• About Us
    • About the platform
    • Editorial Collective
  • Essays
    • Short Essays
    • Longer Reads
    • Reviews
    • Interviews
  • Series
    • Italian Political Ecologies
    • Reimagining, remembering and reclaiming water
    • Political Ecologies of the Far Right
    • Green inequalities in the city
    • Authoritarianism, populism and political ecology
    • Ecology after Capitalism
    • Ecomodernist socialism and comunist futurism
    • Political Ecology for Civil Society
    • World Press Photography Awards
    • Authoritarianism, populism and political ecology
    • Green inequalities in the city
    • Political Ecologies of Pesticides
    • Political Ecologies of the Far Right
    • Political Ecology for Civil Society
    • Ecomodernist socialism and comunist futurism
    • World Press Photography Awards
    • Ecology after Capitalism
    • Reimagining, remembering and reclaiming water
  • Resources
  • Events and Calls
  • Art & multimedia
  • Contribute
  • About Us
    • About the platform
    • Editorial Collective
  • Essays
    • Short Essays
    • Longer Reads
    • Reviews
    • Interviews
  • Series
    • Italian Political Ecologies
    • Reimagining, remembering and reclaiming water
    • Political Ecologies of the Far Right
    • Green inequalities in the city
    • Authoritarianism, populism and political ecology
    • Ecology after Capitalism
    • Ecomodernist socialism and comunist futurism
    • Political Ecology for Civil Society
    • World Press Photography Awards
    • Authoritarianism, populism and political ecology
    • Green inequalities in the city
    • Political Ecologies of Pesticides
    • Political Ecologies of the Far Right
    • Political Ecology for Civil Society
    • Ecomodernist socialism and comunist futurism
    • World Press Photography Awards
    • Ecology after Capitalism
    • Reimagining, remembering and reclaiming water
  • Resources
  • Events and Calls
  • Art & multimedia
  • Contribute
  • About Us
    • About the platform
    • Editorial Collective
  • Essays
    • Short Essays
    • Longer Reads
    • Reviews
    • Interviews
  • Series
    • Italian Political Ecologies
    • Reimagining, remembering and reclaiming water
    • Political Ecologies of the Far Right
    • Green inequalities in the city
    • Authoritarianism, populism and political ecology
    • Ecology after Capitalism
    • Ecomodernist socialism and comunist futurism
    • Political Ecology for Civil Society
    • World Press Photography Awards
    • Authoritarianism, populism and political ecology
    • Green inequalities in the city
    • Political Ecologies of Pesticides
    • Political Ecologies of the Far Right
    • Political Ecology for Civil Society
    • Ecomodernist socialism and comunist futurism
    • World Press Photography Awards
    • Ecology after Capitalism
    • Reimagining, remembering and reclaiming water
  • Resources
  • Events and Calls
  • Art & multimedia
  • Contribute
A case for small climate stories
April 11, 2019
Statement of the Encounter of Critical and Autonomous Geographies of Latin America // Pronunciamiento del Encuentro de Geografías Críticas y Autónomas de América Latina
May 2, 2019

Traveling abroad to “save” the planet

Published by Undisciplined Environments on April 25, 2019

By Laura Betancur Alarcón

White savior complex, elite studies in the green Scandinavia and other millennial adventures. Can the political ecology approach shed light on the incongruities, flaws and political struggles behind “traveling abroad to save the world”?

I am attending a sustainability class in one of the best universities in the world. A ‘privilege’ that few people can enjoy. I have traveled around 13.000 kilometers from my country to Scandinavia for learning how to deal with the complex sustainability trade-offs in a ‘shrinking-doomed’ world heading to its destruction, according to the Anthropocene narrative. It is treating. Especially, for my country, Colombia, with the Amazon forest, biodiversity, armed conflict and coca plantations (Yes, I know my script about our eternal resource curse).

Next to me, there is a German girl, who some years ago has also traveled thousands of kilometers – let’s say to Kenya or Bolivia – to work as a volunteer in a conservation initiative in rural areas.  Like me, she has also crossed a continent or the entire ocean to contribute to the noble cause of “saving the Earth”.

