This special issue situates Digital Solidarity Economies (DSE) within this broader landscape of resistance and renewal. DSE refers to the diverse practices, technologies, and organisational forms that challenge extractive models of the digital economy by embedding principles of cooperation, mutual aid, and shared ownership into data governance, platforms, and artificial intelligence. In doing so, they extend long-standing traditions of the social and solidarity economy into the digital realm, offering concrete pathways toward democratic and sustainable digital futures.

By bringing together case studies and theoretical reflections from across regions, this special issue on digital solidarity economies responds to an urgent need: to reframe the debate on digital sovereignty and autonomy from below, and to recognise that alternative digital economies are already being built – by collectives that prioritise solidarity over profit. Here, “from below” is inspired by the tradition of British Marxist historians, such as Edward Palmer Thompson (1996), as a way of telling history from the perspective of the working class. In the context of digital solidarity economies, this means the experiences led by workers, grassroots collectives, and diverse networks.

link to open access article..

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article/379/1893/20220255/109324/The-Anthropocene-condition-evolving-through-social

The first principle for understanding the Anthropocene entanglement of social and planetary change is that this disruptive condition did not result from a lack of human capabilities to adapt to, shape or sustain the novel social–ecological systems (SES) that sustain human societies. Rather, it is only because human societies evolved unprecedented sociocultural capabilities and agency in shaping their social and ecological environments over thousands of years that human populations are now thriving at levels beyond those of any other species in Earth's history [7,26,28–33]. For better and for worse, the Anthropocene condition of disruptive planetary change is coupled with unprecedented sociocultural capabilities to shape the SES that have always sustained human societies [7].

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Anthroecology theory offers a different approach. While SES theory is based on understanding systems feedbacks and capacities relating to pathways of development, adaptation and transformation, anthroecology theory aims at understanding long-term evolutionary changes in human capabilities to shape societies and ecosystems and their consequences. In other words, anthroecology theory focuses on explaining the ongoing evolution of transformational possibilities. Evolutionary changes in human cultural traits and their transmission and inheritance are central to anthroecology theory because these are the main determinants of human societal capabilities and because cultural traits, including norms, institutions and technologies, can evolve, reproduce and spread much faster than genetic and other traits [7,60]. Cultural traits are, therefore, increasingly favoured by selection processes under increasingly dynamic environmental conditions, including those produced by many human societies [7,60].

Human sociocultural capabilities to engineer ecosystems, from using fire to clear land, to propagating favoured species, to agriculture, to industrial food systems, have evolved and accumulated over millennia, producing both beneficial and harmful ecological inheritances, from increased ecosystem productivity to soil erosion and pollution [7,11,61,62]. Over the same interval, these increasingly complex and intensive niche construction capabilities have tended to appear in parallel with the increasingly rich diversity and complexity of human cultural practices, technologies, institutions, norms, identities and values that structure human social relations, social groups and societies, including increasing dependence on non-kin exchange and other forms of cooperation that together define humans as Earth's first ultrasocial species [7,30,34,49,50].

Like all evolutionary processes, sociocultural evolution is open-ended, diversifying, nondeterministic and generally unpredictable. Most changes in sociocultural niche construction are incremental and gradual, resulting from innovation, selection, accumulation, drift and diversification of sociocultural capabilities within and across societies. Nevertheless, across the tangled web of sociocultural history, some convergent general patterns are observable. With notable exceptions in highly productive and stable coastal and wetland environments, increasingly complex, specialized and larger-scale societies tend to be associated with increasingly intensive, complex and socially coordinated forms of sociocultural niche construction (figure 1; [7,34]). Anthroecology theory explains this long-term trend towards larger-scale societies sustained by increasingly transformative ecosystem engineering as the product of a runaway evolutionary process of sociocultural niche construction [7,34].

With AgrAbility’s help, Miller was able to get a track power chair, drive over gates, auto-feeders for grain, and a camera system for his tractor, to make it easier to drive with his limited vision. AgrAbility’s specialists saw all of the little problems throughout his day and did everything they could to solve them.

AgrAbility assists anyone with agriculture connections that have limitations or disabilities and makes recommendations for assistive technology that can help them keep doing what they love.

Goodwill being involved is a pretty big red flag, but it is a cool idea at the very least.

One major source of that pollution is easy to overlook: on any given day, millions of washing machines hum in homes around the world. What most people don’t see is what flows out with every rinse cycle: microscopic plastic fibers shed from synthetic clothing, slipping through wastewater systems and into rivers, oceans and ultimately, our food chain. In Columbia’s M.S. in Sustainability Management (SUMA) and M.S. in Sustainability Science (MoSSS) programs, which are offered by Columbia’s School of Professional Studies in partnership with the Columbia Climate School, that invisible problem became a call to action.

