Cubasch et al 2013: 126)
Global Warming refers to a particular effect of human-made
(fossil fuels, and other “natural” occurrences over time that
have led to an increase in the core temperature of the
“greenhouse effect” that keeps planet earth habitable: e.g.
cars, factories, large-scale farming, pollution, deforestation,
population growth (e.g. mega-cities), global food industries
etc).
Indicators
Various ways to notice, and to measure climate
change. Main indicators for scientists are:
• Sea levels (rising or lowering): e.g. rose by an average
of 0.17mm in 20thc, predicted to rise 28-79mm in next
century (2007 projection): last decade level rising
higher, 3.1mm per year
• Precipitation (rainfall, aridity): e.g. water vapour
• Temperature (rising, lowering): e.g. warmer in 20th c
than 19th c, 0.74% rise
Global Warming term for main symptom: rise in
earth’s average temperature either by “natural
greenhouse effect” or human induced i.e.
anthropogenic processes, or a combination
Scientific evidence of political economic and
sociocultural implications
The modern era/industrialization based on “ an expansion on
the amount of energy used” (Maslin 2009, preface) e.g.
burning fossil fuels, pollution, urbanization, changes in land
use, air travel and transport systems
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For 200 years main contributor from Global North
Since late 20thc, the Global South now “catching up”
The Blame Game - Multilateral Institutional efforts
International attention to global warming/climate change
issues go back to Rio Earth Summit 1992: UN member
states try to agree on ways to tackle a global problem
together e.g. reduce carbon emissions, pollution etc
• 1992 Rio Summit and the UN Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC)
• 1997 Kyoto Protocol – basic principles for Treaty on worldwide
cut on greenhouse emissions; 2001 ratified in Bonn though
signed by US (G.W. Bush) so scuttled and not including
developing countries; 2005 came into law with Russia signing
(i.e. 55% of 186 countries signed)
• Since then, India and China rapidly industrialising, urbanising,
and increasing income (middle classes) so need to come on
board. But so does the USA whose carbon emissions are also
increasing so binding targets without big hitters somewhat
undermined
• 2015: Shift in US to support climate treaties from Obama
Administration, Volkswagen Scandal, Scientists declaring a
new era – the Anthropocene
• 2015 UN Climate Conference (COP 21) claims victory with
“Paris Climate Agreement”
Players at the UN: United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC
UNFCCC is the international treaty agreed to in Rio (1992) in
order to bring nations into line to combat greenhouse
gases
IPCC provides scientific support to the UNFCCC and the 1997
Kyoto Protocol (that made agreements for developed
countries legally binding).
Outcomes of its reports since 1988 influence international
negotiations, public opinion, and policy making at home
and abroad.
Methodology based on big databases - predictive modelling,
source of much scientific debate and political polemic (e.g.
sceptics, US Oil lobbies, faulty models )
Evidence – quantity, timescale, qualitative, sources
Meanwhile evidence gathering that supports broad, albeit
contested consensus that climate change is happening faster
because of human activities, not natural processes
Evidence collected from various sources, over various timeperiods i.e. not hundreds of years but thousands, even millions
of years in terms of geological time.
However, terms of reference and worldviews about how – and
whether - planet earth works for - and from – the perspective
of human life differs between countries, developed and nonindustrialised world
Part of the world bear the burden of climate change effects more
than others e.g. rising sea levels, natural resource depletion,
global divisions of labour – and waste management
(electronics, minerals, assembly plants)
Paradigm Shifts
International Lawyers considering a shift from Halocene to
Anthropocene: Informal term since 2009 being explored for
empirical basis for eventual recognition and ratification in
2016
• Climate change and related rising sea levels have
implications of law of the sea, and so for global trade
(most still by sea-routes)
• Rising sea levels affect land use, fishing limits (based on
a stable shoreline), and population movements as low
lying areas are flooded, or rendered inhabitable
• Maritime disputes, human rights issues (e.g. refugee
status, immigration), definition of nation-statehood on
physical territory (land) undergoing changes too
HOLOCENE TO ANTHROPOCENE
Scientists, and increasingly lawmakers, looking at
climate change from a geological frame
Current epoch in which we live is the (“entirely
recent”) Holocene i.e. interglacial period (11,700)
years of relative stability and warm temperatures
since the last Ice Age
The “coming together… of the usually separate
syntactic orders of recorded and deep histories of
the human kind, of species history and the history
of earth systems” as result of current “climate
crisis” (Chakrabarty 2014: 16)
To Illustrate: Rising sea levels
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71% of earth’s surface is ocean
90% world trade is seabound
International state system and international law
founded on law of the sea (1609, Freedom of the
Seas by Grotius)
Rules about trade routes, fishing rights, state
sovereignty linked to Halocene-based stable
coastlines
• 165 UN member states + EU (166) defined as having
coastlines so key players in changes in international law
and the sea
• So 71% of planet’s surface decided by uneven, natural
distribition of access to the sea…
http://www.icemonolith-maldivespavilion.com/project.html
… also at stake are local and global tourist
economies, cultural heritage, and survival in the
Global South and Global North
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Atolls e.g. Pacific Islands (Tuvalu, Niue,
Maldives)
Low-lying and exposed coastal areas and
their local communities (e.g. Devon UK,
Zeeland NL)
Global-Local tourist economies (Venice)
Coral reefs, fisheries, water supplies,
amount of habitable dry land, cultural
practices, memory, nationhood
Back to Venice..
