The 2017 RGS-IBG Annual International Conference Chair, Sarah Radcliffe, University of Cambridge, has chosen the theme ‘Decolonising geographical knowledges: opening geography out to the world’.

A series of articles that directly engage with the conference theme have been published in the RGS-IBG journals Transactions and Area. The following papers are free to access until August 2018.

Transactions Themed Intervention, Decolonising Geographical Knowledges. Guest edited by Sarah A Radcliffe

Decolonising geographical knowledges  by Sarah A Radcliffe (University of Cambridge) and RGS-IBG Conference Chair.

Mainstreaming geography’s decolonial imperative by Tariq Jazeel  (UCL)

From where we stand: unsettling geographical knowledges in the classroom by Michelle Daigle and Juanita Sundberg (The University of British Columbia)

Decolonial theory in a time of the re-colonisation of UK research by Patricia Noxolo (University of Birmingham)

Decolonialism by Stephen Legg (University of Nottingham)

Area Special Section, Decolonising Geographical Knowledge in a Colonised and Re-colonising Postcolonial World. Guest edited by Patricia Noxolo

Introduction: Decolonising geographical knowledge in a colonised and re-colonising postcolonial world by Patricia Noxolo (University of Birmingham)

Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) student and staff in contemporary British Geography by Vandana Desai (Royal Holloway University of London)

A day in the life of a Geographer: ‘lone’, black, female by Divya P Tolia-Kelly (Durham University)

Decolonising geographical knowledges: the incommensurable, the university and democracy by Andrew Baldwin (Durham University)

‘Free, decolonised education’: a lesson from the South African student struggle by Adam Elliott-Cooper (King’s College London)

Commentary: The 2017 RGS-IBG chair’s theme: decolonising geographical knowledges, or reproducing coloniality? By James Esson (Loughborough University), Patricia Noxolo (University of Birmingham), Richard Baxter (Queen Mary University of London), Patricia Daley (University of Oxford), and Margaret Byron (University of Leicester)

By Jillian Smith, University of Birmingham

Photo Credit: Peter Essick

The phrase “ethical oil” went mainstream in Canada in 2010 after a national bestseller of the same name.  The book, written by Ezra Levant, a right-wing political activist and lawyer, gave this simplified primer: Canada is a friendly, secure petro state; Saudi Arabia and OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) are conflicted and undemocratic.  In other words, the opinion is that Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and climate change aside, Canada’s oil is “ethical”.  Opinions aside, the International Energy Agency – a Parisian-based intergovernmental organization – states that depending on the region, Canadian oil is 5-10 per cent more GHG intensive than U.S. conventional fuel from extraction to combustion (well-to-wheel) (IEA, 2011).  Bradshaw (2010) recognises that globalisation, climate change, and energy security are intricately linked; he strives to explain why geography complicates the interaction of climate change and energy security. Bradshaw dubs this the ‘global dilemma’.  While the momentum of Levant and his ‘ethical oil’ campaign may have become distant memories, given the scope of climate change and energy security, it is worth reflecting on why it was paradoxical to rebrand Canadian oil, or any oil, as “ethical” in the first place.

Oil sands development constitutes Canada’s fastest growing source of CO₂ because of the large amount of energy required to extract bitumen from sand.  Additionally, after accounting for the natural gas that powers the process of converting bitumen to crude and the removal of Boreal forest (a large carbon storehouse), Canadian tar sands oil can emit up to three times more GHG’s than conventional oil (Hatch and Price, 2008).  Despite plans to reduce emissions per barrel, with development scheduled to proceed, overall emissions will inevitably rise and the global issue of climate change could weigh heavily on Canada’s shoulders.

In March of 2017, President Trump gave an enthusiastic green light to the “incredible” Keystone pipeline.  This 1400 kilometre mile pipeline will transport up to 830,000 barrels of Canadian crude to Texas.  The State department said it considered foreign policy and energy security in making the approval.  This aligns with Levant’s argument that the world has a choice: embrace Canada’s peaceful, democratic oil or continue its dependence on OPEC’s dictatorship, conflict oil.  Levant, however, went further to suggest that the question of morality must encompass human rights issues independent of environmental costs.  In his mind, reliance on oil from dictatorships to “save modestly on greenhouse gases” was a misguided notion.  Many Americans and Canadians, however, would beg to differ – environmental costs do matter.

