Multispecies justice article wins Environmental Politics Article of the Year
Dr Verlie received the award from the Environmental Politics journal for her article, Climate justice in more-than-human worlds (2022). Environmental Politics is an international, multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal, which receives over 600,000 downloads every year.
The article, part of an Sydney Environment Institute supported multispecies justice collection, was commended for its “intellectual ambition and insight”. The judges noting the “highly significant” impact it will have on debates about climate justice.
Focusing on the devastating effects of the bushfire smoke that covered eastern Australia in the Black Summer of 2019/2020, the article challenges human-centric views of climate justice. Dr Verlie argues that the deadly impact of the smoke, on both humans and non humans, demonstrates the transcorporeal nature of climate change and the need for a multispecies reorientation of climate justice.
The author does a beautiful job of weaving together very complex ideas, literatures, personal anecdotes and evidence to put forward the outline of an important new approach to climate justice.
Dr Verlie, an Honorary Research Fellow of the Sydney Environment Institute and Lecturer at the University of Wollongong, has recently been awarded a prestigious Sydney Horizon Fellowship commencing in 2024. These fellowships are intended to empower the world's best and brightest emerging academics to undertake innovative research that will build our understanding of, and resilience to, some of the key challenges of our time.
Verlie is also a key contributor to SEI’s world leading research on multispecies justice and a research lead on the project, Developing systems and capacities to protect animals in catastrophic fires, which aims to create formal processes for caring for domestic and wild animals in future bushfires and climate events.
Verlie’s work examines the ways climate change is felt, lived and imagined, including experiences of climate anxiety. Her widely cited book, Learning to live-with climate change: From anxiety to transformation (Taylor & Francis, 2021), explores strategies for managing ecological distress, engaging directly with young people’s experiences of the emotional impact of climate change and how this might contribute to social transformation.
Access Dr Blanche Verlie’s award-winning article Climate justice in more-than-human worlds, here. The article is part of a multispecies justice symposium, an output of a Sydney Environment Institute and a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences ‘Future Fix’ grant.
Header image: Matt Palmer on Unsplash.