Dia de la Tierra – a reflection on a public event

Last Saturday, the 25th of April 2009, the second Día de la Tierra was arranged in Buenos Aires. Along with international environmental organizations like Greenpeace and the Red Cross, national and local organizations like FARN and Youth and Water, participated along with the City of Buenos Aires. In the invitation to the Earth Day it said that it was anticipated to be a day which would focus on ecology, culture and quality of life; and that the event would unite music with actors from the private, public and third sector with the objective to “create environmental consciousness”. In the invitation found at the web, it further said that there would be art, sustainable design, NGOs and “all other things that are related to a green life”. For the second time around the festival would “give a simple but practical and positive message concerning how to care for the planet”. Even if the invitation mentioned that there would be an area for companies where they could present their initiatives, projects and sustainable products for the public, they were nowhere to be found in the area as far as I could see, unless one consider two organic food stands. Neither was there a tent with “Sounds from Nature”, as advertised; nor any movie for children called “Save the Planet” that dealt with the global warming. However, let’s not focus on what was not there. Earth day is an international event which was started in 1970 in the U.S. Its general aim is to “promote a sustainable citizenship” through the means of cultural expressions. The event took place in the United Nations Park, where the spectacular metallic Flor rises over the green grass. Renowned musicians “within the field” had been recruited to play, and this is an issue which deserves attention in its own right as a means of “cultural politics”. A quick detour - I believe Andrew Jamison has discussed the role of music in political mobilization, and lately I noticed how the National Museum of History in Stockholm opened an exhibition on climate change. I believe it proves that environmental politics is, and has to be, discussed in several, sometimes unexpected, contexts. This is the reason I have applied for funds for a photo project where the aim would be to visualize environmental problems and solutions.

Last year I visited the first Dia de la Tierra in Buenos Aires, and I was intrigued by the way environmental responsibility was communicated by the present organizations. They suggested individual activities like recycling batteries and conserving water, while one organization emphasized the slogan “think globally – act locally”. Even if the declared international aim of the Earth day 2009 was to place emphasis on climate change, the local adaptation gave emphasis to the Clean up of the Riachuelo, a heavily polluted suburban area and river where the City of Buenos Aires has business to take care of. This relates to the Waste policy “Cero Basura” which I referred to in an earlier comment. The focus on the clean up of Riachuelo was reinforced by the fact that the Greenpeace icebreaker “Arctic Sunrise” had been anchored in Puerto Madero for a bit over a week, with the aim to demand that the government implements its promises to start the clean up. At the stand for Greenpeace they handed out invitations to go visit the icebreaker.

The event seems drew many visitors, and while many probably came because they liked the music, the strategy to let all the organizations use the time in between the performances to say something essential about their goals and work was important. There is not enough space here for going through all the material that the different participating organizations were disseminating at the event. In conclusion however, I consider that a large share of the material and the speeches from the stage, focused on the individualisation of responsibility for the environment by suggesting people to bicycle, use public transportation instead of cars or walk, to recycle and use less plastic bags – in short – to take their responsibility. However, this has to be said with caution since I mentioned that Greenpeace for example demanded the City to implement their waste policy.

What interests me in public events like these, apart from the distribution of environmental responsibility, is the relationship between the global and local. I consider that “glocalization”, which I take to mean that global issues get adapted to local circumstances and feed back to the global system, was present, partly because many focused on the waste issue rather than the climate change as mentioned by the international organizers. Glocalization has a lot to offer environmental studies since it places focus on the relationship between causing and solving environmental problems that may cross national borders, and what motivations that are used to mobilize people to care for the environment. To give a brief example taken from the Argentine context, would the fact that your child, or even neighbour, gets ill from the fumigation with “glifosatos” at the nearby soy bean field motivate you more to care for environmental, than the fact that polar bears may be dying due to climate changes? This example is placed in a crossing point between the axis of the global and local, and nature and humans. The analysis of the relationship between humans and nature is usually discussed by the concepts ecocentric and anthropocentric. Last year I was interested by how seals were used on the brochures of some environmental organizations to mobilize people to act, and this is the reason I came to pay attention to how environmental responsibility is communicated – by rhetorical arguments, through pictures and other art forms. A proof of the focus on social and health related environmental care was the fact that the Red Cross participated at this second Earth Day.

Since this is very much work in progress I want to finish this reflection with some questions that I want to continue with. An issue that has dawned on me in the work this far is the ways international organizations are networking between countries and nation states in relation to local-national organisations, and how different environmental organizations can enhance each others work by a strategic division of labour, or, dismiss the aims, methods and approaches of other organizations. By doing this it may be possible to analyse global networking. And in turn it might be possible to connect the recent demand by Swedish Green Party members dressed up as penguins and polar bears asking for more arctic ice at the presentation of the energy company Vattenfall’s economic report, and the Greenpeace members dressed up as speaking rats in Buenos Aires thanking the mayor for all the waste.