C-URGE Panel at the WAU 2025 Congress: Unearthing Humanity
- elena.gilis
- Oct 20
- 15 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
We are delighted to announce the participation of C-URGE Doctoral Candidates in the World Anthropological Union (WAU) 2025 Congress, “Unearthing Humanity: Critical and Urgent Epistemic Redefinitions in World Anthropologies.” This global event brings together researchers, practitioners, and activists to rethink how anthropology engages with today’s intertwined technological, ecological, and sociopolitical transformations.
The 10 C-Urge Doctoral Candidates will present their papers, in the panel session “Understanding Urgency in Climate Action: Reframing Time, Power, and Justice” on the 5th of November, hosted by C-URGE’s Supervisors (on site and online)
The urgency narrative in climate change discourse plays a central role in shaping public perceptions and influencing policy responses. However, this dominant narrative often fails to account for the complex socio-ecological entanglements that underpin climate crises, both at global and local levels. This panel aims to critically interrogate how the construct of urgency influences our understanding of climate change and the strategies developed to address it, particularly in how it can marginalize long-term, justice-driven approaches to climate action. Rather than accepting urgency as an unquestioned framework, we seek to explore how this perspective may obscure the deeper, relational processes required for sustainable and equitable climate solutions. The panel will examine the ways in which urgency is constructed, mobilized, and contested across various contexts, critically questioning its implications for both global and local strategies in climate mitigation and adaptation, and exploring alternative approaches that prioritize long-term ecological repair.
Program 5 November 2025
Session 1 - 15:00–17:00 (CET)
Urgent deceleration in times of fascist takeover: Postcarbon democracy and procedural climate justice in, from and for Pödelwitz – Jonny Grünsch – Online
Water, fire and ecological repair practices in Esteros del Iberá (Corrientes, Argentina) –: Matias Ezequiel Menalled – Face-to-Face / On Site
Not all urgencies are the same: The temporal entanglements of deforestation in El Impenetrable dry forest – Metztli Hernandez– Online
Entangled temporalities: Agrarian transitions and climate perceptions in rural Sri Lanka – Avishka Sendanayake – Face-to-Face / On Site
Mangrove dilemmas: Balancing climate urgency and traditional brush park fisheries in Sri Lanka – Suranga Lakmal Kiri Hennadige – Online
Discerning climate urgency: National “tree planting” & community-led “tree growing” as a response to climate change in Nairobi, Kenya – Amber Caine – Online
Session 2 - 17:30–19:30 (CET)
Entanglements of urgency in whale shark tourism on Mafia Island – Rebecca Campbell – Online
Local temporalities, perceptions and community resilience to climate change in fishing villages along the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – Tito Muhindo Kakundika – Online
Industrial heritage as a form of urgent repair? The making of industrial heritage in the late industrialism – Helena Böhmová – Online
Where the sea holds time: Urgency, industry, and ecological repair in a fragmented landscape – Luisa Katharina Mohr – Online
You are warmly invited to explore the following subtopics with us on the 5th of November:
Water, fire and ecological repair practices in Esteros del Iberá (Corrientes, Argentina). Matias Ezequiel Menalled, Uppsala University
The largest wetland in Argentina, Esteros del Iberá, can be analysed as a waterscape due to the centrality of water in the socio-environmental relations of the region. In this sense, water is positioned as an element of vital importance in environmental, cultural and economic valuation. However, in recent years, water scarcity has become a problem that causes environmental alterations, political tensions and social repercussions. The most notable effects associated with drought, low rainfall and high temperatures have been the reduction of surface water, the drying up of vegetation and the proliferation of forest fires. The uncontrolled burning of grasslands, native forests, forest crops, livestock and wild animals has caused significant transformations in the aquatic landscape. The mobilisation of social and political resources has been primarily focused on addressing the situation in the short term. Nonetheless, there is an emerging medium- and long-term outlook advocating practices aimed at environmental restoration, including the deliberate management of fire, as well as the repurposing of fire residues into new components. Based on ethnograp;hic fieldwork carried out in Esteros del Iberá (Corrientes, Argentina), I present the socio-environmental practices related to fire in a waterscape where cattle ranching, forest cultivation, and tourism coexist with natural protected areas. In other words, the purpose of this paper is to consider the entanglements of combustion processes on Esteros del Iberá. Consequently, I am interested in proposing an anthropological view of the hydro-pyro-social articulations by exploring the transformations of waterscapes in the context of climate change.
