As well as acting as another motivating period of intense analysis and synthesis, I learned a great deal. Given my focus on Svalbard, it was really useful to get a picture of
I might be in danger of sounding like a broken record, but last month I returned from another great conference and am struck again by the importance of getting out there and presenting my research, but for different reasons. This time, I headed to the very North of Norway for the Barent’s Institute’s "Mining the Arctic: sustainable communities, economies, and governance? Thorvald Stoltenberg Conference.
As well as acting as another motivating period of intense analysis and synthesis, I learned a great deal. Given my focus on Svalbard, it was really useful to get a picture of
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I have been thinking about ‘waste’ and its value quite a lot while in Svalbard. Pyramiden one might think is an extreme example. However, though teaming with things that are no longer in use for their original purpose, there is a significant amount that is not in fact discarded or unwanted, either being valued as cultural history (for some) and embedded with memories and stories. Or, in the case of metal structures and machinery, being harvested for scrap metal to be sold when shipped out. Which is to say nothing of the relationship or potential conflict between the two… I have just learnt of the sad, sad passing away of an amazing environmental campaigner and perma-culture teacher, advocate and practioner, Paulo Mellet, whom I met and studied with at CAT. It seems more than a happy co-incidence that today I visited the Polar Permaculture project and met an energetic and enthusiastic project leader just at the start of his permaculture journey and already pushing possibilities up here.
After some experimenting the project is running on mainly locally sourced inputs through composting waste materials and concentrating on hardy varieties to limit the energy input needed. This isn't an easy thing to do up here where almost everything is imported, but it is possible! It was great to meet with such positivity and determination, I'm pretty sure Paulo would have loved it. We log in via the visitors book, pass the security guy, don hard hats with the Statsbygg logo (the state construction arm of the Norwegian government) and file into the dank corridor (which must be the bit outside the mountain) and through the second metal door that has been unlocked for us. We descend as we walk down the rounded tunnel, which feels like a pedestrianised version of road tunnels which go through mountains. Melt water steadily runs down the sides of the corrugations....
(For anyone not of the right age and taste in music to get the Skunk Anansie reference, this blog title needs screaming loudly and with passion!)
As mentioned last week, Environmental Protection is a big talking point in Svalbard, as is the future of coal mining here. The 'paradox' between the two, is perhaps no different to other nations calling for more international action on climate change which have not maxed out on national efforts. However, in Svalbard these factors are drawn together in stark relief visually: coal - black - bad; ice/snow - white - good (especially when not melting!). Coal mining and scientific research (especially into climate science) makes up two of the three main 'pillars' of activity here (the third being tourism), so throw in a long cultural history and attachment to mining here, energy challenges, the issue of reinforcing sovreignty rights and the desire to be an environmental flag ship, and we have a very interesting melting pot which is not as simple as it might at first appear. Today a 3 day conference that the research base and Norwegian Ministries had organised to stimulate internation action on climate change in Ny Alesund drew to a close. After her visit to Svalbard, the UN Executive Secretary on climate change, Christiana Figeures came out of that meeting with a message to Norway and Svalbard - stop mining coal, it doesn't fit with the climate research goals and image, though from her statement she clearly understands the challenges such a move would bring, insisting on needing to pull out in a responsible, fair and planned way that could set a good example. From my perspective, this is all about value, values and how these input into the future strategies for Svalbard. If Norway is going to continue to push hard for positive environmental action, perhaps it will no longer be able to do so without re-evaluating how it's environmental 'flagship' is run both on and offshore (I might return to Grenpeace action off the coast another time!)... Today I have been comtemplating this question quite a lot and had some very interesting discussions around it. I can say with some certainty and without causing too much uproar, that it can mean very different things to different institutions and individuals. From a surface glance, the tensions (or not) between the three 'legs' of Svalbard: mining, tourism and research/ education look interesting enough. Beneath this there are many more issues, positions, agendas and concerns. At the heart of most of them are how we value and relate to 'nature'/ 'the wilderness', those age old troublesome words. Anyone in Svalbard feel like talking to me about this kind of thing, get in touch!
