Considering that there is a vast emerging political science literature on this concept and associated ones, like the 'environmental state', 'greening the state' and ecopolitics, this is rather puzzling . 

Here is the Anthropocene breakdown :

Nations and Nationalism: 0 mentions 

Nationalism and Ethnic Politics: 0 mentions 

Ethnopolitics: 0 mentions

Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism: 0 mentions

Ethnicities: 0 mentions   

Given the fact that many ultranationalists are, or have been, climate change deniers, I find this lack of attention within the nationalism studies scholarship quite astonishing. 

We may simply pause and consider how the new chronology can be antithetical to Ernest Gellner's stress on the modernity-nationalism linkage and its  potential for a paradigm shift in the Kuhnian tradition. 

It is therefore a topic which deserves urgent attention.  

Best wishes, 

Daniele Conversi

Finally I have started a quite lively debate on this H-Net link:

https://networks.h-net.org/node/3911/discussions/4386325/question-month-august

I look forward to reading this discussion... looks great...

Interesting! Thanks Daniele!

Hello Amanda,

Even though I haven't read the article yet, I identified a couple of conceptual issues in your comments.

First, there is a sharp distinction between environmentalism (in itself to be distinguished from ecologism) and climate change. The first is a political movement accompanied by its own ideology, the latter is a fact which not only finds scientists in agreement, but whose rapidly evolving developments are projecting an increasingly gloomy scenario on all living beings. It is true that ecologism often proposes alternative socioeconomic paths through its own ideological lens, advancing solutions to address the problem, an existential problem that would have never occurred, they claim, if their solutions and proposals would have been seriously taken into account.

Secondly, populism and ecologism seem to be barely compatible, the former being adopted by shorttermist demagogues, the latter by those with a long term vision.

Quite another thing is the superficial environmental embrace of the far right, which has been part of nationalist discourses since at least the age of romanticism.

Will take a look soon,

Daniele

Hello Amanda,

One thing needs to be clarified:

Most, if not all, prototypical far right political movements, such as Nazism and fascism, have been, and still are, highly technocratic, based on a sense of competitive nationalism, an obsession for speed, masculinity, progress, demographic empowerment and so on --the prevailing zeitgeist in a world of competitive nation-states.

More on this issue in this article on modernism and nationalism: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254307888_Modernism_and_nationalism

Within fascism, green issues have always been lateral or highly channelled within specific dimensions: Mussolini, for instance, agreed with the king of Italy to create the first national park in Italy in 1922 and his regime subsequently instituted three more National Parks. Likewise, museums of popular culture and folklore also expanded -but neither Hitler nor Mussolini cared much about the very volk (and its culture) they claimed to protect.

Perhaps part of the problem is that students of populism do not communicate or cross-fertilise with contiguous disciplines such as nationalism studies, fascism studies, genocide studies and other sub-disciplines?

To explore relations between nationalism and environmental issues effectively, it is important not to equate 'nationalism' with its extreme manifestations - right-wing or not. It is also important to avoid the Eurocentric bias that dominates debates about relations between modernisms and nationalisms. For example, environmental issues relate to anti-colonial nationalist movements, especially regarding relations between the colonial power, anti-colonial challengers and post-colonial leaders,. A key example would be over oil.So I hope this debate will go beyond Europe and beyond extreme manifestations.

Thanks a lot for your most interesting comments.

Coincidentally, I was trying to study precisely this contrast and came up with an interesting distinction.

As previously discussed, nationalism can be appropriated by both pro-environmentalist and anti-environmentalist groups and interests.

In the Anthropocene, however, we no longer have a simple ecology vs environmentalism opposition, as both movements and their respective scientific approaches are clearly insufficient to tackle the much broader and totalising threat of climate change.

Currently, most instances of anti-environmental nationalism can be identified as 'resource nationalism', such as in Donald Trump's USA, Modi's India, Poland's rightwing populists and so on --including the extreme case of Bolsonaro's Brazil. This form of nationalism has been well identified in political and human geography, but has not yet been incorporated in nationalism studies. It tends to occur at the level of the state, but rarely at the level of autonomous regions . It usually combines extreme forms of far-right nationalism with a taste for neoliberal deregulation.

However, some nationalist parties in stateless nations, particularly in Europe, seem not only to be immune from resource nationalism, but propose an environmentally-focused agenda for advanced social transformations to radically address the issue of climate change.

Amongst a wide range of measures, including the first declaration of a climate emergency, Scotland's SNP has proposed highland "re-wildling" in which heritage and sustainability combine with nationalist aspirations. In Catalonia, the Nationalist Left proposed important environmental laws, interestingly contrasted by the Spanish Supreme Court.

So, here is an interesting contrast, which would need to be explored......

Hello Daniele

please find here a feedback.

(a) I'm only somewhat surprised that the/your search for contributions did not gave much results because substantial analyses of climate change (down scaling from global climate models) at 'nation / ethnic scale' (= sub-regional scale) did came possible only recently; however, nowadays there is a bulk of studies about 'regional climate change' (example: Michel, David. "Iran’s Impending Water Crisis." Water, Security and US Foreign Policy (2017): 168.); possibly most without reference to social / political / cultural co-notations.

