Books by Simon Batterbury
Book: Kowasch M. and Batterbury, S.P.J. (eds.). 2024. Geographies of New Caledonia-Kanaky: Environments, politics and cultures. Springer, 2024
This open access book provides a unique overview of geographical, historical, political and envir... more This open access book provides a unique overview of geographical, historical, political and environmental issues facing the French overseas territory New Caledonia, also called “Kanaky” by the indigenous Kanak people, who outnumber citizens of European and other origin. New Caledonia has seen a long and complex struggle for decolonization, but is still on the United Nations’ list of “Non-Self Governing territories” and there is little sign of change following three referendums on independence and extensive negotiations with France. The archipelago possesses around a quarter of the world’s nickel deposits, giving it additional strategic importance when demand for the mineral is strong. The islands have unique biodiversity, and Caledonian coastal lagoons have been listed as UNESCO world heritage sites since 2008. The book offers detailed insights into the environmental and human geographies of the archipelago, with a focus on the linksbetween environmental protection and extensive mining operations, between political independence struggles and continued wellbeing and economic development, and the differing visions for the future of the islands. This multidisciplinary volume, one of the few to appear in English, appeals to researchers, students and policy makers across the environmental, social and political sciences.
Articles and chapters by Simon Batterbury
Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy , 2025
Catalyzing sustainability transitions occurs at different scales, from macro-level policy changes... more Catalyzing sustainability transitions occurs at different scales, from macro-level policy changes to micro-level adjustments of lifestyles. This study argues that socioeconomic transformations are effective at meso-level scales and operating in, and through, processes of commoning and mutual community support. We present the learning from direct experience in starting and managing the Brisbane Tool Library (BTL) in Australia, incorporating perspectives as researchers and practitioners. BTL encourages and enables people to borrow tools, camping gear, party appliances, and many other items. BTL started as a practical response to enable degrowth transitions. The inventory of BTL has been built through rescued items from landfills and private donations. Tool libraries influence productivism, consumerism, and ownership models. The circular models of tool libraries, and their commitment to reuse and repair, can help communities reduce their ecological footprint. By allowing people to borrow and not to buy, BTL has also saved its members more than 1.1 million. Additionally, by prioritizing access over ownership, these sharing models can help reshape cities by, for example, reducing inequality and helping households save money and space. The case study is presented under various facets, including its barriers and opportunities. Access to premises and the lack of exnovation are the major obstacles. BTL's role and its work are contextualized within broader socioeconomic transitions in Australia. One major significance of BTL is that it re-politicizes sustainability discourses and socializes new narratives, such as degrowth.
Transactions on Transport Sciences, 2025
In this article, our goal is to analyse a small but growing movement of community bike workshops ... more In this article, our goal is to analyse a small but growing movement of community bike workshops or 'bike kitchens' in Australia. Bicycles are reliable forms of 'active' travel for short and moderate length journeys, in an age where carbon emissions must be reduced and reuse, recycling and refurbishment of everyday objects like bicycles are increasingly identified as key elements of sustainability transitions in western countries. A community bike workshop is a not-for-profit community-based organization formed around the restoration and maintenance of bicycles. From interviews, surveys and participant-observation over several years in Australia and in Europe, we show how community bike workshops challenge consumerism and reliance on cars (termed, automobility), offering an innovative pathway to increasing bike ridership and acceptance of this mode of transport in urban environments. We find that they additionally support vélonomie, developing confidence among riders to repair a bicycle and to ride it safely. Bike ridership is slowly expanding in Australia, a nation of high carbon emissions per capita and high vehicle ownership. We demonstrate that repair workshops help to increase 'demand' for cycling, by encouraging confidence with mechanical tasks, greater expertise, and convivial sharing of tools and knowledge. As part of increasing ridership and hence demand for cycling provision, they operate in very different ways to more expensive 'supply-side' interventions that tend to dominate planning interventions. Supply-side policies prioritise costly bike lanes, junction treatments, safer streetscapes and bike share schemes. This agenda is favoured by urban authorities, engineers, and planners. By contrast we characterise community workshops, including those we have volunteered at in Australia, as 'mutual aid' organisations, following Kropotkin. We show that although they still have quite limited geographical coverage in Australia centred on Melbourne, they are making a modest contribution to an affordable, more sustainable, and active transportation agenda. In addition, their participants can benefit from their activities across gender, race, age, wealth, and wellness.