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Venice_Lagoon
_December_9_2001.jpg
However, particularly vulnerable are
Small Island States
In the Global South whole cultures, and nations are
threatened by rising sea levels, facing forced
migration to other territories, but who wants
them? E.g. Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean,
Kiribati, Niue, and Tuvalu in the Pacific
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http://www.sprep.org/climate-change/newclimate-change-unit-for-niue
Issues about whether climate refugees are covered
by international law protecting refugee..
Tuvalu
"We live in constant fear of the adverse impacts of
climate change. For a coral atoll nation, sea level rise
and more severe weather events loom as a growing
threat to our entire population. The threat is real and
serious, and is of no difference to a slow and insidious
form of terrorism against us."
Saufatu Sopoanga, Prime Minister of Tuvalu, at the 58th
Session of the United Nations General Assembly New
York, 24th September 2003
http://www.tuvaluislands.com/warming.htm
Whole nations on the move? E.g. The Maldives
Build up, or move out?
How, and where to preserve a disappearing culture? Archives
in digital form one way?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/26/maldivesdemocracy-climate-change-ipcc
www.contingentmovementsarchive.com
Future Implications – political
economic and sociocultural
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Rethinking the legal and political link between statehood, nation,
and landed territory: “imagined communities” (Anderson 1991)
without physical borders (Vidas & Schei 2011) ?
Shifts in international “law of the sea” based on rethinking link
between sovereignty, sea-access, and ownership of foreshores and
marine routes (for land-bound or flooded states)
Causal links between said “Anthropocene” and effects on our
climate and industrialization, decolonization, and modernization
policies, i.e. of the BRIC powers (Chakrabarty 2014, Lovelock 2014)
How to reconcile human-centred concerns about social justice,
wealth creation, improved standards of living and those for the
“climate system of the planet as a whole”? (Chakrabarty 2014|: 19)
Decentring Humankind?
Climate Change/Global Warming debates around role of human activities; shift
to anthropocene as geological descriptor for planetary states linked to but not
same as anthropocentrism or anthropomorhism
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Solutions differ according to economic beliefs e.g. capitalism must/cannot
save the planet (see Klein 2014, Chakrabarty 2014: 18) and scientific
theories of whether fundamental causes, e.g. rising sea levels, greenhouse
gases, ozone layer issues etc, of climate change are human-made or natural
Debates centre on whether humankind is both cause and solution to the
problem (i.e. anthropocentric viewpoint) and if so what sort of approach is
best
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e.g. economic (e.g. carbon credits, who pays, stalled Climate Change UN summits e.g. Rio, The
Hague, New York?) and incentives OR …
Political shifts whereby humankind accepts that “humans must live within the natural
environmental limits of our planet [but which]..denies the reality of our entire history…” (Ellis in
Chakrabarty 2014: 20) OR…
Ethical shift whereby decision-makers, and their constituencies (citizens, shareholders) “consider
the health of the Earth without the constraint that the welfare of humankind comes first”
(Lovelock in Chakrabarty 2014: 25, Lovelock 2014)
1990’s
2000’s
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/09/23/informationsenvironmental-cost
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/global-warming-massivecomputer-centers-bad-for-the-environment-a-544053.html
What has this got to do with global media and
transnational communications?
Quite a lot actually – planetary uptake of internet
media and communications
contributing/exacerbating facot:
• Cloud computing/server farms in the arctic
• Dependence on electricity (fossil fuels)
• Extractive industries (in Sub-Saharan Africa) for
precious metals in computer/mobile phone
components
• Toxic E-waste mountains in Global South
• Labour conditions and pollutants of electronic
assembly plants, e.g. in coastal, southern China
(e.g. Apple), microprocessor manufacture
(Mexico)