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New Books in Environmental Studies

Marshall Poe
New Books in Environmental Studies
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  • Judith Scheele, "Shifting Sands: A Human History of the Sahara" (Basic Books, 2025)
    What comes to mind when we think about the Sahara? Rippling sand dunes, sun-blasted expanses, camel drivers and their caravans perhaps. Or famine, climate change, civil war, desperate migrants stuck in a hostile environment. The Sahara stretches across 3.2 million square miles, hosting several million inhabitants and a corresponding variety of languages, cultures, and livelihoods. But beyond ready-made images of exoticism and squalor, we know surprisingly little about its history and the people who call it home. Shifting Sands is about that other Sahara, not the empty wasteland of the romantic imagination but the vast and highly differentiated space in which Saharan peoples and, increasingly, new arrivals from other parts of Africa live, work, and move. It takes us from the ancient Roman Empire through the bloody colonial era to the geopolitics of the present, questioning easy clichés and exposing fascinating truths along the way. From the geology of the region to the religions, languages, and cultural and political forces that shape and fracture it, this landmark book tells the compelling story of a place that sits at the heart of our world, and whose future holds implications for us all. Judith Scheele is a social anthropologist with a special interest in the Sahara and neighbouring areas. She has carried out long-term fieldwork in Algeria, Mali and Chad. Her research focuses on exchange, mobility, and local and regional interdependence, with the aim of developing a comparative framework that would allow us to analyse the Sahara as a region, in drawing on its own ethnographic and historical categories. Sidney Michelini is a post-doctoral researcher working on Ecology, Climate, and Violence at the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt (PRIF). Book Recomendations: The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge by Diana Davis A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960 by Bruce Hall Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe by Ruben Andersson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  • Rachel Killean and Lauren Dempster, "Green Transitional Justice" (Routledge, 2025)
    In this episode, host Alex Batesmith sits down with Dr Rachel Killean and Dr Lauren Dempster to discuss their groundbreaking new book, Green Transitional Justice (Routledge, 2025). The conversation explores the urgent need to rethink transitional justice (TJ) in light of the environmental crises facing post-conflict societies. Dr Killean and Dr Dempster begin by explaining what drew them to the intersection of TJ and environmental harm. Their book emerges from a shared concern that traditional TJ mechanisms—designed to address human rights violations in post-conflict settings—have largely ignored the profound and lasting harms inflicted on Nature. They deliberately use the term “harms against Nature” to signal a shift away from anthropocentric language and to foreground the agency and value of the natural world. The book is structured around four major critiques of the TJ field. First, the authors argue that knowledge production in TJ is shaped by Eurocentric and neocolonial perspectives, often marginalising Indigenous and feminist epistemologies. They advocate for a more inclusive approach that recognises lived experience, interconnectivity, and the importance of naming environmental harm. Second, they critique the dominance of “anthropocentric legalism” in TJ—where legal frameworks and human rights discourses prioritise human victims and overlook ecological damage. This, they argue, limits the field’s ability to respond meaningfully to environmental destruction. The third critique addresses how TJ mechanisms often leave structural inequalities intact. Concepts like “slow violence” and “crimes of the powerful” help illuminate how environmental harms are ongoing and systemic, not just episodic. The authors call for a shift toward transformative environmental justice, drawing on thinkers like Nancy Fraser to propose a model that includes redistribution, recognition, and representation. Finally, the book challenges the neoliberal underpinnings of TJ, particularly its alignment with economic growth and extractivism. Instead, Killean and Dempster explore alternative worldviews—buen vivir, Ubuntu, and ecological swaraj—that offer more holistic, communitarian approaches to justice. In closing, the authors outline six guiding principles for “greening” TJ, including decolonising justice, recognising non-human victimhood, and rejecting neoliberal inevitability. While acknowledging the challenges of such a radical reimagining, they remain hopeful that the field can evolve to meet the intertwined needs of people and planet. Alex Batesmith is an Associate Professor in Legal Professions in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor. His University of Leeds profile page can be found here Bluesky: @batesmith.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/batesmith/ His recent publications include: ‘“Closeted” Cause Lawyers in Authoritarian Cambodia’ (with Kieran McEvoy) Law and Society Review (2025) 1-33 DOI:10.1017/lsr.2025.29 (open access) “Cambodia and the progressivist ‘imaginary’: The limitations of international(ised) criminal tribunals as mechanisms for implementing human rights” in Louisa Ashley and Nicolette Butler (eds), The Incoherence of Human Rights in International Law: Absence, Emergence and Limitations (Routledge, 2024 ISBN13: 978-1-032638-03-4) “‘Poetic Justice Products’: International Justice, Victim Counter-Aesthetics, and the Spectre of the Show Trial” in Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Rob Knox (eds) Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice (Counterpress, 2024 ISBN 978-1-910761-17-5) "Lawyers who want to make the world a better place – Scheingold and Sarat’s Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering" in D. Newman (ed.) Leading Works on the Legal Profession (Routledge, July 2023), ISBN 978-1-032182-80-3) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  • Kelsea Best, Kayly Ober, Robert A. McLeman, "Migration and Displacement in a Changing Climate" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
