YOUR RESOURCE FOR OVERCOMING THE ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL CRISES OF THE 21ST CENTURY THROUGH THE GREEN TRANSITION, COMMUNITY BUILDING, AND UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIETY THROUGH SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE
We will remember 2020 as a year of crisis. COVID-19 hit Australia just as we were beginning to make sense of the horror bushfires and smoke of last summer, a sinister illustration of global warming’s threats.
Since then, the news media has given centre stage to COVID-19 and its cascading impacts on society, shifting climate change to a relatively minor role in our narrative of this year’s crises. So, have Australians forgotten about the urgency of climate change? No.
Polling released today byThe Australia Instituteshows climate change and its impacts remain a prominent concern to Australians, even amid the upheaval and uncertainty wrought by COVID-19.
The majority of Australians (57%) experienced some form of direct impact from last summer’s bushfires or smoke.Shutterstock
82% of Aussies worry about climate-driven bushfires
This year, it polled 1,998 Australians aged 18 and over, and found the vast majority (79%) hold views in line with thebest available scientific evidence. That is, four in five Australians agree climate change is occurring. This is the highest result since 2012.
An even greater majority, 82%, is worried climate change will result in more bushfires, up from 76% in last year’s report. This is perhaps unsurprising, given the record-breaking fires of last summer and the threat of longer and more ferocious fire seasons.
The bushfire royal commission is due to release its report today, and will likely highlight climate change as an amplifier of bushfire risk. This was foreshadowed in the commission’s interim observations in August.
The report also showed Australians believe the post-pandemic economic recovery is not a time to further entrench fossil fuels. Only 12% of Australians want to see Australia’s economic recovery led by investment in gas, a plan the Morrison government is set on carrying out.
The level of scientific consensus on climate change is remarkable. Urgent action on climate change is recommended by scientists and desired by the overwhelming majority of the public. Yet, Australia remains an international laggard in this area.
The Climate Change Performance Index evaluates 57 countries plus the European Union, which together are responsible for more than 90% of global emissions. This year, Australia ranked last on climate policy.
Australia’s inaction on climate change has made the country an international laggard.AAP Image/Lukas Coch
For many years, denial, delay and division over climate change was the norm in Australian politics. This is still the case among some media and political elites, and is no more pronounced than in debates over the future of coal in the domestic energy mix and for export.
Our energy sources play a big role in our overall contribution to climate change, with electricity generation contributing 32.7% of Australia’s emissions.
For everyday Australians, the solution is clear. The Climate of the Nation report shows the vast majority (83%) want to see coal-fired power stations phased out. Some 65% want the Australian government to stop new coal mines from being developed.
Toxic politics limit constructive conversations
For many, particularly those living in Australia’s coal production regions, the prospect of shifting from coal to renewables raises legitimate concerns about their futures.
However, the ability for people and policy to engage constructively with concerns over jobs and climate is limited by toxic politics.
An important culprit is the pervasive “us versus them” narrative that dominates political and media discourse. The narrative repeatedly – but erroneously – signals to people in coal production regions that the rest of the country doesn’t care about them.
Coal production is also pitted against climate action in the “climate versus jobs” debate. But the polling shows such binaries are false: most Australians do care what happens in coal production regions. In fact, three-quarters of Australians want governments to plans and manage an orderly shift from coal to renewables.
The Australian people, by a large majority, care for those living in coal production communities and want to secure a safe climate.
68% of Aussies support an ambitious climate target
Australians recognise our country can make a disproportionately large and positive contribution to international efforts to mitigate climate change.
Most Australians want to see a renewables-led economic recovery from COVID-19.AAP Image/Dean Lewins
Seventy-one per cent want Australia to be a global leader in finding solutions to climate change, while 77% recognise tackling climate change can create opportunities for new jobs and investment in clean energy.
While all Australian states and territories have committed to net-zero emissions by 2050 or sooner, the federal government has not. But, once again, a majority of people would like to see otherwise: 68% support a net-zero by 2050 target for Australia. This is four percentage points higher than last year.
