Making Climate Justice: Social Natures and Political Spaces of the Anthropocene
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Making Climate Justice: Social Natures and Political Spaces of the Anthropocene Brandon Derman A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2015 Reading Committee: Steven Herbert, Chair Victoria Lawson Matthew Sparke Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Geography © Copyright 2015 Brandon Derman University of Washington Abstract Making Climate Justice: Social Natures and Political Spaces of the Anthropocene Brandon Derman Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Steven Herbert Geography The global connections of climate change produce profoundly uneven geographies across social and physical space at many scales. In general, however, those who have benefited most from climate-changing fossil-fueled development are also most insulated from its deleterious effects, while those who have contributed and benefited least suffer such effects first and most dramatically. Regulatory response frameworks are challenged by, and may exacerbate, these challenges to justice. This dissertation draws on interviews, participant observation and documentary sources in a relational analysis of social responses to climate change framed by law, governance and political mobilization. The methodological approach examines the socio-ecological, socio-spatial and governmental connections these initiatives acknowledge, construct, elide or erode. Part 1 demonstrates how institutionalized practices and epistemologies of disconnection have compromised the efficacy and justice of response efforts structured by international human rights law, multilateral treaty negotiations, and economistic modes of governance. Part 2 explores the construction of and tensions within what I call a politics of connection, as pursued by a subset of civil society actors engaged in advocacy and activism for climate justice. These politics consist in challenging separation and highlighting or constructing connection in each relational domain. The analysis suggests that response efforts are not likely to halt the progression of climate change or resolve its multi-dimensional justice issues without recognizing and accounting politically for the various facets of its embedding in socio-ecological processes and relations at scales and sites from the global to the local. The politics of connection, then, presents possibilities for transformation toward more effective and just responses to the climate crisis. The study contributes to theoretical development and political debate by addressing (1) the spatiality of transnational social movements, (2) the political relevance of the more-than-human, and (3) the role of “civil society” in constituting governance and contesting socio-ecological power. Linking (1) and (2), I argue that more-than-human assemblages constitute conditions for constructing transnational solidarities and, more importantly, for grounding a politics of socio- ecological justice that can socialize, historicize and politicize global change in the Anthropocene. I propose the term socio-ecological conjunctures to index the objects of activist analyses that articulate globally-extensive socio-ecological processes with the community- and place-based concerns of established and incipient political identities. Analyses of socio-ecological conjunctures can more broadly politicize climate change, both superseding the militant particularisms of place-based politics and grounding tenuous transnational alliances. Addressing (3), I argue that the urgency of imminent disparate impact incites multiplicity, pragmatism, and ongoing experimentation in the pursuit of protection from and redress for climate harms, which operate in tandem with the purer politics of radical political ecological critique. Civil society emerges therefore, in these ecological politics, as an indeterminate figure encompassing these and other engagements; its presence in both official and “outside” political spaces marking both as contested terrain. Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ ix Dedication ..................................................................................................................................... xi1 Chapter 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 Analyzing (dis)connections ....................................................................................................... 11 The socio-ecological .............................................................................................................. 11 The socio-spatial .................................................................................................................... 17 The socio-spatial and the socio-ecological ............................................................................ 22 The governmental .................................................................................................................. 25 The ecological political ......................................................................................................... 29 Institutionalized separation and the politics of connection: the chapters .................................. 32 For the analytic of (dis)connection............................................................................................ 37 Chapter 2. Research activity, materials and analysis ................................................................... 39 The research activity and materials ........................................................................................... 39 Analysis ..................................................................................................................................... 43 Travelling contested terrain ....................................................................................................... 44 Chapter 3. Extensive ties and uneven geographies: Climatic injustice and emerging responses 48 The human impacts of climate change as socio-ecological connection .................................... 48 The uneven geographies of climate impact ............................................................................... 54 Responsibility and vulnerability: Inverted geographies and multiple exposures ...................... 60 Activism and advocacy for climate justice ............................................................................... 66 Chapter 4. Climate change and the violation of human rights: Contesting the juridical visibility of socio-natural and spatial relations ............................................................................................ 73 Legal mobilization, institutions, and responsibility for Anthropocene harm ............................ 73 1 a The ICC and Maldives climate rights claims ............................................................................ 77 Socio-ecological and socio-spatial connections as ties of legal responsibility ......................... 79 Formal responses to the Maldives and ICC claims ................................................................... 85 Interpreting formal responses .................................................................................................... 91 Appeals to complexity ........................................................................................................... 93 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 99 Chapter 5. International law and/as geo-economic power: renegotiating responsibility at the UNFCCC..................................................................................................................................... 100 Copenhagen and the withdrawal from law .............................................................................. 104 After Copenhagen: renegotiating responsibility and the relevance of law ............................. 107 Legalizing the Copenhagen Accord’s guiding principles .................................................... 108 “Legal form,” Kyoto’s Annexes, and the fixing of socio-spatial relations ......................... 110 The geopolitics of legal principle and form ......................................................................... 114 Problems with “pledge and review” ........................................................................................ 121 The persistence of nomic advocacy for climate justice ........................................................... 123 Conclusion: Law’s promise for climate justice – deferred or empty? ................................... 128 Chapter 6. The propagation of separation: climate governance and climate justice after Copenhagen................................................................................................................................. 132 Climate governance after Copenhagen ................................................................................... 134 Changing actors, logics and spaces of governance .............................................................. 134 The post-internationalization and marketization of climate governance ............................. 139 Post-Copenhagen climate justice advocacy and regimes of the respons-ible/able ................. 142 Structures of opportunity in the EU and US .......................................................................