Geographies of New Caledonia-Kanaky: Environments, Politics and Cultures (Kowasch & Batterbury, eds. Springer.), 2024
This chapter is an introduction to "Geographies of New Caledonia-Kanaky", edited by Matthias Kowa... more This chapter is an introduction to "Geographies of New Caledonia-Kanaky", edited by Matthias Kowasch and Simon Batterbury. The archipelago is a "biodiversity hotspot" with high species endemism, ultramafic soils and nickel resources that have been mined extensively for nearly 150 years. It remains a territory of France, and after three referendums on independence, decolonisation is an unfinished and ongoing process that still divides communities in their interpretation of history and their aspirations for the future. The 21 chapters of the book, including this introduction and the conclusion, reflect different themes and offer cultural, political, social and ecological perspectives. New Caledonia-Kanaky (NC-K) is a "window on the world" in terms of decolonisation paths, environmental and social justice, racial inequality, biodiversity and the impacts of mining. The book has seven parts: (1) biodiversity, environmental protection and policies; (2) fisheries and agriculture; (3) extractive industries, mining development and waste management; (4) land reform and urban development; (5) cultural heritage, languages and education; (6) small-scale politics and gender questions; and lastly (7) decolonisation and political independence.
Area, 2024
Matthew Gandy's Commentary in Area (2023) criticised the decision of the national funder UKRI to ... more Matthew Gandy's Commentary in Area (2023) criticised the decision of the national funder UKRI to mandate that all books resulting from the research that it funds must be published open access (OA) from 2024. This raises many issues of importance to geographers. We argue that scholars in the discipline need to fight for affordable and ethically produced OA books, not ‘legacy’ modes of publishing. In particular, books produced by scholar- led OA presses will not harm the reputation of departments or individual scholars, and they also have the potential to reduce significant financial barriers to accessing books across the globe. A more powerful critique must be to challenge the continued ‘enclosure’ of books, and the denial of OA by academic publishers and university presses. ................This commentary is part of a forthcoming collection responding to Matthew Gandy’s 2023 commentary ‘Books under threat: Open access publishing and the neoliberal academy.' in Area, 2024
Journal of Modern African Studies , 2021
Despite the proliferation of literature on large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA) in Africa, few em... more Despite the proliferation of literature on large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA) in Africa, few empirical studies exist on how patronage networks combine with socio-cultural stratification to determine the livelihood outcomes for African agrarian-based communities. This article draws from ethnographic research on Cameroon to contribute to bridging this gap. We argue that lineage and patronage considerations intersect to determine beneficiaries and losers during LSLA. Second, we show that LSLA tend to re-entrench existing inequalities in power relations that exist within communities in favour of people with traceable ancestral lineage. Concomitantly, non-indigenous groups especially migrants, bear the brunt of exclusion and are unfortunately exposed to severe livelihood stresses due to their inability to leverage patronage networks and political power to defend their interests. We submit that empirical examination of the impacts of land acquisitions should consider the centrality of power and patronage networks between indigenes and non-indigenes, and how this socio-cultural dichotomy restricts and/or mediates land acquisition outcomes in Cameroon.
