An anthropocene rhetoric of ecological networking: the biomic politics of nonhuman nature, culture and politics at the European Green Belt

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Content AN ANTHROPOCENE RHETORIC OF ECOLOGICAL NETWORKING: THE BIOMIC POLITICS OF NONHUMAN NATURE, CULTURE AND POLITICS AT THE EUROPEAN GREEN BELT by Marcia Clare Allison A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (COMMUNICATION) August 2019 2 Acknowledgments This PhD has been the extraordinary accomplishment of so many people. A PhD is not just a testament to hard work, but is a testament to the kindness, love, and support of others. I have been incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by an extraordinary group of people of whom without I would have never achieved this mammoth task. First and foremost, I must express my deepest gratitude towards my chair, G. Tom Goodnight. Tom has been my biggest supporter throughout this process from day one, supplanted by being, by far, the smartest man I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. He has demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for patience, yet has pushed me to my academic limits in order to become the rhetorical semiotician I am today. In this vein, I also must thank my committee members Randy Lake and Tok Thompson, whose work, guidance, and intellectual development have also made a substantial impact, both professionally and personally. Working on a project that encompasses the bringing-together of international efforts is perhaps no coincidence. First and foremost, my thanks goes out to my family, and in particular my parents who have supported my transformation from flautist to doctor in more ways than I can count. As a first generation scholar, to have a family that supports the crazy decision of flying 8,000 miles away from home in order to learn from books is truly beyond the bounds of expectation. Then there is my chosen family of friends from around the world from which I learn more and more every day. Sonia, Binh, Lena and Kari have been my USC PhD rocks. Emma and Esben are not only my most wonderful friends but also my incredibly talented co-authors with whom I have learnt more about Burke than I ever expected. My actor and industry friend group has been the most welcome and unlikely support, as we have journeyed together along paths that have more similarities than differences. In particular, all my love goes out to Jordan and Eddie, my first friends and roommates in LA, and to whom I’m so grateful to have in my life all these years later. And then there is my European family to whom I owe everything. So many deserve a mention, but it 3 is my internationally Danish-based group of Annabel, Jesper, Jess R, Jenni, their partners and their children, that have created my home away from home as I have travelled back and forth over the past 7 years, welcoming me with hygge whenever I drop in unexpectedly. And of course, I have to thank my previous mentors and colleagues at the Semiotic departments at Aarhus and Tartu University, where this PhD journey initially began. Finally, I have to dedicate this PhD to the millions missing. This journey has been more than just about writing and research, but has been an exercise in human triumph against the harshest of adversities. Now that I am at the end of this journey, I hope to use my skills for good to help those missing from life due to chronic illness. This is my promise. You may be invisible, but you will never be forgotten. 4 Table of Contents AN ANTHROPOCENE RHETORIC OF ECOLOGICAL NETWORKING: THE BIOMIC POLITICS OF NONHUMAN NATURE, CULTURE AND POLITICS AT THE EUROPEAN GREEN BELT ...................................................................... 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................................................................... 2 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................................................................................... 12 LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................................................................... 14 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................................................... 17 CHAPTER ONE: THE EUROPEAN GREEN BELT IN THE RUINS OF THE ANTHROPOCENE ............... 19 1.0 OVERVIEW AND PLAN OF INQUIRY ............................................................................................................................... 24 1.1 Generating concepts for future rhetorical, environmental work. ........................................................................ 25 1.2 Research Questions and theses. ................................................................................................................................ 26 1.3 Dissertation outline ..................................................................................................................................................... 27 1.3a Chapter one outline ................................................................................................................................................................... 28 1.3b Content follows ......................................................................................................................................................................... 29 2.0 A TRABBI ORIGIN STORY ................................................................................................................................................. 32 3.0 AN ANTHROPOCENE RHETORIC .................................................................................................................................... 35 3.1 The Anthropocene as rhetorical trope ..................................................................................................................................... 36 3.2 Rhetorical geography as wor[l]d-building ................................................................................................................ 38 3.2a The nonhuman human as the gendered resource ................................................................................................................. 39 3.2b World-building as a social endeavour ..................................................................................................................................... 40 3.3 Rhetorical geography ................................................................................................................................................... 42 3.4a Communicative infrastructures as part of a rhetorical geography ..................................................................................... 43 3.4 Reading the rhetoric of memory. .............................................................................................................................. 44 3.4a The land as a memory apparatuses ......................................................................................................................................... 46 3.5b Distinguishing cultural memory from the everyday. ............................................................................................................ 47 4.0 A BIOMIC POLITICS ........................................................................................................................................................... 47 5 4.1 From bio- to bio-mic politics. .................................................................................................................................... 48 4.2 Governance as risk ...................................................................................................................................................... 50 4.3 Governance of lifeforms is rhetorical ....................................................................................................................... 52 5.0 THE ANTHROPOCENE RHETORIC OF THE EGB .......................................................................................................... 53 5.1 Biodiversity as rhetorical construct ........................................................................................................................... 54 5.2 Extinction as rhetorical topos in the EGB. ............................................................................................................. 55 5.3 Life and non-life in the border zone ......................................................................................................................... 56 5.3a The biomic politics of ecological networking. ....................................................................................................................... 57 5.4 Cultural networks of green and grey infrastructure ................................................................................................ 59 5.4a The Iron Curtain Trail as eco-tourist gambit ........................................................................................................................ 61 5.5 Rhetorical transcendence ............................................................................................................................................ 64 6.0 ASSEMBLING METHODS ................................................................................................................................................... 71 6.1 Rhetorical field methods ............................................................................................................................................. 71 6.2 Multimodal argument .................................................................................................................................................. 72 6.3 Symbolic semiotics ...................................................................................................................................................... 75 7.0 THE ROAD TRAVELS FROM THEORY TO EMPIRICAL STUDY ..................................................................................... 76 CHAPTER TWO: HISTORY BEGETS CHANGE ............................................................................................................ 79 1.0 THE METAPHOR AS RHETORICAL WORLD-BUILDER. ................................................................................................. 80 1.1 Ideological, material and curtain change. ................................................................................................................. 82 2.0 A EUROPEAN GREEN ZONE GROWS ............................................................................................................................ 83 2.1 German reunification .................................................................................................................................................. 85 2.2 The IUCN takes the Belt international .................................................................................................................... 87 2.3 The Euronatur Belt as network assembly ................................................................................................................ 89 2.4 The mature association ............................................................................................................................................... 90 3.0 ADJACENCY: CONSERVATION OF HUMAN AND NONHUMAN NATURE WITHIN THE EU. ................................... 91 3.1 Green Infrastructure as rhetorical strategy .............................................................................................................. 92 3.1a GI as a rhetorical service .......................................................................................................................................................... 95 6 3.2 One road thus leads to another. ................................................................................................................................ 98 3.2a Green–grey infrastructure leads to holistic representation ................................................................................................ 100 4.0 GOVERNING THE WHOLE ............................................................................................................................................. 101 4.1 Raising questions ....................................................................................................................................................... 102 4.2 Beginnings from endings .......................................................................................................................................... 103 4.2a Symbolically defining the EGB ............................................................................................................................................. 104 4.2a.i. Mapping requires heritage demarcation ...................................................................................................................... 104 4.2b Backbones and other network metaphors ........................................................................................................................... 108 4.2c Visions as a guiding biomic force .......................................................................................................................................... 109 4.3 Mapping the EGB into a rhetorical, communicative tool ................................................................................... 110 4.4 Living memorial landscape as sustainable infrastructure ..................................................................................... 112 4.4a Memory is rhetorically transcendent ..................................................................................................................................... 113 4.4b Mapping memories .................................................................................................................................................................. 114 4.5 Sustainable development and eco-tourism as harmonising forces .................................................................... 115 4.5a Cycling as sustainable development. ..................................................................................................................................... 117 4.6 The winner takes it all ............................................................................................................................................... 118 4.6a Winning requires agency ......................................................................................................................................................... 119 5.0 CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................................................................................. 120 CHAPTER THREE: THE INTEGRATIVE BELT ........................................................................................................... 123 1.0 A HISTORY OF TERRITORIALISATION .......................................................................................................................... 127 1.1 Ancient times. ............................................................................................................................................................. 127 1.2 Modern Era ................................................................................................................................................................ 128 1.3 Total war ..................................................................................................................................................................... 129 1.4 Cold War epoch ......................................................................................................................................................... 129 1.5 Present day .................................................................................................................................................................. 130 1.6 The borderless Sámpi ................................................................................................................................................ 132 2.0 A RHETORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF A NORTHERLY ANTHROPOCENE RHETORIC ................................................... 134 2.1 The constitution of the FGB as an ecological network ....................................................................................... 136 7 2.2 Conservation initiatives as rhetorical, biomic apparatuses .................................................................................. 138 2.3 The biomic politics of the contemporary forest belt ........................................................................................... 139 2.4 A futurist integrative bioeconomy .......................................................................................................................... 144 3.0 THE FOREST AS INTANGIBLE HERITAGE .................................................................................................................... 147 3.1 The Sámi as border defiant ...................................................................................................................................... 150 3.1a Ecological attunement with Sámpi ........................................................................................................................................ 151 3.1b. How the Sámi map the mosaic ............................................................................................................................................. 153 3.1c Ecological attunement to Sámpi as place ............................................................................................................................. 155 3.2 Karelia .......................................................................................................................................................................... 157 3.2a The Kalevala as intangible heritage ....................................................................................................................................... 159 3.2b Intangible heritage tourism as sustainable development differences .............................................................................. 160 3.3 The intangible heritage of the forest belt ............................................................................................................... 163 3.3a The intangible heritage of forest-nature. .............................................................................................................................. 163 3.3b Forest-nature versus forest-resource .................................................................................................................................... 168 4.0 TRILATERAL CONSERVATION: PASVIK-INARI TRILATERAL PARK. ......................................................................... 171 4.1 Mapping the mosaic .................................................................................................................................................. 172 4.1a Following the design of the wild ........................................................................................................................................... 177 4.1a.i Designing the integrative wild. ...................................................................................................................................... 180 4.1a.ii The mosaic as natural resource ..................................................................................................................................... 183 4.2 Eco-tourism as sustainable development ............................................................................................................... 185 4.3 Grey infrastructure to promote green infrastructure ........................................................................................... 188 4.3a The Sámi’s grey infrastructure of intangible heritage. ........................................................................................................ 192 5.0 ANTHROPOCENE THINKING IN THE FGB. ................................................................................................................. 200 5.1 (Indigenous) intangible heritage drives human–nonhuman nature relations ................................................... 201 CHAPTER FOUR: THE CENTRAL HUB ......................................................................................................................... 204 1.0 THE GERMAN INFLUENCE ............................................................................................................................................ 207 1.1 Constituting the green and grey infrastructure of the GGB. .............................................................................. 208 1.2 The central backbone coordinates international transboundary effort ............................................................. 210 8 1.3 Recent transboundary acts ....................................................................................................................................... 214 2.0 GOVERNING THE CENTRAL HUB’S NATURAL HERITAGE ....................................................................................... 217 2.1 Mapping requires differentiation ............................................................................................................................. 217 2.2 A retreat for the threatened ...................................................................................................................................... 219 2.3 The wilderness of the peopleless German Green Belt . ...................................................................................... 220 2.3a A topos of wild extinction. ..................................................................................................................................................... 221 2.4 Stewarding the wilderness. ....................................................................................................................................... 223 2.4a Stewarding the wilderness in an Anthropocene rhetoric ................................................................................................... 226 3.0 A MEMORIALISING LANDSCAPE ................................................................................................................................... 227 3.1 The vista is rhetorical ................................................................................................................................................ 229 3.2 Multimodal argument of ruins and nonhuman natures ....................................................................................... 232 3.3 The constitution of memorialising relics in the wild ............................................................................................ 236 3.3a Border towers speak to transcendence ................................................................................................................................. 238 3.4 Eco-tourism as rational amusement ....................................................................................................................... 241 3.4a Eco-tourism as witnessing ...................................................................................................................................................... 242 3.4b Sites of rational amusement ................................................................................................................................................... 243 3.4b.i The Educational Border Trail ....................................................................................................................................... 244 3.4b.ii West–Eastern Gate ........................................................................................................................................................ 249 3.5 Biomic aversion to eco-tourism .............................................................................................................................. 251 4.0 OBSERVING OBSERVATION POINT ALPHA ................................................................................................................. 252 4.1 Memoryscape ............................................................................................................................................................. 254 4.2 The museum on the border ..................................................................................................................................... 256 4.3 Following the road ..................................................................................................................................................... 260 4.4 The road as hope ....................................................................................................................................................... 263 4.5 Experiential landscape .............................................................................................................................................. 265 5.0 RUINS AS NETWORKED COMMUNICATIVE INFRASTRUCTURES. .............................................................................. 266 5.1 Material argument ...................................................................................................................................................... 267 5.2 Ruin as museum ......................................................................................................................................................... 268 9 5.3 Networked ruins for the wild. ................................................................................................................................. 269 6.0 THE MEMORYSCAPE AS IDENTIFICATION. .................................................................................................................. 270 6.1 Imagining what was, and what is ............................................................................................................................. 272 6.2 Repurposing the border. ........................................................................................................................................... 273 6.3 Networking multimodal arguments ........................................................................................................................ 274 6.4 Biomic networking .................................................................................................................................................... 275 CHAPTER FIVE: MAPPING THE CONTENTIOUS BELTS ...................................................................................... 277 1.0 THE SEA BELT: COMBINING COASTAL AND TERRESTRIAL CONSERVATION ....................................................... 281 1.1 Ecosystem discoveries. ............................................................................................................................................. 284 1.2 The sea as a rhetorical gap ........................................................................................................................................ 285 1.3 Biomic governance of the sea road. ........................................................................................................................ 287 1.4 Forming the sea-belt. ................................................................................................................................................ 290 1.5 The contemporary sea-road as sustainable Anthropocene resource ................................................................. 292 1.6 Repurposing the grey relics of memor ................................................................................................................... 294 2.0 THE MOUNTAINOUS BELT ............................................................................................................................................ 298 2.1 Mountainous biomic governance ............................................................................................................................ 300 2.2 Looking for biomic cooperation ............................................................................................................................. 301 2.3 A biomically governed natural paradise ................................................................................................................. 303 2.4 Caring for beasts ........................................................................................................................................................ 306 2.5 From beasts to biomic politics ................................................................................................................................ 308 3.0 CASE STUDY COMPARISON: THE ESTONIAN GREEN BELT ..................................................................................... 309 3.1 Constituting the Estonian Green Belt .................................................................................................................... 310 3.1a Soviet control ............................................................................................................................................................................ 311 3.1b From Soviet occupation to conservation ............................................................................................................................. 313 3.1c From conservation to Balkan Green Belt ............................................................................................................................ 315 3.2 The Military Sea-Green Belt .................................................................................................................................... 316 3.3a Recording Anthropocene relics ............................................................................................................................................. 317 3.3b Ruins as catalysts for public memory ................................................................................................................................... 318 10 3.3c A place time has forgotten. .................................................................................................................................................... 321 3.3c.i Recycling the ruins ........................................................................................................................................................... 321 3.3c.ii A husky memory ............................................................................................................................................................. 323 3.3c.iii Ruins ruining the environment .................................................................................................................................... 324 3.4d.i Ruins as the catalyst for Anthropocene adaptation ................................................................................................... 325 4.0 BULGARIAN BORDERS AS (ZŌĒ ) GREEN BELT. ......................................................................................................... 329 4.1 Constituting the Bulgarian border as Green Belt ................................................................................................. 329 4.1a Transboundary help needed ................................................................................................................................................... 331 4.2 Searching out flora, fauna, and zōē in the Strandja Nature Park ...................................................................... 332 4.2a Nonhuman nature tourism as part of conservation action ............................................................................................... 334 4.2b Eco-tourism as intertwining human culture and nonhuman natures. ............................................................................. 337 4.2c Fire dancing in and out of the EGB polity .......................................................................................................................... 338 4.3 Protecting the nation-state ....................................................................................................................................... 341 4.3a A biomic state of exception ................................................................................................................................................... 344 5.0 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................................................... 346 CHAPTER SIX: THE EUROPEAN GREEN BELT AS ANTHROPOCENE ROAD ............................................ 349 1.0 AN ANTHROPOCENE RHETORIC OF THE EGB REVISITED. .................................................................................... 352 1.1 Extinction and risk as Anthropocene ideology ..................................................................................................... 352 1.2 An alt-rhetorical geography of communicative infrastructures .......................................................................... 354 1.2a Transcendence is communicative .......................................................................................................................................... 355 1.2b The ecological network of communicative infrastructure ................................................................................................ 357 1.3 Biomic Politics ............................................................................................................................................................................ 358 1.4 Summary. .................................................................................................................................................................... 360 2.0 HOLISTIC CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................................ 362 2.1 The rhetorical whole ................................................................................................................................................. 362 2.1a Beginnings through extinction. .............................................................................................................................................. 362 2.1b Cultural and natural heritage.. ................................................................................................................................................ 363 2.1c Mapping the discrete into a network of climate mitigation ............................................................................................... 364 2.1d Green-Grey infrastructure as communicative labour. ....................................................................................................... 365 11 2.1e (Memory) place and space ...................................................................................................................................................... 366 2.1f The living memorial as sacrifice zone. .................................................................................................................................. 366 2.1g Networks of change. ............................................................................................................................................................... 367 2.2 Fennoscandian Belt ................................................................................................................................................... 368 2.3 Central hub ................................................................................................................................................................. 369 2.4 The contentious Belts ............................................................................................................................................... 370 3.0 REFLECTIONS ON FIELDWORK ..................................................................................................................................... 371 3.1 Personal experience. .................................................................................................................................................. 372 3.2 Building terminology from the experientia ............................................................................................................ 373 4.0 FUTURE WORK ................................................................................................................................................................ 374 4.1 Where colourisations lead to darkness ................................................................................................................... 375 4.2 Comparative networks of hazards .......................................................................................................................... 375 5.0 LIMITS OF THE STUDY ..................................................................................................................................................... 376 6.0 CODA ................................................................................................................................................................................. 378 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................................................................... 380 APPENDIX ................................................................................................................................................................................ 