Terra Nullius: Repossessing the existent

I was thrilled to be back in my home city of Maracay at the beginning of this year when I went to Venezuela for fieldwork. It had been over 4 years since I had been in the country. During those four years –as the central bank statistics later confirmed – the economy had shrunk more than half, and millions of people had left the desperate conditions.

Throughout Central America, irregular rainfall coupled with unusually high temperatures is placing additional stresses on already compromised environments. Consistent to the literature on climate change and its associated impacts, storms in the region have become increasingly intense, dropping as much as a month’s worth of rainfall in a single day. Yet for the majority of locations the isolated nature of these storms has led to record-long dry-spells.

The Green New Deal has serious implications for rural landscapes. In fact, GND is not all that “green” and risks exaggerating extractive activities.

How can we understand the complexity of the contemporary rural world, and its entanglements with the urban? The Rural transformations in the new century research group is pleased to present our new blog.