#neoliberalenvironment

[seaisrisn]

"The rise of neoliberal science management regimes has created a decisive and substantive shift in the organization and practice of science in the United States." —Rebecca Lave, Fields and Streams: Stream Restoration, Neoliberalism, and the Future of Environmental Science (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012)

[seaisrisn]

We cannot rely on explanations grounded in physical or critical human geography alone because socio-biophysical landscapes are as much the product of unequal power relations, histories of colonialism, and racial and gender disparities as they are of hydrology, ecology, and climate change. Critical Physical Geography is thus based in the careful integrative work necessary to render this co-production possible.

Rebecca Lave et al, “ Intervention: Critical Physical Geography,” The Canadian Geographer, 2013.

[seaisrisn]

“After decades of research on climate change and glacier retreat, we know relatively little about how diverse peoples think about climate change: how they respond when a glacier retreats a thousand meters, what they feel when a glacier vanishes, how they grieve when melting ice triggers a catastrophic flood or landslide what they perceive as the best or perhaps the only acceptable ways to protect their water resources, how their recreational preferences change as temperatures rise and glaciers melt. We know little about why particular sciences and technologies evolve in certain places, how local people influence that evolution over time, how governments make decisions about what to fund (or not), how power imbalances and social relations affect choices about environmental management, and why people continued to inhabit areas vulnerable to climate change and ensuing environmental hazards, even when they know the risks...

“When it comes down to the actual ways people grapple (or don’t) with these environmental changes, culture often matters more than science.” 

-Mark Carey, In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society (Oxford University Press, 2010).