Levant, however, is no stranger to controversy and libel.  A former tobacco lobbyist, he is adept at weaving intricate webs.  His favourite spin in the oil debate was lambasting Saudi oil. Certainly a healthy dose of skeptisim and a critical eye is healthy in any society, yet when skeptics are given the same airtime as legitimate researchers, facts become blurred.

With Canada’s oil being celebrated and extolled, while simultaneously being criticized and decried, it is not surprising that Canadians can be confused about the dizzying array of incongruous oil sands reports.  As such, decisions and reformations must first be based on sound scientific assessments of the facts.  Consequently, the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) – Canada’s most prominent group of scholars and scientists, experts in their fields whom are peer-elected to receive this highest academic accolade and fellowship – published a peer-reviewed, comprehensive, 437-page evidence-based study of the oil sands in late 2010.

The report, while not as blasphemous as environmentalists would have liked, is certainly proof that Canada’s oil needs more than a rebranding makeover to be considered “ethical”.  The report concludes that “carbon capture and storage (CCS) does not appear to be a feasible option” and that increasing GHG emissions will create a major challenge for Canada to meet international commitments for overall emission reductions (Gosselin et al., 2010).

Fossil fuels, though intrinsically unsustainable, are the crown jewel of Canada’s multi-billion dollar energy sector.  But virtuous, ethical societies must aim to ultimately reduce oil consumption and pave the way for cleaner, renewable energy developments around the globe.  Additionally, ethical societies must conscientiously manage the resources they are entrusted with and devise coherent energy policies.  To date, North America lags behind the rest of the world in terms of energy efficiency and innovation.  Canada, with its enhanced regulatory oversight, can choose to perform ethically by embracing intergenerational thinking of a world beyond mere decades of oil.  Could some of Canada’s oil proceeds help pave the way toward a more sustainable future?  Regardless, it seems the words “ethical” and “oil”, though a clever marketing pitch, are not to be metaphorically mixed in the long-term interests of the planet or its people.

References

 Bradshaw, M. J. (2010). Global energy dilemmas: a geographical perspective. The Geographical Journal, 176(4), 275-290.

 Gosselin, P., Hrudey, S. E., Naeth, M. A., Plourde, A., Therrien, R., Van Der Kraak, G., et al. (2010, December). Environmental and Health Impacts of Canada’s Oil Sands Industry. Retrieved September 21, 2016, from The Royal Society of Canada: http://www.rsc.ca/documents/RSCreportcompletesecured9Mb_Mar28_11_000.pdf

 Hatch, C., & Price, M. (2008). Canada’s Toxic Tar Sands: The Most Destructive Project on Earth. Toronto: Environmental Defence of Canada.

 IEA. (2011, April 13). Oil in the global energy mix: Climate policies can drive an early peak in oil demand. Retrieved July 2, 2017, from International Energy Agency: http://www.iea.org

 Levant, E. (2010). Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oil Sands. Toronto: McLelland & Stewart Ltd.

By Simon Dixon, University of Birmingham, UK

Attributions A) Used with permission of author, appears in Hartland A, Fairchild I J, Lead J R, Dominguez-Villar D, Baker A, Gunn J, Baalousha M and Ju-Nam Y, 2010, The dripwaters and speleothems of Poole’s Cavern: a review of recent and ongoing research Cave and Karst Science 36 37–46, B) Bradley Garrett, used with permission, C) CC BY 3.0, User Σ64 on Wikimedia commons, D) Photo by Aheneen for State of California (public domain)

Sinkholes regularly appear in city streets around the world, but despite often widespread media interest, there is almost no academic research into sinkholes in urban environments. This is symptomatic of a wider lack of urban-based earth surface research. The world is becoming increasingly urbanised, with the majority of people already living in cities and the proportion expected to rise to 66% by 2050. We are undeniably living in the age of humankind, the “Anthropocene”, but we are still coming to terms with what this means for the planet and for ourselves. Researchers and policy makers have begun to consider the social and environmental impacts of our increased urbanisation. There are also efforts to understand the impact human activity is having on the surface of the earth more broadly – for example, through the creation of anthropogenic landforms like open-cast mines, and by changing erosion processes in rivers through human activity. However, so far there has been little attention paid to the way earth surface processes are slowly altering and morphing the fabric of our cities to create new, startling and potentially dangerous features.