432 12 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AWG Anthropocene Working Group BfN Bundesamt für Naturschutz (German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation) BMU Bundeministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz, Bau un Reaktosicherheit (German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety) BUND Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (Friends of the Earth, Germany) BSPB Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds CGB Central European Green Belt EC European Commission EEA European Environment Agency EGB European Green Belt EU European Union FGB Fennoscandian Green Belt/The Green Belt of Fennoscandia GDR German Democratic Republic GIS Geographic Interactive Systems GGB German Green Belt GI Green Infrastructure HELCOM Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission - Helsinki Commission ICS International Commission on Stratigraphy ICT Iron Curtain Trail ICZM Integrated Coastal Zone Management 13 IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature MOU Memorandum of Understanding NGO Non-governmental organisation OPA Observation Point Alpha UN United Nations US United States UK United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland UNCED United Nations Conference for the Environment and Development USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics WWII World War Two WWIII World War Three 14 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: The European Green Belt Logo.. ................................................................................................................................................... 19 Figure 2: The EGB route through 24 countries as of 2018 ........................................................................................................................ 21 Figure 3: ICT sign .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 23 Figure 4: Trabbi .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 32 Figure 5: The EGB as a literal wilding green ribbon dividing yet uniting the continent. ....................................................................... 34 Figure 6: A rusting electronic device overgrown with the EGB nonhuman natures at Anleger Wohlenberg ................................... 61 Figure 7: The Svaty Kriz memorial in the Czech Republic. ........................................................................................................................ 62 Figure 8: Former GDR road ............................................................................................................................................................................ 64 Figure 9: The Nordbanhof S-Bahn station in Germany .............................................................................................................................. 65 Figure 10: Panorama of the eco-tourist memory site at Kühlungsborn, Germany. ................................................................................ 66 Figure 11: Kühlungsborn, Germany .............................................................................................................................................................. 66 Figure 12: The old-growth forests of Näränkä in Southern Kuusamo, Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland .......................................... 84 Figure 13: The grove of birch trees ................................................................................................................................................................. 87 Figure 14: The Natura 2000 logo in the wild. ................................................................................................................................................ 93 Figure 15: Remnants from the Berlin Wall along the Berlin Wall Trail .................................................................................................... 97 Figure 16: The Berlin Wall Memorial along the Berlin Wall Trail. ............................................................................................................. 97 Figure 17: Informational interactive technology on the Berlin Wall Trail ................................................................................................ 99 Figure 18: The division of Karelia across Finland and Russia .................................................................................................................. 127 Figure 19: The meeting point for the borders of Norway, Finland, and Russia .................................................................................... 131 Figure 20: The Sámediggi Parliament in Kárášjohka, Norway ................................................................................................................. 133 Figure 21: Eco-tourist information along the trail in Oulanka National Park, Finland ........................................................................ 166 Figure 22: The view from Koli across the lake, facing towards Russia.. ................................................................................................. 170 Figure 23: The Russian-Norway border in Pasvik Valley, August 2016. ................................................................................................. 173 Figure 24: Inauguration of old Russian border patrol tower into bird observation tower. .................................................................. 190 Figure 25: 96 Høyden looking out over the Norwegian/Russian border ............................................................................................... 190 Figure 26: The village of Nellim in the Trilateral Park, Inari, Finland .................................................................................................... 193 15 Figure 27: Siida Sámi Museum and Nature Centre ..................................................................................................................................... 194 Figure 28: Inside Siida museum. .................................................................................................................................................................... 194 Figure 29: Another Siida permanent exhibition .......................................................................................................................................... 195 Figure 30: The skylight that runs through the Siida museum at twilight ................................................................................................ 196 Figure 31: The colours of the museum continue ........................................................................................................................................ 198 Figure 32: The open-air museum of Siida .................................................................................................................................................... 199 Figure 33: Abandoned watch tower features in northern inner-Germany border ................................................................................ 205 Figure 34: Road sign indexing the Grünes Band ........................................................................................................................................ 230 Figure 35: An example of nonhuman nature information within the GGB countryside. .................................................................... 232 Figure 36: An example of GDR roads .......................................................................................................................................................... 233 Figure 37: An example of the GDR signs .................................................................................................................................................... 235 Figure 38: Hötensleben Border Memorial. .................................................................................................................................................. 235 Figure 39: Brown heritage signs ..................................................................................................................................................................... 236 Figure 40: Murturm Nature Observation Tower in Gosdorf, Austria. ................................................................................................... 239 Figure 41: Sign pointing to the repurposed GDR road, now EuroVelo 13 cycle path,. ...................................................................... 241 Figure 42: Bundy" ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 244 Figure 43: The Education Border Trail ........................................................................................................................................................ 245 Figure 44: Abandoned watch tower at the end of the Educational Border Trail in Saxony-Anhalt .................................................. 247 Figure 45: The linden tree planted at the end of the Educational Border Trail in Saxony-Anhlat.. ................................................... 248 Figure 46: Sign to indicate the beginning of the West-Eastern Gate Trail in Eichsfeld. ...................................................................... 249 Figure 47: The West-Eastern Gate trail. ....................................................................................................................................................... 249 Figure 48: Juxtaposition of warning sign ...................................................................................................................................................... 250 Figure 49: Border towers ................................................................................................................................................................................ 253 Figure 50: Border towers in opposition. ....................................................................................................................................................... 254 Figure 51: The flags and Iron Curtain memorial sculpture outside the newly constructed OPA museum. ...................................... 256 Figure 52: The bright blue, newly constructed OPA museum entitled “House on the Border” ........................................................ 257 Figure 53: Entrance to the second floor of the OPA museum. ............................................................................................................... 259 Figure 54: German and European Green Belt displays on the second floor in the House on the Border. ...................................... 259 16 Figure 55: Following the path from the museum along the former GDR convoy road. ..................................................................... 261 Figure 56: The memorial at the end of the partially reconstructed border ............................................................................................. 261 Figure 57: Path of Hope ................................................................................................................................................................................. 264 Figure 58: A view over the lush Estonian coast from the Pakri Peninsula ............................................................................................. 281 Figure 59: View from the German Baltic Coast line in Kühlungsborn.. ................................................................................................. 282 Figure 60: Ostsee Grenzturm Kühlungsborn (Baltic Sea Border Tower in Külungsborn, Germany). Type BT 11. ..................... 295 Figure 61: Anleger Wohlenberg ..................................................................................................................................................................... 295 Figure 62: Remnants of a Soviet past on Anleger Wohlenber. ................................................................................................................. 297 Figure 63: Deserted beach in the height of summer in Võsu, Lahmeaa County, Estonia. .................................................................. 312 Figure 64: Abandoned Cold War border tower and Soviet bunker. ........................................................................................................ 319 Figure 65: An old Soviet prison at Rummu quarry ..................................................................................................................................... 320 Figure 66: Unnamed gravestone site of Soviet Pilots using their aircraft wings as headstones. .......................................................... 322 Figure 67: Signifiers to a Soviet past in Paldiski, Pakri Peninsula, Estonia.. ........................................................................................... 323 Figure 68: Abandoned border defence in the surrounding fields of the old nuclear submarine testing centre. ............................... 326 Figure 69: Sign detailing the village of Gramtikovo and the nearby forest nursery .............................................................................. 336 Figure 70: The tradition of fire-dancing in Balgaria Village, Strandja Park ............................................................................................ 339 Figure 71: The ruined tomb of Mishkova Niva, Strandja Nature Park ................................................................................................... 340 Figure 72: The river border between Turkey and Bulgaria at Sinemorets .............................................................................................. 342 Figure 73: The newly constructed border fence between Turkey and Bulgaria ..................................................................................... 343 Figure 74: A close-up of the border fence. .................................................................................................................................................. 343 17 Abstract This dissertation analyses a material-cultural network in the nascent Anthropocene. This dissertation argues for the invention of an Anthropocene rhetoric to address the material turn in the social sciences and humanities. To examine an Anthropocene rhetoric in action, my chosen case study is the European Green Belt (EGB)—a dual biodiversity and public memory project built from the ashes of the former Iron Curtain. Built from the Anthropocene ruins of the Cold War, I position that the governance involved in this project is a unique site of environmental biopolitics. The governance of people and land across multiple nations in the Anthropocene posits a new set of biomic politics as the EU and EGB Association act as a supra-national governing body. In chapter one I set out my theories and methods in the context of the Anthropocene, environmental communication and modern day Western human–nonhuman nature relations. Chapter two provides a historical account of the EGB and the current rhetorical work invoked in constructing the project as whole. The following three chapters then consider the project by biogeographical region. Chapter three looks at the Fennoscandic region, and argues that human– nonhuman nature relations are at their most balanced in the region, as both humans and nonhumans are granted bios. Chapter four looks at the Central European region and argues that Germany is the primary biomic sovereign for the whole project. Further, I argue that Germany enacts a reversal patriarchal governance over humans and nonhumans, as it is the latter than is granted bios in the EGB polity. Chapter five then performs a comparative analysis of the two remaining biogeographical regions, the Baltic and Balkan. I argue that these regions were denied entry in the EGB polity at the beginning of its conception, and that the rebuilding of the Iron Curtain border between the EU and Turkey gives both humans and nonhumans zoe in an action of Holocene environmental thinking. Ultimately, I contend that the flourishing nonhuman natures and historical relics form a network of communicative infrastructures for the biomic 18 sovereign of the EGB Initiative and the EU, that argues for a now unified-Europe with a united climate mitigation strategy in the form of biodiversity conservation. 19 Chapter One: The European Green Belt in the Ruins of the Anthropocene Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species—man—acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world – Rachel Carson, Silent Spring In a global state of precarity, we don’t have choices other than looking for life in this ruin. – Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World Figure 1: The European Green Belt Logo. Screenshot author’s own. This dissertation presents and reflects on a material-cultural network, the European Green Belt (EGB) (see Figure one). The EGB is a biodiversity conservation and historical memory project built from the ashes of the Iron Curtain. During the 40 years that the Iron Curtain divided Europe East from West, the lack of human action within the corporeal Iron Curtain border—the so-called “no-man’s land”— resulted in nonhuman nature reclaiming the forbidden zone of European division. Multiple new ecologies rewilded Europe within the Curtain’s physical manifestation. As the border opened up and border 20 fortifications were abandoned at the end of the Cold War, the Iron Curtain transformed into a fossilised graveyard containing the spoils of war—both human and nonhuman. Concerns over the conservation of these novel ecologies merged with desires for continental integration. The budding reunification of Europe at the end of the 20 th century eventually instigated preservation efforts for both nonhuman natures and Iron Curtain relics. Ultimately, this transformed the former border into a natural, living memory site. The EGB Initiative was born. The three quotations that began this chapter reflect the driving concerns of this inquiry. The EGB represents a mesh of human work and natural evolution in a unique time in human and natural history. The start of the Cold War coincided with the Great Acceleration—a significant moment for both human and geological histories. The Great Acceleration is also, as of 2019, considered to be the start of a new geological epoch entitled the Anthropocene (Crutzen, 2000; ap507, 2016). The Anthropocene as a term delineates the moment that human actions upon the Earth System became akin to a geological force. The Anthropocene as a geological concept is deigned to replace our still official, but perhaps shifting, 10,000 year old Ice Age of the Holocene. Thereon, this proposed reclassification of our geological epoch represents a lineage of actions stemming from a topos of extinction, both human and nonhuman, that began with the Industrial Revolution and has culminated in a new geological era with an indeterminate future. The EGB is formed from human actions akin to a geological force. And yet. Just as Tsing (2015) looked for life in the ruins of Capitalism, I argue that the EGB looks for and supports life in the ruins of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene promises an era fraught with uncertainty and risk. The risks brought on by the Cold War and the Great Acceleration affect humans and nonhumans equally. These stretches in time symbolise human actions that deny the agency of others and ignore potential consequences. The division of Europe and its resulting ruins signify the arrogance, wastefulness, and foolishness that characterise the Anthropocene. Despite the war being cold, two competing ideologies were 21 still able to wreak material havoc upon their environment, without thought to local ecological outcomes and larger, global environmental consequences. Both the West and the East devastated local ecosystems, but through differing means. Whilst the Soviet Union destroyed ecosystems through infrastructure and pollution, the West sought consumption and exponential growth within the logics of capitalism. Competing human ideologies thus grew and shrunk on the land against their nonhuman populations. Figure 2: The EGB route through 24 countries (as of 2018), following the former Iron Curtain border. Licensed through the Creative Commons, Wikimedia. Copyright Smaack 22 This lack of regard for the natural world caused much devastation across the European continent. And yet, it also resulted in something unexpected—an accidental respite for nonhuman nature. EGB nonhuman natures flourished defiantly against the symbolic construction of a human negative space. Despite unseemly beginnings, the EGB’s existence has been dependent on the actions, or non-actions, of humans. Since the end of 1980s, the former border has slowly transformed into a 24 country-wide ecological network (see Figure two) that connects the Northern Barents Sea with the shores of the Black Sea. The construction of the ecological network as the EGB has incorporated two distinct yet related endeavours—the conservation of a 12,500 km network of novel ecologies, and a European-wide historical memory project of the division and unification of Europe. Whilst biodiversity conservation and the preservation of cultural memory are not typical bedfellows, this inquiry examines their intersection in the creation and maintenance of the EGB. Ultimately, this dissertation argues for their conjunction as an unparalleled partnership in communicative labour. The EGB as a natural living memorial represents a unique rhetorical site in the Western world. The EGB traces the rhetorical labour of human actions that both negate and enable the flourishing of nonhumans. This inquiry thus makes several arguments regarding the EGB as both biodiversity and historical memory project. It contends that through the rhetorical act of transcendence (Burke, 1969), the flourishing of biodiversity has become a symbolic act of unification and peace in Europe against a history of war and strife (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018). Whilst border structures are normally considered as a site of division between nation-states, I contend that the transformative presence of the former Curtain into the EGB can be seen as a unifying, material act of reparations. These are not only reparations of providing respite for nonhuman nature. The EGB has an additional principle of transit and alt-realisation: The Iron Curtain Trail (ICT). The ICT (see Figure three) is a complementary but separate long distance cycling project that also follows the former Iron Curtain. 23 The sign in the EU colours of blue with gold stars, circles the letter 13 to indicate a European-wide trail. However, the ICT is constructed on a more limited basis as it has no route where the Curtain itself was in the middle of the Baltic Sea. In this dissertation, I argue that the ICT offers the traveller to experience the EGB through an alternative lens, by moving with agility through this lengthy memorialised landscape as a long-distance cycling route. Whilst the EGB and the ICT are separate projects, the two projects invoke cooperation between their governance, working in tandem to promote these border regions and biome. However, I portend that whilst the EGB’s focus on increasing awareness of this biodiversity conservation project through tangential eco-tourism, the ICT highlights the former border space as a site specifically for eco-tourism, repurposing border pathways, GDR roads and other such materials for the cyclist. The two projects intersect tensions of conservation for both environmental and political crises. Figure 3: ICT sign (bottom right as it hangs off the signpost) as seen throughout the continent to guide the eco-tourist. Photograph taken in Schaalsee, Zarrentin and Schaalsee, Germany. Photograph author’s own. 24 This dissertation argues that the transformation of the border into an ecological network as well as eco-tourist gambit as the ICT has invited a unique form of continental-wide trans-boundary governance over both humans and nonhumans into what this dissertation terms a biomic politics. A biomic politics is a rhetorical analysis of the structures of power that use a governing communicative over humans and nonhumans on a land. Thus, a biomic analysis considers these communicative structures of governance being made across borders and biomes of people and land. These actions of biomic governance are offered additional analysis when considered through the lens of the Anthropocene. Overall, this inquiry places the transboundary creation and maintenance of the EGB as part of a larger response to calls for global action against political and environmental calamities. This is conservation work in the idiomatic Anthropocene. I argue that a rhetoric of governance of the Anthropocene, in calling for global actions to governance, thus necessitates a biomic politics over multiple nation-states. Overall, I thus contend in this inquiry that from border to belt, the prior division of Europe offers a foreseeable future of climate change mitigation and European union. The former border has ultimately yoked a divided European history across a commons of environmental crises. 1.0 Overview and Plan of Inquiry This dissertation traces the construction of the EGB as an exercise in communicative labour that embraces the material turn in the humanities and social sciences. This work portends that the transformation of the former Iron Curtain into a metaphorical and literal belt that highlights contemporary human–nonhuman nature relations as they work with and against a cultural geography on the land. This inquiry argues that the transformation of the former Iron Curtain into the EGB faced, and continues to face, tensions of continental-wide political turmoil, environmental degradation that has resulted in the colloquial sixth extinction of species (Kolbert, 2014), and the varying effects of climate change. This dissertation thus places the creation of the EGB as a materially and ideologically situated artefact against 25 past and present human–nonhuman nature relations as depicted in policy as well as more generalised Western cultural discourses. This work argues that the development of the EGB is multifaceted. The EGB is clearly the result of a European-wide concern regarding biodiversity conservation and care over the nonhuman However, this dissertation also posits that the significant intersections between biodiversity conservation and growing global calls to rethink human actions against the natural world and human–nonhuman nature relations relies on the significance of the Anthropocene as a suggested new geological epoch. Whilst an Anthropocene ideology posits the destructive force of human actions, I argue that an Anthropocene rhetoric offers a manifesto for action in this time of crisis to help repair human–nonhuman nature relations. Thus, I position the EGB and its related Initiative as an exercise in collective rhetorical world building in this shifting historical and political epoch. 1.1 Generating concepts for future rhetorical, environmental work. In order to account for rhetorical work of the EGB as a material-cultural network, this dissertation develops a cluster of concepts for future work. These terms fill in what I have identified as gaps in the literature in accounting for intersection of rhetoric and governance over humans and nonhumans in this current climate. In this inquiry, I make a logical line of inquiry. I argue that the EGB is constructed through a rhetorical geography of communicative infrastructures—which are then governed through a biomic politics. This cluster of concepts construct what I term more broadly as this Anthropocene rhetoric that needs to account for contemporary human–nonhuman nature relations. An Anthropocene rhetoric is a response to Holocene, Cartesian thinking that places human actions inside an environmental container, one separate from the other. This inquiry thus positions that a rhetoric of what it means to exist in the Anthropocene entwines the human with the nonhuman; the ideological with the material. Whilst Anthropocene ideology refers specifically to the past and present actions of humans that have caused this change in geological epoch, I argue that an 26 Anthropocene rhetoric is a call to future semiotic action that attempts reparations for these previous detrimental actions. Analysis of the EGB project is offered as an exemplar of the cyclical relationship between humans and nonhumans as communicative labour working with and against a changing political, geological epoch. The EGB thus unfolds as a complex cultural statement that symbolises European unity and diversity in its commitment to confront questions of political cohesion as well as environmental crisis in the Anthropocene. 1.2 Research Questions and theses. The EGB in relation to shifting human–nonhuman nature relations in the Anthropocene drives this project. The EGB is a relatively unknown and greatly understudied phenomenon. Although I am a European by birth and culture, I never knew what this project was until I happened upon it by chance. Once the Iron Curtain disbanded, concern regarding what was left behind was washed over. Today, the EGB is mostly discussed from an international development and neo- liberal conservation literature. It is missing entirely from communication studies, the humanities, and any account that considers the cultural and political intersections of this biodiversity conservation project. The rarity of academic undertakings on the project thus leave it rife for examination. The EGB is what I term as a diamond in the rough regarding environmental communication, rhetoric, and biopolitics. The intentions for this inquiry thus intend to turn the diamond in the rough into a 24 carat rhetorical artefact. This undertaking is up to a unique task to account for the scale of such a project against contemporary political and environmental turmoil. Overall, such an inquiry into an artefact where previous literature on the object are scare must be motivated by psyma: a form of rhetorical question that calls into being all that there to be addressed, an elusive goal as being unfolds in time. In particular, the context of climate change and the Anthropocene brings an additional aspect to psyma: a proliferation of questions that call into attention urgencies that invite address but appear to generate an open-ended variety of things to be considered. Ultimately, when long-standing orientations change in 27 relation to key boundaries, psyma comes into play. The EGB thus presents a set of proliferating questions that signal that answers are scarce, even as the necessities to act in a smart, timely, responsive manner threaten to overwhelm. This dissertation thus poses and addresses the following prismatic questions: How are the interests of a continental biome—its capacities, circumstances, precarity, and histories—reimagined? How does this biome, as a former border of division, transform into a site of unity mitigation among the ruins of the nascent Anthropocene? This then leads to questions regarding how Western human–nonhuman nature relations are deployed in manifestation of a climate mitigation strategy in the Anthropocene? Furthermore, it moves to ask what are the rhetorical necessities for adjustment, adaptation, and survival in the face of planetary change? Overall, these questions lead to the major contention that the rhetorical imaginings (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018) of the EGB afford and construct biomic processes affecting, narrating, and investing authority in transformative cultural geographies. Ultimately, this interweaving across questions is not without vein: it is aimed to provide analysis of the EGB Initiative actors—including the European Union (EU)— as they employ a variety of communication strategies to govern the people and lands by investing residents, victors, and nations in a united European identity that is environmentally robust. Overall, this complex intersection of nonhuman nature, human culture, and politics governs human– nonhuman nature relations in the nascent Anthropocene. The EGB is thus positioned as a rhetorically infused material-cultural network in the shifting political and geological epoch. 1.3 Dissertation outline. As a study in communication and social theory, this dissertation begins by placing rhetorical inquiry as pursuing the forces of the better argument. These persuasive forces exist in the contexts of peitho and bia (Folely, 2012). Peitho is a domain where words shape judgment in contingent situations—for want of a better word, world building. Bia refers to life’s necessities that invite naming and compel response. This inquiry thus contends that the EGB and its Initiative is an expression of persuasions 28 that construct, preserve, connect, and guides visitors and locals towards a particular argument. Through tracing these expressions through specific case studies, these map a rhetorical geography of a material- cultural network. 1.3a Chapter one outline. This beginning chapter sets out the foundations for this study. In order to account for the communicative work the creation and maintenance the EGB invokes, this dissertation borrows from select critical ecological, rhetorical and cultural methods. The literature review sets out key theoretical canons from which this inquiry draws from: human-nonhuman nature relations; the memory, space, and place literature; and (environmental) biopolitics. Following a brief introduction to the EGB case study in section two, I introduce a synopsis of the relevant literature followed by a development of terms that assemble elements of the rhetorical tradition in novel ways that fully embrace the material turn with the symbolic. Through a literature review and historical tracing of Western human–nonhuman nature relations, I argue that the development of the Anthropocene requires new thought over human–nonhuman nature relations in these global times of crisis. Beginning with Western human–nonhuman nature relations and the development of the Anthropocene, I argue that a topos of extinction acts as a catalyst for human action in the Anthropocene. Moving from peithot and bia, I thus develop my cluster of terms—a rhetorical geography of communicative infrastructures—that consolidate into an Anthropocene rhetoric. I contend that part of an Anthropocene rhetoric relies on reading both the ideological and the material; the human and the nonhuman. This is a material rhetoric that is most often seen within the broad canon of the “memory, space, and place” literature. Thus, in order to account for a comprehensive Anthropocene rhetoric, he creation, maintenance, and necessary governance of global affects articulates a somewhat novel mode of inquiry: a biomic politics that builds from Foucauldian biopolitics (1998; 2003; 2009). A biomic politics is a contemporary approach to environmental biopolitical governance, in which people and land travel, crossing nation-state borders, and thus require a larger multi-national governmental 29 force. It considers both the top-down and bottom-up creation of a material-cultural network: from governance across the EU to the symbolic work nonhuman nature and Iron Curtain relics perform. Human created-relics and nonhuman nature come to argue for and symbolise cross-boundary work in the Anthropocene. This inquiry thus positions that enabling global responses in the Anthropocene requires a new form of governance that goes beyond governing the individual nation state’s human and nonhuman population. Ultimately, an environmental governance in the Anthropocene requires cross-boundary work—a biomic politics. Thus, after outlining my cluster of concepts, I then present an Anthropocene rhetoric of the EGB more generally, before outlining the methods of analysis this project engages in: transcendent rhetoric, multimodal argumentation, and social semiotics. 