Resistance and seeds
Our latest update features stories of enclosure and commoning, from defence against mining in Europe to seed sharing in Argentina - plus news of our involvement in POLLEN23 in South Africa.
A Portuguese village on the front line of the ‘energy transition’
Covas do Barroso is a village in Northern Portugal, in the Barroso region famous for its sustainable agriculture and traditional ways of life. It is home to the ‘Baldios’, a system where mountain lands are collectively used for agriculture, forestry or grazing, and enjoys a World Agricultural Heritage status. It’s also on the front line of a conflict in the ‘energy transition’ that demands the extraction of large amounts of lithium for batteries.
Resisting new mines in Germany and the UK
Released in February 2023, the documentary film ‘Finite’ shows action in two countries to defend landscapes against destruction by the fossil fuel industry, and how the two campaigns became linked across national borders. Against the backdrop of global problems made worse by climate change, the film documents how activists have come together to take direct action as a last resort against new coal mines.
Seeding the commons in Argentina
In this audio episode, Anoushka Zoob Carter talks to Almendra Cremaschi, a co-founder of Bioleft - an initiative based in Argentina that provides an open source licence for seeds and ways to share information about them.
They discuss seeds and the multiple forms of enclosure that have affected the seed sovereignty of farmers in Argentina and across the world. The conversation also explores the role of the imagination and art-based methods for envisioning more desirable food systems for small-scale food growers.
Naming, unnaming and commons
Animals are freed from their names in Ursula Le Guin’s short story ‘She Unnames Them’. What can 'unnaming' do for people's relationships to the other creatures around them?
Future Natures at POLLEN23: exhibition and more
A group from Future Natures will be at POLLEN23 in June. Held in Durban this year, the event is the biannual conference of the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN). Our coordinator Amber Huff will be a speaker in two ‘indaba’ plenary sessions: Political Ecology: North, South and Beyond, and Situating Labor in Biodiversity Conservation.
Future Natures will also be part of a joint exhibition at the conference. Our contributions will include artwork from our first comic, A Primer for the Curious, as well as other archive and forthcoming work from the artist Tim Zocco.
If you’re planning to be at the conference and want to drop us a line in advance, email: hello@futurenatures.org
Join the network
Future Natures aims to support a network that includes diverse communities of researchers, commoners, and commoning-aligned artists, writers, makers and others.
Our networking space aims to provide ways for people to connect across borders, places and experiences. The space includes a discussion forum and ways to share information or ideas with other people in the network.