I am here trying to learn from the Scandinavian perspective about sustainability, innovation and all the green solutions that I repeatedly see in social media: the cities of bikes, countries where solar and wind are powering the households, a paradise of recycling… She learned, during her gap-year, about the complexity of socio-ecological contexts: poverty, biodiversity, difficulties of every day, music and cultural differences.

We are both aware of the monumental challenge of environmental degradation, the need for cooperation and the urgency for solutions. We both believe that our actions and decisions will define the future of the next generations. But, are our travels by themselves another evidence of how ruling narratives about knowledge-production are reproducing the historical patterns of domination (in this case, in the study of sustainability)? Can the political ecology approach shed light on the incongruities, flaws and political struggles behind “traveling abroad to save the world”?

To what extent are the thousand volunteer programs, the scholarships for low-income countries to study in Europe, or the training exchanges between students from different countries tools of the dominant developmentality rhetoric? Or do these programs create possibilities for a genuine encounter of people and ideas for a structural transformation of our societies?  It seems to be a context-dependent answer, but also a challenging inquiry in the era of information society full of invisible global connections.

Without any intention of generalizing knowledge exchanges or personal approaches to  experiences abroad, the trend of the white savior complex of conquering  rural areas in Africa with aid packages and Instagram galleries of kids – as hilariously portraited by Barbie savior or the Rai-Aid project – can be understood as a practice within the regime of truth of Western societies of imposing historical colonialist patterns of domination.

barbie savior

The critical humor of the Barbie Savior Instagram account highlights the “white savior” attitudes of some volunteering projects. Source: https://www.instagram.com/barbiesavior/.

The logic behind the voluntourism or the narratives behind of the one-lifetime experience of cleaning beaches in Indonesia can be reviewed by political ecologist scholars to understand the flows of knowledge/power systems and how these impact the material realities of local contexts. Besides, it can be understood how those dynamics reinforce the multi-scalar tights within the global system.

But this story of traveling abroad with the mindset of contributing to solving environmental issues is not a one-way street from North to South. The branding strategies of different universities of high-income countries (see, for instance, the inspirational video of Study in Sweden, a country with around 35.000 new incoming students per year) are aiming to build a narrative of these educational institutions as the spaces where the most innovative knowledge is being constructed to solve global challenges.

Like many of the applicants for scholarships, I truly claimed my interest in learning about the Swedish–European approaches to deal with sustainability issues to implement them once I am back in my country. In a way, I still believe that the reasoning of learning the best practices to promote sustainable transitions in other regions is still acceptable.

However, the educational journey of the last year and a half made me realize – while I am sitting here in class listening about the debates of degrowth, eco-modernization and windmills in the Netherlands – how dislocated the knowledge production is from the spatialities which it refers to. And, how the knowledge/power constructions are perpetuating visions about nature and society strongly influenced by modernist-colonialist approaches.

In other words, as expressed by Paul Robbins, it is a challenge within the field of political ecology to analyze and self-reflect to what extent the scientific knowledge of even critical environmental researchers can be inserted in the logic of western dominance. What are the implications of that process in constructing symbolic meanings and therefore changing the material developments and practices where power is being reproduced? It is a persistent inquiry.

sweden story

Advertising campaign for studying in Sweden. Source: www.facebook.com/studyinsweden/

I am aware that there is not white or black in untangling these contemporary practices of international experiences. In fact, global arenas possess the potential to link the struggles of the Global North and the Global South in order to create less destructive models of socio-natural life, as Arturo Escobar suggests. These transitions might require conjunctive efforts from scholarships, social movements and NGO’s from different parts of the world.

In that sense, these travels and practices of international exchange can also be perceived as exciting experiments to deconstruct and reimagine the political and socioecological connections that cause environmental degradation and injustices around the world.

climate march students

A group of master students from different nationalities participating in a climate march in Copenhagen, Denmark. Source: www.facebook.com/LumesLundUniversity/

While I am still sitting in this classroom in Scandinavia trying to understand sustainability science, I recognize the need of inquiring the knowledge/power dynamics behind all these kilometers traveled from different latitudes in search of explanations of, and answers to, global environmental destruction. Hopefully, in my case and in the case of the German girl sitting next to me, this experience might contribute to a reflection about how to re-configure the power practices that today lead us to travel around the world in an attempt to “save” it.

