Periodic Reporting for period 2 - COSMOVIS (Cosmological Visionaries: Shamans, Scientists, and Climate Change at the Ethnic Borderlands of China and Russia)
Período documentado: 2022-03-01 hasta 2023-08-31
A cosmological vision is built upon culturally specific and religious ways of knowing or being in the world, metaphysical reflections on the universe, and often certain astronomical elements – all of which indigenous people in Southwest China, Siberia, and elsewhere tend to combine with practical environmental knowledge about their own lands that has been built up over generations. Climate change in the research sites of both project teams is currently accelerating due to past and present deforestation, which feeds global market demands for wood, paper, and other forest-derived resources even as it encourages forest fires and, in Siberia, permafrost melt that is releasing carbon dioxide, methane, and mercury at rates faster than carbon capture technologies of the future are predicted to be able to manage. Novel cosmological visions that take on board indigenous environmental knowledge and animistic sensibilities of how to relate to humans, animals, plants, things, forces of nature, spirits, and sometimes even ancestors, transcendent gods, robots, or science itself are needed to uncover innovative ways of coping with climate change. Lessons gathered now from the temperate highlands and uplands of Southwest China and the boreal mountains of the Siberian Arctic will provide insights, and potentially even a roadmap, for how societies across the globe might best navigate the vicissitudes of climate change.