Cities in the Anthropocene

New Ecology and Urban Politics

Ihnji Jon

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781786807557
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Geography
• Index: Social Sciences

Climate change is real, and extreme weather events are its physical manifestations. These extreme events affect how we live and work in cities, and subsequently the way we design, plan, and govern them. Taking action 'for the environment' is not only a moral imperative; instead, it is activated by our everyday experience in the city.

Based on the author's site visits and interviews in Darwin (Australia), Tulsa (Oklahoma), Cleveland (Ohio), and Cape Town (South Africa), this book tells the story of how cities can lead a transformative pro-environment politics.

National governments often fail to make binding agreements that bring about radical actions for the environment. This book shows how cities, as local sites of mobilizing a collective, political agenda, can be frontiers for activating the kind of environmental politics that appreciates the role of 'nature' in the everyday functioning of our urban life.

1

Introduction
Environment politics beyond environment

To express is always to sing the glory of God. Every stratum is a judgment of God; not only do plants and animals, orchids, and wasps, sing and express themselves, but so do rocks and even rivers, every stratified thing on earth.

– Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari¹

This book is about cities and for cities as enablers of what I call ‘environment politics beyond environment’. Please bear with me if the statement ‘one should take care of the environment’ feels old to you. Despite the lengthy history of environmentalism, let alone the outpouring of scientific facts that insist upon the urgency of action, we still constantly hear the voices of climate change deniers, as well as those who think that our actions are unrelated to the atmospheric change. Maybe, just maybe, our approaches have been wrong. At least that’s what ‘new ecology’ writers have been saying. My argument for ‘environment politics beyond environment’, which this book is all about, draws its philosophical groundings from this ‘new ecology’ literature.

What then is ‘new ecology’, and how is it different from ‘old ecology’? The standard criticism of ‘old ecology’ unfolds in three main questions:

1. On its human/nature division: In proclaiming the norm ‘we have to protect nature’, aren’t we normalising the human/nature dichotomy – as if environmentalism is something that we do as charity, independent from sustaining our everyday life?

2. On its top-down moral grounds: Is an apocalyptic moral imperative – ‘we have to do something, or we will all die’ – an effective way to garner a wider audience for environmentalism?

3. On its over-reliance on ‘logical thinking’: Aren’t humans material beings – i.e., isn’t it wrong to rely solely on cerebral or ‘rational’ decisions for inducing an action or a desire for change?

What I refer to as ‘new ecology’ in this book is the recent literature on anti-essentialist environmentalism, which defies the essentialist dichotomy between human and nature, as well as the essentialist morality of the norm ‘we have to protect nature’. Often also referred to as ‘posthumanism’ or ‘affirmative ecopolitics’ in the Anthropocene, ‘new ecology’ literature is ‘new’ for the following reasons.

Above all, ‘new ecology’ literature fundamentally questions the essentialist division between human/nonhuman or culture/nature, highlighting how they are intricately intertwined with one another through co-development/co-evolution processes.² New ecology writers argue that the story of ‘how humans came to become what we are today’ cannot be told without the roles of nonhuman agencies. Our material being itself is a product of historical evolution from micro-organisms; in a more contemporary context, no one can deny that our everyday cognitive decision-making is constantly influenced by different ‘nudges’ from nonhuman agents, either atmospheric weather patterns or digital gadgets that we interact with from the moment we start our day.

Second, ‘new ecology’ does not impose environmentalism on us as a top-down moral imperative; rather, it focuses on demonstrating how much we are dependent on ecosystem functions and all the nonhuman ‘ancestors’ who render possible the material world in which we inhabit. We learn to be, rather than have to be, response-able to the feedback, reactions, and voices from the nonhuman world, as we start becoming more aware of the fragility and materiality of our bodily existence – the destiny of which is entangled and interconnected with the density of other species (who are at the brink of disappearing precisely because of our irresponsible interventions).

Finally, inspired by pragmatic empiricism that rejects any a priori conception or values, ‘new ecology’ emphasises the empirical and sensory experiences of our immediate surroundings – arguing how our pro-environment actions should be fuelled by (and cannot be disconnected from) our everyday experiences of the world or ‘what surrounds us’. This implies that ‘love for nature’ is something to be learned and cultivated, starting with appreciating our everyday interaction with local surroundings.

