Environmental performativity: How natures are made

Area of Science:

• Environmental governance
• Political ecology
• Science and technology studies

Background:

• Nature is actively shaped by management, measurement, regulation, subsidy, and commodification.
• Knowledge production transforms dynamic environments into governable objects.
• Environmental management schemes create value by materializing specific ecologies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To offer a conceptual vocabulary for understanding the performances and processes driving the "making" of nature under governance.
• To introduce and define the framework of environmental performativity.
• To analyze how objects, environments, and regimes are constructed through governance.

Main Methods:

• Conceptual analysis and synthesis of literature on performativity in environmental governance.
• Development of a framework termed "environmental performativity."
• Identification of material, semiotic, ideological, and calculative forces in governance interventions.

Main Results:

• Environmental performativity explains how objects, environments, and regimes are produced through governance.
• The framework disambiguates uses of "performativity" in environmental literature.
• Human activities significantly shape the environment, while acknowledging nonhuman agency.

Conclusions:

• Environmental governance involves complex performative processes with material and ideological dimensions.
• Reflexive performativity offers political opportunities for more just and sustainable environmental futures.
• Understanding these makings is crucial for designing effective and equitable environmental interventions.