Offering a programme and a reference to a call to action, Andreas Malm in Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency
States in advanced capitalist countries could claim to have acted on the dangers of pandemics the moment they made the following announcement: today, we are launching a comprehensive audit of all supply chains and import flows running into our country. With our amazing capacity for surveillance and data collection, we’ll shift from citizens output analyses (of the kind scientists already excel at) and ascertain just how much land from the tropics they appropriate. We shall then terminate such appropriation, by cutting off chains that run into tropical forests and, insofar as any can be classified as ‘essential’, redirect them to other locations. Every Noranda, every Skanska and Engle will be withdrawn. The time has come to pull in the claws of unequal exchange, now a menace to all.
We shall pay for tropical areas previously devoted to northern consumption to be reforested and rewilded. This will compensate for lost export revenues — not as charity or even a drain on our budgets, but as a running investment in the habitability of this planet, an establishment and maintenance of sanctuaries on which our health depends. We are here simply adhering to the categorical recommendations from scientists (whom we’ll put on the stage for regular briefings on national television):
There is an urgent need to stop deforestation and invest in afforestation and reforestation globally. In response to the viral outbreaks, billions of dollars are spent on eradicating the infection, providing services to humans, and developing diagnostic, treatment and vaccination strategies. However, no or less attention is given to the primary level of prevention such as forestation and respecting wildlife habitats. The world should realize the importance of forests and the biodiversity carrying deadly viruses.
Ghulam Nabi, Rabeea Siddique, Achaq Ali and Suliman Khan, ‘Preventing Bat-Borne Viral Outbreaks in Future Using Ecological Interventions‘, Environmental Research
Reminds me of the title of an Ursula K. Le Guin novel, The World for World is Forest.
And so for day 2891
11.11.2014