Link to Session Platform

Chairs(s):

Brittany Meche, Williams College

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Description:

Deserts are only getting hotter. The Sixth Assessment Report issued this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that arid and semi-arid environments are expected to experience some of the highest increases in mean temperatures over the next several decades (IPCC 2021). A dramatic drought in the American West is highlighting how climate change is reshaping arid spaces. In southern Africa, a "climate change-induced famine" and increased aridity in Madagascar offer a stark example of the devastating and disproportionate impacts of environmental change for communities in the Global South (Harding 2021). Elsewhere, deserts are being developed as extractive frontiers that will help people contend with coming environmental crises, as demand for renewable energy storage drives lithium mining in deserts (Sanchez-Lopez 2019). In addition, the formal end of the US war in Afghanistan and the refractions of numerous conflicts in arid landscapes further demonstrates how these environments continue to serve as contested sites of imperial power (Davis 2016; Gregory 2016; Meché 2019). Such developments signal the importance of reflecting on the place of arid environments in the contemporary moment. Informed by a range of critical work interrogating the ways that deserts have long been understood as extractive frontiers (Curley 2021; Kuletz 1998), degraded wastelands (Davis and Burke 2011; Voyles 2015), technological dreamscapes (George 1979; Sizek 2021; Weizman and Sheikh 2015), and imperial playgrounds (Koch 2020; Solnit 1999), this panel will explore deserts as dynamic social, political, economic, and ecological worlds.

Non-Presenting Participants Agenda