In short, ‘new ecology’ tries to go beyond the kinds of environmentalism that relies on the fetishised understanding of ‘nature’ or ‘the environment’ that unnecessarily creates the boundaries between our everyday living (human needs) and ecosystem functions (ecological needs). Adopting this ‘new ecology’ attitude to further environmentalism – especially in today’s world of social and political division – this book proposes how cities can perform ‘environment politics beyond environment’.

Why cities? On what grounds am I proposing that ‘cities’ would be an adequate scale for environmental action? Indeed, ‘global city’ scholars have already noted the rising influence and power of cities in the global economy and politics. They have highlighted that cities, as global economic powerhouses and concentrated human settlements, are now important figures driving policy trends or more progressive political agendas. Think of American cities’ mayoral statements on welcoming international refugees, for instance. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlins-Blake has stated that: ‘There are few among us who can claim that their ancestors were indigenous to the United States. The welcoming of immigrants and New Americans is a critical part of my strategy to grow Baltimore, and I hope that refugees from Syria will look to our city as a potential place to call home’.³

Further, political actions on climate have been led by several international networks of like-minded cities, who together hope to start a global movement and culture that normalises ‘pro-environment’ ideals. The examples of such city networks include but are not limited to: C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, United Nation’s Cities for Climate Protection Campaign, and Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI)’s Cities With Nature. In short, transcending ideology or partisan politics at the national scale, cities have been playing an instrumental role in promoting human societies that are socially and ecologically responsible.

Adding to this existing dialogue on ‘why cities matter’, this book provides another rationale on why cities would be a particularly ‘good scale’ for enacting and leading global environment politics. This discussion goes beyond the conventional global cities literature, which has mainly paid attention to the ‘intensity’ of cities, instead emphasising the advantage of ‘complexity’ that cities possess, arguing that this can help cities advance ‘environment politics beyond environment’. With this complexity in mind, I ask: How could we engage with those who are not particularly interested in nature or the matters of ‘the environment’? How could ‘the environment’ be deeply situated and integrated into our (humans’) everyday socioeconomic affairs – to the point where we cannot simply imagine any politics or policy decisions without factoring in our relationship with the environment? The book tries to address these questions by drawing examples from cities that have been under-researched on that front.

The book unfolds as follows. First, in ‘Why Cities? Towards a New Theorisation of “Scale”’ (Chapter 2), I theorise what a ‘good scale’ for enacting environment actions should/would look like, especially given that the impacts of environmental degradation are local (as in actual households are affected) and global (as in climate change happens everywhere in a ubiquitous manner) at the same time. Who can say for sure what the reason, or the ‘root cause’ is when it comes to ever-more-frequent tornado events in the USA, severe bushfire season in Australia, or severe droughts in South Africa? We can blame the world, global capitalism, and every decision related to climate crisis, but we can also blame the regional and local, for their inability to act promptly within their capacity and jurisdictional boundaries. By exploring the tension between ‘ever-expanding’ versus ‘ever-narrowing’ notion of scale in environment politics, I identify the characteristics of what could be considered an adequate or ideal scale for pro-environment initiatives. Next, I use the ideal aspects of ‘city-scale’ as a demonstrative example that captures these characteristics, arguing that cities can be frontiers of doing environment politics thanks to their physical graspability (‘small enough’), the degree of influence and leadership that cities possess (‘intense enough’), and the extent of complexity that allows cities to take on a more holistic approach to governance – taking account of the interaction effects (‘large enough’).

After the theoretical explorations as to why cities are a good scale for action in environment politics, I move on to discussing different cities’ empirical experiences of engaging with citizens who often brush off the ‘green agenda’ as a partisan shibboleth. In ‘Darwin vs. Tulsa: How Cities Talk About ‘Nature’ Without Saying the Word’ (Chapter 3), I investigate the specific strategies of how cities re-articulate environment politics without saying the word ‘nature’ or ‘the environment’, in attempts to reach out to a broader audience who are often put off by the ideological claims associated with ‘green agenda’. Especially in the current divisive political climate, I ask: how do cities still manage to pursue pro-environment actions, and what are their strategies for working with those who may or may not be interested in nature in the first place? Based on interviews with urban planners and environmental activists in Tulsa, Oklahoma (USA) and Darwin, Northern Territory (Australia) – whose regional economy is largely dependent on dark energy resources – I discuss the practices, strategies, and visions of what I call ‘pragmatic environmentalism’. Focusing on tangible material objects and everyday surroundings, pragmatic environmentalism prioritises concrete actions over ideological agreements, and presents a speculative hope that we might be able to link immediate benefits (of whatever feels good to us for now) and long-term benefits (of our sustainable future).

