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The global tree: Forests and the possibility of a multispecies IR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2022

Stefanie R. Fishel Open the ORCID record for Stefanie R. Fishel [Opens in a new window]
Stefanie R. Fishel*
Affiliation:
University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: sfishel@usc.edu.au
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Abstract

Forest ecosystems are crucial to survival on Earth. This article argues that trees and forests are both vital components of a healthy Earth system and productive examples for expanding International Relations’ disciplinary boundaries. The article discusses the forest in three contexts: the global, the (post)colonial, and from the tree itself. From tree planting as a practice of social and environmental justice, to postcolonial and Indigenous science and knowledge, to the mycorrhizal ‘wood wide web’, a focus on trees, forests, and biosphere opens the possibility for a multispecies IR. Through a consideration of trees and forests in law, treaty, culture, and science at the local and global level, this article adds to a growing literature in IR that strives to bring the non-human, more-than-human, or other-than-human creatively and productively into the discipline. Foregrounding the forest's materiality and trees’ symbolic power for human cultures opens important pathways to understanding how the non-human is, and should, alter and affect global politics.

Keywords

EcologyForestsInternational Relations TheoryMultispeciesMore-Than-Human
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 49 , Special Issue 2: Multispecies International Politics , April 2023 , pp. 223 - 240
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association

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References

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11 I have chosen to use ‘more-than-human’ rather than ‘non-human’ to reflect the complex entanglements and connections across species. I see other-than-human and non-human as appropriate and correct terms in different contexts. See Andres Jacques, Marina Otero Verzier, and Lucia Pietroiusti, More-than-Human (Rotterdam: Het Nieuwe Instituut, 2020) and Sophie Chao, In the Shadow of the Palms: More than Human Becomings in West Papua (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022).

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21 Stefano Mancuso, Nations of Plants: A Radical Manifesto for Humans (London, UK: Profile Books, 2021), p. 9.

22 Ibid.

23 Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), p. 33.

24 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 15.

25 Anja Eikermann, Forests in International Law: Is There Really a Need for an International Forest Convention? (Cham: Springer Nature, 2015), p. 9.

26 Ibid., p. 17.

27 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Forest and Woodland Systems (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000).

28 Ibid.

29 IPCC, ‘Climate Change and Land: An IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems’ (2019), p. 12, available at: {https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/}.

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31 Lenton et al., ‘Climate tipping points’; Luciana Gatti, Luana Basso, and John Miller, ‘Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation and climate change’, Nature, 595 (2021), pp. 388–93.

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34 Anthony Burke and Danielle Celermajer, ‘Human progress is no excuse to destroy nature: A push to make “ecocide” a global crime must recognise this fundamental truth’, The Conversation, available at: {https://theconversation.com/human-progress-is-no-excuse-to-destroy-nature-a-push-to-make-ecocide-a-global-crime-must-recognise-this-fundamental-truth-164594} accessed 20 January 2022.

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40 Eikermann, Forests in International Law, p. 9.

41 Ibid., p. 11.

42 Ibid., p. 21.

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46 Eikermann, Forests in International Law, p. 22.

47 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Forest and Woodland Systems.

48 Eikermann, Forests in International Law, p. 1.

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50 Clint Carroll, The Roots of Our Renewal: Ethnobotany and Cherokee Environmental Governance (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), p. 12.

51 Ibid.

52 Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants (Canada: Milkweed Editions, 2013), p. 17.

53 Ibid., p. 366.

54 Eikermann, Forests in International Law, p. 13.

55 Chao, In the Shadow of the Palms.

56 Green Belt Movement, ‘Our History’, available at: {http://greenbeltmovement.org/who-we-are/our-history} accessed 20 January 2022.

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58 Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 132–3.

59 Ibid., p. 135.

60 Carolyn Merchant, Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1980); Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, Material Feminisms (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007).

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62 Kyrke Gaudreau, ‘Hope grows on trees’, Alternatives, 39:2 (2013), p. 43.

63 Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, p. 147.