The Climate of the Nation results clearly shows this goes against the will of the Australian people. Australia has a voting base that will support and reward ambitious climate action. Now is the time for political leaders to reflect this in the nation’s climate policy.
Explore the creation of national parks and the importance of finding a balance between public use and ecological preservation.
In 1903, US President Theodore Roosevelt took a camping trip in California’s Yosemite Valley with conservationist John Muir. Roosevelt famously loved the outdoors, but Muir had invited him for more than just camping: Yosemite was in danger. It was part of a struggle to set aside land for both preservation and public use. Elyse Cox details the delicate balancing act of creating a national park.
Lesson by Elyse Cox, directed by Boniato Studio.
Animator's website: https://www.boniato.studio/
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Thank you so much to our patrons for your support! Without you this video would not be possible! Brandy Jones, Shawn Quichocho, Gi Nam Lee, Joy Love Om, Miloš Stevanović, Ghassan Alhazzaa, Yankai Liu, Pavel Zalevskiy, Claudia Mayfield, Stephanie Perozo, Joe Giamartino, Filip Dabrowski, Barbara Smalley, Megan Douglas, Tim Leistikow, Andrés Melo Gámez, Renhe Ji, Ka-Hei Law, Michal Salman, Peter Liu, Mark Morris, Catherine Sverko, Misaki Sato, Tan YH, Ph.D., Rodrigo Carballo, SookKwan Loong, Bev Millar, Merit Gamertsfelder, Lex Azevedo, Noa Shore, Taylor Hunter, Kyle Nguyen, MJ Tan Mingjie, Cristóbal Moenne, Goh Xiang Ting Diana, Kevin Wong, Dawn Jordan, Yanira Santamaria, Prasanth Mathialagan, Savannah Scheelings, Susan Herder, Samuel Doerle, David Rosario, Dominik Kugelmann, Siamak H, Tracey Tobkin, Dwight Tevuk, Anthony Kudolo, Mrinalini and Yanuar Ashari.
Lauren Kaljur is a freelance journalist who lives on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She's passionate about connection and collaboration through storytelling.
As soon as he heard the news, Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation’s Chief Paul Prosper’s heart began to race. A school bus, a grade school and a sign in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, the remote county on the east coast of Canada encircling Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation’s reserve, had been tagged with anti-Black and Indigenous racist slurs. Prosper’s heartbeat was anticipating terse interactions with parents, the school board and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, not to mention the students. “You’re sort of walking into a hornet’s nest, you know, you’re bound to get stung,” he says.
But looking back now at the 2018 incident, a different detail stands out to him: a text message from Owen McCarron, warden of Antigonish, who wrote:“I heard what has happened. This is completely unacceptable, it doesn’t reflect the attitudes of the vast majority of people and I’m here to support in any way I can,” Prosper recounts.
“That was sort of a moment for me. That indicated to me that somebody actually cared for us,” Prosper says. Later, some members of the Antigonish council stood behind him at a school-wide debrief of the events.
These are small gestures, but what they represent is revolutionary. Across Canada, hundreds of counties like Antigonish sit right next to First Nations communities with very little communication, let alone collaboration. While the Canadian government now touts a “nation-to-nation” relationship with Indigenous Peoples, at the local level reconciliation is more of an afterthought. Municipalities often treat reserves as “blank spaces” as they develop around them and on the Nations’ traditional territories. For this and many other historical reasons, Indigenous communities like Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation report that racial divides are ever-present.
An Antigonish County and Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation joint council, part of a program designed to help longtime neighbors act like neighbors. Credit: Municipality of Antigonish
But the united front that Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation and the county of Antigonish presented that day did not come easily. For the past five years, they have benefitted from a unique country-wide program designed to help longtime neighbors like them become neighbors. The First Nation–Municipal Community Economic Development Initiative, known as CEDI, empowers municipal and First Nation leaders and their staff to, for once, sit down and talk as equals.
