Research project BIOrdinary
Biodiversity dilemmas in ordinary places
BIOrdinary expands our understanding of biodiversity by focusing on places marked by habitation, trade and agriculture. Essential to our needs for food, shelter and resources, these ordinary places currently fall outside global biodiversity agendas. We explore biodiversity dilemmas in five ordinary places that involve migrant species - tea plants, mosquitos, fish, oysters and mink. Researching the intertwined social and biological histories leading up to these dilemmas and local communities engagement with these crises, BIOrdinary asks: what would a more just and democratic biodiversity agenda entail?
Contact us for more information at: biordinary@su.se
BIOrdinary Research Program (295 Kb)
BIOrdinary Project Description (2468 Kb)
Project description
BIOrdinary expands the current biodiversity agenda, moving away from protected hotspots to explore how people in ordinary places address everyday biodiversity dilemmas driven by species influxes and climate change. It goes about this in three ways:
- By writing environmental histories that uncover the entangled social and cultural processes underlying species mobility and shifts in biodiversity.
- By examining vernacular understandings and adaptation practices among local communities and other stakeholders at the frontline of biodiversity dilemmas, as opposed to previous research’s focus on suffering, loss, and crisis.
- By contributing to the formulation of a more just, democratic and inclusive biodiversity agenda.
The missing 70%
Current biodiversity agendas aim to protect 30 percent of the surface of the planet, largely in ecological hotspots. BIOrdinary turns attention to the missing 70 percent. With the help of anthropological tools, we explore the shifts in biodiversity in ordinary places, marked by human activity.
Case studies: species on the move
The project’s five empirical case studies explore biodiversity dilemmas involving species influxes tied to colonial histories. The case studies underline how the trajectories of migrant species are entangled with imperial sea routes and domestication processes. Scapegoated by global biodiversity protection, these species are integrated into environments and social. Political and economic life. There are no easy answers or quick fixes to the biodiversity dilemmas evolving in these places.
Global warming has added a new dimension to environments with migrant species. Due to differences in genetical makeup, alien and endemic species react differently to climate-induced changes. Some species thrive, others suffer. We cannot rule out that migrant species will survive future heatwaves, while local species perish.
The program thus sets out to explore biodiversity in ordinary places across five ethnographic case-studies where recent biodiversity shifts can be attributed to a combination of climate change, imperial debris and shipping route infrastructure.
- Case 1: Traveling Tea Plants in East Africa, Bengt G Karlsson
British settlers brought the Assam tea plant from India to East Africa, turning dense forests into monocultural plantations. Climate change and plant breeding reducing the tea species’ genetic diversity have now made these plantations highly vulnerable. Tea plants have also escaped into nearby forest and become ”invasive”.
- Case 2: Emergent Ecologies in the Mediterranean Sea, Karin Ahlberg
The Mediterranean Sea is undergoing one of the world’s largest marine transformation. The Suez Canal, dug to shorten the route between East and West, has become a “highway” for tropical marine species (jellyfish, rabbitfish, crustacea and algae), in search of new habitats.
- Case 3: Hungry Crabs in Sicily, Emma Cyr
Blue crabs, whose mobility into the Mediterranean was facilitated by an appropriation of more-than-human shipping infrastructures, are now arriving on the Sicilian coast. Noted for their appetite, blue crabs’ arrival mobilizes concerns about the damage they have caused to biodiversity elsewhere. At the same time, in a seascape characterized by small-scale capture fishing lying in the shadow of heavy industry on land, these recent arrivals could be a valuable bycatch for local fishers.
- Case 4: ‘Invasive’ Mosquitos in Southeast Asia, Tomas Cole
Aedes aegypti mosquitos, originally from Africa, are a highly effective vector of dengue and zika that are increasingly making urban Singapore their home. However, large-scale technoscientific projects to eradicate this ‘invader’ in the name of public health run the risk of also catastrophically reducing biodiversity.
- Case 5: Migrant Pacific Oysters on the West Coast of Sweden, Ivana Maček
These mollusks, imported from Pacific Ocean to aquafarms in Europe, escaped these facilities hitchhiking on warmer sea-currents to Western shores of Sweden. Accused of outcompeting local species and being a nuisance to the leisure industry, they are also a potential new marine nutrient.
- Case 6: Runaway Mink in the Stockholm Archipelago, Erica von Essen
Mink was first brought to Sweden from North America for the commercial exploitation of their fur in the 1920s, before they absconded from captivity or were released by people. Mink now threaten the diversity of several native species, particularly birds, in the Swedish archipelago.
- Case 7: Pastoralism and Ecological Change in Aotearoa New Zealand, Gabriel Lennon
Goats, sheep, and cattle came with colonialism to Aotearoa, and have proliferated since, with pastures and paddocks now dominating the islands’ landscapes. However, this grassy idyll, so characteristic of the country, came at a cost: causing a drastic shift in endemic ecologies and devastating native species. While this pastoral assemblage has been contested since settlement, it is increasingly appearing as a pivotal socio-ecological juncture amid ecological fragility and loss.
Imperial routes
Transatlantic trade and colonial cultivation practices set in motion global sociobiological processes that unevenly redrew the map of human/non-human relations. In this project we examine their aftermath: the life trajectories of species displayed by trade, infrastructural projects, domestication, plantations and aquaculture.
The trial of species
How we talk about new species in our environment influences our responses to them. Mobile species have their own histories. Some moved of their own accord. Others were brought along by humans or hitched a ride on infrastructural projects and international trade.
What responsibility do we have for migrant species? Should we eradicate them to protect native species or learn to live with them? Who decides when a migrant species is an intruder or a climate regufee?
Biodiversity for whom?
The larger aim of BIOrdinary is to formulate a more just, inclusive and democratic biodiversity agenda, based on local understandings and practices that involve living with migrant species and multispecies justice.
Project members
Project managers
Karin Ahlberg
PhD
Bengt G Karlsson
Professor
Members
Ivana Macek
Associate Professor
Tomas Cole
PhD
Erica von Essen
Docent
Gabriel Lennon
PhD student
Emma Rose Cyr
PhD student
News
More about this project
Project overview
| Work packages | Research objectives | Focus & approaches | |
| 2023 |
WP1: Perspectives More-than-human histories of species mobility |
1. Documenting unique species trajectories, and environmental and social histories leading up to biodiversity dilemmas |
|
| 2024 |
WP2: Practices Vernacular understandings |
2. Understanding diverse communities' engagements with unfolding shifts in biodiversity |
|
|
2025 2026 |
WP3: Policy Democratizing biodiversity |
3. Envisioning a more just, inclusive and democratic biodiversity agenda |
|
Project activities
- Co-edited volume
- Peer-reviewed articles
- Conference participation
- Seminar series
- Reading groups
- Workshops in the field
- Yearly summer schools
- Participation in cultural and artistic projects
- co-authoring a children's book