“Society is defect, now it is up to us” Building worlds beyond the human/nature divide in the Norwegian youth environmental movement

Abstract

The climate and environmental crisis is growing more tangible and extreme every day. From being a threat in a distant future, it is now taking lives and destroying livelihoods across the world. Further, the crisis is triggering action as more and more people realize that it is caused by the systems (re)producing the oppression and exploitation of humans and nature alike. The climate and environmental crisis is as such not only a crisis of nature, but a violent expression of and reaction to the crisis of human and nature co-existence in the modern world (Blaser, 2013; de la Cadena & Blaser, 2018; Escobar, 2019; Latour, 2018; Mies & Shiva, 1993; Moore, 2017). It is within this context that I have written my master’s thesis. In my research I have asked how climate- and environmentally-engaged youth in Norway understand and practice nature-human relations within the context of the climate and environmental crisis, the collapse of old worlds and (re)emergence of new worlds. To explore this I have worked with my own active engagement in the field, building on my knowledge and personal experiences through ‘autoethnography’. I have had conversations with other youth who are active in the young climate and environmental movement in Norway, and I have taken part in actions within three central struggles: The school strikes for the climate, the Riehpovuotna-struggle and the Førdefjorden-struggle. Building on the theories and work within political ontology, post-development and Science and Technology Studies, the thesis tells stories of the climate and environmental crisis and of other possible futures through the perspectives of climate- and environmentally-engaged youth in Norway, including myself. In the thesis, I show that climate- and environmentally-engaged youth in Norway, through their experience of urgency, practice of solidarity and enactment of nature-human interdependency, call for radical change and co-produce ways of worlding that are different to the modern. Going beyond the modern world’s human/nature divide, climate- and environmentally-engaged youth in Norway understand and practice nature-human relations in a manner that is radically different to the modern world. Thus, in a time of ravaging climate disasters, mass extinction and ecological collapse, climate- and environmentally-engaged youth in Norway enact futures that confront the modern world and represent radically different ways of being and knowing; they enact radically different worlds.