Speaking Power to “Post-Truth”: Critical Political Ecology and the New Authoritarianism, 2020
Given a history in political ecology of challenging hegemonic “scientific” narratives concerning ... more Given a history in political ecology of challenging hegemonic “scientific” narratives concerning environmental problems, the current political moment presents a potent conundrum: how to (continue to) critically engage with narratives of environmental change while confronting the “populist” promotion of “alternative facts.” We ask how political ecologists might situate themselves vis-a-vis the presently growing power of contemporary authoritarian forms, highlighting how the latter operates through sociopolitical domains and beyond-human natures. We argue for a clear and conscious strategy of speaking power to post-truth, to enable two things. The first is to come to terms with an internal paradox of addressing those seeking to obfuscate or deny environmental degradation and social injustice, while retaining political
ecology’s own historical critique of the privileged role of Western science and expert knowledge in determining dominant forms of environmental governance. This involves understanding post-truth, and its twin pillars of alternative facts and fake news, as operating politically by those regimes looking to shore up power, rather than as embodying a coherent mode of ontological reasoning regarding the nature of reality. Second, we differentiate post-truth from analyses affirming diversity in both knowledge and reality (i.e., epistemology and ontology, respectively) regarding the drivers of environmental change. This enables a critical confrontation of contemporary authoritarianism and still allows for a relevant and accessible political ecology that engages with marginalized populations likely to suffer most from the proliferation of post-truth politics.
The Routledge companion to cycling [ed. G. Norcliffe], 2021
The "sociality" of cycling has broader ramifications for mobility transitions. While infrastructu... more The "sociality" of cycling has broader ramifications for mobility transitions. While infrastructure engineering and other planning efforts may "attract" more cyclists to the roads, we introduce key aspects of the culture of bicycle mobility, which is boosted by social movements like Critical Mass, and organizations including community bike workshops. They respond to particular social needs across race, class and gender, but also create broader "demand" for cycling, through socialization, enlisting new cyclists, lobbying, and bike-friendly actions. The "bikespace", drawing on Lefebvre, forms the "software" that complements, and builds, a cycling culture.
Report of work carried out as one of the first visiting research fellows at the Brussels Centre f... more Report of work carried out as one of the first visiting research fellows at the Brussels Centre for Urban Studies, VUB, Brussels in 2015. An investigation into Brussels and Berlin community bicycle workshops as contributors to community economies and sustainable urban transport.
Journal of Political Ecology, 2020
In the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, conflict and difference between Indigenous Kana... more In the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, conflict and difference between Indigenous Kanak people and European settlers has existed at least since the 1850s. We interrogate the geopolitical ecology of these islands, which is deeply wedded to natural resource extraction, and is instrumentalized in political debate, power struggles, conflict, and the mining sector. Territoriality, including changes to political borders and access to land, has promoted the interests of the key actors in shaping the future of the islands. Violence in the 1980s was followed by the Matignon Accords (1988) and three provinces were established (North, South, Loyalty Islands). The South Province is governed by a party loyal to France, and the others are in the hands of the Indigenous Kanak independence movement seeking full decolonization and independence. The strengthened regional autonomy that emerged from the creation of provinces has permitted the Kanak-dominated ones to control certain political competencies as well as to guide economic development much more strongly than in other settler states, notably through a large nickel mining project in the North Province. Provincialization has not diminished ethnic divisions as French interests hoped, as signaled by voting in the close-run but unsuccessful 2018 referendum on independence from France. We explore the ironies of these efforts at territorial reordering , which are layered on significant spatial and racial disparities. Re-bordering has enabled resurgence of Kanak power in ways unanticipated by the architects of the Accords, but without a guarantee of eventual success.
There are several lessons emerging from a political ecological analysis of the 2019/2020 bushfire... more There are several lessons emerging from a political ecological analysis of the 2019/2020 bushfire disaster.
Tabula Rasa 31: 289-323. , 2019
El Pacífico colombiano ha sido imaginado vacío en términos sociales y lleno de recursos naturales... more El Pacífico colombiano ha sido imaginado vacío en términos sociales y lleno de recursos naturales y biodiversidad. Estos imaginarios han permitido la creación de fronteras de control que históricamente han despojado a afrodescendientes e indígenas de sus territorios ancestrales. Este artículo examina la territorialización en los océanos, tomando como referencia el Golfo de Tribugá. Muestra como comunidades afrodescendientes y actores no estatales se ven obligados a usar el lenguaje de recursos, en vez del de arraigo socio-cultural, para negociar los procesos de territorialización marinos.
