Introduction - Environmental Transformations - page 7

human beings have caused to environmental
systems been most acutely felt? 2) Where have the
different processes that appear to be driving
environmental transformation been orchestrated
from? 3) How does what can be done, and what is
being done, to address the human impacts on the
natural environment vary from place to place?
Geographical perspectives on processes of en-
vironmental change are not only important
because they supplement historical accounts of
ecological transformation. They also have the
potential to transform our understanding of the
consequences of environmental change. In part,
developing a geographical perspective on the
Anthropocene means that we have to question
some of the spatial assumptions associated with
modern forms of environmentalism. For some
time now, ecologists and environmentalists have
been engaged in an important, and often hard-
fought battle, to make us think of environmental
systems in globally interconnected terms (see
Botkin, 1992). Thinking about environmental
issues in relation to interconnected global systems
has, however, more than just scientific value. By
invoking the notion of a Spaceship Earth the envir-
onmental movement has attempted to build a
unified political project, based upon the common
ecological fate we all share. There is, however, a
problem with thinking about environmental
problems in global terms alone. In his book Planet
Dialectics , the German sociologist Wolfgang Sachs,
argues that we need to be wary of global perspec-
tives on environmental problems (Sachs, 1999).
Sachs' suspicion of Spaceship Earth-type visions of
the environment stems from his assertion that
although we live in an interconnected biosphere,
we experience very different ecological fates.
The unevenness of our environmental fates is
expressed nowhere more clearly than in the case
of climate change (see Sandberg and Sandberg,
2010). Studies now indicate that the inhabited
areas that are most likely to suffer the worst
impacts of climate change are Africa and South
Asia. These are the geographical areas that will
bear the brunt of flooding, loss of agricultural

productivity and the spread of climate-related
diseases. These, of course, are also some of the
places that are least responsible for the production
of the climate change problem, and are least able
to protect themselves from it its impacts (see
Chapter 9). According to Collier (2010), these
so-called involuntary exposures to climate change
may not only have devastating environmental
affects on vulnerable nations. The uneven impacts
of climate change could also see the opening-up
of new tracts of agricultural development in the
global north, just as they are disappearing in
the global south (Collier, 2010: 3-4). Such a pro-
cess could make it increasingly difficult for what
Collier has termed the 'Bottom Billion' of human-
kind (the 60 countries that have experienced
no substantial growth in incomes over the last 30
years) to attain prosperity in the future. A geo-
graphical perspective on the Anthropocene is, in
part at least, about exploring the ways in which
globally significant forms of environmental change
affect different places and different people in very
different ways.
Environmental geography does, however,
involve more than simply mapping out what De
Blij has termed the 'rough geographies' of global
environmental change. Environmental geography
also involves the study of spatial relations , spatial
locations and spatial systems . Spatial relations take
two interconnected, but distinct, forms. First,
there are the routes taken by trade, transport,
communication and pollution, which form the
geographical means in and through which our
world is joined together. These types of spatialized
relations can be expressed on a map as the lines
between ports or the trajectories taken by air
pollution. Second, and perhaps more import-
antly, there are the myriad political, economic,
social, cultural and environmental processes
that constitute the collection of relations in
and through which specific spaces (such as
cities, regions, neighbourhoods and even nation
states) relate to other places. These types of
spatial relations are more difficult to express
visually as they include financial transactions,