1.3b Content follows. The rest of this dissertation then unfolds as follows. The second chapter traces the construction of the EGB project from the annals of history to the present day. A historical account of Iron Curtain-turned-EGB must begin with the end of World War II, the Marshall Plan, and the resulting division of Europe amongst the Allied West and the Soviet Union. What follows is then a communicative, rhetorical analysis of the discourse of the EGB project through the materials of its connected NGO, the EGB Association. Here the development of EGB is examined under historical conditions as a discursive project, through its assembly of interest groups, statements of interest, and governing announcements. Following these foundational chapters, the inquiry then progresses in three content chapters. These chapters are divided according to the construction of the EGB itself into four discrete biogeographical region. North to South, these are: the Fennoscandian Green Belt constituting of Norway, Finland and Russia; the Balkan Green Belt, which incorporates the Russian Federation with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany; the Central Green Belt that includes Germany once again alongside the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Italy; and finally the Balkan Green Belt, which consists of Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro, FYOM Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, 30 Albania, Greece and Turkey. I first begin in the North with the Fennoscandian Green Belt. Chapter four then considers the Central EGB. Finally, chapter five presents a comparative analysis of the Baltic and Balkan regions, due to the contentions that have driven the creation of these two regions. For biogeographical region, a particular case study is then presented in rhetorical detail. These thus employ ideas of governance, politics, critique, and comparison. Each chapter begins with a historical account of the development of each Belt, drawn from archival research of the digital and analogue materials from the project, the EU, and other actors. This also details the unique governance, political structure and cultural limitations that guide each region, as well as the holistic work of the project. Each critical case study uses material rhetorical and multimodal argumentation analyses for notable sites in each region. Choosing key sites began first with in-depth archival research into the online and analogue materials produced by the EGB Initiative and other local/state actors for the project. From this I compiled a list of key sites along each of the four biogeographical regions. I also followed the route of the ICT using the Bikeline publications and the ICT website, seeing what sites the project authors themselves highlight and how best to follow the route of the Belt. Indubitably, each section had multiple sites that all deserved acknowledgment but, due to the limits of this project, not all could be addressed or examined in detail. I thus chose sites that were exemplary of the EGB project, recent regional developments, and regional discourses regarding green and grey infrastructure. I also chose sites where rhetorical work in the field was feasible. This therefore narrowed down options. Apart from extenuating circumstances that prevented work in the field at the Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park in the Fennoscandian Green Belt, I visited each of the key sites analysed in my chapters and performed critical rhetorical analysis in situ. Rhetorical fieldwork was conducted over three different time periods. I initially conducted research in the summer of 2016 in Germany (both along the Baltic coast and the inner German border), the 31 German/Czech Republic border and the Finnish/Russian border. I then conducted further fieldwork in the summer of 2018, concentrating on the surrounding areas of Tallinn, Estonia, and the Bulgarian/Turkish/Greek border. This rhetorical fieldwork was supported by interviews with key members from the three German-based Regional Coordinators. Sadly, the Fennoscandian Coordinator, based in Russia, did not respond to an interview request. Furthermore, this was then followed by participant- observation at the 9 th European Green Belt Conference in Koli, Finland in the autumn of 2016. The concluding chapter of the study once again broadens out to consider the EGB as a holistic project in relation to the terms laid out for inquiry, followed by a speculative discussion of rhetoric and the Anthropocene. I examine the rhetorical strategies employed in what appears to be an international EU exercise in collective narrative building. This conclusion also includes author experiences, and accounts for newer political developments since this project began. Ultimately, this dissertation presents a critical inquiry that reads the complex, spirited and oft-material rhetorics of this European grey-green ribbon that are constituted through the intersections of nonhuman nature, culture and politics on the continent. 32 2.0 A Trabbi Origin Story Figure 4: The very distinctive East-German government- issued car colloquially known as the Trabbi that flooded the West-German restaurant just after the fall of the Wall. Licensed under the Creative Commons, Wikimedia. Copyright Flominator. The story goes as follows. It was December 1989, and the Berlin Wall had just fallen. Conservationists from Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND), the German section of Friends of the Earth, were on their way to a meeting at a restaurant at the Bavarian-Saxon-Czech border in Hof. But yet, there was nothing ordinary about this particular gathering. This was to be the first borderless national meeting of BUND, where East German conservationists were able to join their Western German counterparts. Western BUND activists did not know if anyone from the East would attend. So, as they approached the restaurant with anticipation, they were shocked at what they saw. The restaurant car park was overflowing with Trabbis (see Figure four)—the East German, government issued car (Personal correspondence, 2016). Ultimately, 400 conservationists from both East and West met that day. This first 33 post-Cold War meeting thus begat a new chapter for BUND. Trans-boundary conservation found its beginning. This possibility of cooperation between conservationists so recently ruled by competing regimes was remarkable. Even more, the topic at hand was exactly that which had been the source of their division for 40 years—the inner-German border of the larger Iron Curtain. This strip of land between newly defined East and West Germany in the aftermath of World War II had been made inaccessible to ordinary citizens. This unapproachable corporeal border continued across Europe between countries, as the larger ideological Curtain divided the continent in two. But this division resulted in the unexpected. Without human interference in this border space, novel ecologies of flora and fauna underwent successive generations undisturbed. A sacrifice zone (Bullard, 1993; Lerner, 2010) to humans, the corporeal border became a haven for nonhuman species to return and rewild the European continent against global environmental degradation. The border had become a literal green belt descending the continent (see Figure five). Humans and nonhumans thus competed for growth in the sacrifice zone of a cold yet material war. 34 Figure 5: Across the continent, the EGB appears as a literal wilding green ribbon dividing yet uniting the continent. This is an aerial shot of the German Green Belt between the two German states, Bavaria and Thuringia, near Föritz-Mupperg. Licensed under the Creative Commons License 3.0. The Iron Curtain divided a European continent against the risk of political and environmental turmoil. During the latter half of the 20 th century, the rewilding of a separating land mass between countries (and within Germany) was realised through two differing mechanisms. Eastern Bloc countries predominately created off-limit and un-utilised border areas, with forced resettlement and the razing of several border villages to the ground. In the West, these remote areas were less militarised but were also less attractive for investors. These Western border areas thus remained sparsely populated and without major infrastructure development (European Green Belt, 2018c). The denial of passage in the border space combined with limited economic development to turn the divisive into a unique area of ecological importance. 35 When the physical and ideological border disbanded in 1989, several psyma emerged: What should happen to the material infrastructure of the border? What should now happen to this former forbidden land? And specifically, what of the nonhuman nature that had grown in this border region? The questions were related, urgent, and just beginning. Proliferating psyma broke open the rhetorical space. The first intercultural meeting of BUND was driven by an immediate urgency of biodiversity conservation in a nation reuniting. Rhetorical questions and the re-imagination of local space began to map a rhetorical geography on land that was once forgotten. Psyma was vital in order to map a new project for the Iron Curtain border. 3.0 An Anthropocene Rhetoric This German origin story of the EGB begins this communicative exploration through nonhuman nature and ruins, human–nonhuman nature discourses, environmental programmes, and political strategy in precarious times. Starting with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the EGB Initiative unfolded as a climate change mitigation project that began to suture the continent after 40 years of division. Beginning with German efforts, the conservation of novel ecologies that had grown in the former border space brought together an assembly of actors from Europe and the EU alongside national and local preservation efforts. The dissolution of the Iron Curtain offered an opportunity for natural as well as human growth. This disbandment of the Iron Curtain was a significant historical marker of the 20 th century. But coincidently, the beginning of the Cold War also finds another noteworthy historical bedfellow: the Great Acceleration (Steffen, Broadgate, Deutsch, Gaffney & Ludwig, 2015). Beginning in the 1950s, the Great Acceleration is akin to a second Industrial Revolution. This significant industrial development has been identified as bringing upon the Anthropocene—an ideological neologism that argues that human influence upon the Earth System is so great that it acts as a geological entity (Zalasiewicz, Williams, et al., 2011). In 2019, the Anthropocene has become the driving question of our time over the first two decades of the 21 st 36 century. Human–nonhuman nature relations have shifted as concerns over the planet increase. The search is thus on for a rhetoric that addresses the boundaries and connections that enable and transmit power to the robust pursuit of sustainable life across the planet. This dissertation is hence a contribution to what I anticipate will become a defining project of the 21 st century: a rhetoric of the Anthropocene. 3.1 The Anthropocene as rhetorical trope. Human–nonhuman nature relationships in many guises have become a pressing concern for rhetorical and communication inquiries. The rise of the Anthropocene—“Anthropo” meaning human, “cene” meaning epoch—is more than simple terminology, but infers a concept and ideology that rethinks, rewords and reworks human–nonhuman nature relations. The term posits that humans have now left the Holocene—our still official geological epoch of the last 10,000 years. Instead, the notion of the Anthropocene defines humans as a geophysical presence that since the Great Acceleration has placed humanity and nonhuman life in an unpredictable and dangerous time by undermining the planetary life support systems upon which it depends (Steffen et al., 2015). The Anthropocene has seen much use in popular and scientific discourse since its inception by Eugene Stoermer in the 1980s, although it was Paul Crutzen’s use of the term in 2000 (Falcon-Lang, 2011) that brought it into the public sphere. This was then followed by a joint statement by both authors later that year (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000). However, as of 2010, the term still remains epistemically undefined by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), who are the official keepers of geological time. Thus, the term itself is part of rhetorical world-building, as it attempts to redefine human-nonhuman nature relations in a time of urgent climate change concerns. With no current, official epistemic designation, the Anthropocene as semiotic concept is a hot spot of research in contemporary climate research and environmental communication. Since the popular conception of the Anthropocene as a term in 2000, the term has spread as proverbial wildfire. In the 2010s, it has spawned other similar, rhetorically named “cenes” that include Donna Haraway’s (2016) 37 Cthulucene, the Capitolocene (Moore, 2016) and the thanatotic Necrocene (McBrien, 2016). Whilst such accounts range widely in conceptual scope without an official, grounding designation, all posit variations of destructive human relationships with the nonhuman, with an inextricable link with neoliberalism. The Anthropocene as a new geological epoch thus signals shifting human–nonhuman nature relations with politics and culture that drive a necessity for change. Shifting human–nonhuman nature relations that characterise the Anthropocene uncover power dynamics as humans find geological history being rewritten. Dipesh Chakrabarty (2016) argued that anthropogenically caused effects upon the Earth System are a specific symptom of Western imperialism and industrialisation (Chakrabarty, 2016, p. 216): what is termed by Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg (2014) as “species-thinking”. This is an Anthropocene cultural geography imagined by Chakrabarty’s (2009) Four Theses as an iteration of collapse. Chakrabarty ultimately argued for the rewriting of Western human histories into a geological history, which I argue is a key concept for an Anthropocene rhetoric. The collapse of historical and geological histories challenges traditional Western constructs of humans as separate and apart from an environmental, nonhuman nature (p. 207). Challenging Western constructs through language is a tricky but important business. I argue that the Anthropocene is more than just a neologism, as invokes ideological conceits of what it means to be human in relation to the natural world. The Anthropocene as term moves nonhuman nature from the backgrounded environment (Plumwood, 1993) to entities that react. The Anthropocene intertwines the concept of human and nonhuman nature as a feedback loop, with one’s actions reading into the other’s. The Anthropocene provokes uncertainty, compounded by human actors possibly arriving too late to have any remedial role in this new geological epoch. Humans initiated the Anthropocene, but now they must adapt to a changing and hostile climate. Humans have become the object against the active subject of 38 nonhuman nature, reversing “Western philosophy’s most cherished trope” (Latour, 2014, p.11). Humans and nonhuman nature both become agents and subjects of the action of the “other” simultaneously. The Anthropocene posits new conceptions of human–nonhuman nature relations in the 20 th and 21 st century. The creation of the Anthropocene as a proposed new geological epoch to address the current and future iterations of the Earth System thus infers the need for a new rhetoric of human–nonhuman nature relations. A formative rhetorical question thus asks how Anthropocene problems and solutions are manifested in a rationale distinct from Holocene thinking. Bruno Latour’s (2015) considerations of the “mesh” of global networks leads to this question: If the planetary moment necessitates living in the “capitalist ruins” of society, how does the Anthropocene frame the entanglement of natural, cultural, and political relations in today’s climate? This inquiry thus addresses how contemporary Anthropocene thinking affects the human–nonhuman nature relations of the EGB as both discursive project and physical space. 3.2 Rhetorical geography as wor[l]d-building. The ideology of the Anthropocene pits human action on the land as akin to a geological force. Human notions of nonhuman nature as a resource, as will be discussed shortly, renders the material and the land as a site to be read rhetorically. This manifestation on the ground is what I approach ontologically as communication infrastructures transubstantiating an alt- rhetorical geography on the land. Reading the rhetoric infused in the geography of the land, created through human ideals, geopolitical aspirations, and human–nonhuman nature relations, is key for an Anthropocene rhetoric. Action in the Anthropocene requires acknowledging that the nonhuman world is a symbolic actor moulded by, and moulds itself, human actions. Geography plays thus a part in organising, framing, selecting and deselecting rhetorical elements through according presence (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958), advancing simulation, or responding to absence. Nonhuman nature and the environment are both critical parts such geography that also become defined by it. Overall, the concept of nonhuman nature is 39 not objective; rather, it is a social construction with different meanings to different populations, varied over time. 3.2a The nonhuman human as the gendered resource. This social construction of nonhuman natures in Western culture begins with geographical entities initially posited as stemming from a linguistic and symbolic Cartesian dualism derived from monotheistic religions (Cronon, 1996a, p. 35). Kevin DeLuca (1999) provided an apt summary of such dynamics: “In Western culture nature has been displaced in numerous narratives, including Christian, Enlightenment, scientific, capitalistic, socialistic, and industrial, that place human reason and humans at the center [sic]” (pp. 12-13). Lynn White Jr. (1967) emphasised the tendency to see human life as more valuable than other life based on Christianity’s teachings. In the Holocene, Western culture has enacted a hierarchy of humanity over flora and fauna, as humans became the stewards and/or masters of nonhuman nature (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, pp. 2-3). Linguistic hierarchies have been established over time, and patriarchal tones have abounded as nonhuman nature became characterised as the subservient but life-giving woman. The commonly used metaphor of “Mother Earth” thus frames this particular Western view of the natural world (Plumwood, 1993; Soper, 1995). The characterisation of nonhuman nature as deferential mother has another rhetorical counterpart in Western culture: that of nonhuman nature as a resource for human use. Eco-feminists, and feminist political ecology, has argued that since Ancient Greek philosophical thought, the conceit of nonhuman nature as feminine automatically has rendered nonhuman nature as subservient to “man” (aka humans), as the masters of this lower class of species. For Luce Irigaray (2011), this is a democracy born in Ancient Greece that “had as its more or less explicit stakes the differentiation of the masculine body from nature and the mother, who was assimilated to the natural world” (p. 194). For Irigaray, this democracy bred a culture of domination of matter, where the nonhuman nature was in part considered female because it was “material”, apart from thought and logic—a man’s game—which is situated in the mental (Irigaray, 2011, 40 p. 195). The domination of the material by the mental invoked a conceptual metaphor nonhuman nature as a resource, seen in the language of contemporary culture where ecosystems are considered to provide “services” (“Ecosystem Services”, n.d.). Such rhetorical tensions between nonhuman nature and humans have been highlighted by Olson and Goodnight (1994). Here the authors, in their examination of humans using and wearing animal fur denotes that “humans have assumed a right to use other animals for their own purposes” (p. 253). Bruno Latour (2004) argued that this Western human/nonhuman nature dichotomy is unseen in other cultures, and thus a conceptual mistake. This argument has rendered agreement across disciplines concerned with language use as well as philosophy of mind (Bateson, 1972; Van Dijk, 1977; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980[2003]). Alfred Kentigern Siewers (2014) argued that even within Western environmental disciplines, capitalist culture still chooses not to deeply engage with the “ecological wisdom” of nonmodern cultures that do not use these dualisms—culture/nonhuman nature, economy/ecology, and meaning/function (p. 4). Despite the creation of the Anthropocene, Western society still dismisses nonmodern cultures as primitively destroying their environments, yet denies the global scale of environmental destruction by supposedly more sophisticated tenocracies. Thus, the creation of an Anthropocene rhetoric offers an opportunity to study human–nonhuman nature relations in the context of contemporary environmental and geological crises. A developed alt-rhetorical geography facilitates critical inquiry into humanity’s relationship with the planet and nonhuman nature. As with the Anthropocene, symbolic world-building posits ideology. A concept suggests an idea, whilst a construct assembles ideas into a relationship among terms that attribute cause and effect to actions in the world. A rhetorical geography thus reads the land as part of human world-building. 3.2b World-building as a social endeavour. A rhetorical geography informs and shapes the world and our understanding of it. A significant organisational tool of such world building is the concept of 41 framing, traditionally attributed to Erving Goffman (1974) and resonant with Kenneth Burke’s (1966) terministic screens. Frames organise individual perceptions of events and experience by filtering important information, discarding the noise, and building basic cognitive structures to guide actors and audiences in the perception of acts and events. Frames are thus cognitive schema organised through social experience. Lakoff (2010) argued that frames include semantic roles, relations between roles, and relations to other frames that are physically realised in the neural circuits of our brain. Frames are about salience: which particular aspects of reality get highlighted and which are ignored. Goffman’s frame analysis thus examined how texts influence human cognitive organisation—essentially their interpretations of sensory input. As Robert Entman (1993) argued, "to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation, for the item described" (p. 51). Charles Fillmore’s (1976) frame semantics argued that words specifically are organised by frames that incorporate a variety of elements of essential, encyclopaedic knowledge that relate to that word. From words to second-order signification systems, Barthes’ (1972[2012]) concept of myth and metalanguage were also frames, but with a culturally, socially-constructed aspect that unconsciously organised the world from the top-down (p. 217). Our conceptual knowledge of (nonhuman) nature as a concept is thus activated by its frame, its cultural myth, and the symbolic system it is presented in. Lakoff argued that the environmental frame elucidates the tricky rhetorical problem of nonhuman nature—a term seemingly historical and innate—as an ideological concept that induces another frame prompted its binary opposite. Lakoff argued that because political ideologies are characterised by systems of frames, nonhuman nature and the environment are ideological languages that activate the ideological system (Lakoff, 2010, p. 72). Regarding concerns over climate change, the facts must make sense in terms of their system of frames, or 42 they will be ignored. The facts must be adequately framed or screened. Human–nonhuman relations thus invite a rhetoric that accounts for the social construction of the land. 3.3 Rhetorical geography. The notion of a rhetorical geography has seen various coinages but has not solidified into a definitive phrase. I thus reframe the term. Elizabeth Dukehart (2011) argued unimaginately that a rhetorical geography is but a mapping of a network of semiotic pieces, as the communication inquiry of an artefact. These pieces can vary from political white papers to digital blogs. Dukehart’s assessment is useful, but an inert, taken-for-granted, naïve actor orientation. I argue for a rhetorical geography that is more than mapping spaces between the known and the unknown: the treatied and the untreatied. Rather, a rhetorical geography changes human relations to space, things, and sites. As the material comes to extend beyond concrete physical objects and fixed places, it reaches towards the study of how we immerse ourselves within the world and articulate with it (Wells et al., 2018, p. 21). An alt- rhetorical geography takes this one step further, as it also looks to the past as it is materially presented in and on the land. Geography thus becomes both the product and producer of rhetoric. To unpack a rhetorical geography, several methods offer the necessary toolkit. The material turn in rhetoric is the necessary starting point, as is cultural geography (Soja, 1989). Wells et al. (2018) discussed how the movement of rhetorical scholarship towards on-site research has invited an ecological understanding of public rhetoric by showing how physical things participate in constituting narratives of past and future, affective practices such as mourning and celebration, and individual and communal identity. If memory objects have largely ground foci on human rhetorics, they have nonetheless inspired scholar to intimate in situ exploration of nonhuman forces (pp. 17-18.) The examination of a rhetorical geography necessitates rhetorical criticism in the field in order to examine the symbolic action of the material in conjunction with social discourses. Such methods are imperative to 43 extending beyond language and discourse on human–nonhuman nature relations, to the communicative labour invoked in their manifestation on the ground. Rhetorical criticism in situ (Endres, Middleton, Hess & Send-Cook, 2016), participatory critical rhetoric (Middleton, Hess, Endres, and Senda-Cook, 2015), and critical-rhetorical ethnography (Hess, 2011) of which Phaedra Pezzullo (2001; 2007; 2016) presents a unique subsect of this work, verges on advocacy: it offers a voice to local and vernacular populations, as opposed to broader top-down influences. In the study of landscapes, memorials, public protests, and sites of environmental justice, scholars have intertwined the physicality and materialities of symbolic action with rhetorical criticism. The methods for this immersion of the material thus varies, from interviews and participant-observation to rhetorical analyses of the material and symbolic supports of public memory, ideologies, discourses, and identity. Although such rhetorical field methods are worthy goals, the scope of this project lies specifically with these top-down discourses as they construct human–nonhuman nature relations on the land. Thus, a rhetorical geography extends rhetorical criticism to how green and grey infrastructures act perform communicative labour for the nation state, or in the case of the EGB, Europeans more generally. 3.4a Communicative infrastructures as part of a rhetorical geography. Geography and the natural world perform rhetorical work. Logically, this would also expand to the various infrastructures, both green and grey, that make manifest the physical environment as part of a broader, resonant affective flow of life. These are what I term as communicative, or communication, infrastructures. A rhetorical geography can be a conservative enterprise sorting out places into property, locations, and communication control structures. Communication infrastructures as a term also exhibits a similar limited conservative bias as rhetorical geography did. Wilkin, Moran, Ball-Rokeach et al.’s (2010) construction of Communication Infrastructure Theory referred to the network of digital and analogue media in a given area of the city. This is a solid account in terms of media theory. But for a material 44 rhetoric, I posit that such thinking lacks the significant communicative labour of non-discursive materialities. Infrastructure metaphorically and literally suggests the organisational activities-in-being for a habitat or society. The labour of communication is neither limited nor exhausted by television, radio, newspapers, and smart phones. Rather, communication, and communicative infrastructures, are the totality of material objects that become part of a habitat’s rhetorical work. For instance, the city is constructed by multiple ecologies in competition within the larger orbit of a biome that rests inland as a metropolis or on the oceans as a port. Cultural networks are another example. Cultural networks offer various ways of preserving, collecting, displaying, and performing objects, constituting vital networks of urban communicative infrastructures. Furthermore, if the land can be read rhetorically, then material communication infrastructures extends from the grey to the green as they connect Kairotically (when resonant) in the polytechtonic relations of time and space. Communicative infrastructures thus work through and extend beyond media. The land and the environment becomes a rhetorical geography constructed of these communicative green and grey infrastructures. Just as human-built grey infrastructures can be read sites of importance for cultural memory, I argue that nonhuman nature can, and is, cultivated in order to be read as a symbolic apparatus of the state. The land is constructed of green and grey infrastructures that act as cultural signifiers. 3.4 Reading the rhetoric of memory. Reading green and grey infrastructures is a classic rhetorical material turn. Whilst it is mostly typical that cultural memory sites are considered human-built infrastructures on the land, this dissertation argues that the land itself can also be read. Humans, acting as the stewards and masters of nonhuman nature, have been shaping the land since humans roamed the planet. If a site built of natural material such as wood can be read as significant for a culture, then surely 45 the land, mostly likely cultivated in some fashion, also has semiotic value. Through articulation, we see nonhuman nature as dynamically constituted. Whilst maps are stable and fixed, the act of dwelling (Ingold, 1987) is Hutchins and Stormer’s (2013) furthering of Deleuze in which place-making does not happen at a single moment, but is the act of “becoming-entwined” and “revealing-together” (p. 28). Dwelling thus emerges not only from human sources but also in the “between”, in our emergent positioning within environment—a fundamentally new position for the rhetorician (Wells at al., 2018, p. 23). The human and nonhuman dwell in the same map and discourse. And yet, the human who maps differs in intentions, actions, and pathos. I thus argue that the material rhetorical turn to reading the land is not without precedent. Reading the land and its grey infrastructures has been a significant aspect of the rhetorical memory 1 , place, and space literature. Traditional sites normally include museums, memorials, preservation sites, and battlefields (Balthrop & Blair, in press; Blair, 1999; Bodnar, 1999; Haines, 1986; Linenthal, 1993). However, Greg Dickinson, Carole Blair and Brian L. Ott’s (2010) germinal edited volume Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials shows how any “memory place” can be rhetorical. 2 Memorials and museums are memory sites that are places. For Tim Cresswell (2004), places are spaces in which people have made meaningful and have engaged in place-making activities. The rhetorical functioning of places is that they are not just a way of seeing but also a way of understanding the world: “When we look at the world as a world of places we see different things. We see attachments and connections between people 1 It is important to note that public memory differs from cultural memory, and that varying definitions of both term exist. For instance, Morris (cited in McGeough et al., 2015) argues that whilst cultural memory reflects the world view of a particular culture, a public memory is the current hegemonic bloc’s cultural memory, alongside other pieces of cultural memory that members of other cultures that are able to preserved (p. 232). 2 The authors posit six assumptions taken from a variety of positions by contemporary memory scholars: 1) memory is activated by present concerns, issues, or anxieties; 2) memory narrates shared identities, constructing a sense of communal belonging; 3) memory is animated by affect; 4) memory is partial, partisan and thus often contested; 5) memory relies on material and/or symbolic supports; and 6) memory has a history (Blair, Dickinson & Ott, 2010, p. 6). 46 and place. We see worlds of meaning and experience.” (Cresswell, 2004, p. 11.) Places provide terministic screens for the visitor, designating what to think about and what is unimportant. Brian S. Osborne (2006) agreed. Osborne argued that whilst space is a neutral entity, places are emotive, experienced emotionally and defined subjectively. As people both produce places and derive their identities from them, “they are the spatial co-ordinates for identity and belonging in the reciprocal relationship between people and the places they inhabit” (p. 149). Thus, through living, memorising, narrating place, and creating symbolic landscapes, places constitute essential dimensions of the “geography of identity” (Osbourne, 2006, p. 150). Places are thus typically discrete and bounded, whilst spaces are open and undesignated. A memory place is hence constructed as a sight of importance and preservation for human culture, politics, and human relationships with the natural world. 3.4a The land as a memory apparatuses. Public memory is not just a rhetorical narrative of the past. Place is not a narrative that can be told or read as such, but is a memory apparatus that parses, represents, shares, and embraces different forms, created by various techne (Blair, Dickinson & Ott, 2010, p. 24). Memories are differentiated, named “events”, marked for recognition from an undifferentiated, temporal succession of occurrences. And yet, most public memories utilise invention insofar as they are selectively and creatively constructed of rhetorical resources. John Bodnar (1993) observed that public memory is a site of power structure. For Bondar, memory spaces becomes sites of contestation over who gets to construct these public memories and rhetorical narratives. This is seen in Ryan McGeough, Catherine Palczewski, and Randall Lake’s (2015) rhetorical reading of oppositional memory practices at US memorial sites, which extends Lake and Pickering’s (1998) visual argumentation framework. Collective memories are selective and able to change, deflect, or negate other memories as conditions and needs change. The material and symbolic supports of public memory are thus where the rhetorical groundwork is laid—language, ritual performances, communication materials, communication technologies, objects and 47 places. Moreover, these memory places involve the full bodily experience of moving through the site as you read its symbolic and material artefacts, becoming a rhetorically embodied practice (Blair et al., 2010, p. 24). Memory thus hinges on the action of the visitor as well as top-down discourses. 3.5b Distinguishing cultural memory from the everyday. The creation of memory sites relies on various actions of those who are appointed the task of creating and preserving such spaces. The designation of a site as sacred to a culture, the preservation of the site through biomic apparatuses, and its election into cultural discourse, is a complex act of biopolitical apparatuses on behalf of the nation state. Part of this rhetorical memory work is conducted through tourism, which creates a set of expectations that are formed in part because “memory places fashion themselves rhetorically to distinguish themselves from the everyday” (Blair, Dickinson & Ott, 2010, p. 26). As destinations that typically require travel, visiting the memory place also becomes a consummatory act: the rhetoric of the memory place invites the performance of travelling to and traversing it. The experience offers more than the sum of its tourist episodes. The accounting for the material and what it can symbolise for a culture is an inherent part of an Anthropocene rhetoric. 4.0 A Biomic Politics An Anthropocene rhetoric that reads the rhetorical geography of the land is one of the symbolic constructs this dissertation employs to account for this new geological era of crisis. But an Anthropocene rhetoric—a global phenomenon—also requires a globalising account of human actions that attempt to control for and repair destructive human actions against the natural world. Resolving impending environmental and ecological crises cannot be achieved by one person or one nation alone. It requires a global response of collaborative environmental governance. In order to reverse (if this is indeed possible) climate change and biodiversity loss, governance must become a global endeavour beyond the borders of the singular nation state. If the governance of human actions and the land is an (environmental) biopolitics, 48 then I propose that the governance of global human actions and the land as a biomic politics. This is an Anthropocene rhetorical theory of governance. 4.1 From bio- to bio-mic politics. Biomic politics builds from and extends significantly from the cottage industry of environmental biopolitics (Biermann & Mansfield, 2014; Bulkeley & Schroeder, 2012; Cavanagh, 2014; Charkiewicz, 2009; Coleman & Grove, 2009; Corry, 2012). Biopolitics is dominated by Foucault’s (1998; 2003; 2009) lectures on biopower— a product of Holocene thinking—where the governance of the population in enacted in its environmental milieu through state apparatuses. Here a biopolitical sovereign focuses on “making live” or “letting die” the body of a national population. “Governmentality” thus becomes the resulting apparatus of the state focused on the body-politics of the population as a whole, rather than disciplining the individual anatamo-body (Foucault, 2008, p. 240). Environmental biopolitics thus extends this notion to explicate governance of the body-politics of a population and its resulting environmental milieu in light of global climate change. Harriet Bulkeley and Heike Schroeder (2011) argued that hybrid arrangements between the state and nonstate actors are prevalent in acts of environmental biopolitics, where nonstate actors act biopolitically on behalf of the sovereign. This use of nonstate actors was anticipated by Foucault’s (1998; 2003; 2009) notion of biopolitics and biopower. