Bordering sustainability in the Anthropocene

S. Dalby | Territory, Politics, Governance | 2020

While environmental matters rarely respect political boundaries, efforts to govern resource, pollution, wildlife and numerous other matters are often profoundly shaped by territorial jurisdiction. Direct regulation, trade restrictions and forms of international cooperation have all shaped global efforts at environmental governance, while fortress conservation ideas frequently invoke territorial exclusivity. The context for these measures has been changing both as a consequence of the growth of the global economy and as a result of the biophysical transformations that are integral to this expansion through the period of the great acceleration. Climate adaptation practices frequently invoked practices of enclosure and expulsion that are often counter-productive. Novel circumstances due to accelerating Anthropocene change now shape the policy landscape, while numerous policy-makers grapple with how to implement the Sustainable Development Goals. These require rethinking the bordering practices that govern environmental matters and the relationships of territory to ecological function. This is necessary now not least because of increased natural system instability, the new condition of non-stationarity and the inadequacy of stable base line assumptions for dealing with rapid change across boundaries.

Dalby, S. “Bordering sustainability in the Anthropocene.Territory, Politics, Governance 8, no. 2 (2020), 144-160.

Bordering sustainability in the Anthropocene