Earth Day & Week: Politicizing a Social Movement

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a famous U.S. American poet, wrote this reflecting on nature and it seeks to capture what this week stands for. This week, April 18-22, is Earth Week, an international campaign to promote environmentalism. It’s a week culminating to Friday, called Earth Day that also raises awareness to how humans are exploiting the planet and its resources.

The provocative video shown below outlines major statistics about the natural resources being depleted by humans. It’s a call to actions. We must do something because lives are being lost, both animals and humans. This week is sponsored and encourage, in large part, by the non-profit Earth Day Network that serves a main digital medium actor for this movement, according to Leonarda Garcia-Jimenez et. al. The article titled “The Construction of Symbolic Power:Comparing Offline and Online Media Representationsof Occupy the Street in Spain” discusses and defines symbolic power as they relate to social movements and allows us to identify who the major actors, actions, and themes are in the environmental social movement. .

The symbolic power of this specific event within the larger environmentalism social movement is that it has moved beyond the digital sphere. Earth Day and Earth Week are not simply existing behind a screen. They are promoting action and activism, organizing rallies, encouraging people to plant trees etc. For many in developed countries, the knowledge about Earth Day/Week begins on the screen but it’s goal is to move beyond the screen and formulate into protests, sit-ins, and actions.

Earth Day 2016 centers around trees—planting 7.8 billion of them to be precise. People can participate in this event by planting a tree themselves, donating, or organizing or attending an event that promotes environmentalism. This advocacy from the screen to organized events and action demonstrates the symbolic power this social movement embodies, and particularly this organization.

This day and week focusing on the earth and environmentalism is an example of how this larger social movement is seeking to move beyond the screen and into both the public realm and into political arenas.

Clay Shirky, in an article published in the UK magazine Prospect, argues that there are advantages to using the Internet in social movement revolutions and activism; that the internet can be a starting place for protests and social gatherings around a particular issue. Earth Day clearly demonstrates this idea in that it allows for people to learn about and opt into activism. The protests are then more influential with the social media dynamic. The YouTube video below demonstrates how social media is asking people to get involved in small ways, utilizing symbolic power to build ethos and credibility.

The digital divide operating in this social movement has to do with access. Who has access to Earth Day events? Who has access and means to organize an Earth Day event? It’s an international campaign, but what groups of people are reading about it and participating? Is it more about those with access, privilege, and money donating or trying to save developing countries and those areas that have little to no access and money?

These questions becomes imperative as we consider how digital spaces have consequences and divides between non-digital spaces and publics.

King of the Ocean

Sharks are in rapid decline as demand for their fins increases and over-fishing messes with marine ecosystems. Sharks are extremely important to marine ecosystems. They sit at the top of the food chain and help control species growth for the ecosystem. They contribute to the balance of underwater life.

Embed from Getty Images

One might not recall sharks as a threat for extinction, but all recorded shark species are facing this threat with the exception of Mako sharks. The biggest threat to sharks is commercial and overfishing as well as shark finning. Sharks lost due to overfishing is typically because they get caught in fishing gear in targeted areas. So even though people are not targeting this species, they get caught and killed. This process is also called by catching.

By-catching is also another threat to shark species across the globe. This is the accidental capture of an animal. Targeted fisheries seeking billfish and tuna are particularly high in by-catching sharks.

Shark-finning is another main reason why sharks are on the decline. According to seethewild.org, “Commercial shark-finning is a practice where sharks are caught and their fins are cut off, then the body of the shark is discarded.”

Embed from Getty Images

This process kills more than 100 million sharks every year. Shark-finning is a common practice in Asian cultures because the meat, fins, and cartilage are desired for various purposes including consumption, medicine, and status. The shark fins and meat will be made into fin soup which is a delicacy, and they are often used for medicinal purposes. Shark finning is unregulated and unsustainable. The trade runs rampant as laws and enforcement lags behind.

Another reason the endangerment of shark’s matters is because sharks are not easily replenished. Known as the top predator of the ocean, they mature slowly, live long, and produce few young. While this does not excuse or cause their decline, it does help explain why, in the face of finning and overfishing, this animal is currently vulnerable.

Learn more about what is being done and how you can help! You can even adopt a shark!

Actively Protecting Marine Wildlife

As the video shows there are mass amounts of pollution that affects all aspects of marine wildlife.  With all marine life being intertwined it is crucial that we not only protect every part of the ocean and the animals that live in the ocean and enforce the laws that are put in place. Our plant is 71% water and yet only 3.4% of that is protected, whereas 16% of land is protected.  Saying that the ocean is protected is not completely accurate because even though there are laws in place, they are not enforced.

Passing a law to protect a small piece of the ocean is a step in the right direction but it isn’t enough because no single part of the ocean is isolated from another part. Throwing garbage into the ocean has resulted in the injury and sometimes even the death of some animals that call the ocean home.  Plastic garbage can be mistaken for food by marine animals, which in high concentrations results in the animals’ stomachs and breathing to be blocked.  It doesn’t have to get into their bodies to cause harm though, the plastic six-pack rings that are used for drinks can choke and animal or get stuck around their bodies and cause their bodies to take abnormal shapes (i.e. a turtles shell will grow to look like to shells morphed together instead of one circular shell).