Laura Betancur Alarcón is student of the International Master Programme in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science (Lumes) at Lund University in Sweden. She is an environmental journalist from Colombia. Her current research project focuses on water justice and environmental peace-building.

Share
Undisciplined Environments
Undisciplined Environments

Related posts

February 7, 2023

The Universal Humanity of the Peruvian Uprising


Read more
January 24, 2023

About refrigerators


Read more
January 10, 2023

Biodiversity breakthrough or time to stop global environmental meetings altogether?


Read more

2 Comments

  1. marleenschutter says:
    April 30, 2019 at 1:57 pm

    Reblogged this on POLLEN.

    Reply
  2. May updates from POLLEN – POLLEN says:
    May 3, 2019 at 10:35 am

    […] Traveling abroad to “save” the planet by Laura Betancur Alarcón  […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search this site

✕

Subscribe to our Newsfeed

We keep your data private and share your data only with third parties that make this service possible. See our Privacy Policy for more information.

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Tags

Agriculture Alternatives Anthropocene Art Brazil Capitalism Cities Climate change Climate crisis Climate justice Colonialism, Post-colonialism & Decolonization Commoning Commons Conflicts Conservation & Biodiversity COVID-19 Culture Decolonial Political Ecologies Degrowth Democracy Development Disaster Energy Environmental Change Environmental History Environmental Justice Environmental movements Extractivism Food Forests Green inequalities Indigenous Peoples Land Methodologies Mining & Extractivism Movements & Resistance Neoliberalism Post-colonialism Post-colonialism & Decolonization Social Movements & Resistance Urban Violence Waste Water water governance

Visit WEGO

wegoint.org
This website is co-funded by WEGO

Popular Posts

  • Indigenous Science 292 views
  • South-South Circles of Poison? Malaysia’s role in (re)creating uneven geographies 141 views
  • What does virtual water conceal? 121 views
  • A comprehensive political ecology reading list 98 views
  • Weaving musical spaces of indigenous resistance for environmental justice 85 views
  • Venice Climate March, September 10, 2022. Credits: Michele Lapini From overlapping to convergence: workers’ struggles and climate justice from GKN, Florence 80 views

Recent Comments

  • February 9, 2023

    About refrigerators – Thoughts in words commented on About refrigerators

  • February 5, 2023

    Luciano medinero morales commented on Fruta saludable, cuerpos enfermos

  • January 29, 2023

    User19 commented on Green is the new brown: ecology in the metapolitics of the far right

  • January 26, 2023

    Book review: “Enlightenment and Ecology: The Legacy of Murray Bookchin in the 21st Century” – towardsautonomyblog commented on Social Ecology, Kurdistan, and the Origins of Freedom

  • January 25, 2023

    المدن المستدامة بعد COVID-19: هل المناطق الخضراء على غرار برشلونة هي الحل؟ - Corepaedia news commented on To Green Or Not To Green: Four stories of urban (in)justice in Barcelona

  • January 4, 2023

    Timo commented on Against the misrepresentation of climate activism in Lützerath aka the ZAD Rhineland

✕

Tags

Agriculture Alternatives Anthropocene Art Brazil Capitalism Cities Climate change Climate crisis Climate justice Colonialism, Post-colonialism & Decolonization Commoning Commons Conflicts Conservation & Biodiversity COVID-19 Culture Decolonial Political Ecologies Degrowth Democracy Development Disaster Energy Environmental Change Environmental History Environmental Justice Environmental movements Extractivism Food Forests Green inequalities Indigenous Peoples Land Methodologies Mining & Extractivism Movements & Resistance Neoliberalism Post-colonialism Post-colonialism & Decolonization Social Movements & Resistance Urban Violence Waste Water water governance

Follow us

facebook       twitter
E-Mail Us : undisciplinedenvironments@gmail.com

Contribute

If you want to contribute send us your text at undisciplinedenvironments@gmail.com
Find our posting guide here

About Us

We are a collective of scholars and activists oriented towards a common horizon of emancipatory social and ecological transformation. With this platform, we aim to animate a space to share, debate and critically reflect on research and activist experiences, observations, methodologies, news, events, publications, art, music and other themes and objects related to political ecology.
powered by andromedia
  • About Us
  • Essays
  • Series
  • Resources
  • Events and Calls
  • Art & multimedia
  • Contribute
go