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (2006) extended Foucault’s original notion by arguing how biopolitics is a governing of the self through modes of subjectification—through the social institutions that act as biopolitical apparatuses. This governance is what I identify as invoking rhetorical and semiotic techniques to frame their world-building in a particular way. People receive and interpret categorisation from which to identity-build and govern themselves. The individual as an agent, acting within the oikos, is also taking responsibility for their actions within the democratic polis. Social institutions give the rhetorical impression of agentive acts of freedom, but are heavily politicised and guide the individual to particular “choices”. For an environmental biopolitics that indexes risk, the individual 49 must rely on the scientific institution and biopolitical modes of subjectification, to self-govern their behaviour based on a rhetoric that they cannot embody experience in their everyday life. Rather, it is biopolitical apparatuses that stage and govern a personal response to these staged risks. Foucault’s original notion of biopolitics and biopower has seen many variations throughout Western social and political thought. However, Rabinow and Rose (2006) have warned against this proliferation where the use of biopolitics is used indiscriminately as an overarching narrative for all governance. The authors argue that not all politics is a biopolitics. And yet, at the same time, the authors have also asserted that all biopolitical work is now an expansion of Foucault’s original notion as Foucault’s original account was specifically a genealogical one. An account of an international environmental biopolitics unavoidably branches out from Foucault’s original notions, as it must necessarily reach beyond the governing boundaries of the nation state and instead ask what forms of life will be let to live and which will be left to die under increasingly unpredictable environmental concerns. Biopolitical governance becomes a moral concern over life and death. Thus, extensions of the theory are natural in order to apply the biopolitics to the present day. Environmental biopolitics is just one such expanded iteration. The granting of life and of death is a key concept within biopolitics. For instance, the furnishing of life and death is inherently an Agamben thanatopolitics (1998). Furthermore, I argue that this is a significant concern for the budding Anthropocene. In Homo Sacer (1998), Agamben reworked Aristotle’s (2013) and Hannah Arendt’s ([1957]1998) distinctions between biological existence (zōē) and the political life of speech and action (bios), introducing his own interpretation of “bare life” that is not the same as biological zōē but rather the remainder of the destroyed political bios. As Agamben argued, mere life “is not simply natural reproductive life, the zōē of the Greeks, nor bios [but rather] a zone in a distinction and continuous transition between man and beast” (Agamben, 1998, p. 109). The effect of this life is 50 compounded in the creation of a “state of exception”, in which the individual, through a radical change in law, is reduced to bare life and thus loses agency: If the law employs the exception—that is the suspension of law itself—as its original means of referring to and encompassing life, then a theory of the state of exception is the preliminary condition for any definition of the relation that binds and, at the same time, abandons the living being to law (Agamben, 2005, p. 1). In a state of exception, life rhetorically comes to be conceptualised as nonlife—as zōē —in order to be sacrificed outside the boundaries of traditional juridical order. Thus, it allows the state to let die a certain population under this new moral order of exception. Governance is structured in zones where bios is attributed to beings in a state of ordered value, whilst zōē is reserved as a zone for displaceable, disposable biotic entities who are not recognised as crossing the threshold of legal protection. Risk to individual agents as well as risk to the nation state leads to such moral classifications of that which deserves bios and what is subjected to as zōē . Risk is thus an inherent part of bio- and biomic politics. 4.2 Governance as risk. Theories of governance are tricky in the risky Anthropocene. The Anthropocene posits that humans, who have traditionally been granted full bios, are required to grant such powers to the nonhuman. The Anthropocene is a unique state of exception where the status quo has been challenged. But because the Anthropocene itself is a global rather than nation-state issue, the status quo of traditional environmental biopolitics is challenged further. The governance of environmental risk goes beyond these traditional boundaries of the nation-state. It requires a supranational governance over global bios in order to constitute and regulate human actions beyond national borders. Risk in the Anthropocene thus extends beyond the body of a population towards all humans and nonhumans. This risk in the Anthropocene has been foreshadowed by Ulrich Beck’s (2009) notion that humans have moved from traditional “hazard” cultural orders to a “risk society.” By inference, the Anthropocene 51 also marks a global risk, cumulatively, to such a social order. The Anthropocene is constituted in agglomerated, accumulated, and delocalised risking—hyper events take place with causes and consequences that overflow the boundaries of the nation-states. Thus, a logic of precaution through prevention prevails for the risk society (Beck, 2009, p. 52). This is a speculative move. Risky events are no longer limited spatially (as they reach beyond national borders), or knowable through temporal sequences (climate events have long latency periods and indeterminate length of outcomes), as they harbour unpredictable sociality (the result of complex biopolitical and biomic processes). Rather, the calculability of risk results in the inability-to-know regarding the future (Beck, 2009, p. 53), despite efforts to the contrary. Thus. Combining transboundary space, the absence of fitting moments of prevention or recovery (bio-Kairos) and the complexity of cultures, an (environmental) biopolitics is challenged. Overall, the governance of environmental risk in the global Anthropocene becomes difficult as it goes beyond the nation-state boundary within which biopolitics is traditionally conceived. Uncertainty and risk drives governance in the Anthropocene. Part of this risk in the Anthropocene is a topos of extinction for both humans and nonhumans. This topos invokes the risk of both acting and not acting. Human actions have caused the Anthropocene. And yet, if humans now do not act in order to repair the damage they have caused, and will continue to, then this topos of extinction will also continue. Thus, a topos of extinction becomes a key player in both environmental and biomic (bio)politics. The threat of extinction is a particular driver in the attempt to mitigate climate change. Climate change is not an issue that the ordinary citizen can experience or make a judgment on for themselves. Rather, the individual must rely on top-down apparatuses and climate experts to “stage” the reality of climate change as a global risk (Beck, 2009, p. 10). Beck argues that global risks have to be staged—they have to be presented as a future catastrophe—with the oft-result of averting said catastrophe due to influencing present decisions as a “self-refuting prophecy” (Beck, 2009, p. 10). Staged 52 anticipation thus obliges preventive action as a “top-down” governance, framing processes mediated through experts. Ultimately, it is not the lay person experiencing changes in weather patterns that becomes the scientific proof of global warming. Rather, it is only the expert that can see receding glaciers as a global climate risk (Beck, 2009). Thus, this governance against risk and extinction requires a multi-layered, and multi-national, platform. 4.3 Governance of lifeforms is rhetorical. The governance of lifeforms against risk and extinction invokes a moral question regarding which life forms are properly zoned as bios and which as zōē . It leads to further questions regarding alterations of the status quo and what protections it engenders as sovereignty is suspended, taken away, or simply denied. The answers require choices of governance that speak to the relation of human and nonhuman populations through state (or state-enacting) apparatuses. This is a defining communicative rhetorical problem of the Anthropocene. The creation of the “population”— whether including the human and the nonhuman, the living and the non-living—is a culturally symbolic move that engages in socially designated categories, communicated through rhetorical devices. This is rhetorical world-building. Worlds provide habitats for a variety of subjectivities. Biomic politics assembles biopolitics for contemporary world-scapes and thus multiples zones with numerous objects for its modes of subjectification. A biomic politics rethinks governance beyond nation- state borders and oversees the transnational governance of humans and nonhumans hybrids. World– building through zone-taking has been made problematic by the nascent, chaotic disturbances of the Anthropocene. A biomic politics considers the investments of power in defining, regulating, and opening access to sites for the human that also rely on the governance of the nonhuman in order to create a hospitable environment. In order to examine this rethinking of environmental biopolitics in the Anthropocene, the EGB is a prime example of what these new concepts offer. An EGB Anthropocene rhetoric are vibrant. 53 5.0 The Anthropocene Rhetoric of the EGB This dissertation argues for an Anthropocene rhetoric of the EGB as a unique, layered affair. IN sections three and four I outlined the seminal cluster of concepts coined in this dissertation that accumulate into a communicative Anthropocene rhetoric. This section now turns to their application to this inquiry’s case study: the EGB. This dissertation argues that the EGB, as both ecological network and historical memory project, represents a unique approach to climate mitigation, following the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity at the 1992 United Nations Conference for the Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. Through UNCED, biodiversity has been considered a key global climate mitigation strategy. Scientists argue that greater genetic diversity in an ecosystem better enables species to become resistant to global warming and to adapt to changing environmental conditions. This is what is termed the “insurance hypothesis”—that high levels of genetic variability among species increases the likelihood that at least part of the population will adapt and that two species will perform overlapping functions in an ecosystem. Ultimately, if one species is lost, the other can take over its role (Küchler-Krischun & Maria Walter, 2007, p. 11). The EGB thus represents an individual climate mitigation strategy that is manifested on, and originates from, the physicalities of the land. Biodiversity conservation is thus key to help mitigate climate change during this sixth wave of extinction. 3 Over the past two decades, the EU has created biodiversity “deadlines”. The sixth Environmental Action Programme was aimed to halt biodiversity decline by 2010 (Vogtmann, 2004, p. 5). The EU then called on European countries to raise their biodiversity levels by 2020 (European Commission, 2011; European 3 For instance, these extinctions are classified by the IUCN “Red List Categories and Criteria”. This list is a classification system for denoting which plants and animals at a high risk of global extinction from critically endangered, endangered, and vulnerable. It also lists: which species are already extinct or extinct in the wild; categorisation that cannot be determined because there is insufficient information; and flora and fauna that are near threatened, including those that would be threatened if it was not for ongoing taxonomic conservation programmes (Strauss & Pezold, 2009, p. 18). 54 Commission, 2016). Meanwhile, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which is ratified between more than 170 governments, created an international agreement to regulate the international trade in wildlife by ensuring trade does not threaten extinction (Strauss & Pezold, 2009, p. 16). 4 5.1 Biodiversity as rhetorical construct. The loss of biodiversity across Europe was noted during the reign of the Cold War. Biodiversity conservation as a climate change strategy in the Anthropocene was noted by natural and social scientists this century (Rockström, Steffen, Noone, et al., 2009). The EGB represented an opportunity to support increasing levels of biodiversity as a key agenda for the EU as well as the entire Earth System. Furthermore. With the fall of the Curtain, scientists and conservations thus turned to the former border as an opportunity to do their part from the Earth System. But I argue that biodiversity conservation is not solely an act of good intentions towards the Earth System. Rather, I argue that biodiversity, and biodiversity conservation, are rhetorical constructs that drive human action and changing human–nonhuman nature relations. This is clear in regards to the construction and maintenance of the EGB. The EGB was born itself in a rhetorical construction—the human constructed negative space of the Iron Curtain. Burke (1966) argued that such negatives do not exist in nonhuman nature (p. 430). Rather, humans create words to define the absence of things that they consider of value. The lack of humans, an inherent high value group in society, in this border resulted in the conceptual and physical negative space—a place without human bios. Thus, even before fall of the Iron Curtain, the border space had become a rhetorical construct—a rhetorical geography. With nonhuman nature symbolically constituted as a resource in Western society, it is not surprising that the conservation of biodiversity has been translated into economic costs and benefits. A study in 1997 4 Currently, this agreement offers varying degrees of protection to more than 30,000 species of animals and plants. 55 estimated the annual benefit of the world’s combined ecosystems at between $16 and $64 trillion (Küchler- Krischun & Maria Walter, 2007, p. 12). Natural resources became a monetary reserve of human reparations against extinction within the Earth System. The EGB is thus both a rhetorical geography and highly linguistically-constructed entity. It was language that drove the former border’s iteration as historical memory and biodiversity conservation project. Nonhuman nature knows no borders, and does not remain solely in previously drawn human boundaries. Rather, nonhuman nature proliferated in the border regions, but extended and transformed the former border into a site of flourishing. Furthermore, the EGB was never, and continues to be, not a literal sole network. It is a network consisting of millions of miniature ecosystems, that together work as one rhetorical construct—an ecological network that symbolises European efforts to mitigate climate change in the Anthropocene. Acting within the nonhuman nature as a resource conceptual metaphor, the significant biodiversity of this biome thus became part of the topoi of ecosystem “services” that the EGB could provide to the European continent. Thus, the EGB can be seen as founded upon the desire to protect novel ecosystems against a rhetorical and actual ecological crisis of biodiversity loss and climate change as well as political turmoil and need for unification. The land thus spoke towards the ambitions of European humans in the service of Anthropocene needs. 5.2 Extinction as rhetorical topos in the EGB. The threat of extinction is a key catalyst for an Anthropocene rhetoric. But extinction is not solely a literal act. Extinction in the Anthropocene threatens a human way of life, as well body population of the living, both human and nonhuman. The topos of extinction drives both biodiversity conservation as well as the cultural conservation of public memory. A topos usually suggests an area to discuss means to an end, presupposing the continuation of possibilities of action and address. Extinction is a peculiar type of topos, holding thanatotic resonances. Resistance to thanatotic impulse thus turns extinction towards remembering the rhetorical resources that animate life and 56 always underwrite living. Extinction thus may find its expression in melancholy, feelings of loss, and futility resisting fate. The Anthropocene presents a unique rhetorical topos of extinction. Human-caused extinction in the Anthropocene looms as one of the “9 planetary boundaries”, named by 28 international scientists, that cannot be crossed without an extinction of the living and cultural ways of life . As we saw with biodiversity as an ecosystem service, the enhanced diversity of the EGB offers a safe operating space for humanity and hospitable living within this new geological age (Rockström, Steffen, Noone, et al., 2009). Extinction hence acts a topos that drives action and borderless governance of European humans and nonhumans in order to protect against the risky Anthropocene. For instance, in 2015, Steffen, Richardson and 16 other scientists (Steffen et al., 2015) observed that the planet had already surpassed four of these nine boundaries: human caused extinctions (loss of biosphere integrity); deforestation (land-sphere change); the rising level of CO2 in the atmosphere; and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorous into the ocean. Thus, the Earth was considered to be entering into a zone of increasing risk, greater unpredictability, and interactive uncertainty. At stake became the possibility, perhaps likelihood, that the Earth System may be driven into an irreversible and less hospitable state for humanity itself. 5.3 Life and non-life in the border zone. The topos of extinction that drove initial conservation action in the EGB was led by individual nation-states. I argue that the creation of the Bel, with its foundations based on the Iron Curtain, is a distinctly necro-political act (Mbembé & Meintjes, 2003). The Curtain was a product of the Cold War, where the Soviet Union and the West declared that the rule of law could be suspended in the name of self-defence and security. Here biopower was focused on othering lives of different populations East and West and enacted the right to “make die and let live” those who attempted to cross their division. The Iron Curtain border—the “death zone” (GrünesBand Deutschland, 57 n.d.)— was Agamben’s (1998) state of exception. Consequently, it was this state of exception that cultivated novel ecologies along borders of formerly warring countries. As the Iron Curtain disbanded at the end of the 20 th century, its new instantiation as biodiversity conservation project because situated within a discourse on global environmental change that required governments to consider the lives of both their human and nonhuman populations. Laws governing the sovereignty of the sea, the Arctic, and land lay out spaces of a common sovereignty: the protection of environments for the common good of people. This is an Anthropocene rhetoric of governance. 5.3a The biomic politics of ecological networking. Robert Brunner (2006) posited that transboundary work in the EGB defied traditional thinking. With the Iron Curtain as an almost insurmountable border, the facilitation of cooperation brought Europeans to think in terms of networks, rather than limited to the protection of isolated areas (p. 13). This networked thinking coexisted with the development of a Western green movement and a realisation of the detrimental effect humans wage on the Earth System. Initial green efforts came from individual NGOs, biodiversity charities, eco-tourist companies, and state apparatuses. But delineation of borders between actors and nation-states became increasingly fuzzy as risks manifested not only in terms of climate insecurity but also in ever-more- restricted degrees of freedom for biodiversity management. Countries needed to work together to preserve these boundaryless nonhuman natures. Thus, climate mitigation action such as biodiversity conservation could not be initiated and continued to this present day without an organising, top-down governance to guide such actions. For the EGB specifically, the governance of a biome across 24 countries required a new type of globalising thinking to join disparate countries into agreement. Although biopolitics as a theory can somewhat account for this governance of life and death in the nation-state, the flourishings of novel ecologies across country boundaries necessitate novel border discourses. Thus, I offer an extension of 58 Foucault’s discussion of power and discipline over questions of life and death as well as the environmental biopolitical work of Bulkeley and Schroeder work, to argue that such transboundary governance is part of an Anthropocene rhetoric. I argue that these ecosystems flourishing in the former death zone in between nation-state boundaries transformed border discourses from an environmental biopolitics—the governance of humans in relation to a changing environmental milieu—into a biomic politics that governs humans, nonhumans and land beyond the singular nation state. Instead, the EGB Initiative became a supra- national governing agent alongside the IUCN, and following the latter’s departure the EGB Association was initiated. But as the unification of Europe increased and more eastern bloc states became EU members, the EU also became increasingly involved in giving rules, directives, and guidelines for adherence to climate mitigation recommendations. Overall, I argue that the Anthropocene requires a supra-national governing sovereign (a holistic European continent) whose governmentality is enacted by predominately non-state actors (the EGB Association). The result is a biomic politics of an ecological network: a landscape where humans, nonhuman nature, and the ruins of the Anthropocene thrive. The EGB provides a timely example of how climate change mitigation becomes managed through piece-work by reshaping select culture–nonhuman nature relations. As the thriving of the EGB depends on cross-boundary work, the EGB as Initiative invokes a certain left-wing politics in these precarious times. Against political moves that turn inward, Illka Liikanen (2008) heralds cross-border region building as a key theme to the newly emerging area of border studies. EU programmes of cross-border collaboration (CBC) are imagined to create the groundwork for a new type of cross-border regionalisation—softening, by capping or reversing division turned inward and national boundary lines. Border links have reached across European countries to extend prospects of EU membership (Liikanen, 2008, p. 22). But today, as times moves towards the beginning of a new decade, such softening of borders finds tension with Europe’s history of disunity and national sovereignty. The EGB, thus, invites inquiry into a fledgling, transcendent 59 Europeanisation of the institutional, discursive practices that are connected with borders (Liikanen, 2008 p. 19). The border governs against risk of both climate disintegration and the prevention of a divided European continent once again. 5.4 Cultural networks of green and grey infrastructure. The EGB as a biome is the material actualisation of environmental discourses and European governmentality: their resulting, geographically mapped, presence on the ground. As project and biome, the EGB is the symbolic manifestation of Western cultural discourses, EU politics, and nonhuman natures. Particular human–nonhuman nature relations are experienced discursively and non-discursively in the service of European climate mitigation. Local, state, and trans-national actors labour to redefine and reframe former places, sealing off settlers and developers, and inviting travellers whilst preserving traces of violence. Thus, what was once a continental scene of bipolar confrontation became a signature of change and difference working across multiple ecologies and lifeforms, human cultures, and geo-political borders. Burke’s rhetoric of merger and division unfolds in the networks of cultural projects and actions across a continent: the very substance of a biomic politics. This new rethinking of human–nonhuman nature relations is what Chakrabarty argued as the collapse of geological and human histories. This collapse allows for a more ecological approach to contemporary issues of climate mitigation by “making linkages among the multiple aspects of the ecosystem, including the biophysical environment, the built environment, and the social environment. For activists it is incomprehensible and inaccurate, as well as immoral, to separate them.” (Di Chiro, 1996, p. 317.) Linkages between the biophysical environment and the built environment thus result in a material- cultural network formed from the intersection of nonhuman nature, culture and politics. These are the respective green and grey infrastructures of the Earth. As Andrian (2006) argues, The landscape elements and the uniqueness of its potential as a structured green backbone of 60 Europe are to be seen in close connection with the symbolic and cultural values of the Green Belt, as one element of a more complex territorial system, the functionality of which relies on both the ‘hardware’ of its biological characteristics and the ‘software’ of its cultural and geopolitical features. (p. 20.) The complex territorial system of the Belt stands as a metonym for larger human–nonhuman nature relations. The ability for green “hardware” to thrive against the grey, invisible “software” of culture and politics represents how nonhuman nature does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, nonhuman nature is dependent on the culture and action, or non-action, of humanity on the land. The Anthropocene represents a new era in which Cartesian dualism does not fully account for the makeup of the Earth System. The EGB acts as an interconnected biome of novel ecologies. But conversely, the EGB—in particular in its instantiation as the Iron Curtain Trail—offers another type of connected network: cultural. Humans build grey infrastructures on the land, but in the Anthropocene, they also enact a non-visible action that shapes the land on which these grey infrastructures reside. As a shared history incorporates both ruins and nonhuman natures, another comparative distinction emerges: the EGB as a material as well as symbolic resource for the EU. Resources in the auspices of building spaces are often referred to as infrastructure. Thus, over time, the nonhuman natures came to be referred to as green infrastructure for both the EGB and EU. The addition of grey infrastructures is one I use to work in tandem with its green counterpart. 61 Figure 6: A rusting electronic device overgrown with the EGB nonhuman natures at Anleger Wohlenberg, the German Baltic Coast. This artefact is an old-East German pier and Soviet potato feeder that now serves as a summer beach destination and reminder to the division of Germany. Photograph author’s own. 5.4a The Iron Curtain Trail as eco-tourist gambit. The grey infrastructures of the biome connect people and things through providing horizons of vision, means of entrance, travelling and exit, sizable features, displays, and horizons. The EGB is studded with the ruins and relics of the border defences, military facilities, and other materials (see Figure six). The EGB is constituted by green and grey infrastructures, conserved for tourism and educational purposes. This dissertation argues that this network of ruins interlaced with the EGB “wilding” spaces for nonhuman natures needs to be studied as communicative infrastructures at the intersection of nonhuman nature and ruins in the Anthropocene. In particular this notion of the former border as a set of communicative infrastructures is felt in the EGB’s twin project of the ICT. The ICT is an eco-tourist gambit. “Discovering history on the road” (Cramer & 62 Bikeline, 2012, p. 5), the ICT offers the “history-loving cyclist” (Cramer & Bikeline, 2012, p. 5) to “retrace and reminder of the peace and reconciliation that have [sic] followed the fall of the ‘Curtain’” (Cramer & Bikeline, 2012, p. 5). For instance, the peaceful EuroVelo 13 passes through the rich Czech Republic countryside as depicted in Figure seven, whilst memorials to the division of Europe provide a historical narrative for the tourist, as the flourishing nature contains the road. The designation of certain sites, projects and governing actions as significant green and grey infrastructure creates a natural, living, history to the ruins that pepper the EGB landscape. Nonhuman nature and relics work are transformed as symbolic, material artefacts to EU goals. They collectively argue for a united European identity—symbolised by the now flourishing nonhuman nature—in which only a united European front can face climate change. These ruins thus become repurposed into a network of biodiverse cultural infrastructures. Figure 7: The Svaty Kriz memorial in the Czech Republic. The photograph on the left shows the opposing view to the memorial: a cycle path designated as the Iron Curtain Trail. The memorial on the right photograph lists the names of the 82 victims who died trying to flee Soviet rule in the Karlovy Vary region. Photograph author’s own. Both the EGB and ICT create a hybrid of green-grey infrastructure as it creates a network of communicative infrastructures from the ruins from the Cold War. The grey are ruins of the Anthropocene—the relics, fossils and other such historical objects of the Cold War. These are what Jüri Pärn (2011) calls military heritage objects—tangible artefacts related to military activities, whether cold or 63 not, that range from military buildings, to war materials, to unexploded shells. Constituting the grey–green communicative infrastructure of the ICT, they are more than just heritage: they are vibrant, lively materials (Bennett, 2010). The liveliness of these objects helps constitute a road. Bicycles and ruins are united into a mobile experience. The ICT follows the same EGB route and borrows its infrastructure, but specifically designates a dynamic road of travel, rather than a static set of ruins (see Figure eight). The ICT becomes a semiotic arrangement as it maps this grey infrastructure that supports its constitution as a road. The map arranges material spaces in anticipation of various kinds of mobility. For Samantha Senda-Cook (2013), the mapping of the ICT calls into tension “access-preservation,” as maps seek to both preserve natural space whilst at the same time guiding the tourist’s visit, thus potentially disturbing preservation efforts” (p. 361). The materialisation of the EGB project as its long-distance cycling counterpart creates significant access- preservation material, as the route is mapped by three guidebooks by the long-distance cycling publisher Bikeline, an specific website dedicated to the ICT, and a social media presence. The ICT thus becomes an inherently rhetorical material of human architecture, built upon the ruins of former border paths in order to offer a climate change friendly access to the cultivated EGB nonhuman nature. Maps offer access to the preserved green and grey infrastructures of the former border. 64 Figure 8: Former GDR road that is now used as a car park and opposes a preserved Soviet watch tower on the other side of the river. Photograph author's own. 5.5 Rhetorical transcendence. Kenneth Burke announced a novel post-Aristotelian rhetoric where identity is key and naming directs attention. The merger and division of symbols compete dialectically, as rhetors draw forward terms of unity and negation when naming agents, agencies, scenes, and purpose. The dialectic of terms is evident in the development of the EGB as culturally connected road of memory, too; but, so are aspirations to Figure a transcendent unifying symbol. European unity is of course a reach, particularly in current surges in nationalism and xenophobia, moves to the political right, Brexit, hate politics and immigration, and the Syrian refugee crisis. Consequently, this leads to desires for a symbol for European unity. The EGB is punctuated throughout with the grey infrastructures of the Cold War. But I also argue that Cold War relics, constituted into a site for eco-tourism, have rhetorically been repurposed. This is in part due to the creation of the ICT, which relies on the transformation of the infrastructures of war becoming an infrastructure of tourism. Various artefacts have been modified. For instance, the 65 Nordbanhof S-Bahn Station in Berlin (see Figure nine) was one of the famous “ghost stations” of East Germany, as these underground stops were closed to East Germans in fear of escape to the West in the tunnels. The Station was re-opened after the fall of the Wall, and now serves as both a working station but also a museum to the division of Germany, with a particular focus the Ghost Stations of Berlin. This ghosts of the past becomes a cultural infrastructure of memory. Figure 9: The Nordbanhof S-Bahn station in Germany is now working station whilst also existing as a museum to the division of Germany. Photograph author's own 66 Figure 10: Panorama of the eco-tourist memory site at Kühlungsborn, Germany, on the Baltic border. Photograph author’s own. This transformation of relics into communicative infrastructures continues above ground. GDR pathways have become cycle paths; old border fortifications have become museums; and watch towers have become nonhuman nature observation stations (see Figures 10 and 11). This repurposing is in part dependent on the tourist seeing and engaging with these sites. The tourist is able to fully immerse themselves in and experience first-hand that green, nonhuman natures have a unified grey, divisive past. The passage of tourist transforms the former border into a literal eco-tourist living memorial. Allison and Bloomfield (2019) argue that the juxtaposition of ruins with nonhuman grey infrastructure pushes the tourist towards viewing grey infrastructure in a new frame. This new frame argues for the remnant of war as responsible for the green flourishings of the present. This process of recasting and shifting perspectives is a rhetorical strategy outlined by Burke (1984) as transcendence. Figure 11: These photographs depict Kühlungsborn, Germany, on the Baltic border, which has turned into an eco-tourist gambit and museum regarding the Cold War, the division of Germany, and also as a site of respite. The leftmost photograph is a bottom-up view of the old border 67 tower which you can climb for a birds-eye view over the coast line; the middle is the respite offered along the former border; and the third depicts one of the displays regarding East Germans during the Cold War. All photographs author’s own. The theory of transcendence is key for this dissertation. Burke argued that through the move of transcendence, things that were once perceived as contradictory are united by a third way of looking. Burke (1969a) described transcendence as a “break in continuity”, where that what was once considered true is recast in a new light (p. 421). I argue that this break in continuity is central to transforming the former divisive border into a site of promising unity. I portend that the EGB Initiative reframes the symbolic interpretation of these ruins with a new understandings of their necessity for new beginnings. Here, transcendence overcomes dichotomies by producing a narrative where competing binaries are united (Allison & Bloomfield, in press). Ultimately, this inquiry deems to show how seemingly dichotomous grey and green infrastructures of the EGB are recast under a coherent narrative towards a “correct” way to view and experience them. The Initiative constructs a terministic screen where other interpretations are not supported (Burke 1966). As Allison and Bloomfield argue, “transcendence thus becomes a key argumentative structure for the EGB, formulated visually, linguistically, and physically through the act of visiting the site (Allison & Bloomfield, 2019, p. 8). Although transcendence is typically considered as a pure linguistic strategy that overcomes guilt by reimagining transgression in a new light, Allison and Bloomfield argued that for the EGB Initiative, we can consider the European transgression of war, separation and environmental degradation as guilt-producing acts. This is not the guilt that stems from traditional conflicts but from ideological divisions on the brink of war. Thus, in order to perform rhetorical and literal penance and cleanse this guilt, the EGB Association offers the reclamation of lost land by nonhuman nature as new life in a previous space of death (Allison & Bloomfield, 2019, p. 8). In seeking to restore a unified Europe, the EGB Initiative performs transcendence to create a new order, where the sins of the past have fostered a new narrative and identity for Europe 68 (Burke 1970). The relics of war remain in the EGB as a reminder of the past; not one that should be mourned or forgotten, but one that acts as a foil to proclaim the new triumph of European unity. Transcendence is a multimodal strategy of persuasion. But I contend that the transcendence of the EGB goes beyond this argumentative performance and extends towards the site’s discursive and material presence as a performance of identity. Identification and division compete, as rhetors draw upon the language of what brings us together and what pulls us apart. This dialectic is evident in the tensions between the acts of human intervention and environmental conversation and the presence of relics of both war and peace (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018). In juxtaposing such materialities and actions, the EGB argues for transcendence, an “ultimate identification” (Zappen, 2009, p. 281) between humans and nonhuman nature and between previously warring European nations. And yet. Burke argued that perfect identification is impossible. He argued that when identification is present, division is not too far behind. Furthermore, Burke argued that the “ideal culminations” that are the aim of transcendence are “often beset” by their “material embodiment” (Burke, 1969, p. 23). In other words, transcendence is an ideal, existing “only in ritual performances or utopian visions,” not to be practically enacted (Zappen, 2009, p. 281). But transcendence is still useful in that its performance works to “encompass a diversity of individual voices in larger unities that preserve, but transcend, any one of them” (Zappen, 2009, p. 281). The green and grey infrastructures of the EGB work together to build identification through the act of recasting. Overall this inquiry contends green and grey infrastructures as constituting a rhetorical geography that can be read. I argue that the preservation of relics alongside the burgeoning nonhuman natures transforms the conceptual metaphor of nonhuman nature is a resource into nonhuman nature is an argumentative resource. This transformation portends that conservation efforts can transcend the evils of the past, creating a unified Europe and European identity. Grey war relics (as memories of our sinful past) become constructed in harmony with green nonhuman nature (as hope for our united future). This is a unique 69 rhetorical move that embraces juxtaposition as a vehicle to achieve transcendence (Allison & Bloomfield, 2019). This dissertation thus argues that the EGB Initiative presents a multimodal transcendent argument by uniting the dichotomies of war and nonhuman nature under a new vision of the future. 