Today was an amazingly clear, sunny day, in contrast to yesterday (though it has just come over white and snowy again right now!). It would be all too easy to post a beautiful, postcard perfect landscape shot...but not today at least, though plenty of those have been taken! Influenced by our latest lunchtime listening (a 'keynote conversation' between Donna Harraway, Eduardo Kohn and Colin Dayan) human-non-human relations have come to the forefront, helped along with the goings-on of the day. On a walk to the westerly polar bear limit sign, we came across these reindeer antlers and skull near the port. Is it just a matter of time before someone decides they are valuable decorative items, or a revered memorial for a past life? Or, given that reindeer are not protected to the extent of some other species here, is this just trash?
This evening I attended quite a major event, the launch of Birger Amundsen's book 'Uten nåde' (Without Mercy) which is all about human-polar bear relations. I didn't understand much beyond that, but it was a full house at UNIS who enjoyed hearing tales of old-timers on Svalbard and their escapades with polar bears in the 1970s. This 'charasmatic species' certainly captures the imagination and attention. I wonder if they can, as Eduardo Kohn pursues, 'hold open space' to form new, positive and hopeful relations in this time of extinction and crisis Harraway and co seek to address? Today was very white. A balmy -1 degrees C and snow all day, it felt a bit like Christmas! The skyfull of snow blended with the snow on the mountains and all views were turned to just white.
Today's photo got me thinking about a lecture from Michael Haywood that we listened to last night on A.N. Whitehead's philosophy of emotions, feelings and aesthetics. It was all about extending the notion of feeling to all things and beings...tricky, but interesting stuff. According to the lecture, Whitehead defined aesthetics as a higher order of feelings that boils down to enjoyment of the contrasts between what is, and other possibilities - of what could be. The almost 'blank canvass' of the whited out town also opens up scope for the imagination of other possibilities and made the visual contrasts of the few discernable features stand in stark relation to each other, the kayaks on a snow-covered beach, the wild west style huts and flags, the smoke stack ... So, polar bears. They have been fascinating to me from the point where they started being flag ship species and campaign motives for action on climate change (which I’ll come to shortly). However, since starting this project, they have started to haunt my dreams (nightmares) in a rather different sense, given getting eaten by one is a possibility when I head out to Svalbard! Don’t worry, I’ll be taking all the necessary pre-cautions to minimise the risks, but I think it’s good to have a healthy respect for these arctic residents, and watching this series has been useful in cultivating this.
With there being some snow around (although not much in Aberystwyth), along with a flurry (sorry!) of documentaries popping up featuring one hell of a lot of ice, I thought I’d start a little series of posts about the ones I’ve been watching. First up: Chasing Ice If you haven’t heard about this one, it’s a documentary about the Extreme Ice Survey, a time-lapse photography project led by James Balog. About 30 cameras were installed (no mean feat!) to take time lapses of glaciers in the Arctic. That climate change is happening, is not something I need much convincing of. One can easily point to the many many variables this visual imagery cannot take into account (despite media headlines of course of ‘irrefutable truths’ etc). Nonetheless the retreat of the glaciers these cameras record, over just a few years, is quite staggering. Yes, this was over a short time period, but for me, watching such massive chunks of ice calving off into the sea and thinking about the long term trends and predictions at the same time, made for some scary and quite emotional viewing. Which, I presume is the main point of the project: giving people something real and happening to visualise when scientists talk of sea level rise, melting ice caps. Just before attending this event [1] I remember questioning why I was going. Sure it sounded interesting, but I had umpteen assignments, marking, supervisions, all sorts that were looming, should I really be going to a conference that I’m not presenting at? Well, I’m really glad I did, it was an inspiring day full of interesting people and perspectives, lively cross-disciplinary discussions and I have to say I learnt a lot about what I need to learn more about! I won’t mention all the speakers, but here is a round up of the discussions and questions that sparked particular interest for me.
Thinking about temporality The centre’s director, Graham Dawson got the day off to a good start by getting my brain ticking over the ways in which understandings of the past can be useful, not just interesting. Apparently this quote’s famous, but it was a first hearing for me: ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there’ L. P Hartley: The Go Between (1953) – into which he interjected that the same could be said of the future. But how to do we ‘go’ to the past or future? These are key ponderances for me as I am thinking through the different temporalities my proposed case study sites invoke. Indeed climate change as an entity has time woven into it in every strand. |
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