When the top 100 companies account for 71% of global emissions since 1988, going vegetarian or biking to work may seem a little bit pointless. Individual actions have limited positive effects, compared to corporation’s huge negative effects on the environment. How could any single person hope to accomplish real change within a system that has enabled those 100 companies for decades? The answer may be counter-intuitive: working through rather than against corporations.

Working through corporations means buying carbon offsets, engaging in impact investing, or participating in corporate governance. It’s difficult to ascertain whether any activism coming from within the establishment can be effective. Sometimes, tearing down an exploitative system is the best way of creating a more just social norm. But as the climate crisis grows more urgent, options are needed now.

Look at shareholder activism. Investors have always used their leverage to pressure companies into changing policies. Recently, investors have weaponized that leverage to advance environmental objectives. Large savings management companies, companies that invest your savings for you or handle your retirement accounts, have been pressed to divest from fossil fuel investments. This is a good idea both financially by increasing the long-term stability of people’s savings, and environmentally by decreasing the scale of funds funneled into extractive practices.

This strategy is yielding surprising dividends. More and more firms include a sustainability statement or aspect to their business, and young people in particular have pushed for this kind of recognition. Investments in sustainable funds have increased tenfold from 2016 to 2020 due to investor preferences – investors like you and me. Companies are shifting their portfolios and mission statements to appease a more environmentally conscious clientele.

But are these practices leading to meaningful change?  Greenwashing, a misleading marketing tactic, is a concern. Many companies falsely advertise environmentally friendly behavior, tricking consumers into thinking their participation is benefiting the environment. For example, Barclays and Deutsche Bank joined the Net Zero Banking Alliance in 2021 which was supposed to reduce their carbon emissions, but instead, in the same year, they both spent collectively over $10 billion on fossil fuel investments. Clearly, there are some issues with divestment. Key to equipping people with the ability to be the change is finding legitimately effective methods of action. So, what are they?

These developments, questions, and issues all require further consideration. In order to address the climate crisis, activists need to be aware of which options can make the most meaningful changes, like ways to influence those firms who are the emitters. Finding a solution is not the goal, but empowering the populace to enact their own change and enforce their own will is a more feasible objective. For my beat I will be exploring the possibilities of environmental activism within and by corporations.

Green waves of rice rippled in the sticky summer breeze, startling a slender figure to take flight. With a frog wriggling out of its beak, an egret flashed its white feathers, dancing into the cobalt sky. Catching the warm wind under its broad wings, the egret soared over the sea of green towards the distant mountains.

In Japan, traditional agricultural practices have created a unique ecosystem, known as the “satoyama”. “Sato” means “village” and “yama” means “mountain.” In these landscapes, a buffer between the human-managed and natural world, wildlife and ecosystems thrive. Hundreds of years ago, most people did not move around from their local villages, so the conservation of the local natural resources was of utmost importance. People maintained open woodlands specifically used for lumber and firewood, and water resources were kept pristine to ensure a good rice harvest. These human-made landscapes not only kept large animals away from the villages but provided an opportunity for some animals to adapt to the new environment.

Satoyama can be found throughout Japan. The photo above was taken just half an hour by car from Tokyo Disneyland. The unique ecosystems found in the satoyama provide a home for species such as the Japanese tree frog and the golden venus chub, as well as serving as a resting point for egrets and pheasants.

The future of the satoyama is at risk. The farming population is rapidly aging, forcing many of them to abandon their trade and leave their plots untended. Many of the abandoned farmlands are now being developed to build new houses, erasing any chance of them being reutilized. The farmlands that haven’t been developed showed a trend of decreasing biodiversity, sometimes even endangering species into becoming extinct. Traditional farmers are also retiring, taking with them the local farming knowledge vital in managing the satoyama. Younger Japanese are opting to work in urban areas, leading to a labor shortage in rural Japan. The prospect of finding better, high-paying, more sophisticated jobs in metropolitan areas has deterred the youth from staying in the countryside. 

Efforts to save the satoyama are already underway. The Japanese ministry of agriculture created the “satoyama initiative with the support of the United Nations. ” It is trying to promote a sustainable model of agriculture and highlight its benefits to help preserve the traditional Japanese landscape. To encourage younger generations to work in the agricultural institution, many farmers have corporatized their trade so people can join their “company” when they become farmers. 

Japan’s rapidly changing population is bound to push social and political changes that will not only affect the future of the satoyama but Japanese society as a whole. In my beat, I will explore efforts to preserve the satoyama and what it can tell us about the future of Japanese agriculture and society.

A North American grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis)

The Pacific Northwest grizzly bear population has nearly tripled since 1975. How did this happen? We gave them better roads.

