Global Im-Possibilities: Exploring the Paradoxes of Just Sustainabilities

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At a time when environmental and social stakes are at their highest with rising crises and contradictions at the nexus of a building sense of environmental and social collapse there are no easy solutions. Global Im-Possibilities explores just what can be done around the world to ameliorate this dynamic. Using a range of essays and a multitude of case studies, this book explores what new lessons can be learned from examining the challenges and impediments to achieving just sustainabilities on the levels of policy, planning, and practice, and considers how these challenges and impediments can be addressed by individuals and/or governments. Taking a nuanced approach to provide an intersectional analysis of a particular issue relating to the ideals for achieving sustainability, this book asserts that that it is only in recognizing such complexity that we can hope to achieve just sustainabilities.

Reviews

Global Im-Possibilities is a collective scholarly endeavour in the best sense of the term. Area specialists provide convincing case studies ranging far and wide, beginning with the Mercedes Benz sports stadium in Atlanta and the impact of oil on indigenous communities in North Dakota. It follows through with a series of unfinished stories documenting in impressive detail how the forces of neoliberalism time and again frustrate the quest for just sustainabilities in communities in Sri Lanka, Ghana, Bangladesh, Greece, Australia and more. The book is held together by a structure that explains these struggles by connecting environmental justice, environmental racism, and intersectionality, finding optimism in the prospect of many small victories. At a time when Sustainable Development is widely and mostly uncritically seen as the answer to all our problems, this book is a welcome and sometimes optimistic reality check. * Leslie Sklair, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics *
Godfrey and Buchanan challenge sustainability advocates to grapple with the paradoxes, contradictions, and tensions of the sustainability interventions examined in this volume. The contributors bring together stories of just and unjust sustainabilities, featuring a breathtaking diversity of protagonists from the African American communities subject to the injustices of environmental ornamentation perpetrated by the construction of Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, the members of the Baltimore activist group who call themselves The 1619 Coalition, the rickshaw pullers of Dhaka, and the lowland Indigenous communities, who experienced a collective sense of institutional betrayal under the Morales administration. This volume offers a treasure trove of insights and inspirations for those interested in the multiple pursuits of environmental and climate justice. * Prakash Kashwan, Associate Professor, University of Connecticut *

Author Bio

Phoebe Godfrey is an Associate Professor in Residence in Sociology at the University of Connecticut, USA. Mary Buchanan is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Connecticut, USA.