5.6 The EGB as rhetorical memory site. The green and grey infrastructures of the EGB are a unique rhetorical site. This inquiry argues that the preservation of the former border defences and other Cold War relics repurposes remnants of war into a symbolic referent of peace through rhetorical transcendence. I argue that this transformation enacts two simultaneous ideations. Firstly, as relics to the former past, these artefacts become sites of cultural memory. However, I also argue that the concurrent transformation of relics—such as border towers into nonhuman nature observation stations—look towards an European environmentally-focused future. The look towards the past and future simultaneously is what Blair et al. (2010) considers as the function of memory sites: the use of the past to serve future needs. Memorials and museums act as warnings to not repeat the past. Thus, relics and other such communication infrastructures in the Belt are Janus-facing as they enact a reparation of the past in the service of a future in the nascent Anthropocene. This argument positions the EGB in its many iterations as a site of public memory whilst pushing the rhetorical functioning of memory spaces to its limits. The study of landscapes as rhetorical memory sites is burgeoning within the field of rhetoric, as well as the memory, space, and place literature. Carole Blair, William Balthrop and Niel Michel’s (2013) examination of the commemorative site of Fleury-devant- Douaumont sees its undulating topography caused by landmines marking it as a historical site of war. Pezzullo’s examination of a toxic landfill, as a natural and man-made space, attends to the contradictions of public memory over this supposed birthplace of the environmental justice movement. Greg Dickinson, Brian L. Ott and Eric Aoki’s (2006) expansion of rhetorical criticism towards the materiality of museums engages with human–nonhuman nature relations by considering the natural landscape as rhetorically 70 constructing the visitor’s subject position to absolve them of Western US colonial guilt. Furthermore, Dickinson and Ott’s (2010) examination of the Draper Museum of Natural History argued that the museum cultivates a stewardship model over the Earth, nonhuman nature, and natural resources: a term they call the “Master Naturalists”. Pezzullo (2016) thus argued that rhetorical studies have much to offer to environmental matters, particularly “embracing increased reflexivity regarding the persuasive and constitutive power of stories and arguments to shape our values and beliefs” (p. 26). Ultimately, environmental rhetorical criticism goads us to take seriously nonhuman agency (p. 37). It asks how the attributions of nonhuman nature are used rhetorically, and conversely shape the human world of culture and politics. Named, bordered, and invented in particular ways through symbolic and material intervention, sites in the Belt self-nominate as a recognisable site of significant memory and markers of collective identity (p. 24–5). Human–nonhuman nature relations can be read in the land as memory sites foreshadowed by work in environmental rhetorical, memory, and material rhetoric. Psyma proliferates in service of this understudied artefact. So far this inquiry has laid theoretical foundations for the material turn that necessitates this project. But a rhetorical geography does not account for the entire project. Through transboundary governance of the land, the former border has transformed into a material artefact and symbolic act of European Union (EU) notions of unity and future-thinking. This world building has resulted in the Belt being formed as a network of mergers and divisions; its sights invite rhetorical consubstantiality (Burke, 1966) of that which unifies the whole, and that which also constitutes the local. Just as Aristotle held that rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic, rhetoric was also the means of discovering the best arguments in any particular situation. Speakers addressed the polis to put forward the best ideas that enabled action. Consequently, rhetoric shapes not only public policy in the polis, but also accounts for the larger constructs of human 71 perception, which in turn shapes a society. World building is thus result of both symbolic and material communicative labour. 6.0 Assembling Methods The EGB and Initiative, both ideological and corporeal, is saturated with communicative labour as a symbolically ladened project. The border is a rhetorical construction with rhetorical dimensions that couple ruins and wild spaces that cross but localise in multiple nations. Different materialities converge into a public space of discourse. Authorising discourses from the EU, the EGB Initiative, and the state and local actors that enact conservation efforts, meet semiotic pieces that guide, point, and frame displays at particular lookouts. Furthermore, both the EGB nonhuman natures and their fossil counterparts are lively, semiotically infused agents in this communicative network. Their interaction is the height of human– nonhuman nature relations in the nascent Anthropocene. Thus, for this inquiry I put the EGB second- order discourses and its digital representations into conversation with situated rhetorical criticism of these human–nonhuman nature relations along the biome. I borrow aspects of what are, from an Anthropocene era, traditional rhetoric outlooks. The assemblage of these different methods provides a critical prism for a combined rhetoric of the Anthropocene. 6.1 Rhetorical field methods. The methods of analysis within the context of an Anthropocene rhetoric requires bridging multiple methods that study human world-building with and against the natural environment. As a rhetorician, social theorist and semiotician, I brought multiple tools of symbolic analysis to my analyses of the EGB project. I first constructed an overarching bird’s-eye view of this project through digital and analogue archival research of official and internal documents of the EGB Initiative and the Association. I also conducted online archival research of all official EU materials regarding the EGB. These analyses included the official websites and the white papers produced for conferences alongside EU green regulations. Next I branched out towards analyses of the varying English-based media discourses and 72 representations of the EGB and ICT. This included some German translations. These analyses were then all placed within the context of wider Western human–nonhuman nature relations. Following historical research regarding the European continent following the end of WWII to the present day, these all coalesced to form chapter two. Over-arching narratives narrowed in to focus on local ones. Once initial analyses were conducted of the EGB and ICT digital and analogue materials regarding the project at large, the next stage was to conduct similar analyses through the online and analogue archives of each biogeographical region, followed by each country. Detailed research revealed key sites to visit along the Belt, and invited material rhetorical analysis of the actual EGB sites in each region, in order to elucidate how top-down discourses meld with and against rhetorical work on the ground. This eventually extended into more generalised ethnographic field methods. On-site research across all four biogeographical regions of the EGB was conducted in the summer and winter of 2016, as well as the summer of 2018. This included: multimodal analysis at specific sites through rhetorical fieldwork; open-ended interviews and their subsequent analysis; and attending and fully participating (including presenting a poster) at the 2016 pan-European EGB conference. Such field methods lie at the intersection of qualitative and rhetorical inquiry, as they merge rhetorical criticism in situ with other qualitative methodologies that study experiences of material sites. The intersection of qualitive and rhetorical methods are imperative to extending analyses beyond language and discourse on human– nonhuman nature relations and towards examining the communicative labour invoked in their manifestation on the ground. This rhetorical work in the field thus allowed for a comparative symbolic and rhetorical analysis of the EGB ruins and nonhuman natures, conducting both rhetorical and multimodal argumentative analysis at the EGB itself. 6.2 Multimodal argument. In this study of the material, one key aspect is how materiality comes to be ‘suasive. Karen Barad (2008) sees semantic units as material-discursive practices, arguing that 73 “materiality is discursive” and discursive practices are already material (i.e., they are ongoing material (re)configurings of the world) (pp. 151-152). Jane Bennett’s (2010) vital materiality connects both human and nonhuman bodies with a desire to both be accounted for in the polis. The understanding of reality must ultimately mediated through some symbolic system. It is the symbolicity inherent in a mediated form that is persuasive through world-building. Material rhetoric is the persuasive symbolic kin to semiotic thought, which then circles back towards resonance in rhetoric’s material turn. But material rhetoric is itself multimodal—in other words, semiotic. Multimodality is the lens through which we look to texts—whether linguistic, visual, or tactile—for symbolic meaning-making. Like others, I see rhetorical work as embracing this multimodal lens of symbolic action (Blair, 2001; Blair 2015; Blair, Balthrop, & Michel, 2013; Kjeldsen, 2015a, 2015b; Dickinson, Ott & Aoki, 2006; Hess, 2001; Middleton, Senda-Cook & Endres, 2011; Pezzullo, 2001, 2007, 2007). For instance, analysis of the EGB’s printed and online materials sees certain themes— transboundary cooperativeness, future-led sustainable goals—discursively laid out as a form of argumentation (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, p. 8). But this is by no means a discursive-only communicative exercise. I contend that nonhuman nature and ruins argue. Jens Kjeldsen (2015a) notes how most contemporary rhetorical communication has a visually dominated multimodal form. The EGB communicative infrastructures are no exception. Whilst visual and multimodal argumentation can push traditional boundaries of argument (Fleming 1996; Lake & Pickering, 1998), other scholars have imagined visual and multimodal argumentation more broadly as contributing to human communication (Gilbert, 1994). Leo Groarke (2015) expanded an argument as “an invitation to inference” (Pinto, 2001, pp. 68-9), thus allowing nonverbal elements to make premises and conclusions 74 that are not always clearly propositional (Birdsell and Groarke, 2007). 5 Carole Blair (2015) stated that arguments are just the construct of an interpreter, attributed to a text or image which were used by someone in their intention to construct an argument (p. 232). Kjeldsen (2015a) similarly asserted that pictures offer rhetorical enthymematic processes, reliant on the spectator to reconstruct implied arguments based upon contextual knowledge or through visual tropes and Figures. Consequently, this limits possible interpretations to allow for the evocation of implied arguments (p. 200). Leo Groarke (2015) observed that multimodal argument ropes key materials into the horizons of inquiry—photos, diagrams, tastes, touch, non-verbal sounds, and so on (p. 140). Multimodal argument thus takes a material turn that can be addressed by more philosophical conceits. Michael A. Gilbert (1994) expanded argumentation theory to incorporate three additional modes of: 1) the emotional and the realm of feelings; 2) the visceral, which stems from the area of the physical; and 3) the kisceral, which are the intuitive and non-sensory arenas (p. 166). Furthermore, Kjeldsen noted how emotional appeals are a virtue of visual argumentation “which may help provide a fuller sense of issue and consequences when deliberating and making choices” (Kjeldsen, 2015a, p. 198). Experience itself thus becomes a form of rhetorical expression. The experience of the rhetorical expression of an artefact does not exist in a vacuum. This experience is also informed by larger social and cultural constructs. For instance, the social context and generalised genre of an artefact become essential for determining meaning and rhetorical (Kjeldsen, 2015a, p. 200). For David S. Birdsell and Leo Groarke (1996), three kinds of context are significant: immediate 5 David S. Birdsell and Leo Groake distinguish five ways in which visual images are used: flags, demonstrations, metaphors, symbols, and archetypes (ibid., p. 104.). A visual demonstration is inherently propositional because an image is used to convey information that is purportedly true. Metaphors and symbols are often used to convey propositions in political debates. A visual flag, on the other hand, may or may not be propositional, but even when it is not, it is used to attract our attention to other images that make statements in this sense (ibid, p. 106). 75 visual context; immediate verbal context; and visual culture. This resonates with Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s (1958) concept of presence that can be created through the visual for an audience, as certain elements are selected to the suggestion of their pertinence. Furthermore, Lloyd F. Bitzer’s (1968) rhetorical situation and Michael McGee’s (1980) notion of the ideograph also brings context to the forefront. Both authors have alluded to richness of representation in pictorial imagery, made possible by the multiplicity of codes, resources, and transcriptions, which then provides presence. This is ultimately what Kjeldsen called “thick representation” (cf. Geertz’s “thick description”; Kjeldsen, 2015a, p. 202). 6.3 Symbolic semiotics. Multimodal argument resonates with social and multimodal semiotic analysis. Social semiotic analysis considers how symbolic action begins with the construction of reality for the individual, and how this translates into communication in various socially and culturally constructed settings. This begins with the semiotic cognition of the individual, such as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s (1980[2003]) germinal Conceptual Metaphor Theory which argues for our conceptual system as largely metaphorical, situated amongst a cognition that is embodied. It is from the metaphorical and the embodied where individuals can construct their everyday reality, actions, and make sense of the world. Furthermore, this then extends into how symbolic activity is influenced by a social context that is also inherently semiotic. Such material reality thus decentres language as the only meaning-making tool. Words and visuals become intertwined with the visceral. Ultimately, semioticians argue that all (human) meaning- making and its affect is a social, symbolically communicative act, whether through linguistic, visual, or material infrastructures. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1967) argued that material reality is socially constructed; that the symbolic and material negotiate a dynamic reality in a process of institutionalisation. Burke (1969[1950]) concurred, arguing that reality is created through labelling and naming. But Burke also argued that “the nonverbal element also persuades by reason of its symbolic 76 character” (p. 172), thus extending meaning and persuasion to the non-discursive. Semiotics is the meaning-making inherent in multimodal argumentation. Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s (2001) tome Multimodal Discourse addressed semiotics in which common semiotic principles operate in and across different modes (p. 2). It is a semiotics “conscious of forms of meaning-making which are founded as much on the physiology of humans as bodily beings, and on the meaning potentials of the materials drawn into culturally produced semiotics, as on humans as social actors” (Kress & Leeuwen, 2001, p. 28). The authors argued that signs are imported from other contexts into the context in which the new sign is made, to signify ideas and values which are associated with that other context (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001, p. 10). Signifiers’ meaning potential thus derives from the social action of producing: the ability to turn action into knowledge, to engage experience metaphorically (cf. Lakoff and Johnson, 1980[2003]), and to grasp similar extensions made by others (p. 11). Hence, signifiers are not fixed entities. Instead, meaning-making through multimodal texts is enacted by multiple social articulations. 7.0 The Road Travels From Theory to Empirical Study The Iron Curtain did not formulate a predictable set of outcomes. The history of Europe set forth a set of affects that led to the constitution of the biome-come-road. Like time, a road can be represented as a continuity, and like time it, too, appears in pieces—as zones, regions, and other such boundaried spaces. Zones have borders that define the limits of care and governance. Borders mark transitions between places. In analysing the histories of the Cold War, the Iron Curtain and its transformation, I provide the foundations for an example of biodiversity conservation that was and remains biomically constituted and governed. Old borders have become sites historical memory: zones of remembrance. The introductory discussion was necessary to frame the context for inquiry—to put the Anthropocene in dialogue with Holocene sources of governance, biopolitics, environment, and power. In the next chapters, this 77 introduction moves from an over-arching analysis of the project as a whole, towards the local: from the top-down to bottom-up. This inquiry begins with a documentation of European history from the end of WWII to the present day. Chapter Two lays out the historical context of the EGB, moving towards how the Association presents the project as a holistic enterprise. I then move to biogeographical analyses of each region that constitutes the EGB. Chapter Three examines the cultural communicative work of the homogeneous Fennoscandian Green Belt (FGB), and how biomic politics in action sees bios for both the human and nonhuman. This chapter first begins with analysis of the Finnish-Russian region of Karelia, which has undergone extensive geo-political change and demonstrates strong human–nonhuman nature relations. The main case study is then conducted at the Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, a unique site in a cooperative management by Norway, Finland, and Russia, in an effort to support cultural as well as natural heritage. The FGB thus showcases rhetorical geography in action. Chapter Four then moves further South towards the Central European Green Belt (CGB), with a particular focus on German governmentality that favours nonhuman bios, and the network of communicative infrastructures that reside along the German (both Baltic and inner-German) border. I argue the proliferation of grey infrastructures preserved in the CGB and GGB is the strongest example of rhetorical transcendence in the EGB, and work together to form a networked multimodal argument towards a united Europe environmentally-focused. Although this chapter contains a multitude of material rhetorical fieldwork throughout the GGB, the chapter culminates in a rhetorical examination of Observation Point Alpha in the Fulda Gap, as a site of significant historical memory and biodiversity conservation. Chapter Five provides a different approach to the other two biogeographical regions of the EGB. This chapter performs a comparative analysis of sites, regulations, and governance over both the Baltic and 78 Balkan Green Belts. This approach was taken due to my participant-observation at the pan-European EGB conference, which drew attention to the creation and maintenance of these two Belts as a comparable but significantly different from the other two regions. In particular, I argue that these regions are often the “forgotten” or “contentious” Belts. These Belts have not only both undergone difficulties in mapping out their terrain, but they both are regulated by German biomic apparatuses that creates rhetorical geographic tensions. This chapter thus examines two sites of ecological importance: Lahemaa National Park in Estonia and Strandja National Park in Bulgaria. This is then followed by an examination of green-grey infrastructure at the Paldiski Peninsula in Estonia and the Bulgarian/Turkey border, where the latter enacts a state of exception regarding the Syrian refugee crisis. I ultimately argue that this has resulted in the rebuilding of the border to the reduced zōē of both human and nonhuman life. Like the circular relationship between humans and nonhumans actions, the final chapter of this dissertation circles back upon itself. The concluding chapter provides a contemporary reflection of the EGB and considers the future of such an ecological network in precarious, risky times. Overall, the conclusion argues that the physicality of the land, the different biodiversity needs, the relations to local peoples, and the overarching nation-state policies, result in differing biomic politics of each biogeographical region. I argue that this work is in the service of a larger, supra-national governance of the EGB as a whole and as a metonym for European peace, unification, and care over the environment. The Belt, as road, and as a memory site, does not exist as a literal single superhighway to be travelled. Rather, I argue for the EGB as an ecological network—a set of interconnected pathways that unite varied places as stopping and starting points. Such sites vary from mundane fields and valleys, to dramatic landscapes of mountains and forests, to the individual ruins peculiar to various national borders. Overall, my conclusion argues for the EGB as an biomically governed ecological network in the Anthropocene. The EGB breathes an Anthropocenic, Western cultural wind. 79 Chapter Two: History Begets Change Any full history of the uses of nature would be a history of a large part of human thought. – Raymond Williams, Keywords European (geo) politics consist of thousands of centuries; wars won and lost; borders drawn and redrawn; peoples relocated; and populations governed. But this inquiry begins with the devastation that World War II (WWII) wrought upon Europe. This may have been the end of the world’s war, but this only begat further reckonings after the fall of Berlin in 1945. WWII forced an alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union against Hitler’s Reich. As Hitler was defeated and the War came to an end, US and Soviet powers were forced to work together on post-war peacemaking. And yet, their ideologies fundamentally differed. The democratic, capitalist European West was positioned against the communist Soviet Union in the East. In 1945, a defeated Germany was occupied by the United States, the UK, France, and the Soviet Union. Difficulties ensued as Berlin was divided into four zones of occupation. Germany’s defeat also left the Soviets in control of large areas of Eastern Europe. The Allies could not agree on a peace treaty alongside the governing structure of Germany and the Eastern states. In 1947, the Marshall Plan was suggested, further aggravating this divide between the Soviet Union and the West. The United States promised financial assistance to the recovery of Europe if Europeans drew up a joint recovery programme. Although the Plan did not exclude the Soviets, the aid was not unconditional. The United States saw this financial recompense as an opportunity to open up nationalist economies. Stalin therefore withdrew his 80 participation from the Plan, and threatened satellite countries such as Czechoslovakia and Poland if they were to participate (Rotter, 2003). The deadlock over Germany’s recovery saw the UK and the United States begin to revive their zones of the country without Soviet agreement (Rotter, 2003). In 1948, the French followed, and in 1949 the Western Allies agreed upon and created the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1952, the Soviets sealed off its area of Germany from the West. With West Germany joining NATO in May 1955, the Soviets responded by drawing their satellite countries alongside East Germany into their own military, which came to be known as the Warsaw Pact. This symbolic border thus forced many Central and Eastern European countries to join the Soviet Union controlled Communist Bloc. Albania (until the 1960s), Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania were thus labelled “Iron Curtain countries” (Rotter, 2003), in a metaphor alluding to an iron curtain in a theatre, where events behind the curtain are invisible to the audience and cut off from outside observers. 1.0 The Metaphor as Rhetorical World-Builder. The Iron Curtain was a metaphor made famous by Winston Churchill on March 5, 1946, in what has come to be termed his “Sinews of Peace” speech delivered at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Although Churchill did publicise the phrase, the metaphor is first traceable to Russian philosopher Vasily Rozanov in The Apocalypse of our Times (1918): “an iron curtain is being lowered, creaking and squeaking, at the end of Russian history” (cited in Philpot, 2006; Mitrokhin, 2007). British author and suffragette Ethel Snowden (1920) then used it in her monograph Through Bolshevik Russia in reference to the geographical border of Bolshevik Russia, announcing “we were behind the ‘iron curtain’ at last!” (p. 32). The metaphor was made famous again at the end of WWII. Joseph Goebbels used the term in an article in Das Reich on February 25, 1945, whilst Hitler’s minister of finance, Count Schewerin von Krosigk, used the term in a radio broadcast on May 2 in the same year. Both leaders argued that the Soviet Army 81 was occupying countries and then lowering an iron curtain instantaneously in order to commit war crimes (Gale, 2008). Churchill’s first usage of the term was then documented in a diplomatic telegram to President Truman in May 1945, as well as in a public speech in British Parliament three months later on August 16. However, the term’s infamy derived from Churchill’s speech at Westminster College, as Churchill argued that Europe had disappeared behind an “Iron Curtain”, thus dividing the continent: From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. (Churchill, 1946.) Efforts to create the United Nations (UN) notwithstanding, Churchill’s “Sinews of Peace” is considered to mark the beginning of the Cold War. With the division of Europe, the Cold War was the conflict between two differing ideologies: the capitalist Allies to the West, and the communist Eastern Bloc with the Soviet Union at its centre. Although the Iron Curtain technically referred to the division of central Europe, its analogous extension in the Fennoscandian region was seen to serve “as a reminder of the barriers that have separated Europe in past and present times” (Vogtmann, 2006, ix). But ideology did not freeze the war, as the war was also fuelled by nuclear armament (Gale, 2008). Thus, two differing arguments ensued as to why the border came into existence. The West asserted that the Soviet Union erected the Curtain in order to seal the Union and its associated countries from communicating with the West. In contrast, the Soviet Union claimed that Western countries erected the border to prevent revolutionary ideas from the East permeating into the West (Sepp, 2011, p. 7). The ideological division of Europe was cold but hostile. 82 1.1 Ideological, material and curtain change. The division of Europe was initially ideological. But over time, the ideological became material. Border defences between the East and West were erected and fortified as the Cold War progressed. Each side created and manned their own border defences, creating a forbidden border zone to ordinary citizens who were banned from the border space and thus forced to relocate. The materialities of the border, or technically borders, ranged in scale and fortification, but overall the Soviet side was far more heavily fortified. From barricades and barbed wire erected on August 13, 1961, Soviet border defences quickly intensified: steel mesh; concrete walls for the Berlin Wall; bunkers; land mines; spring guns; and guard-dogs were all used to form the infamous deathzone. Hundreds of people fleeing from the East to the West were killed or injured trying to escape. By the mid 1980s, the arms race between the United States and the Soviets was costing the Soviet Union dearly. Whilst Western economies developed new service economies and the computing age, the Soviet economy had reached zero growth. However, with the election of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, Gorbachev brought a diplomatic revolution influenced by concepts of social democracy in Western Germany and Scandinavia (Rotter, 2003). Gorbachev wanted a radical restructuring of the Soviet system by reducing the arms burden on the economy, and encouraged reform across the Soviet Bloc. Poland and Hungary led the way. The Poles allowed free elections in 1989. Later that year on August 19, the Pan- European Picnic was organised near Sopron by the Hungarian Democratic Forum to celebrate the forming of the Hungarian State. The Hungarian reformers took control and symbolically opened the country’s border with Austria. In opening the border, almost 600 people from the GDR escaped to Austria. Later that summer, the foreign ministers of Austria and Hungary ceremonially cut the border defences between the two countries (European Green Belt Association, 2018m). It was in the autumn of 1989 that sparked the fall of the Iron Curtain. On November 9, a new reformist Politburo in East Germany bowed to mounting pressure and unrest, and announced travel 83 concessions. Initially this was intended as a limited programme. However, thousands flocked to the Berlin border crossing, outnumbering the guards to let them through. Over the next few days, millions of East Germans crossed the Berlin Wall. The East German regime only lasted a few more weeks. The “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia toppled communist rule by the end of the month. Western Germany moved to absorb Eastern Germany, leading to its unification in October 1990. The Soviet Union fell apart. On Christmas Day 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. 2.0 A European Green Zone Grows The material consequences of the Cold War also begat changes in the natural world. In 1970, the existence of unique ecologies flourishing at and across the Curtain’s no-man’s land were observed. An initial discovery was made from satellite pictures that were captured along the Finnish-Russian border. These photographs revealed a dark green belt of old-growth forest, thought to no longer be growing in Europe (Haapala et al., 2003), and yet newly emerging at the border (see Figure 12). Following this discovery, over the next two decades many more habitats were found and observed. For instance, a 140 kilometre corridor of highly rich biodiverse forest was discovered along the inner-Germany border in the 1970s. In the 1980s, nonhuman nature conservationists observed many rare species in the border area via binoculars on the Western side (Beck and Frobel, 1981, cited in Riecken, Ullrich & Land, 2006, p. 3). Continued sightings of novel ecologies drew excitement amongst conservationists East and West. 84 Figure 12: The old-growth forests of Näränkä in Southern Kuusamo, Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland that began the EGB project. Situated at the border with the Russian Republic of Karelia. Photograph author’s own. A unique set of events had furnished the need for biodiversity conservation in the border. Despite the degradation the Cold War wrought on the European continent, inadvertently, the resulting absence of human intervention and development in the corporeal Iron Curtain transformed the border into a continental biome. Over the 40 years the Iron Curtain was manned, the border became a corridor for pockets of bounteous natural growth, representing biodiversity of nearly all the biogeographical regions of Europe. The Curtain remained comparatively undisturbed due to both remoteness and restriction of human access. In the more populated areas of the border, novel ecologies were also able to flourish due to a lack of cultivation or intensification of land use (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 135). Furthermore, the geography of this border landscape also contributed to biodiversity growth, as national borders tend to lie 85 on natural geographical features that are “signposts” for nonhuman nature and have a large or select species population: lakes, rivers, coastlines, and mountain ridges (Sepp, 2011, p. 8). Overall, the intersection of these different facets resulted in the propagation of rich ecologies, and allowed many species thought to be extinguished from their corresponding European geographical spaces to re-emerge. As the Curtain broke down at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, questions thus began to be raised: Where did the borders of a Green Belt lie? What were to be done about the abandoned military facilities and border defences? Who owned the land where these novel ecosystems were now based? And finally, in light of all these questions, how were the novel ecologies in these spaces to be protected? Psyma thus emerged from the ruins of the Anthropocene. 2.1 German reunification. The discovery of ecological richness illuminated an environmental imaginary. BUND—Friends of the Earth in Germany—was created in 1975 with 22 environmentalists on the Western side of the inner-German border. BUND immediately began charting the natural features of the border from the Western side, confirming the vast diversity of species and habitats in the border zone. Trans-boundary cooperation began in the mid-1980s between Finland and the Soviet Union, generating a cooperative scientific nonhuman nature conservation agreement and working group. This resulted in the establishment of twin parks across all regions East and West. Other conservation efforts to preserve these vulnerable novel growths began on each side of the border shortly at the end of the 1980s, which included individually-led community campaigns and grassroot initiatives. However, the acknowledgment of the border as a biome truly began in Germany with the German charity Euronatur in 1987 alongside BUND’s Trabbi origin story in 1989, with the latter as credited with giving birth to the Green Belt project. The eclipse of Cold War logics consequently occasioned a new look at places and things left in the wake of the dissolution of a discourse regime. 86 The geographies and infrastructures of the Curtain were reimagined into regimes of conservation within the contexts of planetary changes. BUND’s meeting in December 1989 was significant in establishing a European network of ecologies over land. A resolution of this meeting demanded the protection of the disbanding border and its unique habitats within Germany. This network was entitled Grünes Band, translating into the Green Ribbon. In November 1990, the German Minister for the Environment, Professor D. Klaus Töpfer, declared that special efforts were required in the former Iron Curtain border to conserve as many natural and near natural sites as possible as the Grünes Band, or Green Ribbon (Sepp, 2011, p. 8). From 1992 onwards, a number of large-scale nonhuman nature conservation projects were then funded by Bundesamt für Naturschutz (BfN)—the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation. Decisions were made to forgo development rather than to rebuild on the newly opened land. German efforts intensified as the country was stitched back together. The division of Germany, rather than a wound, began to form a rhetorical “backbone” (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 135) for an ecological network spreading into central Europe. Slowly the country saw the establishment of large protected areas both along the inner and outer border in an act of transboundary cooperation. The successful establishment of the Green Ribbon prompted initial ideas to expand this conservation work across the entire Iron Curtain (Sepp, 2011, p. 8). Over the next 15 years, many of the 24 countries over which the Iron Curtain traversed began similar campaigns to preserve local new and recovering ecosystems. In 2002, 13 years after the initial meeting between East and West German conservationists, the establishment of the EGB was made concrete by BUND and BfN at the inauguration of the land art monument “West-Eastern Gate” (see Figure 13) in the German Green Belt (GGB), opened by now former 87 president Mikhal Gorbachev. 