Speculating sustainability on a divided island

: gardens, migration, and culture

Abstract

In times of precarity, where the future illuminates the devastation of the Earth’s habitat, the decline of economies and the rise of climate migrations - among others, speculation seems to become an essential art for survival. Notions of sustainability are seen to provide a way forward, as it has taken centre stage in discussions among transnational and national governmental bodies, in academia, corporations, commodity branding and changing lifestyle practices. What meanings can we weave and illuminate among the sustainability jargon? By speculating the meaning of sustainability through the lens of migration, culture, and urban community gardens, this work aims to advocate the cultivation of response-ability (Haraway 2008), of multispecies symbiosis, and the re-evaluation of our caring capacities (Chatzidakis et. al 2020). Focusing on the divided island of Cyprus as a place-based study, the research aims to speculate sustainable practices for a climate change “hotspot” island, which dwells in a frozen ethno-national conflict for nearly half a century. Through the production of inclusive places constituted as commons, such as the spaces of Intercultural Community Gardens, I argue that everyday spaces can act as essential catalysts for generating knowledge, producing response-able citizens, and for weaving convivial connections to our situated environment and heterogenous others, both humans and non-humans.

Date of Award	9 Oct 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Peter Hanenberg (Supervisor)