Interviews with political ecology scholars and activists

February 21, 2023

From overlapping to convergence: workers’ struggles and climate justice from GKN, Florence

by Emanuele Leonardi & Mimmo Perrotta In this interview with Dario Salvetti, conducted on December 21, 2021 we wanted to better understand the relationship between labor mobilizations (especially the occupation at GKN) and climate justice. In practical terms, this issue started to be posed in September 2021 at the Milan Climate Camp – the radical opposition to the Pre-COP 26 where Greta Thunberg famously uttered her ‘blah blah blah’ speech – and continued, with some difficulties, during the protests against the G20-Environment meeting in Rome, […]
February 21, 2023

Dalla coincidenza alla convergenza: lotta operaia e giustizia climatica alla GKN

di Dario Salvetti con Emanuele Leonardi e Mimmo Perrotta Il 23 dicembre 2021 un nuovo proprietario ha acquistato la Gkn di Campi Bisenzio, la fabbrica di semiassi per autoveicoli occupata daə operaiə dal 9 luglio, a seguito dell’annuncio da parte della precedente proprietà – il fondo di investimenti britannico Melrose – della chiusura e del licenziamento di tuttə lə dipendentə. L’arrivo di un nuovo proprietario rappresenta certamente un importante risultato della mobilitazione, che si poneva in primo luogo l’obiettivo della salvaguardia dei posti di lavoro. […]
October 13, 2022

Inspiring Women Healing the Earth: a collection of interviews

By Irene Canalís. A collection of interviews of diverse women who take part in climate change action, in both very noticeable and public ways as well as through everyday and less visible actions.
January 25, 2022

Keeping the world alive and healthy: The radical realism of the “forces of reproduction” – An interview with Stefania Barca

By Ethemcan Turhan Against the grim background of increasing global warming and related disasters, global climate justice movements call for radical political and economic transformations. Accordingly, positioning social reproduction in all its diverse forms at the center of the struggle for life is among the most important steps of these transformations. Building on her latest book, Forces of Reproduction: Notes For A Counter-Hegemonic Anthropocene (Cambridge University Press, 2020), we spoke with environmental historian and political ecologist Stefania Barca on the labour of earthcare, commoning and […]
July 29, 2021

Narrating political ecologies through film: An interview with documentary filmmaker Taylor Rees

By Marek Kaczyński and Marta Ewa Romaneczko Documentary filmmaker Taylor Rees talks about her work on racism and environmental justice.
May 14, 2021

The curse of white gold?

By Francisco Venes and Stefania Barca, with Anna Mandorli, Ben Witte, Eva Sievers, Laure Remmerswaal, Noor Evers, and Victor Peet. An interview with political ecologists Francisco Venes and Stefania Barca explores debates around lithium mining in Portugal.
April 19, 2018

Naomi Klein: “We need a counter-narrative that explains the people’s plan” (Part II)

Professors Self-Assembled in Solidarity Resistance (PAReS)* In the second part of this two-part interview, renowned journalist and activist Naomi Klein speaks with PAReS about the struggles for multiple sovereignties, the importance of weaving historical struggles with current movements, and the role of diasporas in supporting these movements. Read the first part of the interview here, PAReS: Recently you went to Barcelona, where there is a strong political struggle over national sovereignty, often presented in terms of “what is more important”, national independence or an anti-capitalist […]
April 17, 2018

Naomi Klein: “We need a counter-narrative that explains the people’s plan” (Part I)

by PAReS – Professors Self-Assembled in Solidarity Resistance In the first part of this two-part interview by the PAReS collective, renowned journalist and activist Naomi Klein speaks about disaster capitalism in Puerto Rico and the constitution of opposition movements and political alternatives.
July 7, 2017

Patrick Bond: Climate justice movements need to hit Trump where it hurts most

By Ethemcan Turhan and Cem İskender Aydın * Political economist and climate justice expert Patrick Bond comments on the prospects for a progressive anti-capitalist agenda in the face of increasing alt-right populism, xenophobia, climate denialism and economic-political exceptionalism. 
March 9, 2017

The boomerang of green gentrification: an interview with Isabelle Anguelovski

By Michele Catanzaro* The creation of city parks, green belts and ecological corridors in urban neighbourhoods attracts upmarket estate agencies and new residents with more purchasing power than longstanding residents. The rise in housing prices pushes the original population out: a frustrating phenomenon known as “green gentrification”.
June 23, 2016

The road as a commons: An interview with James Longhurst, author of "Bike Battles" (2015)

As cyclists struggle to recover their space in the roads, conflicts involving bicycles are attracting more and more attention. Thinking of the road as a commons, as proposed by environmental historian James Longhurst in his new book Bike Battles: A History of Sharing the American Road, may give an entry point to a political ecology perspective. 
February 23, 2016

‘Never seen it so bad’: violence and impunity in Brazil’s Amazon

Violence has been legitimized as a normal part of politics. It has become informally “acceptable”. I’ve never seen, working for the past 10 years in the Amazon, a situation so bad.