“The Second Body”, a poem for International Women’s Day

On 8th of March 2021, TKPT, a women organization in Indonesia, held the Kalimantan Island meeting. This meeting was attended by 16 women representatives from all provinces in Kalimantan Island, who rely on extractive economies – such as big mining, logging and oil palm plantation. They discussed and had a reflection on their “Tanah air” experiences.

Tanah Air is an Indonesian phrase. The original meaning is “Tanah = soil” and “air = water”.  However, Tanah Air has multiple meanings, from the place where you were born and grew up, to your ancestor territories, to your nation state. According to the participants (all women activist affected by extractives project), Tanah air is the living space for human and non-human nature that they rely on and try to defend.

WEGO researcher Siti Maimunah, who attended the meeting, wrote a poem based on the stories told by these women in their meeting. The poem is inspired by the “Feminist Political Ecology Dialog with Indonesian Youth: Feminist, Multispecies and the Second Body”, two days before the meeting. The poem is dedicated to Women Survivors and Women Right’s Defendants in Kalimantan Island, Indonesia, and to all those celebrating International Women’s Day around the world.

(1)

I met my second body that afternoon,
We talked for almost four hours,
We talked about rivers,
palm oil catfish,
mud cracks,
paper trees,
saltwater crocodiles,
Semandut lake,
lost tallow nuts,
bauxites and cans,
landslide and sandbags,
children died at coal mine pits

I met my second body that afternoon,
We talked until dusk came,
We talked about fields,
land spirits,
village festivals,
alternative economic,
persistence in learning,
nature’s supermarket,
coconut oil soaps,
and growing trails of the forest

I met my second body that afternoon, Tanah Air.

(2)

Ra,
I’m picturing your story about Dulau River and its ripples
About the forest eaten by countless of paper trees
About its leaves protruding like tissue papers
About its bright white fruits, blinding the mounting paper pulp
I see your story in toilets, offices and university library

Le’,
I’m reminiscing your painting of Kapuas River and its creeks
About those mud cracks in where Semendut Lake used to be
About the four villages losing their water and gaining heap of bauxite waste
About tengkawang trees that no longer stand in line along the river
I see your painting on food cans, on cars in the streets and on batteries

Jan,
I’m listening to your tale about Malinau River and its hospitality
About the oil palm trees replacing what once was a rainbow forest
About those catfish carrying palm fruits between their skinfolds
About the fish and water that used to be sweet, now tasteless and oily
I read your tale in cosmetic bottles and boards in gas stations

Jul,
I’m daydreaming about Sanga-sanga River and its gloriousness
About your alienation from land that now moves when it rains,
About the necessity to build a dam using sandbags
About the cracked dry land, and gaping holes of toxic water
I see your frustration at traffic lights in metropolitan cities in the island of Java

Sar,
I’m reminiscing about Mahakam River and its edges
About the ships full of hundreds of Meranti trunks
About the coal barges lining under the bridge
About the drinking water costs a third of the labors’ minimum wage
This memory is written in the list of children who died in coal mine pits

Had,
I’m heeding your story about Santan River and its guardian crocodile
About the damaged upstream and the now regular floods
About the powerless Balians against the crocodiles who prey its neighbours
Your story is on the faces of the rich at the President Palace and Parliament Office

Ann,
I’m picturing Barito River and the floating market
About the foul pilgrims of coal toying with their religion
About the capital city lying below the sea level and the giant pits
The picture sticks to the flash floods that drowned the capital

Still, I’m also listening to Suket’s story
About the female rattan weavers who are related to land spirits
About the farming rituals to honor land, rice, and forest
About “Unang Telang Otah Ine,” for the forest as breast milk
About the belief that forest is the true life provider

Still, I’m dwelling about the story of Had,
About the youth of Santan who bring life back to their village
About the the goal of recovery surrounded by giant mines and palm oil siege
About the spirit of learning and building an alternative economic
About the hopes of the independent festivities and communality

I met my second body that afternoon, Tanah Air.

 

Passau, 8th of March, 2021

Are ‘Nature-based Solutions’ an answer to unsustainable cities or a tool for furthering nature’s neoliberalisation?