CEDI is a partnership between the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Council for the Advancement of Native Development Officers, known as Cando, which represents Indigenous communities in support of economic growth. Since 2013, 15 pairs — out of hundreds of requests — have taken part in the program that is in principle about joint economic development, but in reality more decolonization bootcamp.
CEDI was born out of a tragically common juxtaposition in Canada. Municipalities across the country were investing millions in municipal water infrastructure. Meanwhile, according to an OECD report, it is estimated that “half of the water systems on First Nations reserves pose a medium or high health risk to their users.”
“How could it be that the municipality has perfectly clean piped water, and across the street, if it’s a reserve, they could be living with a boil-water advisory? Where’s the breakdown?” Josh Regnier, a facilitator for the program, reflected on the program’s origins.
For Cando, the motivation to develop CEDI was pragmatic: over the years, funding for First Nations infrastructure and development from the federal government has eroded, generating an incentive to combine efforts regionally toward economic prosperity. “That, though, is easier said than done,” says Cando’s executive director Ray Wanuch.
Though it seems obvious that immediate neighbors should pool resources to share in water treatment plants or firefighting, it’s not that simple. In Canada, municipalities are products of the provinces, while First Nations have a direct relationship with the federal government. Although chiefs, mayors and councillors may share the same grocery stores, they have no obligation to work together.
The jurisdictional barriers, however, create a false sense of separation. The elephant in the room is that municipalities like Antigonish across Canada have taken over Indigenous land. As Prosper points out, in the early 18th century Indigenous nations signed peace and friendship treaties with Great Britain to respectfully coexist. But in the centuries that followed, Indigenous Peoples were increasingly faced with racist policies aimed at eradicating their identities and taking their land. In many communities, the relics of this violence — such as the residential school houses where children were forcibly assimilated — still stand in neighboring towns.
“Some of our communities have had very bad history and relationships with their surrounding municipal neighbors,” says Wanuch.
That’s why the CEDI program doesn’t kick off talking logistics or finances — it starts with history.
In one of the key early exercises, each community’s council and staff, along with Indigenous elders, are asked to outline their own understanding of the region’s history through sticky notes on the wall. Regnier describes one regional partnership where the municipalities outlined a laundry list of infrastructure: town hall, school, fire hall. The First Nations, at their turn, outlined a much longer timeline of teachings, cultural history, and relationships and wars with other Nations. At the end of their timeline came a turning point, a nation-to-nation treaty signed with colonial governments, followed by a tight succession of painful events: the Indian Act defined Indigenous rights and identities, residential schools removed youth from their parents, the last fluent language-speaker passed. They were deeply offended that the treaty responsible for the existence of the municipalities, and the many examples of First Nation resiliency, were ignored.
From this groundwork, deeper conversations sprang up, like the question of who should have a voice in development decisions. With help from independent mediators and regular meetings over three years, the municipalities now include First Nations in development planning. “We should have been doing that all along,” said one participating mayor. “Better late than never.”
Collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities has never been more vital.
Across the United States and Canada together, there are more than 1,200 federally recognized Indigenous communities. Urban centers are growing and sprawling closer to Indigenous reserves, 80 percent of which are less than 500 hectares in size (roughly 2.5 percent the size of Portland), limiting independent infrastructure. Meanwhile, challenges from homelessness to wildfires eschew borders and demand a regional response.
The relationship between Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation and Antigonish shows what incremental steps toward reconciliation can accomplish.
In the 1960s, a section of the Trans-Canada Highway connecting Halifax and Cape Breton severed Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation’s reserve lands in two. And while they were guaranteed access in the early negotiations, the Nation was locked out from 200 hectares (500 acres) of its reserve lands. McCarron said it was an “eye-opener” to learn of this deep wound in early meetings. Despite being effectively landlocked, his Mi’kmaq neighbors were “resilient in their resolve to someday get access to that highway,” McCarron says.
Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation’s Chief Paul Prosper and Antigonish Warden Owen McCarron participate in a ceremony acknowledging the Mi’kmaq territory on which they all live. Credit: Richard Perry
Now they have. With a multimillion-dollar highway expansion in 2019 came “an opportunity to right a historic wrong,” says Prosper. Through negotiations with all levels of government, and support from CEDI, the Nation was able to recover access to its land with a highway interchange complete with a fuel depot, travel center and cardlock.
In 2018, Prosper and McCarron signed a friendship accord in ceremony thatacknowledges the Mi’kmaq territory on which they all live, and commits to regular joint council meetings. Now, they’re working towards a joint solar energy farm that will employ members of both communities. “There’s an understanding that we are connected, that our success will only further success in the area surrounding us,” says Prosper, adding there’s “a genuine feeling of congratulations” from the wider community. From his own conversations with the non-Indigenous community, McCarron agrees: “Attitudes are changing.”
Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation and Antigonish aren’t the only communities making progress.
In Thunder Bay, where more than a third of Canada’s reported anti-Indigenous hate crimes took place in 2015, Fort William First Nation and the City of Thunder Bay found their own shared area of economic interest. The First Nation had a large piece of contaminated lands they couldn’t use. The city, on the other hand, had run out of land for industrial clients. So they came together, pitched the idea of an industrial park to funders and were able to secure the money needed to bring it to market.
Fort William First Nation and the City of Thunder Bay came together to pitch the idea of an industrial park to funders. Credit: John Mason
And though they have every reason to turn inward in face of Covid-19, these relationships are proving their strength. The pandemic has revealed the lack of relationship between many municipalities and First Nations across Canada, as towns reopened without consulting their First Nation neighbors, many of which still have travel restrictions. In contrast, Antigonish and Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation released a joint statement in response to the pandemic in March, while in April, a regional district and First Nation in British Columbia built a joint economic recovery task force through video conference. In Manitoba, partners overcame a deep historical trauma to lobby governments and investors to reverse the closure of a local factory that would have eliminated roughly 250 jobs. As CEDI prepares to welcome another cohort in 2021, program managers say its primary funder, the federal government, is looking to adapt the model toward recovery from the pandemic.
Marissa Lawrence, senior program officer for CEDI, says the nine partnerships finishing the program have embraced video conferencing, but there’s no doubt Covid-19 presents challenges. “My personal opinion is that you can’t replace relationship-building face-to-face,” says Lawrence, noting that their current partners had spent one year together before the pandemic hit.
As this crisis has us turning back to local economies, Lawrence says, these relationships are proving their worth. A resolve to come back to the table in the face of disruption may be harder to measure — but it’s an important marker of success.
Chief Prosper has a similar measure: “If it appears to be uncomfortable, and you seem almost out of your place, then I think that’s a certain indicator that you’re doing something groundbreaking.”
WEAll Scotland response to the Programme for Government in Scotland
by Lukas Hardt and Katherine Trebeck; 28 September 2020
Earlier this month, the Scottish government published its Programme for Government, setting out its plans until the election for the Scottish parliament next year and explicitly committing to building a wellbeing economy in Scotland; an economy that is “fairer, greener, more prosperous”.
We welcome that commitment. And lot of the measures go in a promising direction.
For example, the government recognises that rebuilding the economy after COVID needs to simultaneously contribute to climate change mitigation and other environmental goals. The promised investment in energy efficient buildings, green sectors, tree planting and peatland restoration is important and to be welcomed, even if it still falls short of the scale necessary.
There are nods to the importance of social enterprises, community wealth building and the 20-minute neighbourhood. Some money is provided for cycling infrastructure. The emerging Scottish National Investment Bank could be used to provide the long-term investment we need for a just and green transition. The Youth Guarantee could be a great way to provide meaningful, well-paid job opportunities (although it could also become another way to subsidise poverty wages). Adopting the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law gives society real power to hold the government to account.
