Last year, a ‘historic deal’ was struck during the COP15 meeting on biodiversity in Montreal. Almost 200 countries around the world (with the conspicuous absence of the US) agreed to protect and restore biodiversity in thirty percent of our planet’s terrestrial, inland water, costal and marine areas. The new biodiversity agenda, which also asserted the rights of indigenous people, local communities, and women, was met with enthusiasm by environmental researchers and activists. And yet, this expanded vision of biodiversity only goes so far. Only the biodiversity in protected areas and sites of ‘high ecological integrity,’ are identified as areas worthy of care (baring a mention to urban biodiversity in goal 12). Introduced, so called invasive aliens, are framed as villains whose mobility and populations need to be controlled and, if needed, eradicated (goal 6). This highly selective understanding of biodiversity builds on a we-who-belong and-them-who-intrude logic and sanctions a warlike care in the name of untouched nature and native species. Furthermore, the agenda neglects the importance of biodiversity in most places in the world, and fail to extend responsibility for the 60-70% of planet’s areas whose ecologies and biodiversity statuses are most heavily affected by human activities: ordinary places such as sites of urban infrastructure, agriculture, forestry, tourism, fishing, shipping lanes, and (former) industrial and mining areas.

Troubled by the limited vision of biodiversity, this roundtable aims to discuss: Biodiversity for whom and for what purpose? On what basis are migrating species framed as invasive instead of climate refugees? What type of biodiversity does the current agenda care for? Building on growing insights into more-than-human relations and challenging the idea that only human actors engage in care, we use ‘caring environment' as an analytic to critique the limited vision of the biodiversity. We encourage contributions that take interest in matters of care and biodiversity outside of ‘hotspots.’ Just as welcome are speakers who critically engage the ethics and politics implied in the current biodiversity paradigm from the perspective of care. Lastly, we invite participants who focus on environments and ecologies as caring systems set up in ways that complicate the assumptions of the current biodiversity agenda.

We envision a dialogue through which participants share and discuss their research. Participants will not be expected to give full papers but will be asked to prepare shorter answers to a set of pre-circulated questions.

Biordinary research projetct

Place and Time

This roundtable will take place in Hjalmar Stolpesalen Auditorium on Friday from 15:15-16:30.

Moderator

Karin Ahlberg, BIOrdinary research team, Stockholm University

Round Table

Liana Chua, University of Cambridge

Maris Gillette, University of Gothenburg

Tomas Cole, BIOrdinary research team, Stockholm University

Bengt G Karlsson, BIOrdinary research team, Stockholm University

Erica von Essen, BIOrdinary research team, Stockholm University

Ivana Macek, BIOrdinary research team, Stockholm University