IICAT Biosphere Defense Project
Richard Widick (1/15/2017)
ADRIAN NEL, COORDINATOR (2014-2016) [project complete]
The Biosphere Defence Project (BDP) aims to disseminate knowledge about the defence of our biosphere and the realisation of a more positive socio-ecological future. It features videography and content from researchers, practitioners and activists working around the preservation of biodiversity and the global commons (including forest, glacial, riverine, and dryland systems, and wildlife and indigenous habitats), particularly where they intersect with issues of climate justice and the resistance to various (primarily capitalist) formations that cause environmental degradation and social externalities, harmful co2 emissions, uneven development, inequality and systemic crisis.
Climate Change: Impacts and Imperatives Series
1. Climate change impacts on small holder agriculture in Southern Africa
2. Climate change impacts on Glacial morphology in Tanzania, New Zealand and Antarctica
3. Climate change impacts on national parks and wildlife management Zimbabwe.
This is the third video in the Climate Change Impacts and Imperatives series for the Biosphere Defense Project at the International Institute of Climate Action and Theory’s (IICAT).
This video utilises the 2014 Hwange National Park ‘Game Count’ in Zimbabwe as a focus to explore the intersections between climate change, and the management of water and wildlife in Southern Africa. Paired with footage from the count, stakeholders share their own views, as well as those of their organisations, on challenges they face.
This case illustrates the intimate connections between climate change and local political ecologies, and re-enforces the call by organisations like IICAT, and the Climate Justice Movement, for stronger climate action.
Questioning Current Solutions Series
This series interrogates current interventions.
1. Critique of neoliberal Green Economy interventions
Direct Actions and the Defense of Local Commons Series
1. Extractive Industries and Indigenous Peoples: Fracking and Grassroots Resistance in New Brunswick, Canada.
Fracking Exploration and Gressroots Resistance in Canada: A Photostory
A photo-story published as a part of a Special Focus on Extractive Industries and Indigenous Peoples by the Public Political Ecology Lab (PPEL) at the University of Arizona (http://ppel.arizona.edu/?cat=65)
2. Plantations are not Forests: Forests for Life, not Business.
This video forms part of the “Direct actions and Defense of the local Commons’ series of the Biosphere Defense Project at the International Institute for Climate Action and Theory.
It charts participant’s reflections and calls for change during a march to the World Forestry Congress meeting of the United National Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), hosted at the International Convention Centre (ICC) in Durban, September 2015.
Thousands of learners from the broader South Durban basin, indigenous peoples from across the world, and activists from social and environmental organisations and movements from the Civil Society Alternative Programme (CSAP) to the World Forestry Congress took part. Their message and critique? Forests are for Life and not business.
Additional works by Adrian Nel:
Working Paper: Assembling Value in Carbon Forestry, The Leverhulme Center for Value, February 2015.
Book Chapter: “Zones of Awkward Engagement,” Carbon Conflicts and Forest Landscapes in Africa (Routledge, 2015).