Na začetku letošnjega leta smo v uredništvu Časopisa za kritiko znanosti znova začeli pozornost intenzivno namenjat ekološkim vprašanjem. K temu je precej pripomoglo februarsko dogajanje na petišovskih poljih, ko so začeli domačini na mestih, ki so bila v preteklosti povezana z lokalno naftno industrijo, opažati nenavadne izlive in brbotanje vode. Stopili smo v stik z njimi in izkazalo se je, da se v Prekmurju dogaja nekaj, kar bi lahko v prihodnosti resno ogrozilo širšo Panonsko nižino – investitorji so pridobivali dokumentacijo, ki dovoljuje uporabo sporne metode frackinga za ekstrakcijo plina iz globokih zemeljskih plasti. To dogajanje in dejstvo, da smo se vprašanju okolja in ekološkim premislekom v uredništvu v zadnjih letih posvečali občutno premalo, je vodilo k odločitvi, da vsaj del zadnje številke Časopisa za kritiko znanosti namenimo zelenim politikam. Pri tem se nismo hoteli podrediti uveljavljenim epistemologijam in trendovskim moraliziranjem o posameznikovi odgovornosti za okoljsko opustošenje. Želeli smo poseči globlje: razmišljati o naših antropocentričnih kozmologijah in razkrivati dileme demokracije, ki se kot pahljača razpostrejo pred nami vsakič, ko začnejo investitorji diktirati smer »razvoja«, ne glede na ceno, ki jo bo za to plačalo okolje, s tem pa tudi vsi mi, ki v njem živimo in smo od njega odvisni. Želeli smo se posvetiti nekaterim manj izpostavljenim, spregledanim, navsezadnje tudi manj konvencionalnim dimenzijam sodobnih zelenih politik.
The article discusses blind spots in the knowledge about the historical development of nature-culture relations. The result is a weak and anthropocentric “warped” understanding of the basic historical stages of the social relationship to nature. This default stance has an impact on modern versions of environmental reflection, and consequentially impacts the efficiency of solving today’s environmental dilemmas and problems. The topic is extremely extensive and complex, therefore an essayist and selective approach is inevitable. The purpose of the article is not to offer a new and more comprehensive “truth”, but to promote discussion and dialogue on alternative interpretations, which have been and are still largely marginalized. The ultimate objective is to draw attention to discussions on the revitalization of the fundamental constitutive elements of the relationship to nature that would also allow for the revitalization of environmental reflections, and thus perhaps also the revitalization of contemporary environmental theories and trends.
The article addresses climate change and the consequently altered mobility patterns or migrations of people due to environmental factors. It focuses on routing key discussions on environmental re-fugees/migrants in scientific production; the latter is marked by a two-way debate in the academic sphere, in which the differences between the advocates and critics of the environmental refugees/ migrants hypothesis arise from the disciplines of the analysts. In particular, the initial discussions take place in line with the polarized relationship of environmental vs. migration analysis or the “catastrophic vs. the sceptical scenario.” In spite of the indisputable starting point that environmental changes (co)influence migrations, it is advisable to discard simplistic explanations of causality from the very beginning, and position environmental migrations in the context of the complexity and multidimensionality of migration processes, and this is the starting point adopted in the article. Environmental refugees somehow just seem “to be there”, but they are caught between theoretical inconsistencies, which leave the field of their protection vacant, and the environmental changes taking place in their local living spaces.
Energy transition is a concept originating from the necessity of solving environmental problems and conflicts in the energy sector. It originates from environmental tradition and advocates transition from environmentally and socially controversial sources of energy to renewables. That also means a shift from large centralized production units (mainly based on fossil and nuclear energy) to smaller, dispersed ones. This decentralization process inherently leads to a democratization of the electricity sector, as large energy companies are losing their power and position in the energy policy arena, as more and more smaller actors emerge. However, when trying to change the electricity system, many obstacles arise – from the economics, old energy paradigm, path dependence, inertia of electricity system, power relations between actors, institutional lock-in, to perceptions and values of the dominant players. All barriers are reflected in the energy policy arena, dominated mainly by large energy companies, reluctant to accept changes. Demands for a change come from non-dominant actors, mainly from civil society actors and others, who are pushed to the margins of the political arena. Therefore, decision-makers should recognize their role, change institutional structure of the energy policy arena, and open it to various actors that can add new qualities to decision-making processes and outputs.