But, despite the promising direction, the Programme for Government doesn’t live up to the ambition of a wellbeing economy. Building a wellbeing economy is about transforming our economic system so that it delivers social justice on a healthy planet, the first time round. That last phrase is important, because the Programme for Government, and much of our social policy debate in Scotland, is still too much about cleaning up and redistributing after the fact.
What do we mean by that? Our current socio-economic model is failing because it tries to deliver good lives, but does so by taking the long way round. The approach can be described in three steps1:
Get the economy to grow bigger, but don’t fret too much about the damage to people or the environment that this does.
Second, sequester a chunk out of this economy via taxes.
Third, channel some of this money into helping people and the planet to cope with step number 1.
The limits of this approach are clear – it implicitly concedes to damage and harm being done to people and planet by stage 1; such damage is now so great that actions in Step 3 cannot keep up, so people and planet are inadequately repaired; and in a world of finite resources and ever-more apparent limits to growth, the risks of step 1 are mounting.
Unfortunately, the main thrust of the Programme for Government seems largely confined to such a model. Step 1 policies include the £100 million “Green Jobs Fund” or the “Inward Investment Plan” aimed to boost GDP. Yes, the government is now putting a strong green slant on such policies, which is good, but fundamentally such policies are still about stimulating more growth within the current system. That won’t work.
On the other end, the government needs to spend heavily on Step 3 policies to patch up social inequalities and environmental damage.
Consider the high-profile announcement of a Scottish Child Payment and Child Winter Heating Assistance; or the Tenant’s Hardship Loan facility, which will help tenants, but is only shifting their debt from landlords to the government; or the £150 million of additional funding quietly earmarked for additional flood protection measures (and, while you’re at it, compare the latter amount to the Green Jobs Fund – telling isn’t it?). Such policies are good and important if we are to take care of people in the face of an economic system that generates inequality, financial insecurity and poverty and climate chaos.
But the real tragedy is that they are necessary in the first place.
Heralding redistribution as progress and patting ourselves on the back for helping people survive and cope with the current system is a sad reflection of how low our ambitions are.
A wellbeing economy is about attending to root causes – looking upstream. Designing the nature and configuration of the economy so it enables people to live good lives first time around rather than allowing so much damage to be done – often in some outdated and misguided pursuit of growth – and then thinking we’ve done well when we patch up that damage. A wellbeing economy agenda asks more of the economy. It starts from the premise we can no longer be content to patch and heal and repair – we need to construct the economic system in a way that delivers social justice on a healthy planet. From the outset.
Building a wellbeing economy requires changing the rules of the game and redesigning our institutions, our infrastructure and our laws. It means embracing the potential of pre-distribution rather than re-distribution and measuring our progress in a way that is better aligned with what is really needed. We already have lots of ideas on how to do this.
Some of what is needed is already being done in Scotland – just too tentatively. Take support for alternative business models that put people and planet before profits, such as worker-owned cooperatives or social enterprises. There are good steps towards community wealth building to keep wealth in the place where it is created and reform of land ownership rules (and that of other assets). The National Performance Framework is starting to broaden goals away from simply GDP growth – but hasn’t yet knocked GDP off its ill-deserved pedestal.
While the Scottish government’s powers are limited, it could use planning and procurement and business support much more proactively to cultivate the sort of business activities required for a wellbeing economy. Radical transformative action can be done in small steps. It is time that it takes its own rhetoric on the wellbeing economy seriously and initiates transformative change.
[1]Trebeck, K., and Williams, J., 2019. The economics of arrival: Ideas for a grown up economy. Policy Press, Bristol, p. 86
In 1859, the English philosopher John Stuart Mill published the first of his two major works, On Liberty, which helped him become, as manyagree, the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the 19th century. In that essay, Mill defined what came to be known as the harm principle. Stated briefly, it says:
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
Today we might baulk at Mill’s use of “civilised” and “his” in this sentence, yet the general principle quickly came to dominate all legal debates about crime and the justice system. Liberal democracies the world over enshrined – and largely still use – this idea to give individuals the freedom to generally do as they please. But this ignored a deeper problem — the definition of “harm” itself.