Not all Urgencies are the Same: the temporal entanglements of Deforestation in El Impenetrable dry forest. Metztli Hernandez, Uppsala University
Deep in the heart of the Gran Chaco—the second-largest terrestrial ecosystem in Latin America—lies El Impenetrable, a 40,000 km² tapestry of native forest nestled in the northwest of Chaco Province, Argentina. Its name conjures images of tangled vegetation, rugged soils, and untamed wilderness, shaping a lasting narrative of hardship and resilience. Over the past three decades, El Impenetrable has increasingly drawn the world’s attention, not merely for the fierce beauty of its biodiversity or the kaleidoscope of cultures inhabiting it, but for the slow, relentless catastrophe unfolding before our eyes. Wildfires devour native forests, bulldozers carve deep, irreversible scars into living soils, and people in distant, forgotten communities endure hunger and preventable illness. These brutal realities point to a quiet, simmering crisis born from the entanglement of environmental devastation and humanitarian collapse. In the media, El Impenetrable is often portrayed as a site where ecocide and genocide unfold side by side—not as intertwined histories of human and more-than-human life, but as collateral damage within a developmental logic that renders certain lives and territories disposable. And yet, for its inhabitants, El Impenetrable remains a place of enduring hope—a land of resistance and possibility, where life persists defiantly against all odds. Despite the hardship of the terrain, the state's abandonment, and the growing pressure of agribusiness, people remain rooted, resilient, and unyielding. Deforestation has become an increasing concern in this complex setting, deeply entangled with critical issues such as land tenure, environmental governance, climate change, and territorial planning. This tension has given rise to two conflicting narratives of urgency: one that promotes preventive measures, guided by a forward-looking logic of avoidance, and another that reflects on past events—an urgency grounded in endurance, mourning, and repair. This research explores how these narratives unfold, interact, and shape one another as they converge in the present, intensifying their mutual call for prompt and decisive action today.
Entangled Temporalities: Agrarian Transitions and Climate Perceptions in Rural Sri Lanka. Avishka Sendanayake, University of Catania
In Pattiyawala, a small agricultural village in the north-eastern dry zone of Sri Lanka’s Anuradhapura District, the urgency to adapt to climate change emerges as a multifaceted and contested process. This region, increasingly exposed to erratic weather patterns – marked by both prolonged droughts and sudden floods – has seen a gradual yet significant shift from subsistence agriculture to market-driven models of production. These changes have intensified the entanglements between ecological processes, infrastructural transformations, and evolving social imaginaries, reshaping how risk and urgency are locally perceived and responded to. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork – both observational and participatory – this paper explores how smallholder farmers in Pattiyawala make sense of, and live through, the changing climate. Their perceptions are embedded in overlapping temporalities: memories of past disruptions, mytho-historical narratives, shifting agrarian and spiritual relations, and encounters with state-led development schemes. Climate change, in this context, is not simply a future threat but an unfolding experience negotiated through embodied knowledge and socio-material practices. Focusing on recent agrarian transitions – such as the increasing adoption of monoculture to secure immediate economic returns – the paper highlights the dissonance between accelerated adaptation measures and local rhythms of sustainability. Environmental impacts like pest infestations, declining water availability, and intensified human-wildlife encounters are read as manifestations of deeper socio-ecological fractures rather than isolated climatic events. This paper argues for a rethinking of urgency – not as a call for rapid intervention, but as a site of negotiation shaped by human and non-human entanglements, historical continuities, and epistemic pluralism. It advocates for adaptive strategies that foreground traditional farming knowledge, participatory governance, and situated forms of resilience – approaches that are more attuned to the temporal textures of lived experience and the complex ecologies of agrarian life.