The author discusses the question of a divide between the goals of the Slovene agricultural policy and the actual situation regarding sustainable local self-sufficiency. An insight into farmers’ reality helps illuminate misunderstandings between them and the state. The author believes their actions are conditioned by the system as well as by their imaginaries: values, notions, expectations, and convictions about themselves, about farming and about the role of the state. Entering their imaginaries, the author tries to reveal the existing obstacles impeding farmers from acting more efficiently. Farmers expect the state to enable their survival, however, they are convinced that the state does not do anything to improve their operating conditions. The representatives of the state on the other side stress that measures have been adopted to address the situation, but farmers are not responding. The author tries to explain the existing misunderstandings, and show that for an effective agricultural policy we have to first start removing the existing obstacles. In order to achieve that, we need democratization enabling the excluded agents to be systematically included in the policy-making process, and we need discussions confronting different views – not only about the content of the policy, but firstly about the systematic options for entering the policy-making process, and what is more, about the notions, convictions, and expectations of the agents.
The article focuses on the misuse of the concept of threshold limit values in the case of incineration emissions in the Zasavje region. It describes the role that was played by “science”, which supported and still supports practices polluting the environment, and the long-lasting apathy of state institutions that were supposed to guarantee a safe living environment.
The article is an edited conversation with an activist of an initiative “Stop the fracking in Slovenia”. In order to start the process of fracking for natural gas extraction in the Prekmurje region, companies still have to obtain some environmental permits from the government environmental agency, which seems to have taken the companies’ side. The initiative is struggling to stop this. The conversation was focused on the developments in the Petišovci fields, formal procedures connected to obtaining permits, and the companies involved. The article also contains the explanation of what fracking is.
The text is a dossier focusing on the problems of uranium mining. The first part deals with some general issues and dilemmas associated with nuclear energy production and its environmental impacts; the second deals with case studies of uranium mining in Namibia, Niger, Brazil, and Bulgaria. The dossier is based entirely on the reports and documents of the EJOLT international project. Most of the research and studies mentioned in the article was carried out by CRIIRAD, a French organization, which participated in the EJOLT project.
This paper deals with the ecological potential of participatory art practices in the context of everyday urban life. The author examines the range of their contribution in the fight for the recognition of their different modes of creation, thinking, acting and use of an urban public space in terms of connectivity in the community. Such thought and action can be productively integrated into the concept of new spatial ecologies. We are not talking only about certain environmental initiatives, which are especially close to heart of individual artists (the current practices of artist from the circle of Celje Fine Artists Society serve as a case study in this paper), but also about understanding ecology in much broader sense relating to the relationship of people towards urban space as dwelling area, living space, or domicile. In order to have an urban space capable of offering optimal conditions in a given crisis situation, its inhabitants should think and act sustainably, strive for dynamic balance and harmony, and persistently develop ethical consumption models and also embark upon a unique ecology of mind and body in a space which is becoming increasingly limited in size. Therefore, we need to open interspaces or invent new spaces in the abstract and capitalistically alienated urban space—the space that would be founded in reality and utopia at the same time. City dwellers create their own spatial fictions, invent eco living solutions and wave a net of inventive, mobile, and sometimes impossible connections. The contribution of cross-disciplinary, research-focused, participatory, activist and eco-oriented art, as practiced by the DLUC artists, who strive with their own unique methods for a more open—both mentally and physically—urban public space, is far from negligible, and also cannot be overlooked on the Slovenian artistic scene.