John Stuart Mill, the architect of the harm principle.Wikimedia Commons
In 1999 the legal scholar Bernard Harcourt argued that the harm principle is faulty because it actually contains no way to adjudicate between competing claims of harm. That would require an accepted and fundamental definition of harm, which doesn’t exist. This has led to growing and irreconcilable culture clashes: both sides claim they are being harmed, and whoever happens to be in power gets to decide – and put into law – their own values.
Equally, the widespread destruction of the environment has taken place because human interests are overwhelmingly prioritised over environmental harms, which are not acknowledged in fundamental legal principles. Environmental protection laws allow for harm to the environment. For far too long, harm to “others” has only really considered humans.
In the recent BBC film Extinction: The Facts, Sir David Attenborough painfully examines just how critical this crisis has become. This surprisingly radical documentary shows just how significant an overhaul we need. For the survival of life on this planet, including the survival of humanity, it is vital that actions which threaten it be recognised as harmful, regulated and made criminal under law.
Redefining harm
In a recent paper, philosopher Ed Gibney and I seek to rebuild the harm principle, so that the legal and criminal justice systems can better address competing harms, both between humans and towards the environment.
We draw on evolutionary principles to define harm as “that which makes the survival of life more fragile”. By “life”, we mean all living species, not just humans. And by “survival”, we mean the ability to flourish, not just the bare minimum of a tenuous existence. No actions ought to lead towards the extinction of life.
We argue that this principle should be used to empirically adjudicate between competing claims of harm. For example, humans should not be allowed to kill an entire species for use of their body parts, as has been the case with the Northern white rhinoceros.
There are only two northern white rhinos left alive in the world – and both are female.Dai Kurokawa/EPA-DAI
The general rule to guide all actions is that “life ought to act to survive”. This is precisely what is necessary to arrive at a definition of harm that allows the harm principle to be rebuilt.
You might think this is all very well in theory, but how do we embed these evolutionary perspectives into society?
Most obviously, there is a need to fundamentally alter the legal and criminal justice systems. They are out of date philosophically, and largely still rely on Victorian principles. One way to alter them is by incorporating a legal perspective called “Earth jurisprudence” or “wild law”, an approach to all legislation that puts the Earth at the centre of the system.
Wild law
The non-mainstream perspective of wild law is best placed to use our new definition of harm. It is possibly most prominent in Australia, where scholars Nicole Rogers and Michelle Maloney created the Wild Law Judgement Project, rewriting existing legislation to be Earth-centred.
Human governance systems at all times must take account of the interests of the whole Earth community and must … maintain a dynamic balance between the rights of humans and those of other members of the Earth community on the basis of what is best for Earth as a whole … [and] recognise all members of the Earth community as subjects before the law.
This kind of outlook has been far too neglected. But more and more people now recognise these harms and demand our politicians change our laws to stop them.
Humans are a part of nature. To take just one example from Extinction: The Facts, consider the problem of overfishing. Attenborough notes there may be 100,000 fishing trawlers operating globally at any one time. Each trawler may be the size of four jumbo jets. The industrial scale of such extraction and loss of adult fish mean the populations of fish cannot recover.
Legislation that considers harm to all life rather than only humans would prohibit such activity because of its destructive nature – destructive to the fish, marine ecosystems and to people reliant on fish. The timescale of ethical consideration needs to shift from a narrow short-term focus on human individuals (catching as many fish as possible continually) to comprehensive long-term consequences for all life (collapse of fish populations and food insecurity for our children). Once we recognise this, we must change our interactions and relationships with the environment and non-human animals.
Environmental activists have been advocating for piecemeal change along these lines for decades, sometimes successfully. But what is needed is a fundamental change to the harm principle which underlies all our laws. The legal and criminal justice systems must take up their role in implementing these changes that we now know we need to make. Only this can save our fellow beings, and quite possibly ourselves, from extinction.
