We want to explore how Western approaches to mapping as a highly intellectualized, disembodied, abstract and flat way of apprehending Land allows appropriation, colonization and commodification to have contributed to the growing crises, and we ask how cartographic thought and practice might be transformed to become plural, nonlinear, and alive.
How can the law of Naturachy also become apparent in these new cartographic imaginations and experiences?
Project description
Believing that strong protection for global biodiversity requires renewed relationships and imaginaries of European territories, this project challenges assumptions of what spatial representation is or can be, and aims at leading and changing the structure of how we think about European territory and landscape. The proposal recognizes that under the EU Biodiversity Strategy and EU Restoration Law, each member state will have to produce new maps referencing the areas to be restored, including within their Natura 2000 sites.
The work will draw special interest in the involvement of the public within these processes and proposes a Naturarchy Mapping Framework. This will be a counter-cartography, a polyvocal and multidimensional cartographic method that includes both material and immaterial culture, a citizenry of people and place, and is non-linear, multimedial, and breaks with the tradition of positivist law, instead embracing more-than-human legal plurality.
Meet the Team
Jol Thoms - artist, sound designer, and researcher, Goldsmiths
Lucia Iglesias-Blanco - Policy officer, Nature conservation unit, DG Environment. EU Commission
Michele (Graziano) Ceddia - Senior Research Scientist, Sustainability Governance Impact Area, JRC. EU Commission
Céline Charveriat - Independent Environmentalist and Educator, Public Policy Sector.
Bruno Combal - Policy officer, Nature conservation unit, DG Environment. EU Commission
Grégoire Dubois - Project Leader for Global Conservation and Development, JRC. EU Commission
Saskia Vermeylen - Socio-Legal Property Scholar and Educator, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
Falko Buschke - Africa Knowledge Platform, JRC. EU Commission