As students in the SUMA program, Yoni Ronn (’23SPS, Sustainability Management) and Siddhant Srivastava (’23SPS, Sustainability Management) began asking a deceptively simple question: What if we could stop microplastics at the source?

....

Based on research methods and technology developed at LDEO, Yan, along with colleagues Joaquim Goes and Nick Frearson, designed a microplastic filtration system for capturing fibers released during the laundry process before they enter waterways.

The flooding in Hassanabad reflects a broader challenge in Pakistan's disaster governance. Antonia Fernanda Samur Zúñiga, a senior staff associate at NCDP, says interventions lack sustainability if they are not embedded in ongoing programs, policies and community governance structures. She explained: "Effective disaster preparedness involves regular training, integration into education and health systems and, most importantly, trusted partnerships with organizations already embedded in local communities."

Is this idea completely whack?

Was thinking on the homeless encampments my local news constantly wrings their hands over: what if we gave them an official space to camp on? With bathroom facilities & trash infrastructure? A tent is a lot more affordable than a house or a car.

It wouldn't solve everything, but it would mitigate a lot of material reasons why DIY urban encampments get routed & bulldozed.

Figure 4. Oakland/Berkeley, CA and Detroit, MI capture the variation in the organization of multihazard exposure, hazard driver infrastructure, and socioeconomic inequities in exposure possible across cities. Oakland/Berkeley (a) has many communities experiencing multihazard exposure, which are (b) often home to low-income populations because of (c ) a combination of high street density with few trees. Detroit (d) has few places with multihazard exposure that (e) are not necessarily low-income communities, in part because (f) communities with high street density often have substantial tree canopy.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/50531223

France is saying "non" to Chinese photovoltaic components through a mix of protectionism and cybersecurity requirements as it readies a government-backed program of new solar energy projects.

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President Emmanuel Macron's government set out a timeline for a solar procurement effort late last week, a couple of months after publishing a 10-year energy-transition roadmap called PP3, which envisions 1.2 gigawatts of new solar capacity. Companies will be able to bid for small and ground-mounted solar projects this coming July, and for other industrial installations in the fall. As is the French way, there's a strong preference for French companies.

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The government said its chief objective with small solar installations is to encourage citizens to go electric wherever possible, a change in power generation that should also shield them from wild swings in energy prices. For larger projects, the aim is more explicitly to onshore panel production and break free from China's grip on the market. The government said more than 80% of key photovoltaic components currently come from China.

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Lithuania effectively banned Chinese inverters from its solar and wind installations in 2024 due to fears over remote access. Reuters reported in May 2025 that U.S. energy experts found undocumented communication devices in some China-made inverters, which could allow those devices to communicate back home in a way that bypasses the utility-company firewalls meant to prevent such things.

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The EU's executive body signaled that it was listening in a December communication on "strengthening EU economic security," where it highlighted solar inverters as a prime example of a critical infrastructure risk. It suggested that the devices could prove to be vectors for "manipulating electricity production parameters, preventing electricity production, [and] access to operational data."

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Consequently France supports the use of European-made parts in wind and solar energy auctions and intends to introduce a cybersecurity requirement.

France has initiated a 12 GW renewable energy auction initiative that emphasizes projects utilizing a greater proportion of European-manufactured technology, aiming to strengthen Europe’s energy autonomy. The nation also announced plans to implement cybersecurity standards in future auctions.

The 12 GW renewable auction initiative includes seven offshore wind projects with a combined capacity of 10 GW, in addition to 1.2 GW of solar energy and 0.8 GW from onshore wind sources.

The "resilience criterion" is designed to prioritize a higher proportion of European-sourced components to lessen dependence on imports, especially from China.

The bidding guidelines limit components sourced from China.

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Web Archive link

Private gardens have considerable potential to support and enhance urban biodiversity. However, many garden owners have limited knowledge of biodiversity conservation in their gardens and of biodiversity-enhancing interventions. Capturing garden biodiversity is a first necessary step to utilise this potential. Here, we propose a new Garden Biodiversity Index (GBI), developed based on a detailed survey of the vegetation and structural features present in 28 private gardens in North-Western Germany. We calculated the GBI and four existing feature-based indices for 55 samples taken in these gardens in the years 2022 and 2023 and assessed their applicability for detecting temporal changes. Furthermore, we applied the GBI to 2,000 private gardens distributed across Germany using data from a nationwide survey. The distribution of GBI values across the 2,000 German gardens follows a bell-shaped curve, with most gardens clustering around the mean. This highlights the potential for many gardens to further enhance their contributions to biodiversity. Unlike existing indices, we designed the GBI as a self-assessment tool for garden owners and weight the features according to their contribution to biodiversity. We anticipate it will serve as a valuable tool for many to encourage and guide biodiversity-enhancing measures in their gardens.