64 Ibid., p. 135.

65 Florence, Wangari Matthai, p. 234.

66 Ibid., p. 235.

67 Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, p. 134.

68 Florence, Wangari Matthai, p. 147.

69 Gaudreau, ‘Hope grows on trees’, p. 44.

70 Green Belt Movement, ‘Our History’.

71 I use the term ‘actancy’ rather than agency to denote a different relationship between the ‘agent’ and the structure that this ‘agent’ acts within. Stemming from semiotic theory, and most notably in the work of Bruno Latour, an actant is an actor that modifies other actors through its actions or existence. This is especially helpful framing when accounting for nonhuman agency in larger systems. There need not be a focus on the intention of actors, but rather on an actant's connection to and modification of other actants.

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76 Ibid.

77 Ibid., p. 156.

78 Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, pp. 8–9.

79 Ibid., p. 80.

80 Ibid.

81 Ibid., p. 7.

82 Ibid., p. 15.

83 Suzanne Simard, ‘Finding Mother Earth’, Ecological Landscape Alliance, available at: {https://www.ecolandscaping.org/01/resources/book-reviews/finding-mother-earth/} accessed 10 May 2021.

84 Susan Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Uncovering the Wisdom and Intelligence of the Forest (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2021), loc. 352–3.

85 Ibid., loc. 348.

86 Popkin, ‘“Wood wide web”’.

87 Simard, Finding the Mother Tree, loc. 357.

88 Marcin Solarz, The Language of Development: A Misleading Geography (London, UK: Routledge, 2014), p. 59.

89 Ibid.

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100 Lenton et al., ‘Climate tipping points’, p. 592.

101 Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, pp. 21–2.

102 Ibid., p. 23.

103 Beronda Montgomery, ‘Plants thrive in a complex world by communicating, sharing resources and transforming their environments’, The Conversation (2014), available at: {https://theconversation.com/plants-thrive-in-a-complex-world-by-communicating-sharing-resources-and-transforming-their-environments-156932} accessed 5 June 2021.

104 Ibid.

105 Ibid.

106 Celermajer et al., ‘Justice through a multispecies lens’.

107 Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 9.

108 Ibid., pp. 9–10.

109 For an excellent survey of the plant studies literature, see Anna M. Lawrence, ‘Listening to plants: Conversations between critical plant studies and vegetal geography’, Progress in Human Geography (2021), esp. p. 5.

110 Kohn, How Forests Think, loc. 526.

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113 Ibid., p. 46.

114 Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 15.

115 Marisol de la Cadena, Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015).

116 Kohn, How Forests Think.

117 Youatt, Interspecies Politics.

118 Soren Larsen and Jay Thompson, Being Together in Place: Indigenous Coexistence in a More than Human World (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), p. 1.

119 David Wallace-Wells, ‘How to live in a climate “permanent emergency”’, New York Intelligencer, available at: {https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/how-to-live-in-a-climate-permanent-emergency.html} accessed 7 July 2021.

120 Mimi Perkins, ‘“Leave the forests alone”: Swift action needed to save endangered parrots’, The Age, available at: {https://www.theage.com.au/environment/conservation/leave-the-forests-alone-swift-action-needed-to-save-endangered-parrots-20210521-p57tvg.html?fbclid=IwAR2vxEL_A94XPfX_gL6jpOJ9yC9ksKIWIMy8NKkAKjFJvCFbB_GPaKEe7Mc} accessed 3 April 2022.

121 Anna Locke and Malcolm Childress, ‘New IPCC climate report stresses Indigenous & local land rights 58 times: Let's respond with a concrete tenure plan (commentary)’, Mongabay, available at: {https://news.mongabay.com/2022/03/after-ipcc-climate-report-stresses-indigenous-local-land-rights-58-times-lets-respond-with-a-concrete-tenure-plan-commentary/} accessed 1 April 2022.

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123 Locke & Childress, ‘New IPCC climate report stresses Indigenous & local land rights’.

124 Delueze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 14.