Conservation efforts like the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) are behind these roads. Y2Y’s mission is to connect habitats “so people and nature can thrive,” and it’s been a success.

Creating pathways for these bears seems obvious. If bears can’t meet up, how can they reproduce? If bears can’t range over wide areas, how can they find enough food?

While it is getting easier for humans to get around, it is getting harder for animals. Evidently, there is not so much wild land left. Humans occupy more land than any other animal – you can find us on 50-70% of the world’s landscapes.

Addressing our needs often means neglecting those of wildlife. Not only do people destroy habitats, but human infrastructure also keeps animals from moving between areas. This is habitat fragmentation. It decreases the number of animals an ecosystem can hold, isolates them, and decreases their genetic diversity.

These changes undermine ecosystem resilience. Animals like the panda, tiger, and gorilla are in danger of extinction due to habitat fragmentation. In fact, habitat fragmentation is the number one cause of species extinction since 1950, the beginning of the Anthropocene or “the recent age of man.”

Just as we build infrastructure that helps people from Point A to Point B, we need to build corridors helping wildlife do the same.

Wildlife corridors expand access to resources. For many species, a primary cause of extinction is that they can’t access the food, water, or shelter they need to survive. Corridors can provide a pathway to more resources.

Corridors also allow wildlife to migrate. Seasonal migration is a behavior common in many animals, and corridors allow them to fulfill their search for food, water, and mating partners. Wildlife corridors can also increase a population’s genetic diversity by allowing different populations to mate and reproduce.

A wildlife corridor can be small or large, terrestrial or aquatic. It can be an overpass or a tract of land connecting protected areas. It can even be the trees along the road and the flowers that you and your neighbors plant. This is part of their appeal.

In Montana, a purchase of a mere 80 acres will make a huge difference for grizzly bear populations, allowing them to move between two mountain ranges, breed with other populations, and quite importantly, avoid humans. Legislation like the Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act and standards set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change help to fund and popularize wildlife corridors as a solution to habitat fragmentation.

Wildlife not only needs habitat, they need access to it. It’s unlikely that we’ll stop needing buildings and roads anytime soon, so we need a compromise. Wildlife corridors won’t solve all the problems humans have created, but they will improve upon some. We’ve seen the damage climate change has already done to wildlife. Corridors and other innovative strategies will make a significant difference in the decades to come.

The camera plunges all at once into an ocean of gray. Seagulls peck from above as a net cuts through the water, gathering hundreds of fish into a wriggling swarm. Fins, eyes, and tails emerge out of the darkness. The camera angles up to expose a slate-colored sky. Sounds of relentless waves and slopping fish fill the senses. Disoriented, seasick, and disturbed, you emerge from the theater deeply changed.

This is what it feels like to watch the documentary Leviathan (2012.) Filmed off the coast of New Bedford, Massachusetts, it traces the dangerous and traumatic conditions of work on a modern fishing vessel. Leviathan is a new breed of documentary that resists anthropocentric storytelling methods. It shirks movie cameras in favor of GoPro cameras attached to objects like poles, nets, and the ship’s exterior. This approach gives the viewer a uniquely intense vision of life from many perspectives at sea.

In other words, the film is fundamentally detached from any human subject. Viewers describe a sense of “being thrown in with the fish.” It goes against the rules of storytelling, and yet this experimental structure is one way that scholars seek to explore the sensory and experiential realities of being in the world. This kind of scholarship is called “more-than-humanism” and recognizes humans as just one actor in a complex entanglement of many.

For years, Earth’s coasts have become visible sites of extraction and exploitation. From vulnerable krill populations in the Southern Ocean to the violent whaling history of the Bering Strait, the site where the ocean meets the land becomes a vital place of emergence for humans’ relationship to the nonhuman world. 

Historians like Bathsheba Demuth study the lives of both people and their nonhuman counterparts who exist on the front lines of these dramatic changes. People working in ocean fishing industries are often pushed to their limits. Demuth wonders, “Who is doing [this] labor? Working in a slaughterhouse is wretched– and it’s dangerous.” Climate disasters and pandemics have exposed the fact that we’re linked to nonhumans: that their welfare is our welfare. In a global crisis that exposes inequalities, the evidence of change is vividly felt in coastal communities. 

Scholars and writers are honing in on more-than-human stories to better understand the reality of our global predicament, and how we might emerge more connected. Such stories connect history, journalism, and visual mediums to better describe life on the globe’s imperiled coasts. As humans become a geological force, this research will explore how this approach to storytelling can help us better understand issues like climate change–issues which demand a radical shift in both our relationship to, and our understanding of, a more-than-human Earth.