The book then goes further to understand the positions of cities who often suffer from chronic socioeconomic precarities that require immediate attention, and how they try to balance competing ideals between ‘green’ and ‘equity’. In ‘Cleveland vs. Cape Town: Can a City Aspire to be Green and Inclusive?’ (Chapter 4), I explore how cities – particularly those who are under the stress of addressing poverty and inequality – attempt to effectuate a marriage between ‘green’ and ‘equity’ agendas. The ethics of ‘protecting nature’ may be widely accepted in affluent cities, which have the resources and means to pursue green-only initiatives without further justification. But that is not necessarily the case for cities that suffer from chronic poverty and inequality; it can be considered a luxury for a city to think about nature or the environment, if its constituents cannot imagine a future beyond the next few months. What is it like to pursue pro-environmental initiatives in a context where addressing poverty and social inequality have to come first? How can cities advocate for longer-term green agendas when the socioeconomic challenges of ‘right now’ remains unanswered? Based on interviews in Cleveland (Ohio, USA) and Cape Town (South Africa), this chapter addresses these questions by studying how the convergence between the green and equity agendas could occur. The chapter concludes that hope lies in the willingness and capacity of social actors who create public dialogues, mainstream narratives, or policy articulations that proclaim the pragmatic benefits of environmentalism – effectively harnessing the local social, political, and economic contexts produced by each of their unique territorial experiences and histories.

In ‘Cities and Complexity: Linking “the Social” with “the Environmental”’ (Chapter 5), I return to the theoretical starting points outlined in Chapter 2, weaving together experiences from each of the cities visited in Chapters 3 and 4 to animate the empirical advantages of ‘city-scale’. More specifically, in an attempt to extend the argument that I have made in Chapter 2 – the point that cities are an ideal scale of environment action thanks to their ‘complexity’ – I explain what we can learn from the social assemblage theory literature, which views social entities as ‘complex systems’. What does it mean for a social entity to be a ‘complex system’? I define ‘complexity’ by explaining three key aspects of complex social entities: intense interaction effects, unpredictability of emergent qualities (that rise out of those effects), and respecting the radical heterogeneity and difference among their constituents (which produce those effects). Based on this definition of ‘complexity’, I demonstrate how cities can capitalise on their ‘complexity’ as a way to develop more concrete and creative linkages between ‘the social’ affairs and ‘the environmental’ affairs.

In the concluding chapter (Chapter 6), I disclose my main motivation for writing this book, which was fuelled by my desire to imagine another ‘reality’ that casts hope in the possibilities of the unknown, for the unknown.

In today’s world of political and social division, it has become increasingly difficult to arrive at a wider consensus on ‘why the environment matters’. Terms such as ‘nature’, ‘ecology’, or ‘the environment’ are often dismissed as left-leaning political discourse, while the matters of the environment affect all of us. But let me play a devil’s advocate: who is anyone to judge different people’s life choices and paths? Who are we to impose an essentialist moral standard against people’s lives? According to Dewey, recognising the uniqueness (or ‘singularity’) of individuals is what differentiates today’s world from ancient culture, whose customs, traditions, and rigid conservatism tries to vilify individual characteristics as deviations from normal, or as ‘dangers against which society had to protect itself’.⁴ However, at the same time, celebrating the radical plurality of unique individuals can be at odds with creating a collective vision for our society, which may ask individuals to sacrifice their selfhood for the pursuit of common good. This tension posits a difficult riddle especially in the context of global climate crisis where cities and localities are obliged to mobilise themselves in the face of extreme weather events.

If the urgency of climate crises calls for more swift and immediate action, we should find more creative and inventive ways of engaging with those who do not necessarily share our ideological viewpoints or philosophies on life. This book is a testament to that very quest of how we can ‘mainstreamise’ environment politics and its movement, while at the same time radically embracing the differences (or ‘singularities’) that render societies complex, unpredictable, and hence exciting.

2

Why cities? Towards a new theorisation of ‘scale’

Climate change is real, and extreme weather events are its physical manifestations. A growing literature in political theory, anthropology, and geography is embracing the concept of ‘Anthropocene’, which refers to the current ecological crisis physically affecting our everyday lives – in the form of urban flooding, heat waves, tornadoes, and cyclones.

The scale of political action, or the main political actor who should be respo...