What are the Contributions of the Environmental Humanities

 In his presentation, Nuno pointed out that the environmental humanities can contribute with a critical, transdisciplinary, multiple and intersectional intervention in environmental issues.  

The environmental humanities are suspicious of ideas of development and sustainability, and of the ideological structures of creation of the SDGs. This is a generative suspicion, Nuno showed, since it positions the field critically in relation to the SDGs, asking who gets to be thought of as human and therefore entitled to be included in the vision of the future of the objectives of sustainable development? Who is forgotten in that future? Whose sustainable futures are forgotten? And whose histories and development plans have been forgotten? On the contrary, who benefits from the ideas of development? 

Importantly, the environmental humanities underline the importance of the arts for decision making process on climate issues, not only because they work with emotions, narratives, imagination, but also because they are valid and important forms of knowledge. One of the examples that Nuno gave was that of breathing practices in ecopoetry, which create social spaces of breathing that critique cultural models of relation with the planet. Ecopoetry also provides models of research, practice, and practice-as-research, which expand notions of knowledge beyond the academic realm.

This presentation took place during Nuno’s field work in Chile, as part of the PhD Course Critiques and Practices of Sustainability: Environmental Humanities Perspectives on Chilean and Swedish Ecocultures of Water, Land, and Air, that Nuno organized together with Andrea Casals Hill from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and Azucena Castro from Stockholm Resilience Center, Sweden, as part of the ACCESS Chile-Sweden collaboration platform (co-financed by STINT).