A response to Social, Economic and Environmental Limits to Growth: A Presentation of Degrowth and its Use in Practice
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Although the concept of degrowth has been present in the global scientific community already for several decades, it is not present in the scientific discourse in Slovenia. The purpose of this article is to introduce the concept of degrowth. Sustainable degrowth is defined as the downscaling of production and consumption, which increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet. It calls for a future where societies live within their ecological means, with open, localized economies and resources more equally distributed through new forms of democratic institutions (Research and degrowth, 2015). Sustainable degrowth is a multi-faceted political project that aspires to mobilize support for a change of direction, at the macrolevel of economic and political institutions, and at the micro level of personal values and aspirations. Income and material comfort is to be reduced for many along the way, but the goal is that this is not experienced as welfare loss (Kallis, 2011). To make an introduction to the topic of degrowth, the article sketches the social, economic, and environmental limits to growth, briefly summarizes the different definitions of the degrowth concept, presents a rough framework for degrowth in practice, and discusses the possibility of implementing degrowth in today’s complex world. The article summarizes the key pieces of existing literature in the field of degrowth.
Sustainable development and ecological politics too often act as a mechanism for strengthening alienated state institutions or as a way for developing new market niches for the accumulation of capital. The article tries to offer a critique of technocratic visions of sustainable development by using the bike as a tool of emancipatory politics, and think about political ecology as means for building a community. The bicycle can be seen as an autonomous means of transportation stimulating the construction of ecological urban landscape, which is oriented towards users and community. It stimulates compressed and rationally used urban space, enforces heterogeneous urban plans, increases mixing of diverse practices and needs, liberates public space, which is now subordinated to parking spots and roads, and promotes rights and powers of the users, their autonomy and spontaneity, by enabling the development of open public streets, which are more than just a movement channel. The city, at present subordinated to ecological and social devastation of automobility, is-through extensive usage of bike-re-created as a space for the construction of social, autonomous and ecological community.
One Million Climate Jobs or 528 Megatons of Greenhouse Gases? An interview with Jonathan Neale and Nancy Lindisfarne
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An interview addresses one of the currently most important environmental and political iniciatives in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – the One million Climate Jobs Campaign. An extensive programme of change, which was prepared as part of this campaign, is discussed and with it many of the political and socio-economic areas that are affected by climate change and that thus directly alter human life. The interlocutors reveal how the barriers to solving the problem of pollution stem from our reality – capitalism and its corresponding organisation of the economy and society. Special attention is also given to the fact that some of the world’s crises are usually the consequence of interests of the fossil fuels elites and the profits inevitably connected to them. All this means that in order to achieve any real changes in the ways we treat our planet, what is needed is radical social transformation.
Uradni časopis SS Schwartze Korps je leta 1938 eksplicitno zapisal, da se bo svet, če še ni prepričan, da so Judje izmeček sveta, o tem kmalu prepričal, ko bodo berači, ki jih ne bo mogoče identificirati, brez državljanstva, brez denarja in brez potnega lista prečkali njihove meje.
(Hannah Arendt v Izvori Totalitarizma, 2003: 347)
Sredi najmnožičnejšega prihoda beguncev v Slovenijo v začetku novembra letos smo se odločili, da v ČKZ odpremo blok o beguncih. Skupaj z zaostrovanjem policijskega nadzora nad gibanjem beguncev in neustavljivo varnostno retoriko oblasti zaradi strahu pred nezmožnostjo nadzorovanja schengenske meje se je v tistem času v Sloveniji šele napovedovala postavitev ograje na meji s Hrvaško. K pripravi pričujočega bloka nas je spodbudilo dvoje: 1. travmatične izkušnje, pa tudi lepi in veseli utrinki, s katerimi so se samoorganizirani posamezniki in člani skupine Protirasistične fronte vračali s terena na mejah, kjer so se srečevali in solidarnostno delovali med bežečimi ljudmi na balkanski poti; 2. kljub psihični in fizični izčrpanosti je bilo vodilo za tokratno intervencijo predvsem zavedanje, da je edinole prevlada ideje t. i. dobrodošlice beguncem nad nestrpnostjo in ksenofobijo najnujnejši pogoj za znosno bivanje v družbi in za kakršno koli bolj optimistično življenjsko perspektivo. V povezavi s tem velja poudariti, da so samoorganizirani v nekaj tednih postavili lastno neodvisno infrastrukturo za solidarnostno delovanje med begunci na tako rekoč vseh ravneh: od obveščanja v digitalnem in realnem svetu, humanitarne pomoči, vzpostavitve informacijskih točk za begunce, angažiranja prevajalcev itd. Iz neverjetne energije angažmaja tako na terenu kakor v Ljubljani je nastala dokumentacija poročil s terena, ki skupaj s protestnimi in kritičnimi političnimi intervencijami v javni prostor kličeta po nujnem nadaljnjem raziskovanju, mišljenju, analizah, aktivaciji, političnem organiziranju in delovanju. Zato pričujoči blok podaja zgolj nekaj prvih izhodišč za refleksijo begunske in migracijske situacije ter tudi gibanj solidarnosti z begunci, o katerih bo treba v prihodnje misliti v veliko širših kontekstih. ČKZ bo to storil že v prihodnji, spomladanski številki.
