ecology

Amitangshu Acharya and Alison Ormsby explore devithans—Nepali sacred groves—in the eastern Himalayan state of Sikkim, India. Given that historically the Buddhist Lepcha-Bhutias’ cultural association with Sikkim’s sacred landscape has been celebrated, while that of Nepali ethnic groups has been largely invisibilized, they argue that devithans have emerged as a potential political instrument for the latter to validate political and cultural claims to Sikkim’s sacred landscape.

In his comment on the Papal encyclical Laudato si’, Bruno Latour considers Pope Francis’s attention to the earth and the poor, and what this means for the Catholic Church.

This special “Samhain-Yule” issue of Earth First! is dedicated to Samhain, the Celtic term for “summer’s end,” a time to reassess goals and strategies. It discusses endangered rivers, tar sands, protection from environmental degradation, information about US climate justice activism (MCJ), the “Green Scare,” Deep Ecology, and the G20 Summit. Letters to the editor and songs are included as well.

In this 1995 annual report, the Fund for Wild Nature focuses on current anti-environmental politics and the skirting of environmental laws. The purpose of the fund, its funding guidelines, areas of support, and grant projects are laid out. Their intent is to foster connections among diverse groups with the underlying philosophy of Deep Ecology.

Humanidades Ambientales is a website for three Spanish environmental humanities projects. Most of its content is written in both Spanish and English.

Gregg Mitman examines the relationship between issues in early twentieth-century American society and the sciences of evolution and ecology to reveal how explicit social and political concerns influenced the scientific agenda of biologists at the University of Chicago and throughout the United States during the first half of the twentieth century.

Lorimer’s article for the Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities section discusses rot as a natural process avoided by modern humans, focusing particularly on processes of urbanization in contrast to the nurturing of rot that takes place among natural scientists and managers.

Stockholm Resilience Centre advances the understanding of complex social-ecological systems and generates new insights and development to improve ecosystem management practices and long-term sustainability.