Informadas por sus epistemologías acuáticas, las comunidades osteras reclaman su autoridad sobre el mar a través de la creación de un área marina protegida. Usan instrumentos del estado para asegurar el acceso y control local, subvirtiendo el marco jurídico del mar como
bien público de acceso abierto. El área protegida representa un lugar de resistencia que irónicamente somete a las comunidades a tecnologías disciplinarias de conservación. Palabras clave: afrodescendientes, Colombia, conservación, geografías del mar, áreas marinas protegidas, territorio
Nordia Geographical Publications , 2019
Academic critique drives most political ecology scholarship. An engaged and affirmative political... more Academic critique drives most political ecology scholarship. An engaged and affirmative political ecology, however, is practiced in scholarly, everyday and activist communities. Many academic political ecologists, including some founding figures like Piers Blaikie, take an interest in the '‘relevance'’ of their work and wish to remain '‘engaged'’ with the communities and policy actors that their research identifies as vital for positive social and environmental change. A biographical approach provides clues to what makes '‘affirmative'’ scholarship important and viable. Research engagement, and particularly activism, is desirable but often deemed to be nonconformist by the research culture of Western research universities and organisations. I argue for a more affirmative political ecology, illustrated with examples from research work in an international development project in West Africa. The use of participatory research techniques can reveal injustices, but in this case it was less successful at redressing power imbalances. The more general conclusion is that strong engagement can be effective and satisfying. As environmental problems and injustices worsen, it is essential.
Journal of Land Use Science, 2018
This brief note identifies the consequences of land acquisitions in peri-urban spaces around the ... more This brief note identifies the consequences of land acquisitions in peri-urban spaces around the cities of Bamako and Ségou, Mali. This contributes to debates surrounding the rapid expansion of African cities faced with rapid rural-urban migration and new arrivals settling in precarious conditions. West Africa has a long history of urbanisation, in some cases accompanied by highly productive and intensified land use. It is, therefore, vitally important to question whether formal property rights within peri-urban spaces are a viable option to secure rights for those most marginal and/or recently disposed of their rural land holdings. What are some alternative formalisation mechanisms, which avoid the hazards associated with formal titling, and address the precarious tenure conditions in peri-urban zones?
The AAG Review of Books, 2019
These two books were a pleasure to read. They tackle the history of ideas about regions deemed “m... more These two books were a pleasure to read. They tackle the history of ideas about regions deemed “marginal,” and the ideas and practices that have kept them so. Sayre and Davis deal, respectively, with misperceptions held about the marginal and arid U.S. West, and global arid lands (with a focus on the Sahara and its fringes).
CIC Cuadernos de Información y Comunicación, 2018
Este conjunto de artículos discute e investiga las condiciones y situación de las Universidades P... more Este conjunto de artículos discute e investiga las condiciones y situación de las Universidades Públicas de 14 países de todo el globo, por parte de importantes académicos de cada país. Analiza la productivización y mercantilización de la universidad pública en una era de recortes y falta de apoyo político e institucional. Discute la pérdida de criterios y horizontes de valoración de los académicos y sus escuelas y universidades, su sometimiento al sistema de evaluación cuantométrico que es inadecuado e injusto, y propone la necesidad de organizar una acción conjunta global de los académicos conscientes de esta pérdida de criterios para defender y situar en su puesto la enseñanza superior universitaria y su función vital en el desarrollo social.
Revista Internacional de Educación para la Justicia Social, 2018
Masters degrees that offer a broad understanding of environmental issues have been taught in univ... more Masters degrees that offer a broad understanding of environmental issues have been taught in universities since the 1960s. As the problems, they address have increased in severity and become global in scale and reach, higher education offerings have flourished accordingly. Today, environmental Masters degrees offer a variety of specializations, are often embedded within university environmental institutes or centers, and they lead thousands of students into environmental careers, as activists, advocates, policymakers, technicians, resource managers, and researchers. They provide an opportunity to understand and critically debate mainstream concepts, like sustainability, the green economy, ecological resilience, environmental services, and good governance. The severity of environmental crises also requires a more radical curriculum: critiques of economic growth (including green growth), social and environmental justice, and the political ecology of unequal access to resources. In light of these complex demands and growing opportunities for environmental programs to address social and environmental justice, we discuss a unique and successful model for interdisciplinary environmental Masters teaching at a large Australian university that has juggled promotion of justice in its program along with meeting financial targets imposed by the neoliberal regime prevalent in Australia's underfunded higher education sector. The program has a distinctive approach to interdisciplinary learning, permitting a very wide range of student choice, and unified teaching efforts across ten Faculties. This has required agile administration, and strong defense of an unusual approach to the management of environmental pedagogy. The Master of Environment program illustrates how taught postgraduate programs can offer an alternative space for personal, institutional and environmental commitment to social and environmental justice.
