Borneo’s Dayak combine Indigenous forest knowledge with modern peat management

The Indonesian government intends to release a total of 13 million hectares (32 million acres) from the national forest estate for leasehold management by local communities, a policy known as social forestry. Prior to the community forestry license, people’s relationship with the land was determined by an Indigenous Dayak system of customary rules and norms, known here as handil.

What the H5N1 scare tells us about ourselves and our society

I don’t know whether there is an H5N1 “bird flu” pandemic in our future. We humans think we can build moats around our modern way of life that protect us from the natural world. All the while we have actually been building the equivalent of superhighways into the heart of human society everywhere due to our dense living arrangements and global travel and trade.

How an Aboriginal woman fought a coal company and won

In 2019, Australia was on the cusp of approving a new coal mine on traditional Wirdi land in Queensland that would have extracted approximately 40 million tons of coal each year for 35 years. But that didn’t happen, thanks to the advocacy of Murrawah Maroochy Johnson, a 29-year-old Wirdi woman of the Birri Gubba Nation, who led a lawsuit against the coal company in 2021, and won.

The Climate According to Numbers

The point is, the physical science basis is a term intended for science, and it makes most sense within those boundaries where its meaning and limitations are understood. It’s when it crosses the border to society that things get weird, where you suddenly you wake up to discover everything from forests to farms to whales have been reduced to carbon quantities, and life itself is being financialized.