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With this study we seek to address three goals: First, to design a new index that garden owners can use as a self-assessment tool, with features weighted according to their impact on plant species richness. We call this the Garden Biodiversity Index (GBI). Second, to calculate the four existing indices (WRI, EGI, HHI, HRI) and the new GBI for 55 garden samples. We aim to test for correlation with plant species richness as a proxy for biodiversity and to test to what extent the indices are comparable. Third, to apply the new GBI to 2,000 private gardens using data from a nationwide survey for a comprehensive assessment of the potential of private gardens across Germany in supporting biodiversity. This study was conducted as part of the interdisciplinary project “gARTENreich Preferences and Constraints for Biodiversity Conservation in Home Gardens” (see www.gartenreichprojekt.de and www.NABU.de/gartenreich), a collaboration between practitioners and researchers. The project aimed to assess the role of private gardens in biodiversity conservation, identify drivers and barriers to biodiversity-friendly garden management, and develop strategies to promote such practices in private gardens.

Outdoor recreation often slips into what I call an achievement-based relationship with nature. I’ve been guilty of it myself. Whether it’s “bagging peaks”, racing to finish the AT, or stamping the land with machines and monuments, the focus shifts from ecology to ego.

Being obsessed with Peak Bagging is not Solarpunk.

Nature is not your personal obstacle to challenge yourself against, it is a shared place of discovery you trample when you only see it as a place to endlessly, exhaustingly conquer.

Tldr: the Western neoliberal "neutral state" has no higher value than tolerating each other's values, and no higher goal than promoting free market capitalism.

It is a society that tells each person to find their own ideal of the good life, to succeed and fail on their own - and it is an implicit ideology of "merit" that tells people who fail that it's because of their own lack of merit. You lose because you're losers.

And if your job gets shipped overseas, your factory gets shut down, and your doctor gets you addicted to opioids, tough, that's just the free market at work, loser.

It was inevitable that the neoliberal, globalist neutral state would create its populist, nationalist backlash in the form of MAGA - an ideology that admits the neoliberal capitalist system is broken, that gives its followers a powerful vision of "the good life", an America dominated by family, faith, and patriotism, and gives them an ideal to fight for.

And even if we beat MAGA, if the left doesn't articulate its own vision of the good life, give Americans something to hope for in strive for, and just goes back to the Clinton / Obama / Biden capitalism with humane characteristics, another MAGA or worse will inevitably spawn.

This is not an article about solarpunk, but it's an article about why solarpunk - or something like it - is desperately needed in America today. Because solarpunk provides a vision for the future, and a definition of what the good life is, an ideal to strive for, that the American left has been missing for a long, long time.

(I have a lot more thoughts on this essay, for example, about how clearly it makes the point that Biden's student loan forgiveness attempts were huge mistakes - but read!)

During Citizen Science Month, researchers at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) are highlighting a shift in how scientists think about public participation in research and how people experience nature, benefiting them in ways they never realized.

"Citizen science is no longer just about collecting data. It is a learning pathway that is transforming how people learn to see the natural world," said Corey Callaghan, assistant professor of global ecology at the UF/IFAS Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center. "We're helping people move from being passive observers to active contributors by building the skills and confidence to engage with biodiversity in a meaningful way."

A video essay about art, capitalism, revolution, and yogurt. Hi I'm Saoirse, and this is Free as Folk! 😃

Resilience applies to systems at every scale; from our cells and bodies to our families, friends, cities, and nations, all the way up to our global civilization and biosphere. Each of these is facing threats from climate change; as conscious individuals, we have the ability to direct our time, energy, and resources towards strengthening these systems.

The world needs resilient individuals to weather the challenges of the coming years, whether that’s helping to lower our ecological footprint, developing sustainable ways of meeting our needs, building lifeboat communities, or spearheading shifts in our governments and economies.

Since it’s such a central concept, it’s important to get clear on what resilience means. We like this simple definition from the Stockholm Resilience Centre:

Resilience is the capacity of a system, be it an individual, a forest, a city or an economy, to deal with change and continue to develop.

So how can we work to build climate resilience, both personally and collectively? In this post, we’ve identified 7 principles which expand our ability to weather crises:

• Decentralization
• Diversity
• Redundancy
• Capacity
• Elasticity
• Feedback
• Transformation

For each principle we’ll explore the definition and theory, along with real-world examples so you can integrate them into your life. We hope these keys help you cultivate more resilience in your life, and that this in turn steers us towards a more sustainable future.