Mangrove Dilemmas: Balancing Climate Urgency and Traditional Brush Park Fisheries in Sri Lanka. Suranga Lakmal Kiri Hennadige, University of Catania
Climate urgency refers to the pressing need for immediate action to mitigate the escalating impacts of climate change before they become irreversible. Yet this urgency often places significant pressure on both human and non-human environments, particularly in sensitive coastal areas such as mangrove forests. In Sri Lanka, government-imposed bans on mangrove cutting – intended to safeguard these habitats – have produced unintended consequences for the lagoon environment and traditional fisheries, especially brush park fishing. Brush parks are a traditional method of fish cultivation in which mangrove branches are placed in coastal lagoons to create artificial habitats. These practices are not merely ecological but embedded in local livelihoods, cultural routines, and socio-environmental relations. However, contemporary environmental governance – shaped by political, scientific, and global conservation frameworks – often overlooks these entangled connections. While conservation measures in response to climate urgency aim to curb degradation, they may unintentionally disrupt customary practices and unsettle historically grounded ecological relations. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and participatory observation with local fishers, this paper examines how climate change narratives and conservation policies have progressively reshaped fishing practices and the socio-material relations that sustain them. It traces how such interventions have weakened community connections to place, marginalized local knowledge, and discouraged engagement in customary activities. Findings indicate that institutional frameworks, though aimed at protection, often fail to accommodate the cultural and ecological specificities of brush park fishing. In the absence of community-led stewardship, economically motivated actors have begun to exploit the lagoon, accelerating environmental degradation. Rather than framing climate urgency solely as a race against time, the paper highlights the importance of attending to the complex, situated relations through which climate responses are enacted, and argues for more context-sensitive approaches that engage with local knowledge and lived practices.
Discerning Climate Urgency: National “Tree Planting” & Community-Led “Tree Growing” as a response to Climate Change in Nairobi, Kenya. Amber Caine, The University of KU Leuven
In response to climate urgency, trees, in their assigned role as carbon sequestering agents, have become key actors in large-scale tree planting and reforestation drives. This paper draws upon digital ethnography following the Kenyan government’s commitment to plant 15 billion trees by 2032, to illustrate how a global discourse of climate urgency both endorses and is mobilized for rapid climate action. As a counterpoint, I engage with a community-led “tree growing” approach - observed during in-person fieldwork in Nairobi’s Karura Forest - which challenges climate urgency’s insistence on immediacy. This paper emphasizes that proclamations of climate urgency can be met with discernment (Bandak & Anderson 2022), over “haste” (Haarstad et al. 2023), resulting in action informed by a deeper engagement with socio-ecological entanglements. While this research responds to a call for “anthropologies of urgency” (Wahlberg, Burke and Manderson 2021, 21): ethnographic inquiry into life-threatening crises, this paper heeds a more specific call, for deeper anthropological engagement with the notion of urgency itself (Bandak & Anderson 2022). Kenya’s national tree planting days on 13 November 2023 and 11 May 2024 were presented to the Kenyan public as a response to climate urgency. They were widely publicized across social and news media, yet were also criticized for what was seen as a hurried, often performative, approach. In contrast, “tree growing” in Karura Forest attunes to the more-than-human temporalities of a forest ecosystem, demonstrating a less-frenzied relationship with climate urgency. Climate change, experienced as unpredictable rainfall and - at its extremes - droughts and floods, is acknowledged as a driving force for their work. Yet, climate urgency is only one of many environmental and social urgencies they contend with. By grappling with how climate urgency is employed and responded to within this specific “patch” of the Anthropocene (Tsing, Mathews & Bubandt 2017) this paper contributes towards our collective understanding of how “urgency” itself operates. I argue that climate urgency’s insistence on immediacy can be subverted, not as a challenge to or disengagement from climate change, but in order to enact a more sustained, socially-responsible form of climate action.
Entanglements of Urgency in Whale Shark Tourism on Mafia Island. Rebecca Campbell, The University of KU Leuven
This paper will engage with entanglements between whale shark tourism and marine park conservation strategies on an island in Tanzania, and how these entanglements contribute to academic conversations on climate urgency. The destructive fishing practice of bombing in the waters of Mafia Island (Tanzania) led to the implementation of the Mafia Island Marine Park in 1995 by the WWF and the government of Tanzania. 30 years later, the Marine Park has successfully protected specific areas of oceanic ecology, and generated income, though this income does not reach the communities in Mafia in the way it was originally expected to. Now, there is a bourgeoning tourist economy centered around swimming with whale sharks in the waters outside of the demarcated marine park. This venture is promising similar benefits of the Marine Park without international NGO or federal government involvement. Whale shark tourism was started by fisherman in Mafia Island as an alternative way to generate income, given that fishing has become less economically and ecologically viable due to climate change effects and over-fishing. As global tourists have become more aware of the effects of tourism, this leads them to visiting “smaller” or less obvious tourist destinations presented as being more sustainable (such as Mafia Island). Residents of Mafia Island are now viewing eco-tourism as a response to an international agenda around climate change, while being responsive to local economic needs and tourist desires. Current academic discourses around climate urgency suggest that imperatives towards universalised environmental ideals can be harmful extensions of imperialism and authoritarianism, or prescriptive development. In Mafia, there is an understanding of the milieu of climate urgency politics and policies, and a move towards utilising this to help to increase visitors and investment on the island. While Mafia residents are noticing the effects of climate change on weather patterns and fish stocks, they also understand the potential financial benefit of fitting Mafia as an eco-tourism site, into a global conversation on conservation, sustainability and climate change mitigation. This paper will look at converging points of urgency. Urgency felt by Mafia residents may not be the same as that felt by tourists and the cultural context they belong to. This can be seen in the practices and discourses surrounding whale shark tourism in Mafia Island. Ethnographic attention to the ways that urgency is communicated in spaces of conservation and eco-tourism and how these may vary across cultures and demographics, can point us to a critical understanding of how climate change urgency manifests itself.
