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Party for Animals

This article aims to gauge students’ perceptions of the Dutch Party for Animals (PvdD) in order to reflect on the political representation of nonhumans (animals). The support for political representation of nonhumans is based on the ethical underpinning of deep ecology; growing recognition of the importance of sustainability; and increased societal support for animal rights and welfare. This article reflects on these developments using Bachelor students’ assignments from a Sustainable Business course, which asked them to reflect on the underlying principles of the PvdD. Student assignments indicate that educational efforts targeted at fostering ecological citizenship have a positive effect on the recognition and acceptance of ecocentric values. https://doi.org/10.30560/sdr.v1n1p11 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/

Syrian Alawites: Their history, their future

Elevating the Antagonist Encounter

Working as speech acts that delineate online communities, claims to victimhood tend to evoke contestation. Their inherent political nature spurs user engagement in the shape of clicks, shares, emojis, and so on. TikTok’s multimodality has given rise to new practices of engagement that significantly shape how victimhood is communicated and negotiated. This study draws attention to the platform vernacular practice of the ‘stitch.’ Allowing users to respond to someone else by ‘remixing’ social media content of others, the stitch is a platform practice designed for commentary. We zoom in on stitched videos networked by hashtags, published in relation to the Israel-Hamas war. TikTok’s multimodality expands user pathways that connect claimants and those who contest them. Moving beyond hashtag hijacking the stitch elevates a practice of commentary that turns victimhood politics into a spectacle that politicizes formerly less political realms, and that further blurs the boundaries between on- and offline spaces. The analysis shows how stitched videos are especially used for antagonist encounters where they crowd out the ‘original’ post to which they respond. In this way, stitches can be seen as tools that aid platformed ‘regimes’ of visibility that prioritize the antagonist encounter in order to commodify them.

Wild animals and justice: The case of the dead elephant in the room

This article focuses on engagements with elephants in diverse contexts, inquiring why some scholars are indifferent or even actively opposed to discourses that emphasise elephant suffering. In order to address this question, this article will explore three interrelated streams within social science: one that criticises conservation as an elitist, neo-colonial enterprise; one that is preoccupied with the social construction and cultural interpretation of natural phenomenon; and a third sometimes referred to as the new conservation science that focuses on economic valuations of the benefits nature, viewing “nature is a warehouse for human use.” https://doi.org/10.1080/13880292.2016.1204882 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/

The compounding impacts of climate change and environmental degradation on the insecurity of indigenous women in Papua and West Papua, Indonesia

Immense beyond imagination, the untamed rainforests of western New Guinea represent a biodiversity hotspot, home to several unique species of flora and fauna. The territory’s astonishing beauty and diversity is underpinned by a stunning array of natural resources. The island is also home to many indigenous communities practicing hundreds of local languages and traditions and depending on their natural environment for maintaining their traditional livelihoods, identity and culture. The territory’s much-contested decolonization process in the 1950-60s led to widespread discontent among indigenous Papuans and gave rise to persistent dissent from Indonesian rule, routinely met with disproportionately violent action by Indonesian security forces. Adding to these longstanding colonial ills and grievances, indigenous Papuan communities also struggle to grapple with inequitable allocation of land and resources, extreme pollution and environmental degradation caused by the mining and palm oil sectors. In the meantime, climate-exacerbated weather events have become more frequent in the region creating new tensions by putting an additional strain on natural resources and thus leading to an increased level of insecurity and inequality. In particular, these challenges have a disproportionate and profound impact on indigenous Papuan women, whose native lands are deeply embedded in their cultural and ethnic identity, and who are dependent on access to land to carry out their prescribed roles. Displacement also puts women at further risk of violence. Adding to sexual violence and displacement experienced by indigenous Papuan women, the loss of traditional lands and resources has been identified as having a singularly negative impact on women as it impedes their empowerment and makes them vulnerable to continued violence. The Papuan experience thus serves as a timely illustration to exemplify how environmental factors, such as resource extraction and climate change, not only amplify vulnerabilities and exacerbate pre-existing inequalities stemming from colonial times, they also give rise to gendered consequences flowing from large-scale degradation and loss of the natural environment.

The victims of unsustainability: A challenge to Sustainable Development Goals

Environmental unsustainability is due to both structural features and historically specific characteristics of industrial capitalism resulting in specific patterns of production and consumption, as well as population growth. Sustainability literature criticises the established corporate and political power hegemonies, interested in maintaining economic growth, as well as inability or unwillingness of citizen-consumers to counteract these hegemonic tendencies. Yet, official policies are still targeted at social and economic ‘development’ as a panacea for unsustainability challenges. Instead, renewed accent on social and economic objectives are outlined by a set of sustainable development goals (SDG) that include objectives of fighting poverty, promoting better health, reducing mortality, and stimulating equitable economic growth. What is less commonly critiqued is the underlying morality of unsustainability and ethical questions concerned with the ‘victims of unsustainability’ outside of socioeconomic discourse. The achievement of SDG goals, as will be further elaborated on in this article, is unlikely to lead to greater social equality and economic prosperity, but to a greater spread of unsustainable production and consumption, continuous economic as well as population growth that has caused environmental problems in the first place and further objectification of environment and its elements. This article argues that an invocation of ethical duty toward environment and its elements is required in order to move beyond the current status quo. Such ethical approach to unsustainability can effectively address the shortcomings of the mainstream sustainability discourse that is mainly anthropocentric and therefore fails to identify the correct locus of unsustainability. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International "Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology" on 2015 available online: http://www.tandfonline.com https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2015.1111269 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/