The map as a political tool

Recently I decided to go to the north of Argentina, to the province of Jujuy, where a meeting will be held this weekend for the Union of Civic Assemblies (UAC). It is the 10th meeting and close to 500 people are expected to show up. The meeting is hold under the theme “Against the looting of our natural goods and contamination, and for food sovereignty and life”. First of all it is important to notice that they are not only “against” issues, but also “for”, suggesting paths for the future. In the invitation it says that: “UAC was born with the purpose to articulate and promote the different struggles which have emerged during the last years within the country and in Latin America to repudiate the systematic development of the exportation of agricultural and mining products, represented by the destructive undertakings of the grand mining business which is done under open skies, and the advancement of the agro-business.” What I find specifically interesting with the meeting, apart from the phenomenon in itself, is that there will be a workshop that focuses on the construction of a map. The map will contain the knowledge that different participants share about their experiences of environmental problems. The result will be an illustration/visualization that will be useful for further reflection not only on geographical issues, but also on connections between social, cultural, and economic matters. Finally, the map is expected to be able to contribute to a collective transformation of the situation.

I find it curious that the meeting will have this specific workshop right now, since I performed an interview last week with a representative and founder of a neighbourhood organization called “Vecinos contra la Contaminación [Neighbours against contamination]”. When we met she handed me a map of all the cases of cancer in her neighbourhood, including people who had died and who were ill in 2005. During the interview I reflected on the usefulness of this illustration and visualization of the effects of an environmental problem, in their case, of electromagnetic contamination. The construction of the map had been done by some of the concerned neighbours who started the organization, and it now serves as an object, or rather a political tool, in their struggle. This is one among several tools in the repertoire that I am getting accounts of through my project. If the representatives had not been challenging the current knowledge society, intellectual property rights and the capitalist system, I would have advised them to Trademark ™ their method. Just out of curiosity I checked the directives for what and who can be patented, and at the United States Patent and Trademark Office it says that any person who “invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent”. Since a collective map of socio-environmental problems can be considered to be useful, it should be possible to patent it, but I am not sure that this is the way “usefulness” is defined by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Source: the United States Patent and Trademark Office at http://www.uspto.gov/go/pac/doc/general/#whatpat

Formal environmental politics

The 14th of July “Pino” Solanas, who was elected representative to the Congress for the City of Buenos Aires for the party “Proyecto Sur”, spoke at the TV channel “TN”. The TV channel is part of the Clarin news group. He got the opportunity to raise his central concerns about the recovery of the Argentine natural resources, the role of companies in the veto against the “law of glaciers”, the pollution, and the recovery of the national railway system. In large these questions can be considered as typical environmental issues, and as a movie producer Solanas has discussed these matters before in productions like “Memorias del Saqueo [Memories of the sacking]”. Even if several of the people I have been talking to through my study consider that there is a lack of formal environmental politics in Argentina, I believe it is important to highlight these sprouting initiatives. My aim is not to judge the ideological standpoints involved in the Proyecto Sur, only to recognize their existence.

Similarly I believe it is interesting to notice “la Iniciativa Verde” [The green initiative] who received a bit over 8000 votes in Buenos Aires in the elections in June, which they themselves considered a victory. Now they expect to spread their work to the other provinces of Argentina. Among the issues that la Iniciativa Verde went to the polls with, one find demands for renewable energy sources, sustainable construction policies, recovery and application of the policy “Basura Cero” which I have commented on previously, the sorting of recyclable waste at the source (i.e. at home or at the company site), improved transportation systems that cut noise and air pollution, and finally the promotion of green consumption according to international standards like Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

Since I am lagging behind with my political science classes, I cannot analyze the relative worth or influence of these two formal political initiatives, only acknowledge their existence.