Medtem ko se ministri in voditelji osemindvajsetih držav članic EU še vedno prepirajo med seboj, a tudi ob neustrezni ureditvi (ali »finančnem temelju«) Evrope razpravljajo in odločajo o skupnem dobrem, se »begunska kriza« zaostruje, vpliva na čedalje večje število držav na »migrantski poti« in se s hitro bližajočo se zimo počasi približuje humanitarni katastrofi. Natančnega razvoja razmer ne moremo napovedati, ker se lahko vse spremeni skorajda čez noč, rečemo pa lahko, da smo prekoračili točko zgodovinskega pomena, s katere ni vrnitve.
Čas je, da ocenimo ta dogodek, s katerim se sooča »skupnost« evropskih držav, in naredimo inventuro protislovij, ki so se razkrila v »skupnosti« in v središču vsake njene članice. Če razširim napoved kanclerke Angele Merkel za Nemčijo (»Ti dogodki bodo spremenili našo državo.«) na vso Evropo, bi rekel: ti dogodki bodo spremenili Evropo. Toda kako? Vprašanje ni enoznačno, a lahko postane kmalu. Vstopamo v prostranstvo surovih fluktuacij, v katerem moramo biti toliko realistični kakor tudi odločni.
Najprej, ne maramo, da nam pravijo »begunci«. Sami drug drugemu rečemo »prišleki« ali »imigranti«. Naši časopisi so časopisi za »nemško govoreče Američane«; in kolikor vem, nihče od tistih, ki jih je preganjal Hitler, ni zdaj in nikoli prej ustanovil kluba, katerega ime bi nakazovalo, da so njegovi člani begunci.
Begunec je bil nekoč človek, ki je iskal zatočišče zaradi nekega dejanja ali zaradi določenega političnega prepričanja. Popolnoma drži, da smo morali poiskati zatočišče; toda ničesar nismo storili in večina od nas ni nikoli menila, da bi imela kakršno koli radikalno stališče. Z nami se je pojem »begunec« spremenil. Zdaj so »begunci« med nami tisti, ki so imeli tako nesrečo, da so prišli v novo deželo brez sredstev in jim morajo pomagati begunski odbori.
Upon lived experience on Balkan refugee and migration route author identifies some theoretical dilemmas that appear in so-called refugee crisis and proposes some conceptual tools for analysis and intervention. The clash between movement of refugees and migrants on the one hand and European border and migration regime on the other highlights the role of the state of exception in contemporary forms of government, new meanings of racism in relation to hierarchies proper to nowadays capitalism, inadequacy of objectivist understanding of migration and necessity to grasp refugee and migrant subjectivity and new forms of political engagement on the border, such that are affective and capable of creating common beyond rigid identities.
As refugees arrived in Slovenia, first in September and then in October, many self-organized individuals and groups were present on the hot spots, monitoring the situation and work with refugees. They wrote reports about the situation, which differ from the dominant media accounts. Twenty-eight reports are published as documentary material for potential subsequent analysis.
