Grear, Anna and Kwek, Dorothy  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0542-5783
2025.
Editorial: New materialist reflections for the Anthropocene.
Journal of Human Rights and the Environment
16
, pp. 1-14.
10.4337/jhre.2025.00.00
|
Abstract
It is no secret that all planetary life is facing an uncertain future – nor that this is an epoch of looming material emergency. Earth’s surface is striated by unprecedented vectors of dispossession and damage. The planetary life-system is tilting out of balance and multiple ‘thresholds for human and ecosystem health have been exceeded’.1 Plastics transit inside, across, and between multiple bodies – a toxic drift disrupting cellular function and threatening entire ecosystems. Climate change, meanwhile, increasingly overshadows both the present and the future as a ‘hyper object’,2 a ‘super wicked’3 problem. Even the future habitability of Earth is at stake: rainfall patterns are changing, extreme weather events are more frequent and destructive, and surface air temperatures are rising – in some places to life-endangering levels. Droughts are becoming longer. Desertification is escalating. Sea level rise and ocean acidification present further, terrifying threats. A state-shift in Earth’s biosphere is in full view.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Date Type: | Publication |
| Status: | Published |
| Schools: | Schools > Cardiff Law & Politics |
| Publisher: | Edward Elgar Publishing |
| ISSN: | 1759-7188 |
| Last Modified: | 24 Jul 2025 09:00 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/177129 |
Actions (repository staff only)
 |
Edit Item |
Dimensions
Dimensions