    This book provides insight into the impact of climate change on human mobility - including both migration and displacement - by synthesizing key concepts, research, methodology, policy, and emerging issues surrounding the topic. It illuminates the connections between climate change and its implications for voluntary migration, involuntary displacement, and immobility by providing examples from around the world. The chapters use the latest findings from the natural and social sciences to identify key interactions shaping current climate-related migration, displacement, and immobility; predict future changes in those patterns and methods used to model them; summarize key policy and governance instruments available to us to manage the movements of people in a changing climate; and offer directions for future research and opportunities. The book provides insights into how migration responses differ for slow- and rapid-onset climate-related hazards (including sea level rise, drought, flooding, tropical cyclones, wildfires, and others) It contributes to ongoing international discussions on the topic, which in recent years have emerged as key to UNFCCC negotiations and the UN Human Rights tribunal, and the subject of a special white paper commissioned by the White House in 2021 Finally, the book provides the most current synthesis of the state of knowledge in areas of theory, methodology, and policy considerations for climate-related migration and displacement, and will serve as a go-to resource on the subject This interview was conducted by Dr. Hannah Pool whose research focuses on human mobilities. She is a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  • Brent Z. Kaup and Kelly F. Austin, "The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease" (U of California Press, 2025)
    The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Brent Z. Kaup & Dr. Kelly F. Austin is an exploration of how the rising power and profits of Wall Street underpin the contemporary increases in and inadequate responses to vector-borne disease. Over the past fifty years, insects have transmitted infectious diseases to humans with greater frequency and in more unexpected places. To examine this phenomenon, Dr. Kaup and Dr. Austin take readers to the exurban homes of northern Virginia; the burgeoning agricultural outposts of Mato Grosso, Brazil; and the smallholder coffee farms of the Bududa District of eastern Uganda. Through these case studies, the authors illuminate how the broader financialization of society is intimately intertwined with both the creation of landscapes more conducive to vector-borne disease and the failure to prevent and cure such diseases throughout the world. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  • Todd May "Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times" (Crown, 2024)
    These days it’s harder than ever to watch TV, scroll social media, or even just sit at home looking out of the window without contemplating the question at the heart of philosopher Todd May’s Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times (Crown, 2024). Facing climate destruction and the revived specter of nuclear annihilation even as humans continue to cause untold suffering to our fellow creatures on planet Earth, we are forced each day to contemplate whether the world would be better off in our absence. In this timely, fascinating examination, May, a renowned philosopher and advisor to the acclaimed TV show The Good Place, reasons both for and against the continuation of our species, trying to help us understand how and whether, the positive and negative tallies of the human ledger are comparable, and what conclusions we might draw about ourselves and our future from doing so. He discusses the value that only humans can bring to the world and to one another as well as the goods, like art and music, that would be lost were we no longer here. On the other side of the ledger, he walks us through the suffering we cause to nature and the non-human world, seeking to understand whether it’s possible to justify such suffering against our merits and if not, what changes we could make to reduce the harm we cause.  In this moment of rising pessimism about the future, and as many people wonder whether they should bring children into such a dark and difficult world, the questions May tackles in Should We Go Extinct? are hardly theoretical. As he explores the complexities involved with changes such as an end to factory farming, curbing scientific testing of animals, reducing the human population, and seeking to develop empathy with our fellow creatures, May sketches a powerful framework for establishing our responsibilities as a species and gives hope that we might one day find universal agreement that the answer to his title question should be No. Todd May is Instructor of Philosophy, and Nielsen Professor of the Humanities, at Warren Wilson College. He’s taught and written on philosophy for over thirty years, mostly in the areas of ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of life. Kyle Johannsen is Sessional Faculty Member in the Department of Philosophy at Trent University. His most recent authored book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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