Sources:
http://www.proyecto-sur.com.ar/
http://www.iniciativaverde.org.ar/elecciones/

Playing with scales

One of the environmental problems which is said to have sparked the general interest in environmental issues in Argentina was the construction of two Finnish-Uruguayan paper mills called Botnia on the Uruguayan river. According to Palermo and Reboratti (2007) who have studied the conflict which developed as a result of the construction of these, this was the first time environmentalism as a social movement made its way into the Argentine public debate and was politicized. Argentina opposed the construction of the paper mills due to the supposed pollution and environmental problems they would bring. Through the conflict, political dimensions like the crisis of representation, distrust, the role of media and the combination of independence and civic apathy were possible to notice (Palermo & Reboratti 2007:11). One of the main political methods to oppose the construction of the paper mills in Argentina has been to put up road blocks, or “corte la ruta”. When the blockaders commemorated the third year of blocking the bridge that connects Uruguay and Argentina, the conflict was further given attention by a Finnish journalist.

There is a lot to be said about the role of the paper mill conflict, which got international dimensions when Argentina brought Uruguay to the court in Hague, and I have already commented on the influence it had for the general environmental movement in Argentina. But what I want to reflect on here is a specific matter that Reboratti brings attention to. This has to do with the role of “playing with scales”, which is a common issue in environmental movements. This usually brings in discussions about the relationship between the local and the global, the distant and proximate and what concerns me and what affects “others”. Typically environmental problems which are considered to be near are expected to be more relevant for people, for example expressed through the concept Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY). However, in one of the conference papers that I presented recently I suggest that it has to do with making environmental problems “relevant”, and that it is less about whether an environmental problem, or risk, is physically near. By focusing on this making, instead of assuming that proximate problems always alerts people, it is possible to reveal the actors, arguments, methods and interests that are involved in environmental conflicts, and why some problems are simply not discussed at all. What Reboratti brings the attention to is how media used a specific angle of the place where the paper mills were going to be built, and a close up shot that made the place look a lot more proximate than they actually where. So, taking the remark about how environmental problems are made relevant, this is one strategy that is possible to use in “environmental communication” that different actors, like media, can apply.

Since I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship from Helge Ax:son Johnson’s foundation last week, these issues will be part of my project with a youth organization which works with photography. Hopefully our collaboration will lead up to a photo exhibition about local and global, proximate and distant, and relevant and irrelevant environmental problems, and how we can attempt to represent these in visual images.

References:
Palermo, Vicente & Carlos Reboratti (eds.) (2007) Del otro lado del río: ambientalismo y pol´tica entre uruguayos y argentinos. Edhasa: Barcelona.

More Cultural Politics

The other day I went to see a documentary called “The 100 days that didn’t shake the world [Los 100 días que no conmovieron al mundo]”. The documentary is about the trials of war criminals in Rwanda, among whom the musician Simon Bikindi. He was accused and sentenced to 15 years in prison for writing lyrics that mobilized the Hutu population against the Tutsis in the 100-day genocide in 1994. This is one among several possible examples of how music is used to mobilize the public, obviously not only for good causes. This leads to my current reflection on the continuous issue of what means and methods that are used in political mobilization, in my case for the environment.

Among all the invitations that I received by e-mail for the 5th of June and the International Environmental Day, I noticed with curiosity how creative the organizers had been. For example, during the week that lead up to the 5th of June there was a documentary film festival with special focus on environmental issues, and with invited speakers from environmental organizations. There was also a rock festival in Avellaneda, organized by Agrupación Tox Sud, where they invited people to listen to the music, paint murals, stencils, and print t-shirts. Their motivation was to “organize a cultural activity which rejects the constant contamination and destruction of our environment especially by the petroleum production. We further criticize the precarious conditions in which we find our schools and houses. While some company owners (thanks to the complicity during decades by the municipality, the provincial government and the national government) fill their pockets with thousands of millions, the neighbourhood lets us live in the worst conditions.”

However, it is not only here in Argentina that different means and methods are used to mobilize the public. During the last months I have read about a Swedish exhibition about climate change at the Museum of History, competitions in eastern Europe for TV productions that capture environmental issues, and call for research projects with NGOs that use video or photography. These examples point to the wide array of political means that are used for mobilizing the public.