Embed from Getty Images

The ocean has always been a convenient dumping ground for waste. This practice was banned by the London Dumping Convention in 1972.  Chemicals that find their way into the ocean do not become diluted as many believe, instead they become more concentrated especially once they find their way into the food chain.  Once a small animal like plankton absorb the chemicals it works its way into the larger animals that eat plankton and so on.  Plankton are so small that their bodies cannot break down the chemicals and it accumulates in their bodies therefore becoming more concentrated.

Now that we have established and outlined how ocean pollution is pervasive and killing off species of our planet, we want to know what people are doing about it. What is going on in online mediums to collaborate and address this issue? An easy google search will reveal that organizations, initiatives, and collective’s people are organizing to raise awareness and stop the harm that is being done. People are doing things and participating—this area and social movement are encouraging people to not only passively learn but to also actively participate both within and beyond digital spheres. Save Our Shores is one (of the many) organizations that advocates for both digital and social media activism as well as participation beyond the screen. Their home page features participation avenues and actions that people can including participating in a shore clean up, supporting bans on plastic water bottles, and preventing oil spills.

Within digital spheres, people enacted participatory culture around this issue after the BP oil spill of 2010. Twitter exploded with dialogue as people weighed in about gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The hashtag #bp and #oilspill were trending and it seemed everyone with internet access and a Twitter account had something negative to say about BP. It resulted in the company’s image taking a nose dive with public relations. Their stock went down as negative associations with their name rose. A parody Twitter account (@BPGlobalPR) mocking the public relations and tarnished image of BP was created and now has more followers than BP’s official account (@BP_America). The Twitter account gaining widespread attention and notoriety demonstrates how people are using social media to raise awareness and participate in, even passively, in social movements.

Forests Temporary or Permanent?

Embed from Getty Images

Deforestation may seem like a small problem, but the environmental and animal impacts are vast and potentially devastating. According to National Geographic, deforestation is clearing Earth’s forests on a massive scale often causing damage to the quality of the land and subsequent habitants. Although, thirty percent of the land is still forest, 46-58 thousand square miles of forest per year which is the equivalent to 48 football fields per minute every minute is lost every year. At this rate, there will likely be no forests in one hundred years.

The postmodern view has a skewed definition of reality, which has humans believing they are the only living beings that matter– the idea that humans are dominant over all natural resources, animals, and plants. This impacts wildlife because as humans are cutting down forests for urban development in an attempt toward human greatness, animals are being displaced, threatened with extinction, and some are killed.

So why does this all matter for animals? Deforestation not only drives climate change, but it also snatches land from nearly seventy percent of the Earth’s animals and plants that otherwise cannot survive.

Embed from Getty Images

Climate change is linked to a change in greenhouse gas emissions as well as lack of protection by the sun which affects the water cycle and soil erosion. Greenhouse gas emission rise with deforestation and at unprecedented rates. To put it succinctly, trees provide shelter for animals, but they also help regulate the temperature for certain species and control the water cycle, keeping runoff water from polluting drinking water.

Deforestation also affects the larger cycle of animal life including birth and death rates. As animal habitats are wiped out, some species become smaller and live shorter lives which disrupts the food chain and animal ecosystem.  With the loss of their habitat, animals are forced to live in smaller areas and the smallest natural disaster can mean the end of their species.

The epidemic of deforestation demonstrates that when we consider wildlife conservation, it’s easy to see and advocate for big and beautiful animals like lions but everything is interconnected. We simply cannot discuss the illegal killing of one animal without also recognizing the environmental aspects.

 

 

 

Interests and Passions: Why Protect Wildlife?

We know that wildlife extinction is a growing problem. National Geographic reported in 2014 that we are in a unique time where animals are facing extinction at a rate of 1,000 times faster than in previous centuries.

What is happening? As the global human population grows at astronomical rates, the effects on the natural resources becomes increasingly threatened. Humans consume, consume, consume without considering the depletion of resources and how these depleted resources are affecting the lives of animals. As Mother Nature Network notes, it would take one and a half Earths to regenerate all the natural resources humans consume annually.

So, we know that this is an increasingly important problem we are facing. This is precisely why we want to explore the how, the why, the what, and who behind issues like extinction, deforestation, relocation, and the rights animals are due.

We have limited experience with this topic, BUT we have a great passion and desire to learn more as we journey into this area. It is our belief that the planet our feet are grounded on matters, and that we can no longer treat it like our own personal trash can without having serious consequences to the demise of the human race and of this planet we call home.

We are also concerned with the inevitable nature of how one species affects other species. For example, the forced relocation of one species has vast effects on the lives of not only other species but also the habitat and ecosystems that animals live in. We know that the leading cause of wildlife decline globally is due to loss or change of animal habitat. It serves as a sort of domino effect to the ecosystem, if we don’t preserve the animals and their habitats together. Simply put, we cannot make concerted efforts to preserve animals without also preserving their habitats.

Embed from Getty Images

In our culture, we know that the topic of animal restoration is sometimes controversial. Some see hunting as a right and a trophy that they can brag about. They see killing an animal illegally and taking the tusk (or some other animal part) as a notch on their belt. Perhaps you saw the trending hashtag #Cecilthelion which demonstrates the polarizing nature of this topic.

We are excited to jump into this topic and explore not just these areas but also areas of animal rights and welfare- the humane treatment of animals.