week 1: intro to course Flashcards
What does colonial deja vu mean?
The idea that climate injustice and the effects of climate change are disproportionately distributed and it’s mostly indigenous people who feel them first and the worst - climate injustice it not new for them
What are the 2 facets of GEP?
GEP is an area of activity and practice AND a field of research and study.
- How actors (gov, diplomats, corporations, etc) influence the environment and how that is analyzed and understood (by scholars, students, etc.)
- The ways in which politics are practiced in different places to alter or protect the environment - it is the activities that that affect the environment positively or negatively
What is “the environment” in GEP?
The human causes of environmental change, pollution, resource use, etc. and the human approaches to solving/preventing environmental problems
Explain the intersection of ecology and politics:
Relationships between humans and the environment, often in the context of governance
We want to move away from a dualism of humans and the environment and we want to think of them as interconnected - it is about their relationship
What is ‘the global’ in GEP? What are the different scales?
When either the causes, impacts, and solutions of environmental problems cross scales of governance (typically focusing on beyond national borders)
Scales of governance include: local, regional, national, transnational, and geographically global environmental issues and related political activities
What is ‘politics’ in GEP?
- Struggle for and distribution of power, and thus resources, within and among national communities; how environmental resources and pollution are distributed in society, and the role that power and influence play in that distribution.
- How government policies contribute to environmental problems; effects of environmental policies and regulations.
- Non-state actors (companies, NGOs etc.) trying to influence government, (and non-gov’t) actions and policies in ways that affect the environment.
- International cooperation related to the environment (e.g., negotiations,
treaties, institutions, efforts to govern ‘the commons’ such as oceans)
Why does studying GEP matter?
Because environmental problems are political!
“Without realizing that both the causes and consequences of global environmental change are highly political, being influenced by the distribution of power within and among societies, those who seek to limit pollution and destruction of natural resources will not get very far”
What is turbulence?
A situation where events, demands, and support interact and change in highly variable, inconsistent, unexpected or unpredictable ways.
These events are cumulative, converging, and intersecting forms of slow violence and large-scale shocks
Does turbulence = crisis?
No!
Crisis implies that a time of non-crisis will return once a serious problem is solved or a grave threat ends
What is slow violence?
A set of environmental problems where we might not recognize or visibly see the effects over time but they accumulate and start impacting us
What are the 3 sources of turbulence:
- Systems
- Triggers
- Actors
What is a polycrisis?
Interacting crises across multiple global systems, e.g., pandemic, war, economic insecurity, mass migration, democratic decline, wildfires.
The crises are having an amplification and magnifying effect. When we think of addressing one problem we can’t think of it in isolation, we need to think of it in a broader context
Who experiences turbulence?
Injustices of turbulence are highly unequal across and within societies/communities.
Racialized, indigenous, low-income communities are typically the most at risk with problems of environmental and climate justice