Also, to position regional climate change vis-a-vis nationalism seems to be remote for much of the (natural science) climate change research community, and social science research community may lack access, skills & resources to operate the required numerical models. "Australia" might be an exception (but that is a (somewhat remote) continent & nation, and therefore easy); see:

Rickards, L., Neale, T. & Kearnes, M. 2017. Australia’s national climate: learning to adapt? Geographical Research, 55, 469–476, https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-5871.12240.

(b) Anyhow, for enquire in the matters above I would turn to colleagues like Hans von Storch, because of work like: Ma, S., Zhou, T., et al. 2017. Detectable anthropogenic shift toward heavy precipitation over eastern China. Journal of Climate, 30, 1381–1396, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0311.1 and other works on the Baltic region. An other possible source would be M. Kowarsch and O. Edenhofer (see for example: Edenhofer, O. & Kowarsch, M. 2015. Cartography of pathways: A new model for environmental policy assessments. Environmental Science & Policy, 51, 56–64, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2015.03.017; Kowarsch, M. 2016. A Pragmatist Orientation for the Social Sciences in Climate Policy. Cham, Springer International Publishing, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43281-6.) [I would start searching in the bibliographic references of these papers for possible starting pointzs]

(c) Complementary to the above, I'm less surprised that your 'social / political science'-driven search terms do not resonate with natural science publications on climate change. I guess that some intermediate notions are needed because of language barriers. Finally, that natural science publications do not respond to alternative naming for 'Anthropocene' sounds non-surprising as the still pending problem with that notion is its 'trace-ability in the geological record'. Hence, acknowledging the difficulties that this notion poses outside natural sciences, possibly, is the best that one may get (I did the same, see: Article The 'Anthropocene Proposal': A Possible Quandary and A Work-Around

I believe there is a field of debate on this issue, developed over the past three decades from the emergence of globalisation studies.

In my opinion, the underlying aspect of your question is the transnationalization of the social question. Economic globalisation has spawned new forms of wealth production that are founded on new ways of risk production (see Ulrich Beck's "Risk Society"). At the same time, the borders of politics have not changed in the same way and intensity.

What produced an incongruence between the scale of risk production and the scale of responsibility for that risk (see Nancy Fraser's "Scales of Justice"). In sum: a global problem without a global actor able to answer it (for this discussion see my doctoral dissertation where I explore the notion of “disembedding of social protection and social risk” - see chapter 1 and 4 Thesis Desencajes y Bricolajes de la Protección Social: Las Familia...

The economic transformations generated by the last phase of globalisation and its environmental impacts have produced a new form of distributive conflict. If within the context of a Westphalian framework, there was a clear differentiation between the internal and external problems of the nation-state, today this distinction is not that clear. One effect of this is that the issue of international distribution of risks and wealth is internalised to the borders of the nation-state. This is one of the aspects that explains the profound links between climate change, international migration and nationalism. Three topics understood as some of the great social questions of our time.

Thanks Martin,

Yes, I am aware about the continuous output of studies carried out on policies of climate change mitigation and adaptation at the state and regional level. Many more are published on the role of cities and towns, as well as intercity networks .

in this thread, I was rather referring to the lack of studies linking nationalist actors (governments, parties and political mobilisations) with climate change awareness and policies.

Consequently, I argue, we need to look at two contrasting ways nationalism can be mobilised: under a pro-big business denial agenda- as most often has happened; or, possibly, liaising with the broader movement fighting climate change and demanding significant sociopolitical changes .

While the latter is usually seen as cosmopolitan and internationalist, I suppose it may not work if not robustly rooted onto a local reality. In contrast, the former has, so far, been a prerogative of nation-states that appropriate 'resource nationalism' through homogenising populist appeals.

Thanks for the very useful references, they will be essential for further research

Hello Thales,

I wonder whether the term 'risk' might be insufficient. Ulrich Beck's 'Risk Society' concept could be easily used until 10 years ago, perhaps less, but the very notion of risk has now been overcome and bypassed by events: 'Risk' may refer to behaviour anticipating and/or pre-dating the actual fact or event. Since the latest IPCC report (2015), and even more since the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C was released in October 2018 (https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/), it has become unfortunately clear that we have now passed the 'risk threshold' and entered headlong into the danger zone.

Millions are beginning to be seriously affected by climate change to the point that the very survival of the next generation is seriously at stake and will ultimately depend on a strenuous effort of adaptation, Including the possible need for economic de-growth.

Thanks for pointing our attention to Nancy Fraser's "Scales of Justice", which also brings in the ethical dimension.

Thank you so much, that's very useful: scholars of populism and scholars of nationalism rarely communicate among each other, indeed they seem to live in two separate disciplinary words.

I am aware of several studies linking populism -- as well as the far-right --with climate change denial and I am planning to make a good use of them.

But, to get my point across with more precision, nationalism studies have been so far impermeable to such a pressing change of perspective

. One of the reasons is perhaps the hegemony of historians (including sociologists) within nationalism studies, with their characteristic focus on the (recent or distant) past. I wonder whether other factors may also play a role.