2023 Year in Review
Edge Effects editors look back on their favorite essays and podcast episodes published in 2023 …
Imagining New Futures in West Papua’s Plantation Forestscape
Jessica Richardson reviews Sophie Chao’s book IN THE SHADOW OF THE PALMS, with a focus on indigenous groups’ nuanced feelings and relations with plantation lifeworlds as well as their radical openness toward the future …
Centering Islands in a Rising Ocean: A Conversation with Christina Gerhardt
Samm Newton interviews Dr. Christina Gerhardt about her 2023 book Sea Change, which is a collection of essays, a history of connection, and a window into island nations facing an uncertain future …
Saving the Forest to Secure the Mine in Jamaica’s Cockpit Country
Marie Widengård looks to critical border studies to understand how both extraction and conservation are at work in a contested area of Jamaica …
The Violence of Gated Communities in Buenos Aires’s Wetlands
Real estate developments emulating U.S.-style master-planned communities are popular in Buenos Aires. Mara Dicenta unpacks the violence such developments enact on the environment and the community, as well as the resurgence against them …
When Aboriginal Burning Practices Meet Colonial Legacies in Australia
Aboriginal burning regimes have become popular as a solution to prevent catastrophic wildfires in Australia. Mardi Reardon-Smith argues that Aboriginal peoples’ fire knowledge is not static, as contemporary burning results from both colonial histories and the intercultural co-creation of environmental knowledges …
The Cold Never Bothered Native Hawaiians Anyway: A Conversation with Hi’ilei Julia Hobart
How do certain temperatures come to be normalized and idealized in Hawai’i? Dr. Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart shares critical insights at the intersection of Indigenous dispossession and resistance …
A Love Letter to Weeds
Weeds are maligned as useless, or even harmful, plants. But Tabitha Faber has always had an affection for them, and thinks they can teach us something about how communities of all kinds can practice better relationships …
Unearthing the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming: A Conversation with Liz Carlisle
Liz Carlisle shares stories from her latest book, which uncovers the history of regenerative agriculture and the farmers of color who practice it …
Faculty Favorites: Readings For an Anticolonial Environmental Syllabus
Traveling from the Pacific Islands to Lake Superior, six instructors share recommendations for thinking through the complex relationships between colonialism and environmental change …
What Minnesota’s Mineral Gaze Overlooks
Minnesota state agencies have a history of seeing the landscape with an eye toward extraction, writes Andrew Hoyt, ignoring water resources and Indigenous sovereignty in favor of risky mining …
To Conserve Nature, Recognize Its Rights
The Biden administration wants to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. Austin Miles asks: what might that conservation look like if it recognizes the rights of nature? …
