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Dear IAEP Members and Friends,

As an organization committed to social justice, the International Association for Environmental Philosophy has listened carefully to communities of color and the other voices of Black Lives Matter as they call for racial justice, challenge systemic racism, and protest the militarization of U.S. police forces. We stand in solidarity. Now is the time to relay and amplify the demands of Black Lives Matter for the sake of a just and peaceful world.

As environmental philosophers we recognize that environmental harms are often concentrated in Black communities and communities of color while the benefits for which such harms were produced accrue largely to white communities. We recognize that the histories of racism and settler colonialism are intertwined with the history of environmental destruction.

We understand the environment not as “pristine nature,” but as a place where the exploitation and extraction of settler colonialism and racialized capitalism has destroyed, and continues to destroy, lands and their myriad living bodies, cultures, and peoples. Police brutality against Black bodies in the U.S. is part of the ongoing trauma and degradation produced by the forces of colonialism and racial capitalism that continue to shape our shared society today.

As continental philosophers we recognize that the “easy” universal voice with which much philosophy has been, and continues to be, written has often covered over various forms of exclusion and marginalization, including the exclusion and marginalization of Black and Indigenous people, and people of color generally.

We recognize too that environmental philosophy has often been exclusionary. The field’s early focus on a romantic depopulated notion of wilderness is but one example of the ways in which our field too has been racist.

We support the central demands that Black Lives Matter has articulated, originating from Black voices. We believe there needs to be acknowledgement of and accountability for the devaluation and dehumanization of black lives at the hands of the police. The systemic racism and cultures of corruption exemplified by arbitrary police violence must be confronted and eradicated.

As IAEP’s Executive Committee we continue to be committed to the work of environmental theorizing not as an alternative to the work of engaging with social and political issues, but as part and parcel of them. We are committed to listening and are always open to how we could do better.

Sincerely,
The IAEP Executive Committee
Jonathan Maskit
Janet Donohoe
Jonathan Beever
Bryan Bannon
Rachel Jones
Jeremy Bendik-Keymer

Dear colleagues,

Please consider proposing to share your work in environmental philosophy at our IAEP session at the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Philadelphia, PA from January 8-11, 2020.

Proposals should be sent to iaepsecretary@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions of abstracts is May 31, 2019. Notification of selection will be made by mid-June. Note that all presenters must be members of IAEP at the time of the conference.

Proposals are chosen through a blind review process and so should not include identifying information. The body of the proposal email should include detailed contact information of the author(s). Attach your blinded proposal to the email as a pdf or MS Word document. In the case of panel proposals, a description of the theme of the panel should be included alongside proposals for each of the papers in that panel. Please note that no audio-visual equipment will be available for presentations at the conference.

The International Association for Environmental Philosophy offers a forum for the philosophical discussion of our relation to natural environments. Embracing a broad understanding of environmental philosophy, IAEP encourages not only discussions of environmental ethics, but also of environmental aesthetics, ontology, theology, philosophy of science, political philosophy, ecofeminism, and the philosophy of technology. IAEP also welcomes a diversity of approaches to these issues, including those inspired by Continental philosophy, the history of ideas, and traditions of American philosophy.

Membership in IAEP is open to everyone. For information about joining IAEP or subscribing to the journal Environmental Philosophy, please visit our website http://www.environmentalphilosophy.org

For more info contact Jonathan Beever at iaepsecretary@gmail.com.