Nature-based Solutions (NBS) are broadly perceived as positive ‘triple-win’ strategies, though they have so far shown contradictions and limited transformational potential for advancing environmental justice and sustainability in cities. We can, however, recover the underlying idea of respecting and protecting biodiversity as well as caring for and with nature to repair or transform some of our broken systems.

Read the full article here

Panagiota Kotsila is the author of this blog on Undisciplined Environments

Coronavirus and the much needed overcoming of capitalism

It is important to incorporate a new vision linked to the ethics of care, which opens the possibility of hoping for a better world, a world in which the community dimension becomes central, where care is the basis for connections, not only between human beings but also at the community level and with nature.

The arrival of the Coronavirus in Uruguay has put the population on alert and transformed daily life. The call to stay at home cannot be answered in the same way by all people, considering the activities they carry out but also because not everyone has the real possibility of confronting extreme situations given that the necessary social protection measures have not yet been put in place. What is clear is that, in line with what happened in other affected countries, either voluntarily, by measures suggested by the authorities or imposed by (more or less democratic) measures, the changes in daily life have been radical.

These changes in behaviour respond to the fact that the population perceives that there is an imminent danger. The virus is in circulation and the possibility of people getting sick, or in serious cases dying, is a reality. It is a concrete fact that impacts their lives, directly, or through the excess pressure that the epidemic places on the health system shared by the population. It is not a personal problem. It is a collective problem, a problem of humanity as a whole. There are causes (not entirely clear) and there are consequences. And the consequences are visible. Containing and transforming the situation requires public policies, systems that respond equitably, and an informed and acting society.

At least since the 1970s, when the first United Nations conference on Environment and Development was organised, humanity has had the necessary information and available data that establishes with absolute clarity that the dominant model of production and consumption, like the Coronavirus, sickens and kills, in addition to destroying nature and the diverse ecosystems, putting at risk not only the lives of the present but of future generations. For 50 years, the universal response has been to maintain the same model, dressing it up with statements and terms that are becoming fashionable as a denialist strategy to continue praising economic growth as an indispensable condition for the well-being of humanity. Every year, multiple conferences are organised and programmes are put in place to make production and consumption “sustainable”, to make the economy “green”, to have industry and technology develop “resilient” practices, and the list could go on citing buzzwords used to ensure the perpetuation of a destructive, unjust, discriminatory, exclusive model that fundamentally puts at risk the continuity of Life in its many manifestations.

While the Coronavirus multiplies exponentially and we know the number of victims daily, capitalism has produced unequal societies where millions die daily from multiple causes: hunger, preventable diseases, violence, environmental pollution, destruction of ecosystems, etc. But in addition, capitalism has generated individualism as a central phenomenon, which determines total indifference to the suffering of “the others”, added to the centrality of consumption almost as a way of existence. In recent decades, countless books and articles have been written, innumerable courses have been organised at  university and popular levels, networks have been created throughout the world promoting lifestyles that not only call into question the capitalist model but, and fundamentally, they summon to recognise that there are other ways of being and inhabiting our common planet. Feminist and environmental movements, as well as those of solidarity / community economies, have systematically proposed the necessary consideration of care, reciprocity and overcoming extractivism in relation to nature as central processes to achieve truly sustainable, egalitarian and just societies.

When the pandemic has passed and all of us recognise that we live in another world (in which thousands will no longer be, not only the direct victims of the pandemic, but those who will have succumb to other diseases because of non-existent or weak public health systems which collapsed in the face of the crisis, millions who will have lost their livelihoods and did not have protection systems that could guarantee their right to life and well-being, depressed socioeconomic and environmental indicators and without the resources to reverse them) the ways of being in the world and the public policies that enable them will play a central role in the prevention of new crises. That is why it is important, now, to put on the table knowledge, visions and practices that state that the virus is not the anomaly or the monster, but rather reveals the monstrosity of the dominant model1.

