Dominant responses to the environmental crisis are overwhelmingly depoliticised, epitomised most clearly in international agencies and negotiations proclivity to focus on carbon in the atmosphere rather than the systems of production and relations underpinning the climate crisis. Within this context, international policy discussions universally appraise afforestation as favourable to climate mitigation in ‘sinking’ existing carbon and ‘offsetting’ continued emissions. Climate-driven forestry, however, is often generating negative impacts for local communities, including driving non-native industrial monoculture plantations, toxic regular chemical spraying, and the social & cultural impacts of living in landscapes scarred by monoculture plantations and regular clear-felling. Under the guises of, and driven by, abstract distant and international carbon metrics, forestry constitutes a dispossession. As areas are transformed into spaces of international financial speculation & climate policy driven forestry plantations, local communities are closed out of access to land and experience a loss too in terms of access to decision processes that impact their local environment. This dispossession extends to more-than-human natures, with dense non-native forest plantations representing ecological dead zones and contributing to loss of soil as the tree’s roots compact the earth and are subsequently clear-felled. By tending to the emotional and affective, and thus embodied nature, of lived experiences, Feminist Political Ecology re-embeds and grounds environmental impacts in time and space. Following a FPE approach, this paper shares research conducted in partnership with frontline communities in Ireland affected by forestry, allowing for critique of dominant responses to the environmental crisis, whilst also sharing the alternative solutions local communities are engaging in and advocating for, which hold space for more just and careful ways to respond to environmental crises.
Mots clés : Environmental crises|Feminist Political Ecology (FPE)|forestry|decarbonisation|carbon conflicts
A102850LF