1st Edition

Climate Justice and Community Renewal Resistance and Grassroots Solutions

Edited By Brian Tokar, Tamra Gilbertson Copyright 2020
    266 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    266 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book brings together the voices of people from five continents who live, work, and research on the front lines of climate resistance and renewal.

    The many contributors to this volume explore the impacts of extreme weather events in Africa, the Caribbean and on Pacific islands, experiences of life-long defenders of the land and forests in Brazil, India, Indonesia, and eastern Canada, and efforts to halt the expansion of fossil-fuel infrastructure from North America to South Africa. They offer various perspectives on how a just transition toward a fossil-free economy can take shape, as they share efforts to protect water resources, better feed their communities, and implement new approaches to urban policy and energy democracy.

    Climate Justice and Community Renewal uniquely highlights the accounts of people who are directly engaged in local climate struggles and community renewal efforts, including on-the-ground land defenders, community organizers, leaders of international campaigns, agroecologists, activist-scholars, and many others. It will appeal to students, researchers, activists, and all who appreciate the need for a truly justice-centered response to escalating climate disruptions.

    Introduction: Climate Justice and Community-Centered Responses (Brian Tokar). Part 1: Keep it in the Ground: Challenging fossil fuel extractivism 1. Environmental Justice for Indigenous and Peasant Communities in Ecuador (Ivonne Yanez); 2. Women Challenging Oil Extraction in Nigeria (Terisa Turner & colleagues); 3. Causes, Consequences and False Solutions to the Climate Crisis: Offshore Oil Extraction in Brazil (Marcelo Calazans and Daniela Meirelles); 4. Direct Action Strategies vs. Fossil Fuel Infrastructure Across the US (Scott Parkin); 5. Close the Mines: Decarbonization and the Impacts of Coal in Colombia (Tamra Gilbertson and Andrea Cardoso). Part 2: Water is Life: Protecting water, land and forests 6. Indigenous Megadam Resistance at Muskrat Falls, Labrador (Alexis Lathem); 7. Small is Beautiful: New Geometries of Cooperation in the Face of Water Scarcity (Marcela Olivera and Stefano Archidiacono) 8.Il popolo delle fontane - The People of the Fountains and their Fight for Water as a Common Good (Federico Venturini) 9. Facing Sea Level Rise in the Marshall Islands (Christina Gerhardt) 10. Rethinking REDD and Forest Carbon Offsets in Acre, Brazil (Joanna Cabello and Winnie Overbeek) 11. Forest Commons in India vs. Privatization and Plantation Forestry (Soumitra Ghosh) 12. Maria, Agroecology and Climate Change Resilience in Puerto Rico (Nelson Álvarez Febles) Part 3: Reclaiming Community: Toward a livable future 13. Indigenous Just Transition: Reflections from the Field (Kandi Mossett White) 14. Another Detroit is Emerging (Sharon Howell & the Boggs Center) 15. African Articulations and Approaches to Climate Justice (Patrick Bond and MJ Mithika Mwenda) 16. ‘Green city’ Initiatives in Europe (KarlLudwig Schibel) 17. Energy Democracy in the Northeastern U.S.: Case Studies from New York State (Kelly Roache) 18. Climate Movements and the Limits of Climatology (Larry Lohmann). Conclusion: Tamra Gilbertson and Brian Tokar

    Biography

    Brian Tokar is a Lecturer in Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont, USA, and the author and editor of six previous books on environmental issues and movements.

    Tamra L Gilbertson is the climate change and forest policy advisor of the Indigenous Environmental Network. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Tennessee, Department of Sociology, where she completed her PhD. She works in the nexus of environmental, climate and social justice, social movements, and extractive industry research, as well as carbon pricing, forests, and land related to development policies.

    "Climate Justice and Community Renewal demonstrates why the expanding climate movement’s best chance at substantially transforming current failed climate policies lies in the twin goals of climate justice and community renewal. This exceptional collection by Brian Tokar and Tamra Gilbertson, two of the world’s most knowledgeable and accomplished climate researcher-activists, demonstrates why the most farsighted and constructive responses to the climate emergency stem from embracing the re-communalization of social life on the basis of egalitarian, post-capitalist, horizontalist, and non-patriarchal principles. This is also one of the first volumes to tackle the seemingly intractable question of the systemic convergence among transformative alternatives. By outlining a workable horizon for climate-driven radical change, the authors give us back the possibility for living otherwise and for reclaiming the future". -- Arturo Escobar, Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA, and Ad-hoc Professor, PhD Program in Environmental Sciences, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia

    "The iron law of climate change is, the less you did to cause it, the sooner and harder you suffer. That means that fighting the climate crisis, as these remarkable leaders and thinkers make clear, is first and foremost a matter of justice. The leadership in that fight comes precisely from these people and these places, and so this book is an invaluable resource". -- Bill McKibben, Schumann Distinguished Scholar, Middlebury College, USA

    "As this volume shows, nation-states prevaricate, but everyday people now lead on climate change, building new models of democratic politics, at once grassroots and globally collaborative". -- Ariel Salleh, author and activist, author of Ecofeminism as Politics (2017) and Eco-Sufficiency & Global Justice (2009)

    "This volume comes as a breath of unpolluted air, shining rays of light through the often clouded debates on climate, providing sharp critiques both of the crisis as also grounded alternatives that can provide the just transition to a world where humanity makes peace with the earth". Ashish Kothari, Kalpavriksh / Global Tapestry of Alternatives, India 

    "These activists and scholars alert us to the value of local community experiments as ‘living alternatives’ and show how a climate justice lens simultaneously enriches these precious adventures while carving pathways to the range of systemic alternatives we all desire". -- John Foran, Professor of Sociology and Coordinator, Environmental and Climate Justice Studies Hub, University of California Santa Barbara, USA

    "Climate Justice and Community Renewal does not offer a detailed, theoretical or even philosophical discussion of what the editors and authors understand climate justice to be. Instead, and this is largely because of the book’s insightful contributions from many parts of the world, the volume offers valuable lessons drawn from a global perspective. The book’s potpourri of case studies and thoughtful illuminations on the issue of global warming offers an indispensable contribution to the current debate on climate justice."

    Thomas Klikauer and Meg Young, Western Sydney University in Philosophy in Review Vol. 41 no. 4 (November 2021)

    "Climate Justice and Community Renewal grounds a promising vision of what may be accomplished through authoritative reports and analyses of what is already happening in many areas around the world. The book also suggests the potential of a strengthening of international climate justice efforts and their broadening and convergence as a "movement of movements" that can effectively address the most urgent threats of our time."

    Bob Spivey, climateandcapitalism.com

    "This invaluable book will surely appeal to students, researchers, activists, and all who appreciate the need for a genuinely justice-centered response to the ever-growing threats of dangerous climate change."

    David Schwartzman, Department of Biology, Howard University, Washington, DC USA