Crossposted from https://tardigram.com/m/Cultura/t/14763

Hablamos del Solarpunk, al que mucha gente no considera "punk"... pero es eso es un error, en mi opinión, pues este género emerge como contraposición a un sistema que se está cargando al planeta y a las personas que en él habitan. Y eso es muy "punk".

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/36435067

An usually wide adoption of rooftop solar in Aleppo, Syria.

fast & furious & bicycles

We outlive capitalism. In our solarpunk future, San Francisco is neon green with sustainable abundance. Climate refugees build new communities in skyscrapers once cluttered with cubicles. But not everyone wants to live in the city of fog-kissed gardens.

A family of survivalists kept to themselves, within rewilded lands. It’s a hard and isolated life, and one of their sons chooses to run away. In San Francisco, he finds new friends, even falls in love with a competitive bicyclist. She introduces him to a club of speed demons, who trick out e-bikes to race up the city’s legendary hills and careen down again even faster.

When armored trucks roll in bristling with rifles, the survivalists expect to kidnap their son amidst a confusion of explosions and a hellfire of bullets. They don’t reckon on the recklessness of his new chosen family. The bicycle gang will go to any length to protect him and at any electrified speed.

This is a long dense article, I would hesitate to post such an article without an accompanying post about it in a science communication context but this is an article about the basic nutrient cycles in soil and the introduction is actually a wonderful thorough description of what the important players are in soil nutrient dynamics in a wholistic inclusive way.

Fig. 1 | Five key concepts to integrate soil fauna into multitrophic bio- geochemistry. This figure illustrates pathways by which soil fauna can influence soil carbon C cycling and contribute to particulate organic matter (POM) and mineral- associated organic matter (MAOM) pools: (1)

The abiotic constraints for soil fauna and SOM formation pathways are represented in the ‘Climate’ and ‘Soil type’ panes; (2) the importance to consider quality and quantity of C inputs is showed in the ‘Litter quality’ and ‘Ecosystem size hypothesis’ panes, as well as in the different soil compartments associated with contrasting plant inputs (the rhizosphere primarily associated with root exudates, the detritusphere with litter fragments, and the bulk soil with sporadic inputs from litter leachates (orange drops) and bioturbation; (3) the role of soil fauna feeding preferences and how C flows through the soil food web and into SOM pools is illustrated in different soil compartments, of which (4) soil fauna increases the connectivity; and (5) soil fauna pools beyond living biomass are presented in the ‘Carcasses’ and ‘Consumption and excretion’ panes.

The latter also links to important feeding traits: a detritivore such as an isopod ingests a great amount of litter, most of which is excreted as feces, because of lower food quality and assimilation rates, while a predator such as a centipede comparatively ingests much smaller amounts of prey, as a result of higher food quality and assimilation rates. Purple arrows indicate C flows through living organisms and black arrows after-life transfers of C and nutrients into SOM pools. The figure was entirely designed by CPiG (Carolina Levicek), including all individual elements.

Fig. 2 | Conceptualization of the role of different soil fauna trophic groups under contrasting plant inputs. The quality and availability of plant inputs can be seen as a continuum from the rhizosphere to the detritusphere associated with contrasting soil faunal and microbial communities. The three-way interaction between plant carbon inputs, soil microbes, and soil fauna determine the dominant mechanisms for soil organic matter (SOM) formation and the dominant SOM pools (particulate organic matter, POM, and mineral-associated organic matter, MAOM), given that abiotic conditions are kept constant.

Rik Thijs, deputy mayor for public space, greenery and water in nearby Eindhoven [Netherlands] said private and public initiatives were needed to adapt to the changing weather. “Our sewage system cannot cope with the rainfall that is coming, and we cannot increase its capacity, so we need to do things differently,” he said. “This means that you need to capture as much as possible on the surface.”

This might mean plans to bring an old river, the Gender, back to the surface, “wadi” pools that can hold water during heavy rain, and incorporating green roofs and rainwater storage into housing developments. “The Netherlands is very vulnerable because we are, of course, one large delta,” he said.

Both the emotional valence and the structural understanding of different energy sources has shifted, and for good. Meaning takes a very long time to erode, but when it does the switch can come quickly; we’re living at a hinge moment, and on the other side of the door is a different world.

We tend to think about energy in hard terms—kilowatts, dollars—but in the end our visceral sense of the path forward is what matters most, because attitude informs decision without us even quite realizing it. The world between our ears has changed, decisively, in the direction of renewable power from the sun and wind.