Keywords: Training; Australia; Environmental education; Social justice; Higher education.
There have been a range of protests against the high journal subscription costs, and author proce... more There have been a range of protests against the high journal subscription costs, and author processing charges (APCs) levied for publishing in the more prestigious and commercially run journals that are favoured by geographers. But open protests across the sector like the ‘Academic Spring’ of 2012, and challenges to commercial copyright agreements, have been fragmented and less than successful. I renew the argument for ‘socially just’ publishing in geography. For geographers this is not limited to choosing alternative publication venues. It also involves a considerable effort by senior faculty members that are assessing hiring and promotion cases, to read and assess scholarship independently of its place of publication, and to reward the efforts of colleagues that offer their work as a public good. Criteria other than the citation index and prestige of a journal need to be foregrounded. Geographers can also be publishers, and I offer my experience editing the free online Journal of Political Ecology.
In a provocative article published in 'Minerva' in 2015, Halffman and Radder discuss the Kafkaesq... more In a provocative article published in 'Minerva' in 2015, Halffman and Radder discuss the Kafkaesque worlds that academics in the Netherlands now find themselves in, as an underfunded university sector predates upon itself and its workforce (2015, p. 165-166). Their Academic Manifesto observes that Dutch tertiary institutions have become obsessively focused on ‘accountability’ and pursue neoliberal-style imperatives [forced upon them] of ‘efficiency and excellence’. They paint a portrait of academics under siege, untrusted, and constantly micro-managed. The pursuit of so-called efficiency has involved accountability systems that are themselves wasteful, driving seemingly endless institutional restructuring. Moreover, institutions have become obsessed with star-performers in research, driven by competitive targets that undergird global rankings. Metrics – publication outputs, journal quality, citations, impact and grant revenue – produce a culture of competition and sometimes, mercenary behaviours, on the part of academics and managers. While there may be beacons of light, they are heavily shielded in the article, which makes for depressing reading. Their provocation prompts two questions, to which we will try to respond through our own experiences and review of Australia's adoption of,and resistance to, higher education reform:
1.How does Australia compare?
2.What can Australian universities and their staff do?
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Books by Simon Batterbury
Articles and chapters by Simon Batterbury
ecology’s own historical critique of the privileged role of Western science and expert knowledge in determining dominant forms of environmental governance. This involves understanding post-truth, and its twin pillars of alternative facts and fake news, as operating politically by those regimes looking to shore up power, rather than as embodying a coherent mode of ontological reasoning regarding the nature of reality. Second, we differentiate post-truth from analyses affirming diversity in both knowledge and reality (i.e., epistemology and ontology, respectively) regarding the drivers of environmental change. This enables a critical confrontation of contemporary authoritarianism and still allows for a relevant and accessible political ecology that engages with marginalized populations likely to suffer most from the proliferation of post-truth politics.
Informadas por sus epistemologías acuáticas, las comunidades osteras reclaman su autoridad sobre el mar a través de la creación de un área marina protegida. Usan instrumentos del estado para asegurar el acceso y control local, subvirtiendo el marco jurídico del mar como
bien público de acceso abierto. El área protegida representa un lugar de resistencia que irónicamente somete a las comunidades a tecnologías disciplinarias de conservación. Palabras clave: afrodescendientes, Colombia, conservación, geografías del mar, áreas marinas protegidas, territorio
Keywords: Training; Australia; Environmental education; Social justice; Higher education.
1.How does Australia compare?
2.What can Australian universities and their staff do?