21st-Century Climate Imaginaries: Global Activism, Ecopoetry and the Arts of Environmental Justice

Adopting a comparative approach, this book argues that many iconic 21st -century metaphors and images used to communicate climate change and ecological crisis actually conceal the destructive foundations of Anthropocene life.

Climate crisis images and narratives produced by the global north have long structured the way environmental change is understood and managed. This open access book examines how apocalyptic ’climate memes’ - which are familiar from dominant environmental media, eco-art and science communication - risk invisibilising ecological and social injustices on the ground and perpetuating colonizing and violent planetary responses.

The book showcases alternative climate imaginaries emerging from global south, Indigenous-led and anti-colonial movements. Through five case studies in Chile, Greenland, the Pacific Islands, the UK, and Canada, it introduces key contemporary artists, activists and scholars whose creative interventions challenge colonial, extractive, and late capitalist thinking. Among them are the artistic and filmic collaborations, land defence projects, performances and installations of activist artists including Craig Santos Perez, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner and Rita Wong. The book advocates for collaborative, transdisciplinary, and grassroots action in reconfiguring ecological relations, shifting from technocratic solutions to culturally and contextually grounded practices.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The University of Exeter.

Dr Natalie Pollard is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at the University of Exeter, UK.