6 The rough translation of Green Ribbon into a European-wide Green Belt became the linguistic catalyst for a European network of ecologies. The name established the EGB as a European wide biodiversity conservation project and material-cultural network beginning at the Barents Sea at the border of Norway/Russia, descending 12,500 kilometres long to the Bulgarian/Turkish border. With a significant variance in width from just a few metres to over 50 kilometers wide, the creation of the Belt and the delineation of its borders reflected, and continues to reflect, a fluctuating European geopolitics. A ribbon was being used to suture the continent. Figure 13: The grove of birch trees planted in at the beginning of the West-Eastern Gate trail. The photograph is a close up of the sign on the middle tree. Photograph author's own. 2.2 The IUCN takes the Belt international. The creation of the EGB became a driver of continued unification and transboundary cooperation across European countries. The EGB became both the material instantiation and driver of European conservation discourses situated within the context of 6 Gorbachev’s significance to the project continued as he became the first person to buy a “Green Belt share”. The rhetorical work of a share of nonhuman nature opened doors for people to give money to BUND and BfN to purchase Green Belt land for conservation purposes. 88 climate change and biodiversity loss. The EGB thus became a material, rhetorical artefact. As a conservation initiative, the EGB as project began with its first scientific meeting organised by BfN in Bonn, Germany. Gorbachev once again featured as guest of honour (European Green Belt Association, 2018a, p. 1). At the September 2003 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Parks Congress in Johannesburg, South Africa, a round table with representatives from different Green Belt countries officially inaugurated the project under the by-line “Borders Separate. Nature Unites!” (European Green Belt Association, 2016b). The IUCN agreed to provide overall coordination for the project. On September 9–12, 2004, an initial stakeholders and working group meeting was jointly organised by IUCN and BfN in the Hungarian part of the Fertö-Hansag/Lake Neusiedel National Park. This working group was formed of “National Focal Points”—a named person for each country involved in the EGB project— that were selected by the governments of the riparian states and the international non-governmental organisations (NGOs): IUCN, BUND, EuroNatur, and the Union of the Zapovednics and National Parks of Northwest Russia (European Green Belt Association, 2018a). These organisations offered a form of governing apparatuses that went beyond the nation-state. It was during this initial meeting that the organisational structure of the biome was established. This structure then came into force in 2005. The initial instantiation of the EGB project saw the former border split into three biogeographical regions, with a Regional Coordinator appointed for each: the Fennoscandian (Union of the Zapovednics and National Parks of Northwest Russia); the Central European (BUND); and South Eastern Europe (Stiftung Europäisches Naturerbe [EuroNatur]). These included 19 out of the contemporary 24 countries through which the Curtain ran, as the Baltic region of the EGB was yet to be established. From 2005–7, the EGB Association, with funding from BfN and the German Federal Foundation for Environment Protection, initiated a geographic information system (GIS) mapping project of the EGB and the creation of a common geo-basis for conservation and development. With 89 downloadable maps for the different regions as well as an interactive map, these provided a visual argument for core Green Belt areas, clusters, a linear corridor of biodiversity, and other protected sites (European Green Belt, 2018o). The project was slowly transforming into an argument for holistic European action against climate change. 2.3 The Euronatur Belt as network assembly. As the EGB move from a border of division to a border of unification, the governing structure of the EGB Initiative also transformed. In 2010, the IUCN withdrew providing overall coordination of the project. The IUCN’s role became reduced to one representative acting in an advisory capacity. This therefore prompted a restructure of the Initiative. A coordination group consisting of three Regional Coordinators, select National Focal Points, and NGOs active at the Belt was launched in 2011 (BfN, n.d.; European Green Belt Association, 2018a, p. 2; European Green Belt Association, 2018f). This restructure included incorporating the Baltic countries into the network as well as a fourth Regional Coordinator for the region. From 2009–12, BUND initiated the creation of the Balkan Green Belt through the EU funded INTERREG IV B-project. This integrated the missing Baltic Sea countries into the networked biome. Now 24 countries wide, the EGB project was consequently split into four distinct biogeographical regions. This change continues to represent the EGB in its current form: the Fennoscandian Green Belt, with solely Norway, Finland and Russia; the Balkan Green Belt, constituting Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany; the Central Green Belt including Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Italy; and finally the Balkan Green Belt, consisting of Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro, FYOM Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece and Turkey. The network finally became whole. Since its inception the Coordination Group has been chaired by the German-led NGO EuroNatur. Critically, three out of the four Regional Coordinators are also German. The Fennoscandian’s Regional Coordinator, the Baltic Fund for Nature of Saint Petersburg's Naturalist Society, is based in Russia. 90 However, the following three Coordinators stem from German NGOs. The Baltic Region is overseen by BUND Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania in Schwerin, Germany. Central Europe’s Regional Coordinator is also run by BUND, but through their Green Belt Project Office in Nuremberg. Finally, the Balkan’s coordinator is EuroNatur in Radolfzell. Biomic governance thus has become spearheaded by German influences. 2.4 The mature association. The withdrawal of the IUCN shook up the project. Conversely, the inclusion of the Baltic region brought coherence to the ecological network. In May 2013, on the 10 year anniversary of the Initiative in Berlin, a joint Declaration of Intent was signed by 11 of the countries involved. This was followed by an additional seven signatures and letters of support by two more states. This declaration was to show support to the Initiative. And yet. The Initiative was still entirely dependent on project funding. Thus the long-term existence of the Initiative was considered at risk. Action needed to be taken against the risk of extinction. After thorough consultation within the Coordination Group, it was decided that a member-driven association would be the most appropriate organisational model to reflect the “principle of democratic participation that characterizes [sic] the collaboration along the European Green Belt” (European Green Belt Association, 2018f). On September 24, 2014, the NGO “European Green Belt Association e.V.” was thus founded at the 8th pan-European Green Belt conference in Slavonice, Czech Republic. Established by 23 governmental and NGO organisations from 14 countries, it was officially registered in February 2015. As of June 2016, the Association counted 29 members, with almost 150 governmental and non-governmental organisations from the 24 EGB countries as part of the Initiative. The creation of the EGB NGO thus solidified and secured the project’s position within the EU. Today, the project grows strong. Since the nascence of the Initiative, there have been 10 pan- European Green Belt conferences across Europe, the last one taking place on the 15 th -18 th October 2018 in Eisenach, German. At the 9 th pan-European Green Belt conference in Finland, more than 125 people 91 including myself attended. All 24 countries were represented. Through participant-observation I noted several key facts and ideas that currently dominate the project. One key EGB official confirmed my analyses that the EGB is a site for climate mitigation and adaption as a biodiversity conservation project, whilst also acknowledging that the EGB, as part of the EU’s biodiversity strategy targets, had not yet been achieved. In particular, the Association has noted that “when it comes to green infrastructure and connectivity of habitats and ecosystems as well as their restoration, there is considerable space for improvement” (Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2017b). The Association thus made some conclusions. It was announced in the 9 th Pan-European Green Belt conference that the Initiative could not achieve the European 2020 biodiversity targets without more effective funding. Various EGB Association leaders of the Association thus called on European institutions and EU member states to provide sufficient funding. They also called on conference attendees to campaign and create awareness of the project in their home countries as well as for the European public in general. Overall, my observations during the conference noted that in this new proposed geological epoch of the Anthropocene, a threatening topos of extinction lingers. 3.0 Adjacency: Conservation of Human and Nonhuman Nature within the EU. The EGB project waxes and wanes. It was human actions, now as material ruins, that began the project. And yet. The EGB as Association frames human action under the auspices of absence. It promotes a lack of human influence in the EGB’s naissance. The description of the border having been “ruled by laws of the [sic] nature for the last half a century” (Rakowski & Sienkiewicz, 2004, p. 33) gives nonhuman nature an agency, away from human influence, that is now being challenged as human interference is allowed. A notion of “returning” the land to its rightful position as a natural site in implied. And yet, the terms of restoring, returning and ruling all refer a human interference in order to protect the border from its human natural foes. As I will argue throughout this chapter, I position this rhetorical work 92 of giving the Iron Curtain land “back” to nonhuman nature as being both literal and symbolic action for the larger “nation-state” of the EU. Different biomic apparatuses that govern the EGB in the shadow of the larger “supra-national” governance of the EU biomic actor have grown as the ecological network has expanded both literally and metaphorically in importance, and all work to support this return of land to its rightful owner. The project thus finds supports in its biomic apparatuses. The EGB Association has experienced a growth of internal connections of actors including states, NGOs, and private groups. The biomic project resonates with multiple nations that are carrying forward activities with their own project designs. These projects find strength in cooperation, co-optation, and sometimes competition. But overall, I argue that transboundary cooperation has been, and continues to be, key for the EGB project. Between the 24 Iron Curtain countries, the Initiative has helped launch and promote cross-border nonhuman nature conservation efforts, encouraged sustainable regional development, and overcome historical divisions between existing EU Member States, accession states, candidates, potential candidates, and Russia (BfN, n.d.). These conservation efforts thus achieve resonance with multiple European conservation projects and EU conservation legislation. 3.1 Green Infrastructure as rhetorical strategy. The EGB Initiative is not alone in its conservation efforts. This dissertation argues that the EGB Initiative conceptually resonates with another type of ecological network in Europe: Natura 2000 (see Figure 14). Natura 2000 is a European-wide set of “connected” ecologies that serve as core breeding and resting sites for rare threatened species, as well as some rare natural habitats (European Commission, 2017). The EGB and Natura 2000 posit similar ideals of biodiversity conservation. However, their physicality as representing two sets of connected ecologies significantly differ. Natura 2000 does not operate as a biome running along or through the continent. Rather, the linking of so-called Natura 2000 sites is a conceptual, ideological one whose main focus resides in a European-wide partnership of biodiversity conservation. Beginning in May 1992, Natura 2000 93 represents a selection of protected areas across all 28 EU states that runs under EU legislation called the Habitats Directive (specifically Article 10), and the Birds Directive, respectively. These directives-as-one create what are terms Special Protection Areas and Special Areas of Conservation, which form the basis of the conceptual network Although the project does not have the same visual appeal and redemption story that the EGB has, the scale of Natura 2000 is vastly larger (European Commission, 2017). Approximately 18% of EU land as a Natura 2000 site. Natura 2000 thus becomes an example of another type of ecological network that finds support across the continent. Figure 14: The Natura 2000 logo in the wild. The logo depicts the birds and habitats of the respective directives. The sign depicts a Natura 2000 site in Lieberoser Heide, Brandenburg, Germany. Licensed through Creative Commons. Copyright J. -H. Janßen. The constitution of these biodiversity conservation initiatives often invokes a linking of efforts. Since the EGB Initiative’s conception, the EU has become an increasing Figure in the project. The EU acts as both policy-maker, financier and supra-national governmental operator alongside the EGB Association. This increasing intersection between the EGB Initiative, Association, and the EU demonstrates adjacency 94 in conservation and preservation action across the continent. The most significant EU action has been the EU demarcation of the EGB biome as an EU Green Infrastructure (GI) project. GIs work to designate that which performs an ecosystem service on behalf of the state. In the case of the EGB, this extends beyond the individual country, and instead works towards a unified continent. As the EGB progressed from three to four biogeographical regions, at the same time the turn of nonhuman nature into a resourceful green infrastructure became a rhetorical move. In May 2013, the EU Commission on Green Infrastructure officially identified the EGB as a specifically a “model” project for the implementation of a pan-European GI (European Green Belt Association, 2018a, p. 2). The EU designated the EGB as a model Green Infrastructure (GI) project for its supra-national governing agency. The delineation of the EGB as GI was both an action of recognition for the project, as well as a rhetorical move of stewardship for the EU. As an EU rhetorical designation of GI, the EGB literally transformed. This is Austin’s (1962) speech act of naming something in order to bring it into existence. By naming the EGB as a “model” GI, it not only legitimated the EGB project but imbued it with rhetorical power and representation as the ideal. Naming something as a perfected model brought into being is “speculative realism”—an ontological fold of object into existence. The EGB as GI thus became a literal resource in order to be an exemplar of transboundary, biodiversity conservation on the continent. I thus argue that the making of the EGB as a model GI project for the EU is an exemplar of biomic politics in action. The constitution of the EGB as GI has ultimately solidified the project as part and parcel of EU green policy. As discussed in chapter one, this notion of infrastructure thus has a metaphorical as well as a material aspect. This distinction of green from grey infrastructure is a rhetorical move that imagines spaces of a biome to be strategically related, particularly as proposed for adjacency, relationship, or goals. Although the notion of a natural, living infrastructure may seem perhaps oxymoronic, I argue that these ecosystems do serve as a symbolic, rhetorical artefact—or infrastructure—that argues. GI, in its very delineation as 95 infrastructures—that which has been moulded by human hands for human uses—are built with an intent and purpose. In a return to Cartesian dualism, both green as well as grey infrastructures are valued in regards to their ability to support the needs of their human masters. 3.1a GI as a rhetorical service. Green infrastructures are a living architectonics. Just as their human-built grey infrastructures, GI become a method for providing economic, social and ecological benefits to society by integrating nonhuman nature, the environment, and natural solutions into spatial planning and territorial development. These ecosystems, as living infrastructures, thus become the rhetorical “ecosystem services” that are portrayed throughout the EGB literature. The EU Commission (EC) supports this analysis. The Commission defines GI as a strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas with other environmental features designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services. It incorporates green spaces (or blue if aquatic ecosystems are concerned) and other physical features in terrestrial (including coastal) and marine areas. On land, GI is present in rural and urban settings. (European Commission, 2013, p. 3.) The notion of ecosystems as services is a rhetorical trick that alludes to questions of labour. Ecosystem services as a phrase puts nonhuman nature within a resource conceptual metaphor as well as terministic screen. The construction of GI is thus not just a rhetorical strategy for easy connection between discrete ecologies, but is considered to provide actual provision to the world, both human and nonhuman. Ecosystems thus provide assistance to keeping the Earth System hospitable for its human inhabitants. The European Commission asserts that GI is an effective tool to combat the impacts of climate change as it reduces carbon footprints. Biodiversity thus becomes a resourceful ecosystem service in the service of an overall adaption strategy. For instance, the ecological restoration of functional floodplain boosts disaster resilience against floods, whilst floodplain forests as GIs filter water and prevent erosion, 96 alongside mitigating against climate change by storing carbon dioxide and replacing carbon-intensive materials and fuels (European Commission, 2013, p. 4–5). The EGB mission thus fulfils GI conceits as it conserves and protects species and habitats across the EU. Furthermore, as materialised conceit, it creates a resilience and multiplication of the EGB ecosystems. Ecosystems thus “deliver” ecosystem-services-as- anthropo-aid to human society (European Commission, 2013, p. 7-9). For the EGB and Natura 2000, the creation of these ecological networks is an ultimate strategic act. The biome becomes enacts strategic material and symbolic labour on behalf of the European continent. As part of the EU’s pre- and post- 2010 biodiversity initiatives, GI projects are posited by the Union to contribute to Europe as a whole in protecting the symbolic, resourceful “natural capital” of Europe (European Commission, 2013, p. 2). Nonhuman nature thus becomes a resource against climate risk as it “secur[es] the resilience and vitality of some of Europe’s most iconic ecosystems” (European Commission, 2013, p. 9). Green infrastructures become an act of risk securitisation, just as significant biodiversity serves as an insurance hypothesis. This fulfilment of the insurance hypothesis ultimately resonates with a number of the European Commission’s (EC) strategies: the post-2010 biodiversity policy; the protection, conservation and enhancement of EU’s “natural capital”—the nonhuman natural environment, such as land, soil, water, flora and fauna—; and as part of a climate change mitigation strategy. Overall, these infrastructures serve a rhetorical role for their human population. The green infrastructure becomes in service of the grey. 97 Figure 15: Remnants from the Berlin Wall along the Berlin Wall Trail, overflowing with nonhuman natures in their peaceful repurposing as an memory site and art piece. Photograph author's own. Figure 16: The Berlin Wall Memorial along the Berlin Wall Trail. The peserved border tower can be seen behind the wall which contains an example of the reconstructed border space. Photograph author's own. 98 3.2 One road thus leads to another. The adjacency of green and grey infrastructures proliferates in the former border. Just as the EGB resonates with Natura 2000 as well as the EU’s model GI project, the EGB has one further instantiation—the Iron Curtain Trail (ICT). The ICT was founded by Michael Cramer, a European Member of Parliament and Green Party Member. The project’s origins began with Cramer’s original cycling project—the Berlin Wall trail—which was instigated by Cramer’s vision for tours circling the estrangement of the German capital during the summer of 2001. Cramer was able to convince the city government and the Berlin parliament to place the remnants of the Wall on the protected landmarks list (see Figures 15 and 16). Semiotic additions such as signs were added along the path, which itself was re-paved to be bicycle-friendly (Cramer & Bikeline, 2012, p. 9) (see Figure 17). Also that year, Cramer produced an accompanying cycling guidebook for the 160 kilometre-long route. Following this project, Cramer then turned his sights towards the creation of an inner-German cycling route. As soon as this project was enacted, as a now Member of the European Parliament, Cramer developed his project on a broader continent-wide level (Cramer & Bikeline, 2012, p. 11). Cramer argued for the former border as an idyllic eco-tourist gambit as a historical memory project as well as ecological network. Cramer’s arguments were successful, and in 2005 the European Parliament recognised that the paths along the EGB, both new and old, could serve as a long-distance cycling path. Crossing through 20 countries including 14 EU member states, through 14 UNESCO sites, and next to 3 European seas, the constitution of the EGB as ICT thus made the former border another model project on behalf of Europe—this time as a model project for sustainable tourism. To inaugurate the project, in 2007, Cramer published the first of the ICT 99 cycling books in German on the inner-German border, followed by a further three volumes for the rest of the route in 2009. The ICT thus became an eco-tourist gambit of significant proportions. Figure 17: Informational interactive technology on the Berlin Wall Trail. Licensed through Creative Commons 3.0, Wikimedia. Copyright Miriam Guterland. Networks mapped onto landscapes can furnish mimetic resources for reimagining routes in other places. The ICT campaign is performed through differing visuals on various digital platforms. The ICT also participates in another European-wide initiative entitled EuroVelo—a selection of long-distance 100 cycling network that traverse the continent. Established in 1995, currently 17 routes cross the European landscape. The ICT marks number 13, as the longest of all routes. The linking of such sites on the relatively new EuroVelo and EuroVelo13 website details suggestive access-preservation routes for this particular mode of touristic-travel. This follows with the somewhat technologically-naïve project, seeing technological advancement in April 2017 as the first Iron Curtain Trail app was launched. Both the website and the app provide tasters of what are to come for the imagined ecologically-minded traveller. These are provided by small vignettes for each country through which the road passes. These are then supplemented with the EuroVelo network encouraging tourist to become their own publicist for the cause, by running an annual photo contest of sights seen along the ICT/EGB. Access-preservation has become access- participation. 3.2a Green–grey infrastructure leads to holistic representation. Access-preservation finds tension in the EGB project. The grey and green infrastructures that form the ICT and EGB vary in number and variety across the former Curtain. In particular, significant differences are seen between the four biogeographical regions of the project. Although each region has its own lower-level of governance through Regional Coordinators, these also work for the larger EGB Initiative as a holistic entity. Thus, before this inquiry turns to each of the four regions, the meso relations under the auspices of the EGB Initiative as a macro project need to be examined first. In this next section I turn to the construction of the EGB as a holistic project. This brings to light a general structure of biomic politics that crosses spaces to raise issues of governance of multiple nations, ecologies, and roads. I argue that the EGB, as a project that bridges millions of novel ecologies into one holistic biome and artefact for Europe and the EU, results in a conceptual objectification and ownership of these nonhuman natures as they become shaped and stewarded by the Initiative: “in the very act of designating a space “nature,” or recognizing [sic] the presence of nature, there is the distinctive mark of human influence” (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, p. 15). I 101 contend that the creation of the EGB itself is a mode of stewardship, even if with the best of conservation attentions. Furthermore, I position the conservation work of the Belt, as now framed within this GI terministic screen, makes all EGB conservation and sustainable activities GI performances. This GI rhetorical work is a model for other actors at national, regional and local levels (European Green Belt Association, 2016b). All cooperation enacted in the conservation and protection of “some of Europe’s most impressive and fragile landscapes” European Green Belt Association, 2016b, p. 10)—both green and grey—makes the EGB a green symbol for EU sustainable development but also “a symbol of reconciliation” through cross-border and conservation of ruins. This reconciliation for the sins and transgressions of the past refers to both environmental degradation and human division. In a move of transcendence, the EGB as green infrastructure has become indexical of the transboundary cooperation required to enact this role, and thus makes the rhetorical and material construction of the EGB an act of human European stewardship. 4.0 Governing the Whole The communicative labour of the EGB Initiative in its holistic form is assembled from rhetorical pieces. Pieces are disciplined by social discourses, epistemic scientific discourses, and supra-national EU institutional discourses. Discourses enter via acts of governance, the mass media, digital representation of the project, official publications, and the EGB project’s material realisations on the ground. Analysis of the project thus requires an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods approach. I first began this inquiry with archival and desk-based work to familiarise myself with the project as a whole and its representation of the individual regions before venturing into the field. The EGB Initiative is digitally represented on its website through the chunking of the different biogeographical regions and different expressions of goals, visions, strategies and aspects of the project. These are to engage tourists, residents within the EGB, and biomic apparatuses. However, because the Initiative functions as a collection of differing projects, stakeholders, 102 and grassroots initiatives, a significant part of the EGB’s digital presence is depicted through hyperlinks which perform communicative functions by connecting people to information, acting as “both discourse and technology” (Cagle and Tillery 2017: 136). These hyperlinks both literally and figuratively construct the EGB as a digital as well as ecological network, as the EGB website links to other state and local actor media presences (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, p. 8). The differing EGB websites thus assemble pictures, ratings, maps and histories that are available to peruse at the click of a button. 4.1 Raising questions. Beginning my work through the digital presence of the EGB Initiative was the catalyst for commencing analysis. My research through the digital archives and white papers of the EGB project brought to the fore a classical rhetorical Figure regarding the constitution of the EGB project: Which came first? Did the naming and mapping of the project beget transboundary governance; or did transboundary governance occur naturally, thus being the catalyst of the holistic project? The answer to this question was intended to provide guidance towards how to begin an approach to this complex dynamic organism. And yet, answers are not easy. They are also without a single narrative. Over time I addressed this to several people in my interviews with key EGB officials. My interviewees inferred a holistic, natural blooming of the project as projected by the wilful growth of these nonhuman natures. It should be noted that this is repeated in official analogue material and print materials. At the 2016 pan- European Green Belt Conference in Koli, Finland, I thus followed up this question with local and state actors. Their rhetoric was similar but with nuances. Some prioritised biodiversity conservation within their own nation-state; others were impassioned about preventing future divisions through biomic collaboration. Overall, I gathered circular conclusions. Transboundary cooperation may not have been an initial goal. Rather, the preservation of these unique ecosystems was. Conservation work then expanded from nonhuman natures to ruins as public memory. Transboundary cooperation thus became the appropriate tool for conservation, with the additional benefit of sealing the ravages of division. Transboundary work 103 became the driver as well as the welcomed surprise to the constitution of international biodiversity and public memory conservation. Thus, with this circular notion, I turned my analysis towards the historical archives that chart the beginnings of the project, to infer what rhetorical work was undertaken at these early stages. Through this analysis, I thus chart developments in the project as they create a material- cultural network. 4.2 Beginnings from endings. Archival research demonstrated the importance of Mikhail Gorbachev in the inauguration of the EGB project. I thus decided to turn my rhetorical work to one of his most significant speeches towards the project: the 2004 BfN 10th anniversary international conference. Gorbachev, as former USSR president and representative of Green Cross International, was the guest speaker. The EGB project was in its initial stages. Gobachev’s credentials as former USSR leader and catalyst towards the reunification of Europe brought significant ethos for the Initiative’s rags-to-riches story. Gorbachev’s speech thus had a foundational, rhetorical force: I will make my next point as a person who has been dealing with the unification of Europe and building of the common European house for many years now. I think that this project allows us to cross over borders; it brings people and cultures together, thus extending the dialogue on environmental issues and on European construction to the nations of Europe. The project is important from this point of view—it has a political dimension. The idea is to create a common European economic, legal, and energy space. If we follow this road, we may be sure that a larger, united Europe is a realistic prospect, not just a utopian dream (Gorbachev, 2004, p. 13.) Gorbachev’s statement provided conceptual origins to the project. His narrative opened space, but analyses offer complexities to the building of the biome. Unification was a rhetorical and material goal for Gorbachev. He created a narrative where only a united Europe can build solutions to world problems. 104 Against a topos of extinction, he saw beginnings emerging from death—the beginnings of a new political world, a networked type of governance, and securitisation. Gorbachev’s focus for cooperation as the key success to solving environmental issues was thus framed as an exercise in uniting European human relations, in order to tackle human–nonhuman nature ones. Security went beyond the traditions of the nation-state border, and instead looked towards security against risks and hazards of climate change. Gorbachev thus offered a challenge to other civil Figures to embrace the project, to forgo traditional geo- political borders, and to build a set of common European resources. Pathos led to environmental action. 4.2a Symbolically defining the EGB. Gorbachev’s actions and rhetoric initiated international Green Belt work as the former USSR president offered a call to action. To build support, civil society Figures who were international in commitments but local in origins heeded his rallying cry. And yet. This type of international agreement cannot be born solely from the ashes of war. Rather, it needs symbolic action as a catalyst for achievement. Action thus began in stages. The EGB first needed to delineate its physical space, which required a mapping of spaces marked from unmarked; important from unimportant. This mapping was the demarcation of that nonhuman nature and human infrastructure was part of the EGB polity: this is the Agamben distinction between political and bare life delineation in rhetorical action. Deciding how to categorise real, living entities was thus the actions of a symbolic mapping in which a rhetorical geography emerged. 4.2a.i. Mapping requires heritage demarcation. To decide what is with and without bios is complicated. Furthermore, to decide on boundaries on something as wilful as nonhuman nature is tricky. Much of this decision making relies on global conceits of value dependent on cultural context and Kairos. For the EGB, the global can be considered within a European “local” context. Thus, mapping work has often deferred to the EU. This claim is repeated across EGB digital and analogue literatures. Across the EU, a term that is significant for the demarcation of bios and zōē in a certain locale is that of heritage. Heritage in Western 105 contexts means something of important value to a nation. The concept itself is a rhetorical notion—it infers that which is handed down from the past and invokes a sense of pride. Moreover, to pass something down implies that the referent is fixed. Because heritage items are valued items, the designation of something as heritage thus implies an action—that of conservation. The EGB is one such delineated artefact of heritage that has undergone an intensive, changing mapping of its boundaries and importance for the EU that prizes unification. Official EGB literatures depict the ecological network as an artefact that “connects people and shows that the enlarged European Union has not only a cultural but also a natural heritage.” (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 135). For example, the landing page banner of the official EGB website visually and rhetorically frames this position: Vision! The European Green Belt, our shared natural heritage along the line of the former Iron Curtain, is to be conserved and restored as an ecological network connecting high-value natural and cultural landscapes while respecting the economic, social and cultural needs of local communities. (European Green Belt, 2017b.) Here, the reading of heritage in regards to the EGB can be understood as referring to a shared heritage both across nations as well as human–nonhuman hybrids. The EGB Initiative positions the project “as the backbone of a Pan-European ecological network” from which “we can learn that biological diversity goes hand in hand with cultural diversity. It is a symbol for transboundary cooperation and Europe’s shared natural and cultural heritage” (EuroNatur Foundation & BUND, 2014.). Whilst heritage is normally used in reference to cultural items, for the EGB, this concept has evolved. Heritage is both green and grey. The EGB as heritage thus resonates as a green infrastructure that speaks to larger continental ideologies and actions. Heritage and resources as ultimately complementary Figures. The EGB as heritage designates these locales as high-value landscapes that becomes resources for both its human inhabitants, flora, and fauna. 