CENTRALITY OF LIFE

In this other world, care must be more important than the logic of profit, putting Life at the centre and not money. Care is an intrinsic function of “the social”, which has historically been associated with the feminine and that can sometimes become a burden linked to gender mandates, devalue and become invisible in its contribution and relevance. It is important to incorporate a new vision linked to the ethics of care, which opens the possibility of hoping for a better world, a world in which the community dimension becomes central, where care is the basis for connections, not only between human beings but also at the community level and with nature. Care helps to contribute to more sustainable livelihoods, to the extent that satisfying needs, rather than being exclusively linked to markets (and economic growth). is mainly understood through reciprocity and solidarity. The State is not oblivious to these processes, but quite the contrary, plays a central role in guaranteeing its solidification for the population as a whole, distancing itself from the neoliberal logic that makes each person responsible for their life and that of their family in open opposition to the ontological reality that defines us as human beings – that is, our relational and community nature. The current Coronavirus pandemic is also an excellent example of the impossibility of individual solutions, showing that the only way out of the crisis is caring, for ourselves and for others, that each person who needs attention is intertwined with their most immediate environment, with their community and with the citizenry as a whole, and that the State has the fundamental role of providing resources and distributing them with a criterion of justice and social equality.

But caring goes far beyond us, people. The capitalist mode of production assumes that nature is only the source of resources to satisfy supposedly infinite needs, and that therefore the supply of goods and services must be unlimited in order to guarantee permanent economic growth that generates jobs, consumption, exploitation of nature, new products, new jobs, consumption. Above all, this cycle is predicated on permanent profit, which, invested in speculative markets, allows enrichment without social responsibility and without offering any type of benefits or assistance to the majority of the population. The population, with some luck, will be able to access some of those jobs, consume, that consumption continues to depend on the exploitation of nature and continues to contribute to the enrichment of the famous 1% that concentrates 44% of the world’s wealth2. This is the monstrosity of the system, which lays waste to rivers, species, plants, soils, animals; that creates strata and classes condemning broad sectors of the population to situations of exploitation due to their sex, gender, sexual orientation, class, capacity, place, age, ethnicity; that puts at risk the very continuity of Life without offering well-being or care; and that favours the emergence of diseases that one day make us realise that all the accumulated assets do not even serve to begin to respond to the challenge.

 NATURE AND INTERDEPENDENCE

From a feminist and ethics of care perspective, it is possible to affirm that the dominant vision of nature in capitalism does not recognise its intrinsic value and its interrelation with the diversity of Life, but merely positions it as a provider for human beings, and this is what has justified unsustainable uses and over-exploitation, with known consequences in terms of climate change, pollution and others. The challenge is precisely to recognise the interdependence, the necessary limits in its use, the existence of nature’s own needs that require respect for cycles, protection, care and proper handling, regeneration and restoration of certain processes. The extractivist logic that guides the exploitation of nature is the opposite of the logic of care, and just as it happens with people and societies, it not only harms the subject of those exploitative actions (in this case nature) but the interdependent system as a whole. The stories that come from different parts of the world regarding skies that turn blue again, improvements in the quality of water and air as a result of the decrease in economic activity, are indications that changes in the way of production have a fast impact in nature.

These changes, however, and as we saw at the beginning, respond to the emergency and largely to fear. Long-term changes require a new understanding of the meaning of life and well-being. From the centrality of the economy to the centrality of Life. From self-identification as consumers to citizens. From nationals of a country to inhabitants of a shared planet. From recipients of public policies to co-makers of a reality that celebrates diversity and thrives on plural and diverse knowledge. There will be those who argue that it is a romantic approach. But it is in reciprocal care, within the framework of states that guarantee egalitarian and social protection policies, with programmes that allow overcoming inequalities and discrimination, and with productive practices that recognise and respect interdependence with nature, that we are playing the chances of overcoming this crisis today and forward.

Montevideo, March 2020

This article was originally published in Brecha, Montevideo, Uruguay: https://brecha.com.uy/coronavirus-y-la-necesaria-superacion-del-capitalismo/

1. Bram Ieven and Jan Overwijk,  “Dit is de normale orde”, De Groene Amsterdammer, 18 March 2020, https://www.groene.nl/artikel/dit-is-de-normale-orde
2.  Global Inequality, https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/#global-wealth-inequality