Local temporalities, perceptions and community resilience to climate change in fishing villages along the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Tito Muhindo Kakundika, The University of KU Leuven
In the fishing camps and villages of Irebu, Malangé and Etongo, all located along the Congo River in the Province of Equateur in the DRC, climate change is manifesting itself in several ways. Recurring and devastating floods, the reduction and disappearance of certain fish, plant and animal resources, a significant drop in the water levels of the river and its tributaries, seasonal disruptions with significant implications for agricultural activity schedules, hunting, fishing, the collection of non-timber forest products (NTFPs), charcoal production, timber logging and the destruction of aquatic animal habitats (hippopotamuses and crocodiles) are considered to be the main indicators of the climate crisis. Based on the "eco-ethnography" approach, which encouraged community participation through "citizen scientists" between 2024 and 2025 in these three rural communities, this article examines how these symptoms of the ecological crisis are perceived and interpreted. It then looks at how local actors are adapting to these unpredictable environmental changes by mobilising their own temporal frames of reference. It also analyses narratives on seasonal change and hydrological cycles and highlights various forms of community resilience. This study highlights the temporal reference cases: temperature, moon position, frequency of rains, migratory birds (minyenyengi), abundance of certain species of fish (makoko and mbesi), cries of crocodiles and hippopotamuses, etc. provide information on the evolution of the weather. Their appreciation determines the nature of the seasons experienced and predicts the future. This temporal alert system plays an indispensable role because it influences certain decisions including the choice of crops resistant to drought or floods, the construction of houses at height, the abandonment of fishing camps, the choice of technique, equipment or fishing zone.
Industrial heritage as a form of urgent repair? The Making of Industrial Heritage in the Late Industrialism. Helena Böhmová, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
In line with climate actions and coal-phase-out policy in Germany, the central coal mining district in Saxony-Anhalt, previously renowned for its heavy industry and lignite mining, is being rapidly, urgently, and continuously reimagined and transformed. While industrial infrastructures slowly fade into obsolescence, leaving behind what could be described as “late industrial” landscape (Fortun 2012), the region’s industrial past remains deeply connected to its cultural identity (Berge, Wicke 2017, Berkner 2022 etc.) and industrial heritage is gaining prominence. Apart from providing space and platform for commemoration and preservation, industrial heritage, represented by physical remnants of the past industries and infrastructures, as well as sustained by institutions, networks, and other institutions, possibly carries the potential to contribute to the complex societal challenge: how to reinvent itself, without losing the sense of itself. By valuing, heritizing, and in reinventing the past, while acknowledging its contributions and its consequences for the present and future, industrial heritage holds a unique and important position within the ongoing vast structural transformations in the region.
The paper explores the tension between the "urgency" of post-coal transformations and the "slowness" imposed by the temporalities of heritage-making. Focusing on how industrial heritage is imagined, made and developed by the industrial heritage social actors in Saxony-Anhalt, the paper engages with two intersecting axes: slow vs. urgent and heritization vs. reinvention. To illustrate this, three specific industrial heritage institutions and networks serve as examples, each representing a different approach to conceptualizing, imagining, and 'making of' industrial heritage in Saxony-Anhalt. By examining the current representation, imagination and practises of the industrial heritage in Saxony-Anhalt, ultimately the paper aims to contribute to the broader anthropological debate by thematizing the role of heritization and the process of (re)shaping industrial sentiments in the context of the post-coal, late industrial world.