106 Ecosystem thus provide both cultural and geological services. In a comparison to “grey infrastructure”, GI was and is seen as method to both enhance and protect this natural capital. Capital is a more economic, contemporary rephrasing of heritage. Such phrasing creates a frame of the experiential nonhuman natures, but reverts back to the anthropo-created capitalist, Holocene thought. Human society depends on the benefits provided by nature such as food, materials, clean water, clean air, climate regulation, flood prevention, pollination and recreation. However, many of these benefits, frequently referred to as ecosystem services, are used as if their supply is almost unlimited and treated as free commodities who true value is not fully appreciated (European Commission, 2013, p. 2.) The rhetoric of ecosystem services, and natural supply, are linguistic terminologies in the conceptual schemata of resource. The conceptual metaphor of nonhuman nature is a resource is once again wrought round against the conceit of free commodities. Such a notion of free to plunder is one which the EC pushed against. Heidegger (1970) defined nonhuman nature ontologically for moderns as a “standing reserve” of energy (p. 22). This is the Cartesian human–nonhuman nature dualism. Nature—as one coherent whole— is the backgrounded environment to the human action of capitalism. It “provides” (another consumption metaphorical term) resources that possess the solution to Anthropos-caused degradation as GI. The EC echoes a similar sentiment to the EGB Association’s assertions that its “natural and cultural heritage are parts of the EU’s territorial capital and identity… Overexploitation of these natural resources is recognised as a threat to territorial development” (European Commission, 2013, p. 3). Nonhuman nature is a non-traditional resource of capital, identity-making, and cultural memory as well as biodiversity. The designation of the EGB as an artefact of heritage for humans and nonhumans fixes the dynamic ecological network as a resource to be used. A resource is a stabilised referent that can be used by a certain group of actors. This view is supported by the cultural heritage scholar Valdimar Hafstein (2007), who argued that 107 the EU and UNESCO —key designators of heritage in Europe—use the notion of heritage in order to stabilise traditional practices (and in our case, the ebb and flow of ecosystems), rather than allowing for the flow of dynamism that we give to more modern cultural practices. Thus, whilst heritage may refer to referents from the past, resources as a rhetorical Figure refer to contemporary, dynamic needs. I take Hafstein’s notion and argue that for its significance in the solidification of the EGB project. It is through this delineation of the EGB, as the former Iron Curtain, as a significant item of heritage for both humans and nonhumans that allows the project to be protected by the EU and nation-state actors. Furthermore, it highlights this project, as heritage, as important for present day needs. The notion of a cultural and natural heritage thus conceptualises a referent from the past as providing resources to support a foundational, united European identity. The turn to the past does not only have to look at referents of trauma. The delineation of nonhuman natures as natural heritage has transformed them into objectified artefacts that are a part of human culture. Hafstein expressed apprehension regarding the creation of artefacts of heritage as solidifying local traditions in time, rather than affording legacies—the dynamism other cultural antics receive. Hafstein ultimately posited that heritage is patrimonial, encompassing a rhetoric that is primarily moral, with a moral imperative to conserve that is self-evident (Hafstein, 2007, p. 76). Conservation is that which is moral and just. I argue that Hafstein’s argument is applicable to the EGB. For the EGB Initiative, the urgency of conservation is rarely questioned. The opposite of conservation of these novel ecologies would result in the human construction of a negative— that of destruction. Thus, the implied moral compass of conserving the EGB as shared cultural and natural heritage is imbued in the nascent by-line for the project—“Borders Separate. Nature Unites!” (European Green Belt 2017a). Unification over division is a leftist politics that resonates with concerns over the environment. This slogan thus reclaims the tragedies of history by juxtaposing it with nonhuman nature, a symbol of peace and the Initiative’s vision of a united future. The EGB as an ecological network thus 108 symbolically and literally argues as a site of unity that represents an overcoming the problems of the past and the deaths of war through tending and maintaining this flourishing landscape. The creation of the EGB as a site of heritage thus maps these particular ecosystems as distinct from their nonhuman nature counterparts. 4.2b Backbones and other network metaphors. A shared heritage implies a shared referent between multiple agents. This heritage brings together disparate proxies, often in the service of unification. The terminology of a shared natural and cultural heritage is purposeful in order to demarcate certain shared characteristics across the former border zone into the same conceptual sphere. Thus, in order to map the project, the symbolic comes into play in order to frame disparate elements together. The linguistic phrasing of the EGB as representamen (Peirce, 1867) is itself a symbolic referent. In order to enact the top-down governance of these different habitats, the EGB Initiative and EU had to conceptualise the project’s disparate ecosystems into a singular work. Otherwise there would be no whole to govern. A natural heritage is a tricky rhetorical guise The EGB in name alone was a metaphorical mapping, as it makes a rhetorical move away from individual conservation efforts into the conservation of an entire ecological network binding these ecosystems. This began with the German Green Ribbon. This then became transliterated into the colossal Green Belt. Bridging metaphors thus engaged with other linguistic turns that not only framed the project, but brought resonance with each other as a rhetorical heap. Fleckenstein, Spinuzzi, Rickly and et al. (2008) argued for the importance of metaphors as linguistic devices, and how harmony amongst metaphors provides a strong foundation for research. Metaphors thus influence conceptualisations of a phenomenon, as terministic screens and scientific associations of a theory (p. 390). Bridging metaphors are hence a symbol to what leads. The biome is not represented by the EGB Association as a continuous strip of protected areas but it is defined as a “bridging element that links 109 grassland fallow and wetlands, dry grasslands and mature woodlands, thus forming a string of important habitats … The Green Belt serves as the backbone of a Pan-European ecological network” (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 137). Many bridging metaphors have followed this initial vision: the EGB as “ecological corridor” (Rakowski & Sienkiewicz, 2004 p. 35); as “national ecological network of habitats” (Vogtmann, 2004b, p. 5); as pearls (or as a string of pearls) (European Green Belt Association, 2018l); as the “backbone of diversity” (Strauss & Pezold, 2009, p. 4; Terry, Ullrich, & Riecken, 2006, viii; European Green Belt Association, 2018b; European Green Belt Association, 2018k); and other such linear, beaded items. A backbone is an anthropomorphised structure along which runs the nervous system, and upon which the body is fleshed. Further, the backbone can be the forming function of any network. The EGB as backbone is reimagined from the prostration of war to the erection and dynamism enabled by a support system of a shared heritage. Thus, from backbone to string of pearls, these harmonious metaphors coalesce disparate entities into a matching set of cultural, natural, infrastructures, rather than discrete areas for conservation. 4.2c Visions as a guiding biomic force. The EGB as a rhetorical construction in the symbolic and digital realm is a materialisation of communicative, bridging labour. The linking of discrete ecologies into a rhetorical network was a start. But preserving the EGB as a holistic biome was not only a symbolic but also a corporeal conservation and climate mitigation strategy. Hence, what was needed next after the initial mapping of the project was a set of aims to guide a plan of action for this rhetorical road. Thus, the 2004 agreement regarding the creation of the EGB project resulted in a set of “visions”—a term that implies an active anthro-lens for this collection of ecologies—being defined for the project and the EGB itself. These visions were described as: the EGB being an integrative ecological network that will fit in and provide an implementation mechanism for the major European initiatives on protected areas (NATURA 2000) and biodiversity loss (Convention on Biological Diversity); the EGB as an opportunity to create a nonhuman nature communication and marketing tool, linking nonhuman nature conservation and sustainable regional 110 development; the EGB container as a rhetorical and material tool for transboundary cooperation; and finally the EGB being the container for an “ecological laboratory” containing a cross section of important European habitats (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 137). The future-oriented goals of climate mitigation has necessitated a look back towards history, as the designation of the EGB as a space for both human and nonhuman action has made the EGB a physical and symbolic container by which to enact things in, and enact things upon. As Senda-Cook (2013) argues, there is symbolic action in “our ways of seeing places [and] our ways of representing them” that directs “our ways of interacting with them” (p. 357). In this Janus-faced action, the EGB Association shifts this heritage—this resourceful capital—by investing in the cultural rather than the historical. Heritage is once again a key rhetorical player in the mapping of the EGB as a continent-wide material and symbolic ecological network. The EGB, constructed as a container of visions, is thus a rhetorical and communicative tool. 4.3 Mapping the EGB into a rhetorical, communicative tool. The rhetorical “visions” of the EGB Initiative were used to bring disparate objects together under a conceptual whole. The auspices of the container metaphor world-builded human and nonhuman action with a particular mapped space of that which deserves special attention. The EGB is thus made of a rhetorical geography, from which visions cannot be mapped unless it has semiotic direction. Without communicating the holistic frame that brings these infrastructures together, the nonhuman nature and ruins are mutually exclusive. Rather, it is through the action of mapping these discrete green and grey infrastructures into the same frame that has allowed them to enter into conversation with one another. The notion of a shared cultural as well as natural history is one such frame in which these green and grey infrastructures of the EGB are rhetorical brought together. A shared cultural as well as natural history refers to the material and immaterial effect of humanity. 111 The EGB began as a mapping of valued referents. These in turn were brought together until the guise of an ecological network of a shared natural and cultural heritage. This created the EGB as a holistic project. This creation itself constructed a symbolic referent for biodiversity conservation efforts. But the mapping of discrete ecologies along the former border into a singular ecological network in turn became a natural, green-grey infrastructure that symbolically stands for larger European goals. The 2006 official EGB project monograph, produced by the IUCN argues that the EGB offers an exceptional tool to support Europe’s natural and historical heritage that can help draw attention to rural border areas and thus can enhance sustainable regional development in these border regions. Thus, new sources of income can be opened up and increase opportunities for the socio-economic development of local communities. (Vogtmann, 2006, ix.) The EGB as a resourceful infrastructure becomes symbolic, argumentative, material action for the EU as it posits its commitment to climate mitigation, biodiversity conservation, and continental unification. Furthermore, because the EGB works as a multimodal argument for the EU, it places the EU at the top of the biomic political hierarchy as a supra-national governing entity (European Commission, 2013; European Green Belt, 2017a). The EGB became a metonym for European actions against climate change. The EGB thus becomes a terministic screen by which to frame climate mitigation strategies in the Anthropocene: biodiversity conservation, fossil fuel reduction, and sustainable development, amongst other actions. Like with public memory places, the past is used as a terministic screen for future goals. The stabilised historical and natural heritage of this former border space becomes a boon for sustainable development for human-communities. The EGB, just as its discrete ecosystems of natural heritage, become a resource for the Anthropocenic collapse of human and nonhuman histories, contemporary actions, and future goals. 112 4.4 Living memorial landscape as sustainable infrastructure. The EGB project as GI has developed over this decade. Its solidification of boundaries has become more concrete through developments in GIS mapping in order to designate which discrete ecologies have bios and thus constitute this singular ecological network. The network has thus become imbued with symbolic and material resourcefulness and natural infrastructure for the EU. The creation of the EU has GI depends on both the conservation of grey as well as green infrastructures. These are the rhetorical and material shared natural and cultural heritage of the former border. This model of sustainable development and European continental cooperation is ultimately Janus- faced as it looks towards its past to make symbolic and material arguments for conservation. This historic eye thus becomes materialised in its grey infrastructure alongside the green. Through transboundary cooperation, nonhuman nature conservation versus preservation of ruins meet. Preservation of heritage speaks to future European generations. The Janus-faced looks of the EGB do not have to be mutually exclusive. Rather, the EGB is framed by its historical atrocities. This leads the EGB Initiative to assert that there is “no future without a past” (European Green Belt Association, 2017b). A future oriented-goal of European transboundary cooperation against the fight of climate change thus needs to acknowledge its past. Ruins from the past are not the foils to nonhuman nature conservation as once imagined. Rather, this united European identity of climate mitigation strategies seeks transcendence for its past sins through nonhuman nature conservation: the European Green Belt is an exceptional symbol of European history. This living memorial reminds us of the peaceful overcoming of the Cold War and the Iron Curtain. It is a physical reminder in the landscape of the turbulent and often tragic history of the 20th century.” (European Green Belt Association, 2017b.) 113 As discussed in chapter one, faced with the horrors of the past and in seeking to restore a unified Europe, we can see today that the EGB Initiative uses transcendence to create a new “order” (Burke, 1970, X). The Initiative presents a multimodal transcendent argument by uniting the dichotomies of war and nonhuman nature under a new vision of the future. The relics of war remain as a reminder of the past, but also become recast in a night light. Now, they are the necessary origin story of the constitution of the EGB as hope for a united, ecologically focused Europe. The tracing of the symbolic history is what creates the EGB in all its prismatic glory. 4.4a Memory is rhetorically transcendent. As the project grows, the grey infrastructures of the EGB become recast in a new light as they demand preservation as significant referents of European heritage. The preservation of memorialising heritage items has resulted in an another rhetorical framing of the project: that of the EGB as a “memorial landscape” (European Green Belt Association, 2018; European Green Belt Association, 2018d; Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 135) and/or a “living memorial” (European Green Belt Association, 2018b). A memorial is a conceptual, emotive experience as a monument to that which has passed. Conversely, a living memorial is oxymoronic—that which lives is not normally in need of memorialisation. Instead, these lives are memorialised as the drivers of the Anthropocene. These grey infrastructures thus push back against the green. Michael Cramer as founding father of the ICT notes this tension of conservation and memorialisation: The trail is not purely a scheme created for sustainable tourism. It preserves the memory of what the Iron Curtain once stood for," … Along sections of the trail in Germany, plaques have been placed to mark where people, attempting to flee to the West, were shot dead by border police. "By leaving these historical features in, it is as though one is riding through an open air museum. . . He who masters the past, masters the future. (Michael Cramer, cited in 114 Iron Curtain Trail, 2014.) Once again, the Belt bids to be a telling feature of the Anthropocene. After all, it transforms a scar of division into a merger of unification. This transformation is tricky for Allison and Bloomfield (2018). The authors argue that the Janus-faced nature of the EGB faces a delicate negotiation for anthropocentric inclusivity as the Initiative makes the site approachable and accessible for humans in its conservation efforts of this “ecological network” yet “open-air museum” (p. 14). Green and grey infrastructure are supposed equals. And yet, through memorialisation and eco-tourism, nonhuman nature here becomes characterised as a museum, placing a human name and container around it (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, p. 11). Once again, nonhuman nature became a resource as a container for human action. One type of memorialising container is that of a museum. Museums are human inventions that determine the importance of an artefact by designating it as “valuable” and worthy of commemoration (Sharer, 1999, p. 121). Museums themselves act as containers, as discussed previously, for artefacts of importance for a culture. Calling the EGB a museum implies an anthro-, eco-tourist gaze (cf. Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, [1969]1971) upon the land as a human-owned container to construct meaning and consume as part of history. It suggests that the nonhuman natures within the EGB become symbolically and literally a foil to human history, put in service of assuaging collective guilt to create a contemporary unity (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, p. 11). But guilt is only one memory. Guilt moves to reconciliation. 4.4b Mapping memories. The EGB as a container of action and rhetorical work requires semiotic arrangement to create a memorial landscape. Such symbolic action requires infrastructure mapping. The map arranges material spaces in anticipation of various kinds of mobility. This includes border crossings and visitor centres to provide access and information on the ecological and cultural attractions along the border. The marking of trails, routes and observation stations along the EGB for cycling thus invite access and participation in these locations (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, p. 15). Plaques and signs pepper the 115 landscape and contextualize the nonhuman nature as informational materials create the gaze of selected presence (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1971). Some are small and discrete to detract from the natural vista, employing modern technology such as QR codes in a replacement of lengthy descriptions. But many signs are tattered from years of battling the elements as they punctuate the observable landscape with a subtitle (Allison & Bloomfield, 2019, p. 17). The mapping of this vista thus becomes a memorial landscape, but more significantly a site of rational amusement par excellence. Senda-Cook’s access-preservation thus allows for the visceral act of trailing pathways of the once designated deathzone and no-man’s land into a transformative experience. As Allison and Bloomfield argue, I posit that the visitor at the EGB uses the access-preservation provided by the EGB Initiative to perform an act of rhetorical transcendence for this former border. The visitor in attending to these maps defies a 40 year border of division as they literally walk, or cycle, along multiple countries at once (Allison & Bloomfield, 2019, p. 18). The tourist’s presence, like the nonhuman natures, defies this once negative space, and thus experientially realises its act of transcendence—the remaking of this vista into a new visual frame of unification. But conversely, these maps cannot help but bear anthropocentric markers signalling preferred movement in this open-air museum. These trail markings, educational sites and informational materials invite an objectifying eye of consumption (Allison & Bloomfield, 2019, p. 18). This consumption thus turns into a foil for eco-tourism, as an act of sustainable development. 4.5 Sustainable development and eco-tourism as harmonising forces. Environmental thinking likes to focus in a functional way on objects of preservation, repair and recovery. The EGB changes this logic to generate multiple actions of heterogeneous participation in its growing spaces. Tourism and care thrive together, which is an unusual accomplishment. As a model GI project, sustainable development of 116 care and tourism has become key. The notion of the EGB as a sustainable development project encourages the collapse of its human and geological histories along the road as future action itself. Sustainable development has becomes one of the buzz-words surrounding the EGB. Sustainable development turns the EGB from communicative tool into material resource. Sustainable development is positioned as that which is in “harmony” with the EGB heritage: the natural surroundings and with local communities. Harmony is metaphor for agreement. Harmony with nonhuman natures implies human action working in alignment with a backgrounded, natural flourishing. As the EC argues, “working with nature and in harmony with the local landscape to deliver essential goods and services through GI projects, using a ‘place-based’ approach, is cost-effective and preserves the physical features and identity of the locality” (European Commission, 2013, p. 3). The EGB Association website furthers this assertion by arguing its intent to “harmonise human activities with the natural environment” (European Green Belt Association, 2016b). Strauss and Pezold (2009) echo a similar rhetoric: the EGB “symbolizes [sic] the global effort for joint, cross border activities in nature conservation and sustainable development. Moreover, the initiative shall serve to better harmonise human activities with the natural environment, and to increase opportunities for the socio-economic development of local communities.” (p. 4.) The EGB as resource becomes an opportunity for sustainable development. Such harmony is not reserved for the nonhuman natures alone. It also refers to sustainable (human) development that does not encroach on the natural environment. This reveals a tension that Dunlap and Van Liere (1978) identified whilst the EGB was in its former iteration as the Iron Curtain. Dunlap and Van Liere argued that such harmonising developments find contradictions between the “Dominant Social Paradigm,”— abundance, progress, private property, technology, and growth—and their “New Environmental Paradigm,” which values balance between humanity and nonhuman natures in recognising limits to growth. The latter ultimately rejects the notion that nonhuman nature exists only for human use. 117 Allison and Bloomfield argue that EGB Initiative ontologically attempts to equalise nonhuman nature and humanity, but eco-tourism, the semiotic markings of territory along the Belt for human navigation and labelling, and the presence of human relics is an anthropocentric act (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, p. 6). Ultimately the EU, acting as a supra-national state power, is attempting to repair the environmental damage done to various European countries whilst boosting vital infrastructure with “green capitalism”— sustainable tourism and development, cycling and hiking vacations—that still relies on a neoliberal, free market apparatus of biomic power. 4.5a Cycling as sustainable development. Grzegorz Rakowski & Jadwiga Sienkiewicz (2004) posit that the promotion of “nature-friendly” forms of tourism incorporate management styles according to sustainable development. The EGB ruins become part of the sustainable eco-tourism infrastructure as the pathways and roads of the former border become trails for tourists. Historical and ecological heritage becomes a valuable resource as the site of rational amusement for the tourist. In echoing a value is money conceptual metaphor, Rakowski & Sienkiewicz argue that this combination of nature, landscape, cultural and historic “value” should be the main form of economic activity in the region (Rakowski & Sienkiewicz, 2004, p. 37). Sustainable development works the EGB. One clear example of EGB sustainable action is the creation of the ICT. The Trail cyclists enact the EGB’s existence as a model GI project. The EGB visitor can literally traverse the border space whilst attending to the rhetorical work created in its sense of authenticity by its materiality. The visitor attends to this authenticity in using pathways, GDR roads and other such remnants from history that are preserved as part of the EGB Initiative. For Blair et al., (2010), this is a rhetorical affect that leaves an impression with the visitors (p. 27). But cycling the ICT, whether for tourists or local communities for daily mobility, is also considered an extremely sustainable form of tourism (EuroVelo 13, n.d.c.). In particular this is in relation to its other counterpart, long distance cycling networks across Europe. EuroVelo conceives the ICT as “an 118 [sic] historical trip, a great adventure by bike but it also homes a wonderful natural area. The historical human border granted nature a pause for breath and created what is nowadays known as the ‘Green Belt’, a unique protected “lifeline” in Europe.” (EuroVelo 13, n.d.b.) As a biome that connects differing ecologies, the ICT through the physical act of cycling “connects many buildings, monuments, museums and attractions which remind us of the history of the division of Europe and it’s ending via a peaceful ‘velvet’ revolution in Eastern Europe” (EuroVelo 13, n.d.a.). Its history is realised through the cyclist by cultural knowledge—these second-order discourses—of what-was-once and what-now-is: “the enormous transformation of Europe since the fall of communism can be shown by this route. Where people were once killed for trying to reach freedom, it is now a place where families can cycle freely on holiday.” (Carling, 2004.) Cycling the border is thus a performance of sustainable development-in-action. In its dual role as the EGB and ICT, the former border is as model GI project through sustainable eco-tourism. 4.6 The winner takes it all. Environmental, monetary, and infrastructure gains are presented against the backdrop of (geo)politics. The development of the EGB appears to have gone as far as it will go, for now. The former border-come-biome has transformed into a positive from the atrocities of history. Grey infrastructures are positioned in a Janus-faced frame, as they point to the future whilst iconically are the remembrance of past sins. So in this act of transcendence, who benefits? Vogtmann (2004a) posits that as an “inhuman border between “East” and “West”, the only winner from this division of Europe was the nonhuman natures (p. 7). With nonhuman nature winning, its binary opposite thus implies humanity as the loser. The Curtain itself becomes a battle of wills. In its conception as transformed “from deathzone to lifeline” (European Green Belt Association, 2018c), the notion of death is conceptualised as losing within a life is a game conceptual metaphor. The Initiative portrays nonhuman nature’s prosperity as an act of penance for the border. Such flourishing is visually argued in the EGB logo, which construes a map of continental Europe with the former border now depicted in an ecological green (Allison & Bloomfield, 119 2018, p. 8). The “flourishing” lifeline is the winning hand. Success seems to build success; the notion of momentum covers over the burdens upon enabling subjectivities to form into agents who work for the project. The labour of agency is a responsibility to protect, requiring patience, endurance, will, and thoughtful and well-researched interventions. 4.6a Winning requires agency. This agentic flourishing takes us back full circle to the creation of the EGB in its initial stages. This flourishing is oft-conceptualised amongst EGB discourses as humanity, in relentless forward motion, granting nonhuman nature “a pause” (European Green Belt Association, 2018b). Through humanity’s inadvertence, it creates Kairos: “despite its inhumanity, this border granted nature a pause for breath: nature flourished and developed something extremely rare in intensively used landscapes – a truly wild area” (Geidezis and Kreutz, 2004, p. 135). The border is objectified as the backgrounded environmental retreat for flora and fauna, but is also anthropomorphised in catching its breath in order to flourish. As a holistic project, the EGB nonhuman natures (as opposed to their individual delineation by biogeographical region) are both the foreground and the background. And yet, this anthropomorphism gives nonhuman natures an agency in the EGB. The EGB nonhuman natures are described as wilfully disobeying human boundaries of the nation-state: “Nature does not recognise borders” (Hokkanen, 2004, p. 22); “animals or birds who are crossing the borders without passports everyday” (Viesturs Urtans, 2004, p. 25). Nonhuman nature is wilful. This agentic unwillingness to heed human distinctions circles back to the necessities of transboundary governance. Terry, Ullrich and Riecken (2006), along with the IUCN, posit that “nature does not respect these manmade boundaries, and ecosystems and species cross from one region to the other. Effective conservation measures need to address what happens across borders” (ix). Furthermore, Irina Osokina (2004) from the Ministry of Natural Resources, Russian Federation, heeds Gorbachev’s words: 120 Speakers before me said that the Environment does not follow man-drawn borders. In order to preserve biological and landscape diversity in the territories, which are nonetheless cut across by the state borders, we need to foster our good neighbourly relations, not just through well intentioned speeches at the international conferences, but through practical, join mutually beneficial projects both at the bilateral and global level. (p. 18.) Ultimately, whilst the EGB Association does push back against representing nonhuman nature as a resource, the Association re-enacts human interference to contain these ecologies within the border’s boundaries for conservation and rewilding purposes. For instance, BUND posits how one day, the great carnivores of the Belt could use it as a route for migration (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 137). This is through rewilding practices that see the EGB space as “empty” and prime for rewilding a European natural “heritage”. The EGB Initiative aims to rewild the EGB with nonhuman nature that once existed in Europe, but has now disappeared through anthropocentric interference. Thus, even when nonhuman nature is given agency, “nature” as the environment—the EGB landscape for flora and fauna—continues this conceptualisation of nonhuman nature as terra nullis. The land in one way or another is always cultivated through human histories, present actions, and future intentions. 5.0 Conclusions This chapter has traced a genealogical history of the EGB from WWII to present day. It also has looked to the future, as it addressed the future rhetorical and material goals of this ever-expanding project. The previous section that the creation of the EGB as a holistic enterprise has fashioned this ecological network into a complex communicative, rhetorical infrastructure. Bridging metaphors drive this project, especially as it resonates with the tensions of the delineation of a living artefact as heritage. I argue that the EGB uses heritage in order to drive conservation of both nonhuman nature and cultural infrastructures that are Janus-faced. The rhetorical transcendence of infrastructures of heritage are used to create a 121 European identity that is environmentally-focused. This rhetorical work firmly plants the aims of the EGB Initiative within one of the great concerns our time: climate change and its mitigation strategies. The need for solutions to the Anthropocene are vast and urgent. Furthermore, solutions need to be found on a globalising scale of governance, in order to address both the global and the local. Climate mitigation is thus a global phenomenon that requires rhetorical biomic work beyond the nation-state. This dissertation argues for the biomic action of the EU, EGB Initiative and Association under the guises of an Anthropocene rhetoric. This is a global action for global problems. And yet, the globality of climate change is what Timothy Morton (2013) describes (2013) as a hyperobject— a large, difficult to grasp concept that goes far beyond the immediately visible and visceral realms. Climate mitigation strategies thus require a visual mapping in order fulfil its role within climate action—a symbolic move of communicative labour. The EGB is no exception. The EGB has been mapped as a rhetorical and material resource in the face of EU climate change policy. And yet, a project that is Janus-faced is more complex. The EGB has brought additional rhetorical work as it turns to the impact of grey infrastructures—the meso—against the impact of macro policies. The current irenic scapes suggest the erristic relics from the past. This doubling prompts reflection and exists as an affordance of future goals. The construction of the EGB hence needs to acknowledge the importance of its green-grey heritage. This dissertation argues that the green and grey infrastructures of the EGB constitute a wilding of sorts. A network of efforts tend to the flora and fauna that flourished during the Cold War in the Green Belt. Further, the Initiative preserves against catastrophic biodiversity loss whilst making amends for European sins of the past against nonhuman nature and the environment. As a model GI project for the EU, the EGB is thus both a resource and a symbolic argument for European conservation: “the European Green Belt offers the chance to take one of the world’s leading symbols of human division and transform it into a model for future nature conservation in Europe” (European Green Belt Association, 2016b). 122 Overall, the holistic project both waxes and wanes against European history in the service of an ecologically minded, global European front. It is from the holistic aspirations of the project that now open up the study to consider how this global, holistic project resonates with more local efforts. It is this to which I thus turn next. 123 Chapter Three: The Integrative Belt La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; L’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers. – Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal 7 The Fennoscandian Green Belt, or the Green Belt of Fennoscandia (FGB), comprises a material- cultural network that occupies the northernmost region of the EGB. With the least amount of states for any biogeographical region, only Norway, Finland and Russia govern this 1,350 kilometre biome stretching from the Barents to the Baltic Sea. Pristine old-growth boreal forests, wetlands, mires, bird habitats, lakes, and rivers are among the many ecosystems that form this natural biome (Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2017d). Just as each section of the Belt offers a unique continental landscape, the FGB is no exception. Situated above and below the Arctic circle, the FGB borderlands serve at the intersection of two different biomes: the eastern taiga and western habitats. These dominate this northerly wilderness as Bauderlaire’s forest of symbols at this intersecting edge of Europe, EU, and the Russian Federation. This dissertation argues that the geological as well as geo-political positioning of the FGB makes for a unique site of an Anthropocenic biomic politics between two very different ideologies. Situated mostly 7 Translations are many, but one of the commonly ascribed is: “Nature is a temple in which living pillars, Sometimes give voice to confused words; Man passes there through forests of symbols, Which look at him with understanding eyes.” (Baudelaire & Aggeler, 2015.) 