Nature and Culture

Climate change forces a reckoning with the ecological side effects of fossil-fuel-based industrial development, requiring an incorporation of climate issues into the mainstream structures of society. In this perspective article, we address this as a “climatization” process directed at aligning society with climate imperatives. We focus on the contingent dynamics of “climatization” and show how contention may be avoided by “declimatizing” climate action. Here, we emphasize the immediate co-benefits of climate action as against more distant climate benefits. “Declimatization” is therefore a strategic move: it is distinct from the “anti-climatization” backlash, though it is often figured as a reflexive response to it. We draw on climate anthropology, climate advocacy, and climate movement theory, and provide brief insights into de/climatization in Germany, India, and Australia.

This article describes the pharmaceuticalization of honeybee health, a process that has accelerated alongside growing beekeeper concerns about unexplained colony losses over the past nearly two decades. Despite their uncertainty about the causes of colony loss and the role of pesticide exposures in rendering bees vulnerable, many entomologists agree that controlling populations of parasitic mites in bee colonies is the key to bees’ survival, making mite infestations a primary target for medical interventions. The pharmaceuticalization of honeybee health means that beekeepers need to track drug administration to prevent toxic interactions, avoid overuse, and reduce resistance. This means not only managing those chemicals intentionally applied, but also those ferried in from outside the colony, notably pesticides and fungicides. Medicalizing a range of husbandry practices like supplemental feeding and mite treatment has become a way to regulate beekeepers’ use of medicine as well as encourage it, making medicalization, paradoxically, a means of encouraging restraint.

Financial processes have changed how economic growth is carried out, yet little research has been done examining how financialization affects the well-established association between economic activity and emissions. We construct fixed effects regression analyses with robust standard errors for 172 nations between 1960 and 2014. In this article, we estimate financial processes’ moderation of the association between GDP per capita and CO₂ emissions per capita, as well as whether or not such processes reduce the environmental intensity of manufacturing activities. We find that financialization decouples total GDP per capita from emissions per capita but fails to do so for growth from manufacture. Noting the absolute rise in manufacturing activity, we argue that the economic reorganization that financialization represents may obfuscate the ongoing pressure that economic growth places on the environment.

Although previous studies have examined the causes of deforestation from a cross-national, quantitative perspective, these studies tend to neglect the role of women in mitigating forest loss. Yet, evidence from case studies shows that when women own land they tend to protect forests, replant trees, and engage in agricultural practices that place less pressure on forests. Building on this work, we use ordinary least squares regression models to analyze data on forest loss derived from satellite imagery for a sample of 67 low- and middle-income nations. The results suggest that improving gender equality in immovable property rights does help save trees. Furthermore, our analysis also suggests that men and women have different priorities when it comes to forest sustainability. Women's rights have a protective effect on forests, while men's rights have no statistically significant effect. Given the extent to which we rely on forests for health, environmental, and economic reasons, these findings imply that when women's rights are curtailed, the consequences extend beyond women themselves.

Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime against Humanity and Nature, by Emmanuel Kreike (Princeton University Press, 2021)

Making Peace with Nature: Ecological Encounters Along the Korean DMZ, by Eleana J. Kim (Duke University Press, 2022)