In our new Area paper, we argue, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that in neglecting to consider how earth surface processes are changing the urban fabric we risk repeating the fate of Ozymandias, the great king in the Shelley poem of the same name. In the poem the famous lines: “look on my works ye mighty and despair” are inscribed on the plinth of a ruined and eroded statue. One way of interpreting this is the king did not consider whether time and earth surface processes would degrade the monuments he constructed. We argue that without considering the forces acting within our cities we cannot understand the way they will change, decay and potentially fall into ruin in the future.

There are several interesting ways we have identified earth surface processes working on our cities, including the development of limestone cavern-type formations in old tunnels running under cities, formed from dissolved concrete. A key component in how earth surface processes develop in a city is the degree of maintenance. Social pressures and conditions which mean parts of a city are neglected or abandoned could allow these physical processes to proceed unchecked. Indeed places such as Detroit, Chernobyl and Hashima Island provide examples of hybrid urban landforms created by decay and weathering.

One important example of hybrid urban landforms is that of urban sinkholes, which although a natural phenomenon, occur in different ways in the urban environment. The formation processes for sinkholes in areas of limestone bed rock are well-documented and understood, and they can be classified partly according to the layer of rock and soil above the limestone. However, in urban environments we have created a very unusual situation where there is a hard, impermeable “rock” (tarmac/asphalt/concrete) sitting on top of a soft layer (soil or “made earth”). Flowing or percolating water can remove the soil, creating a void under the tarmac, which eventually develops into a sinkhole. It is possible this process played a role in the collapse of the Oroville Dam spillway in February 2017, with flowing water removing material under the spillway. The combination of a hard impermeable layer over a soft, easily-erodible layer only really occurs in nature during some volcanic eruptions where pumice is overlain by lava. We therefore have no natural comparisons for how soil piping sinkholes form in cities. Without specifically researching these it is hard to design ways to prevent them from occurring, or devise early warning systems.

Once we begin to think of the whole urban fabric as a human created “landform”, and the buildings, and infrastructure within it as like Anthropocene rock formations or outcrops, multiple research avenues open up. Understanding the processes happening within our cities would obviously help civil engineers and municipal authorities, but potentially also help archaeologists studying ancient ruined cities to interpret the features they find. We argue this exciting new frontier in earth science is fundamentally interdisciplinary, as it is not possible to disentangle the social drivers from the physical processes. It is our hope that researchers will start to view the urban environment in a slightly different way and work to together to explore some of the unknown earth surface processes acting in our cities.

About the author: Simon Dixon is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham.  He is currently working a NERC “MegaScours” project looking at river confluences in the world’s largest rivers.

 Boxall B 2017 Water under Oroville spillway probably caused February collapse, state consultants say The LA Times http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-oroville-spillway-20170424-story.html

 Dixon, S. J., Viles, H. A. and Garrett, B. L. (2017), Ozymandias in the Anthropocene: the city as an emerging landform. Area. doi:10.1111/area.12358

 Mitchell K 2017 Denver Uber driver ignores warning, plunges car into sink hole The Denver Post May 27 2017 http://www.denverpost.com/2017/05/26/uber-drives-into-sinkhole/

 Practical Engineering ‘How do sinkholes form?’ http://practical.engineering/blog/2017/6/28/how-do-sinkholes-form

 Roxburgh H 2017 Endless cities: will China’s new urbanisation just mean more sprawl? The Guardian 5 May 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/may/05/megaregions-endless-china-urbanisation-sprawl-xiongan-jingjinji