Where the Sea Holds Time: Urgency, Industry, and Ecological Repair in a Fragmented Landscape. Luisa Katharina Mohr, University of Catania
The urgency constructed around the energy transition in industrial zones is deeply political. It is not just a response to climate change but also a strategy mobilized to justify and manage industrial restructuring. In the oil refinery zone between Siracusa and Augusta, urgency is instrumentalized in multiple and often conflicting ways, by the Industry Union, the Worker Union, and national environmental organizations, to frame industrial transition, economic security, and environmental futures. My research approaches this industrial zone as a fragmented patch (Tsing, 2015), where different actors, workers, inhabitants, environmentalists, and industry representatives struggle over what the future should look like and how ecological repair should be understood. One entry point to these tensions is the closure of Versalis, a key industrial site. Analyzing media discourse, I trace how urgency is shaped through different narratives: for the industry and workers, urgency is about preventing economic collapse and job loss; for environmental organizations, it is about addressing long-standing pollution and the need for a radical shift away from fossil fuels. But these positions are not neatly divided. The workers and inhabitants are not separate groups: Many who suffer from the industry's toxicity also depend on it economically (Dörre, 2017). Amid this contested terrain, the sea emerges as both witness and tool. It is a site of contamination and extraction but also of relation, care, and imagination. In a landscape where toxicity is often unquantifiable, where official data is inaccessible, inhabitants turn to their own life-time observations of the sea to make sense of environmental change. They can recall shifts in its colors, currents, and fish, sensing transformation through their bodies and daily lives. Their knowledge is neither abstract nor detached but embedded in experience, shaped by intergenerational memory and rhythms of living with the sea. Through ethnographic experimentation (Estalella & Criado, 2018), I explored how these embodied ways of knowing can be mobilized not just to document damage but to co-produce forms of ecological repair. One of the workshops I co-organized with local associations sought to move beyond analysis, using the sea as both a conceptual and material space to reimagine what repair might mean in practice. The sea, in this sense, does not just reflect industrial damage or climate change, but also offers a different temporal horizon, a way of thinking about the future that is not solely structured by crisis and urgency but by relation and continuity. If anthropology is to reckon with the realities of industrial and environmental crisis, our role must extend beyond critique, we must also contribute to reimagining futures. This presentation engages with these tensions, questioning what it means to practice anthropology not just as an observer, but as a participant in the making of repair.
Urgent deceleration in times of fascist takeover: Postcarbon democracy and procedural climate justice in, from and for Pödelwitz. Jonny Grünsch, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
Pödelwitz is a village at the heart of the energy transition in the central German mining district. It was saved from devastation because local residents and climate activist resisted the planned expansion of the neighboring lignite mine. From this resistance emerged the civil society association Pödelwitz hat Zukunft which advocates for a just, democratic and sustainable transformation of the village and region, during Germany’s ongoing energy transition. However, this project is caught in a double-bind, since political concepts which should guide this energy transition, like democracy, are inherently intertwined with fossil energy (Chakrabarty 2009; Mitchell 2009; Boyer 2014). In this paper, I explore what political forms emerge from the energy transition in and around Pödelwitz, drawing on field-philosophical research with the civil society association. Central to the governance of energy transition in Germany is participation, however, Pödelwitz showcases the limits of the concept: it often amounts only to Scheinbeteiligung [fictitious participation] which should either legitimize technocratic decisions or serves as political tactic to delay material changes. I argue that participation in its current guise does not have the critical impetus to govern the energopolitical transition towards a postcarbon democracy. Indeed, the prospect of a carbon postdemocracy appears to be increasingly likely, especially in conjuncture with resurgence of antidemocratic and outright fascist politics, globally but also around Pödelwitz (Dagget 2018; Blühdown 2018; Malm 2021). In response to this critical analysis, I then present conceptual innovations as well as practical interventions from and for Pödelwitz. The association governs itself sociocratically, by grassroot and consent-based decision-making and after a successful run for city during the 2024 elections, we are also trying to implement municipalist principles in the region (Russel 2018). As our experience shows, sociocracy and municipialism are slow and, at times, tedious modes of decision-making, which is precisely why they are well suited to govern the energy transition away from fossil energy: If “democratic politics developed, thanks to oil, with a peculiar orientation towards the future: the future was a limitless horizon of growth” as Timothy Mitchell (2009, 422 ) argues, then the temporality of postcarbon democracy urgently requires deceleration as we are rapidly encroaching planetary boundaries. As such, they constitute procedural climate justice for decarbonizing democracy and towards degrowth. Yet, at the same, time there are lingering concerns how to cope with the pace at which fascist movements are dismantling political and civic institutions. I will conclude by reflecting on these issues and proposing antifascism as a crucial vector for climate justice in Pödelwitz and beyond.
Comments