124 on the Finnish/Russian border, until 2004 the FGB was the only border between the EU and the Russian Federation. Such positioning has cultivated a unique set of human–nonhuman nature relations between east and west. This inquiry portends that Finnish (and to a lesser-extent, Norwegian) nonhuman nature practices can been seen as an iteration of a particular EU identity that both aligns with and against Russian collaboration. Finnish scholar Liikannen (2008) agrees, and argues that the border politics between these factions have been reconceptualised in terms of European integration and EU politics (p. 28). In relation to the FGB, this integration extends transboundary cooperation from between sole EU countries towards larger, continental divisions. This is the quintessential globalising biomic politics of the Anthropocene. The human–nonhuman nature relations of the FGB offer a unique facet to Anthropocene biomic work. This chapter argues that such biomic work began along this northerly section of the border even before the Anthropocene entered Western vernacular and ideology. As discussed in the previous chapter, the EGB Initiative aims to bring human and nonhuman nature needs together: this is Chakrabarty’s Anthropocenic collapse of human and geological histories. However, biomic and rhetorical analysis of the FGB region reveals that relations and histories in the FGB were already collapsing before Anthropocene ideology took hold. This inquiry portends that due to the significant positioning and continued presence of the indigenous peoples of the North whose ways of life work with rather than against the land, the governance and care of the FGB reveals a particular ecological attunement to the land. Thus, borders both dividing and unifying work together in the FGB, as nonhuman natures, politics, and cultures work with and against each other in order to support integrative work across this EU/Russian Federation border. The FGB is hence a particular Anthropocene articulation and realisation of human–nonhuman nature relations in the interests of the former border. This chapter begins an exploration of how an Anthropocene rhetoric of a part reflects on the whole. In this chapter, I identify a significant variety of biomic integrative work. And yet. Difficulties of unity still 125 arise. Although English (and to a lesser extent German) is the working language for the EGB project due to the needs for a common tongue, language issues in the FGB prevail. The EGB assigned the Baltic Fund for Nature, run via Russian apparatuses, to be the FGB Regional Coordinator. However, it is perhaps telling that the official website for the FGB is not in English but in Russian, thus alienating the FGB’s cooperative partners. Such a language barrier in transboundary cooperation has been highlighted by Brunner (Brunner, 2006, p. 16). Due to what appears to be a problem of cohesive management from the Russian side, the Finnish Ministry for the Environment and the Finnmark County Governor in Norway has consequently produced the majority of the FGB’s international texts, both increasing the visibility of the project as well as performing well-needed outreach. In my research, I thus broadened out my materials for analysis towards these Nordic artefacts that do not always address the FGB project specifically, but are concerned with the actions of transboundary biodiversity conservation in the border regions. The chapter follows as thus. (1) provides a history of the region from the 1200s to the present day, including the establishment of this section of the project, to set the stage for the conservation antics of nonhuman natures and cultures. This also delineates the flora and fauna of the region. (2) considers how the constitution of the FGB is the result of a mapping of a rhetorical geography in this remote region of the world. I argue that this region, by placing an importance on both epistemic and vernacular, local voices, was constituted through latitudinal natural and cultural moves across nation-state borders. This works from a rhetorical, cultural geography that sets up “the essential condition of human communities in relation to nature” (Vallega, 2003) in the FGB and considers the symbolic significance of this project (Andrian, 2006, p. 20). My methods towards an examination of the alt-rhetorical geography included a sampling of publicly available materials both internal and external: those available digitally (and in English); physical documents gathered during my site visits to the FGB; and that presented at the 2016 Pan-European Green Belt 126 conference in the FGB. These include digital, analogue and video material analysis alongside rhetorical analysis of the border sites in situ. (3) moves from an examination of history and the geography on the land towards how the immaterial writes a rhetorical geography. This section addresses biomic politics in the region, and leads to an examination of what exactly is governed in this biomic political action, by considering intangible heritage as a material instantiation of biomic politics at play. I follow UNESCO’s (2002) argument regarding World Heritage sites as “biological and cultural diversities are mutually reinforcing and interdependent” (Andrian, 2006, p. 23). Hence, this section turns to the constitution of the FGB as material rhetorical artefact through a materialisation of intangible heritage. argues that the FGB exhibit a unique set of human–nonhuman nature relations based on the intersection of indigenous culture and politics attached to the different border regions in the FGB. I ultimately argue that this displays a unique ecological attunement in the region that an Anthropocene rhetoric relies on. (4) examines the crux of this prismatic exploration what I consider the most biomic section of the entire EGB: the Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park in the Barents region. The Trilateral Park is a collection of five nonhuman nature reserves conceptualised and managed jointly by all three FGB countries. I argue that this management is a significant example of cross-border collaboration not only in the EGB but in larger global goals of sustainable development and climate change mitigation. (5) consequently provides a summary of my findings before setting the stage for the next chapter. Overall, my conclusion posits that Nordic and North-western Russian cultures serve as the foundation for a connection to the land that results in an intense biomic politics heavily invested in transboundary cooperation. This is not only within the EU but also Russian Federation borders. The FGB thus sees European, EU and Russian environmental imaginaries coalesce. 127 1.0 A History of Territorialisation A rhetoric of the Anthropocene emanates from new environmental imaginaries that begin with the complications of history. Recall, rhetoric connects with bia, the necessities of life that compel action, with survival as the question at hand. The border between the three countries of the FGB thus has an intricate dynamic history of territorialisation. Figure 18: The division of Karelia across Finland and Russia. Licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0., Wikimedia. Copyright Jniemenmaa. 1.1 Ancient times. Borders have been drawn and redrawn in this region. Its history is vast and complex. But an Anthropocene rhetoric necessarily incorporates history as a driver for action. This section thus begins with Finland, the most besieged country of the FGB. Finland belonged to the Swedish empire 128 for over six centuries. In the 12 th century, the Finnish region of Karelia 8 became a part of the Novgorod Feudal Republic, which saw conflict against German and Swedish crusaders. Karelia (see Figure 18) is a significant region that splits across the Russian Federation and Finland. As discussed in this chapter, this particular region of the FGB has its own specific history, culture, and dialect as a marker of difference from its Finnish and Russian neighbours. This makes the region a continuing hot spot of geopolitics. The historical geopolitics of Karelia continued with the Treaty of Nötebord in 1323, which defined the first border between the two emerging empires of Novgorod and Sweden. However, despite defining the two territorial states, the Treaty only produced a scarcely discernible ethnic and national border (Liikanen, 2008, p. 25). Until the beginning of the 17 th century, the main section of Karelia stayed under the Novgorod Republic as Sweden expanded eastwards. The Treaty of Stolbova in 1617 annexed large areas around the Gulf of Finland and the shores of Lake Ladoga from under the rule of Swedish kings to Muscovite tsars. Karelia thus became divided between Eastern Orthodox Karelia under Russian rule, and Western Lutheran Karelia as Finnish Karelia, although Finland was not yet an administrative unit of its own as part of the Swedish Empire. 1.2 Modern Era. In the 19 th Century, Finland came under the rule of the Russian Empire as a Grand Duchy (1809–1917). Active nation-building ensued as the border with Russia was defined as an autonomous nation-state (Liikanen, 2008, p. 26). Before Finnish independence, interaction and movement between the populations of Eastern Finland and Russia was commonplace (Turki, 2013, p. 96). However, as Finland gained independence following the first World War and the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Bolshevik-backed abortive revolution in Finland in 1918 resulted in the creation of a heavily guarded, hostile military border following the 1920 brokering of peace between the two countries in Tartu, Estonia. 8 Due to the history of the occupation of Finland by Sweden as well as Russia, this was known as Swedish Karelia before 1808. 129 Such history resulted in 1920s Soviet Karelia using Finnish as the official language of administration, education and culture for its non-Russian-speaking population (Turki, 2013, p. 97). Calls for redefining the border in ethnic terms of reuniting the Finns and Karelians within one state were made, but this was never adopted as official state policy. 1.3 Total war. During WWII, the Soviet Union invaded Finland once again during the three and half month Winter War in 1939–40. The resulting Moscow Peace Treaty, signed between Finland and the Soviet Union on March 12, 1940, left Finland succeeding a portion of “Western” Karelia, the entire Karelian Isthmus (that which comprises Saint Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast), as well as a large section of land north of Lake Ladoga (parts of Salla and Kuusamo), and four islands in the Gulf of Finland. These territories from Finland were joined with the rest of Soviet Eastern Karelia to create the Soviet Union’s Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic. 422,000 Karelians—12% of Finland’s population—were evacuated and lost their homes, and the land was settled by other peoples from the Soviet Union. Although the Continuation War of 1941–43 liberated most of the ceded area by Finnish troops and included an occupation of Soviet Karelia, in 1944 the Soviet Union recaptured the area, and Finnish Karelians were once again evacuated. Eeva Berglund (2000a) stated how “this loss symbolised the loss of both cultural heritage and the material substrate of national life” (p. 59). A sense of a shared tragedy created a strong consensual spirit across Finland. 1.4 Cold War epoch. The Cold War resulted in heavy militarisation on both sides of the border between Eastern Norway, Finland, and the Soviet Union. The border zone was narrow on the Finnish side: from point-five to two kilometres wide. However, the Russian side could equal over 20 kilometres. The border began at Grense Jakobselv, near the Norwegian town of Kirkenes on the Barents Sea. From Kirkenes, the border followed the division of Finland and Norway through Neiden, the centre of Norway’s East Sámi people. The border between Finland and Russia began at Näätämö, and descended 1,340 130 kilometres through a still rarely visited East Finland. The first visit to sole Russia was at the bottom of this region of the Curtain at the Gulf of Finland at the Leningrad Oblast. 9 The Soviet administration put a 50 kilometre wide zone of limited access next to the Finnish border from 1945 until 1991 (Saarinen, Jantunen, Saarnio, Kuitunen & Marttila, 2001, p. 267). The nonhuman natures helped draw a natural border alongside purpose-built military facilities, and border crossings were limited to a few locations. Because the Norwegian–Russian border was only one of two land borders between the Soviet Union and NATO territories during the Cold War, it was intensely guarded on both sides (EuroVelo 13, n.d.d.). However, at the end of the 1980s, access to the border region within the Soviet Union was increasingly facilitated and the border area became narrower (Ullrich, Reicken & Lang, 2006, p. 5). 1.5 Present day. Today, borders still remain drawn. The list of protected and valued forests is dissected by nation-states whose borders nonhuman natures defy. Currently, the area that constitutes the FGB includes: all boreal zones north and south; the central and southern parts with vast coniferous taiga forests that serve as a refuge for large mammals such as elk and brown bears; and the Scots pine communities. These forests are the background hosts for a variety of endemic animal species such as the taiga reindeer, wolverines, grey wolves and the brown bear. Fauna trumps flora. And yet, despite conservation demarcation, Berglund (2000b) notes that Finland’s forested biological diversity has seen degradation from selective replanting in response to industry needs, the prevention of natural wild fires and 9 As discussed in the previous chapter, it is important to note the contention over naming the separation of Norway and Finland with the Soviet Union as the Iron Curtain. The Iron Curtain analogy as both experience and metaphor of (border) walls closing off countries, cultures and ideologies, was initially considered to be specific to central Europe. However, there was, and continues to be, a strongly held border between what is now the EU and the Russian Federation with a buffer zone of up to 50 kilometres each side (Zemelik, Schindler & Wrbka, 2011, p. 275). Thus, I find it sufficient to use the term as referring to all borders between the Soviet Union (and territories) against the West. 131 a management that emphasises ease of access (p. 27). This is capitalistic frame of nonhuman nature as a valuable resource for anthropo-exploits. Figure 19: The meeting point for the borders of Norway, Finland, and Russia. To go around the stone is not permitted. Licensed under the Creative Commons, 3.0, Wikimedia. Copyright Julia Velkova. Human acts of marking boundaries continue to both negate and allow nonhuman to flourish. Border fences along the borders of Finland/Russia in the Norwegian Øvre Pasvik National Park now prevent reindeers from crossing the borders (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.c.). Overall, the Finnish-Russian border is still very strictly controlled, particularly as that which divides the EU and the Russian Federation. The border is given so-called Schengen status (Karivalo & Butorin, 2006, p. 38). In the Arctic circle, a small monument on one of the cliffs marks not only the end of the sub-continent but the beginning (or end) of the border as the ICT (EuroVelo 13, n.d.d). Further south, a signpost in Vaggatem marks where the border of Norway, Finland and Russia meet (see Figure 19). Crossing from the EU to Russia (and vice versa) is 132 not allowed at this point: rather, you must go to an official border crossing (EuroVelo 13, n.d.e.). Borders thus prevent human action crossing, but nonhuman nature defies such rules. 1.6 The borderless Sámpi . The history of the FGB is vast. It is a tale of nations conquered and countries reterritorialized. And yet, despite the wars on the north eastern shores of Europe, borders have also been traditionally defied by its human populations. There are two distinct latitudinal regions of the FGB where both humans and nonhumans have traditionally migrated across geopolitical borders. The first is above the Arctic Circle, where a territory known as Sámpi and its indigenous peoples the Sámi reside in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland alongside their northerly Russian neighbour of the Russian Kola peninsula. The second region is Karelia as discussed in the previous section, which has a distinct ethnic group of the Karelians. Geopolitics dominates both these regions as natural and human histories coalesce. Whilst the geopolitics of Nordic settlers have dominated this region, Sámpi as the land of the Sámi has witnessed a different set of human–nonhuman nature relations. The Sámi are the only ethnic group in the EU to be recognised as an aboriginal people. Although the Sámi are considered a separate ethnic group from Caucasian Europeans, the Sámi themselves are a conglomeration of several different groups—the Inari, the Skolt and the Northern Sámi— the latter which are also known as the reindeer or fell Sámi. The Northern Sámi have traditionally lived a nomadic life by migrating with the reindeer herds. The Inari Sámi are named for their locale surrounding Lake Inari in Finland. Conversely, the Skolt Sámi have customarily lived in the Kola Peninsula, which extends from Neiden to Pechenga in Russia (ceded from Finland to Russia after WWII), and to Tuuloma Lapland in Finland. Overall, these different Sámi groups make up a total of approximately 50–70,000 Sámi in Norway, 15-20,000 in Sweden, 10,000 in Finland and 2,000 in Russia (Herrmann & Heinämäki, 2017, p. 5). 133 Figure 20: The Sámediggi Parliament in Kárášjohka, Norway, whose architecture resonates with the natural shapes and materials of the Arctic. Licensed under the Creative Commons, Wikimedia. Copyright Illustratedjc. Sámpi is a protected land for the Sámi, with its own council, Sámediggi (see Figure 20). For the Sámi, Sámpi is considered one land that does not adhere to European borders. The life-world of the Sámi is dynamic. Nomadism is way of life that is both predicted by the changes in nonhuman nature and thus writes a Sámi history on the land. Sámpi is a unique FGB rhetorical geography as the Arctic’s seasonal movements infer change for the Sámi. Thus, whilst a history of the FGB tells a narrative of change for the land’s European settlers, Sámi has undergone differing geopolitical affects. Such nomadism with the reindeer economy was a way of life for the Sámi, and was even protected with the Strömstand Border Treaty between Sweden and Norway in 1751. And yet, the establishment of the four country borders in the 1800s eventually prohibited border crossings. Thus, border crossings were prevented with the 1852 closure of the Norwegian-Finnish border by the reigning Russian Tsar, as well the closing of the Finnish-Swedish border in 1889 which eventually destroyed reindeer nomadism (Lehtola, 2004, p. 36). Furthermore, the 134 Russian reindeer economy also vanished by the time of the Russian revolution (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.j.). Settler intervention was a destructive force on this indigenous way of life. Western political boundaries have caused ripples in the Sámi way of life. For instance, since the 1860s, many of the nomadic Northern Sámi moved to the Finnish side of the Finnish-Norwegian border (Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, 2007, p. 5). Changes of sovereignty resulted in the Skolt Sámi losing their native lands in World War II, and forced the majority to migrate east to the municipality of Inari and in Sør-Varanger in Norway whilst attempting to preserve their culture and Orthodox faith (Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, 2007, p. 5). The closing of nation-state borders ostensibly isolated Sámi living in the former Soviet Union from the Sámi in the Nordic region, as they were relocated from Sámpi villages to other areas. Such relocation destroyed traditional social, cultural and economic structures. For instance, the county of Finnmark in north-easternmost Norway that borders Russia was a common Russian-Norwegian land on which the nomadic Sámi lived, and yet after WWII a border was finally agreed upon, thus dividing Sámpi and restricting Sámi to one nation-state or another (EuroVelo 13, n.d.d.). It was thus only after the collapse of the Soviet Union that the Russian Sámi started to rebuild their culture and re-establish contact with their Nordic counterparts in Finnmark (Henriksen, 2008, p. 28). Overall, in the majority, the Sámi have had to adapt to European constructs by either giving up their migratory habits, or by concealing them until Iron Curtain border fences were built in the 1950s. Sámi nomadism was thus thwarted under the guise of European sovereignty, whilst the nonhuman natures that directed the Sámi lifeworld continued to flourish across borders. Agentic nonhuman nature defied settler borders. 2.0 A Rhetorical Geography of a Northerly Anthropocene Rhetoric The defiance of nonhuman brings us towards the catalyst of an Anthropocene rhetoric. As Latour noted, an Anthropocene rhetoric reverses the Western trope of humans as the active subject who construct nonhuman nature as an object to be manipulated. In the Anthropocene, the roles become circular. Due to 135 the actions of humans since the initial Industrial Revolution, humans have become akin to a geological force on the land. But consequently, this has resulted in a dramatically changing nonhuman nature transforming the Earth System from a site of human hospitality to hostility. This is the beginning of an Anthropocene rhetoric that drives this section. An Anthropocene rhetoric is dependent on both globalising narratives as well as local actions. In order to trace the actualisation of an Anthropocene rhetoric this section begins by depicting the communicative labour that was invested in the construction of the FGB as part of the holistic EGB. The EGB project looms so large that it must be divided into separate regions all with their own governing structures and actions. The FGB is unique in that it only incorporates three countries that have a shared cultural and natural heritage across the Arctic and across Karelia. The geopolitics the FGB thus sit in a discursive space that is the narrative of its historical episodes. The division of Europe and the resulting low level of economic activities in the border regions resulted in the space being in near perfect, natural, condition by the time the Soviet Union fell (Terry, Ullrich & Reicken, 2006). The remoteness of the northerly border in particular allowed for bounteous natural growth. As noted in chapter one, it was the 1970s Finnish/Russia border that a green belt of old- growth forest was initially sighted. Thus, to govern the histories, and the valuables of the land, a transboundary governance is required for that which is mapped across nation-state borders. Nonhuman nature flourished because of, and against, human actions. This is a biomic governance of biodiversity in the Anthropocene. A biomic politics in the Anthropocene sees biomic apparatuses act as a global collective with identical commitments that lead to the mapping of space and infusing it with epistemic meaning (Kjeldsen, 2015b, p. 121). The categorisation of ecosystems, such as boreal zones, as valuable is a rhetorical value- judgement residing within the conceptual metaphor of nonhuman nature as a resource. A valuable resource 136 requires protection. For the FGB/EGB, this lead to the establishment of a network of separate protected areas on either side of the border (Reicken et al., 2006, p. 5). This is the supra-national governance that straddles a post-19 th century thanatopolitics. To make decisions over what is granted bios and which has zōē is an exercise of value judgements. But a rhetoric of value itself begets the question: to who is it valuable? Decisions must thus be made as to what belongs and what does not. There is communicative labour invoked in the governance of land and people. It requires a differentiation between that which has bare life and which has none in the relevant governing polity. But nonhuman natures defy nation state borders, which have both a geopolitical and arbitrary realness. These boundaries only become real for the natural world in terms of the anthrocentric use of nonhumans as resources, conservation, preservation, and degradation for the nation-state. However, as these actions take place across along the former Iron Curtain in the nascent Anthropocene, the polis goes beyond the nation-state and moves towards a larger, supra- national governing body. The land is thus a dynamic site of human and geological histories coalesced. 2.1 The constitution of the FGB as an ecological network. The defiance of nonhuman nature in the border began in the 1970s (Haapala et al., 2003). The FGB’s far northerly aspect makes its nonhuman natures particularly unique: the northern coniferous forest—known as the boreal zone— containing approximately 50% of the species in the area. Within this boreal zone contains the last large massifs of old growth taiga—dry pine forests with a high fire frequency—which are typical for the Fennoscandian region (Karivalo & Butorin, 2006, p. 39). It is these Finnish old-growth forests, that were spotted flourishing in the negative space of the border. Alongside these were numerous wetlands, mires and lakes. Such a boon to the Finnish state, biodiversity conservation initiatives thus began before the intersection of these novel ecologies into one holistic biome. The visual, literal presence of the boundary-belligerent boreal forests became an argument for supporting cross-boundary collaboration between the three previously warring countries. As Berglund (2000b) writes, “in the face of environmental destruction state borders can easily 137 seem meaningless” (p. 23). The existence of these forests alone, never mind in their ability to cross human- derived borders, thus became the driving force for conservationist reasoning to push for international environmental protection of the former border. The intersection of these novel ecologies began with the acknowledgement that the nonhuman is not subject to human geopolitical division. Following the spotting of the old-growth forests, a burgeoning cross-boundary, biomic governance between Finland and the Soviet Union slowly developed later that decade. Uwe Riecken, Karin Ullrich and Ana Lang (2006) posited the nascence of such Russian-Finnish transboundary work with the signing of a scientific-technical cooperation agreement (p. 4). Tapio Lindholm argued for a later start date, and pointed specifically to a 1985 agreement between the two countries which was then resigned with the newly formed Russian Federation. Whilst theorists have thus differed in their interpretations of what transboundary work truly means, the latter agreement did also beget a Russian-Finnish programme on sustainable forest management and the conservation of biodiversity in Northwest Russia (Lindholm, 2004, p. 22). These examples of biomic politics and their apparatuses of governance in action hence began before the fall of the Curtain in 1989. The notion of a biomic governance in the Fennoscandian region started before the Green Ribbon entered European vernacular. As with an Anthropocene rhetoric, I argue that the Nordic-Russian deathzone enacted this topos of extinction as a rhetorical force to drive conservation action. The conservation of biodiversity against the sixth extinction of species drove state apparatuses to work together. As the border broke down in the late 1980s, NGOs, charities, and certain state agencies argued for conservation of the border land as a container for the flourishing of northern biodiversity, such as the wild forest reindeer that exists in the region (Liikannen, 2008, p. 21). But in order to offer sufficient protection and governance of these nonhuman nature reserves along the former Iron Curtain, 138 transboundary action was needed. Former warring countries thus began to join forces against climate change. In the mid-1980s, a joint Finnish-Russian Working Group on Nature Conservation was founded. Consequently, successive several twin parks were established along the soon-to-be FGB (Reicken et al., 2006, pp. 4-5). Timo Hokkanen (2004) noted how international cooperation began in the Suojärvi district in the Russian Republic of Karelia, where the common history between the Finns and Russians started mutual nonhuman nature conservation activities with the local community. Such cooperation was further supplanted in 1992, as both Finland and Norway signing signed agreements with the Russian Federation in 1992 on “cooperation in the field of environmental protection” (Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2017c). Following this, an inventory project on the border-forests was conducted from 1992–94 in order to delineate the “ecological value” of the ecosystems and species in the boreal forest zone. This designation of bios and zōē in the region thus began through GIS infrastructure (see Appendix A). The mapping of the FGB thus became a rhetorical geography of biomic work. 2.2 Conservation initiatives as rhetorical, biomic apparatuses. The flourishing of nonhuman natures and its consequent rewilding of the border is what this dissertation argues for as a new geological Kairos. Biomic politics developed with transboundary cooperation as a world-wide act in the early 1990s (although the first transboundary area was established in 1932) with EUROPARC, IUCN and WWF among many other organisations and NGOs working towards “raising nature protection from a national to a transboundary level” (Brunner, 2006, p. 13). This environmental cooperation created a rhetoric of friendship and cooperation between Finland and Russia after the Cold War, although this did not immediately open up the border (Liikannen, 2008, p. 27). For instance, even today there is still only one official border crossing between Norway and Russia, at the town of Storskog. Contemporary geopolitics thus are fraught with both with transboundary and divisive work. 139 Transboundary work has continued into this decade. The culmination of joint international work for the FGB was in February 2010, when the Ministers of Environment for Norway and Finland, and the Minister of Natural Resources and Environment for the Russian Federation, signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) in Tromsø, Norway (Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2016; Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2017a; Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2017c). The MOU is still in action as this dissertation goes into print, expiring in 2020. The MOU agreement shares responsibility between Norway, Finland and Russia to halt biodiversity loss, to “facilitate ecologically, economically socially and culturally sustainable transboundary cooperation”, and to maintain “the vitality of the natural areas” in the FGB (Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2016). It also includes the implementation of international objectives on biodiversity. There is a shared agreement over all three cultures regarding the value of nonhuman nature. This is ultimately a value judgment across multi-national human–nonhuman relations, as transboundary cooperation cannot happen without an agreed upon transnational ideology regarding humans relationships with the natural world. Human–nonhuman nature relations need to be conceptually agreed upon before their communicative labour is enacted, otherwise action is stalled by competing ideologues. Thus, this 10 year agreement acts as a biomic apparatus for EU and EGB governance by guiding the actions of other actors in these transnational best practices. 2.3 The biomic politics of the contemporary forest belt. The collapse of discrete living objects in the north into the singular FGB has been identified by the EGB Initiative itself as playing a particular role in population adaptation to habitat fragmentation, climate change mitigation, and Anthropocene adaptation (BPAN, n.d.; Metsähallitus, 2014; Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2017d). This designation of ecological value for these border ecologies is thus a key component to the construction of the FGB. Like all biogeographical regions in the EGB, the FGB is 140 undergoing constant transformation as ecosystems become part of the ecological biome. Sometimes novel ecologies are discovered as having grown from the initial border blueprints and thus enter into the EGB polity. Sometimes, previous areas of nonhuman natures that already existed become designated as having a conservation necessity, and thus are added to the EGB biome as a political act, rather than simply a faithful rendering of the former Curtain as now ecological network. These acts thus require rhetorical, communicative work in their conservation activities. The creation of the biome necessitates a rhetorical bridging of discrete entities into the same sphere of bios. The materialism of this work happens on the land, which itself becomes a visual, kisceral argument towards a biomic politics. That which is seen and experienced as flourishing symbolises the cultural distinctions of those that hold valued interest for the state and which do not. Overall, this act of identification is another result of the creation of a rhetorical geography. The contemporary FGB has its own unique rhetorical geography that speaks for both local and globalising Western human–nonhuman nature relations. The visual, experiential, and symbolic delineation of the boundaries between that which is valued and which is not is rhetorical, communicative labour. The EGB Association refers to the FGB’s particular conglomeration of biodiverse ecosystems as a “million- hectare chain of nature reserves” (European Green Belt, 2018h). The discrete ecologies of the FGB resonate with the proverbial EGB “pearls on a string”, as this rhetorical linking results in ecologies becoming rearticulated into a singular argumentative frame, fixing meaning and defining reality temporarily (DeLuca, 1999, p. 334). This rhetorically collapses the range of ecologies and their own needs into a singular, holistic, Burkean (1969) representative anecdote. The FGB seeks a vocabulary of authenticity. But, as Burke argues, these anecdotes can also deflect reality (Burke, 1969, p. 59). Just as maps act like societal discourses and communicative symbolic systems in their integrity to place-making (Hutchins & Stormer, 2013, p. 4), they are not necessarily a faithful reflection of reality. Rather, they are in part a biopolitical 141 apparatus of a governing structure’s own selective mapping of the land. Maps are thus a semiotic guide to humans regarding what should and should not be conserved, as boundaries guide human action. The mapping of the FGB and the creation of its representative anecdote has guided biomic action that continues to this present day. Contemporary efforts of cross-border collaboration have in part been implemented under the larger directive of an even broader biomic actor that designates bios and zōē on a global scale: the United Nations (UN) and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Action under this convention has been focused on its Aichi Targets that aim to halt biodiversity loss by 2020. As a more legitimated intergovernmental organisation that promotes international collaboration, transboundary biodiversity efforts guided by the UN are given additional weight. Transboundary cooperation under the Aichi Targets has been seen as necessary against the decline and thus indispensable conservation of biodiversity, to guard against climate change (Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2016, p. 2). This is cross-border collaboration as listed by the Finish Ministry of Environment as part of FGB strategising. Cross-border collaboration is utilised to protect against significant risks that include: climate change; harmful invasive species; and human impact on the environment and changes in land use that have “fragmented” these protected areas as European species move along the Belt to find new habitats as conditions change (Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2016, p. 2). This claim is repeated in the Guidelines for the planning and communication of Green Belt (2017), which highlights the importance of the FGB as an ecological network supporting species in the adaption to climate change: Biodiversity is essential to life. Nature in the Green Belt knows no borders. Green Belt is one of] the most significant ecological corridors in the whole Europe. Nature in the area gives also rise to the region’s vitality and to the well-being of its inhabitants. 142 The decline in biodiversity has been recognized [sic] as a future threat equal to climate change. Pressure directed at biodiversity can be reduced by effective conservation actions complemented with sustainable use of natural resources and increasing awareness on the value of the biodiversity. (Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2017g, p. 2.) Conservation of nonhuman nature in the FGB corridor is thus a key biomic action in the Anthropocene. The MOU, the Aichi targets, and other such governing structures in the FGB underpin biomic work. Biomic politics collapse the global and local as well as human and geological histories. The FGB is recognised by all countries as a site of significant biodiversity. Tapio Lindholm (2004), a prominent expert on the FGB for the Finnish Environmental Institute noted the uniqueness of the corridor of old Scots Pine forest through this boreal zone. Lindholm argued that from the hemi-boreal to sub-arctic subzones, this boreal forest exists at a northern latitude where what is normally present is Arctic permafrost (p. 20). And yet. Despite the recognised importance of the forest belt, its significance is still presented as being a foil to economic activities. Approximately 50% of the land and water along the Finnish-Russian Belt is privately owned (Karivalo & Butorin, 2006, p. 43), although nearly 100% of Finnish protected areas are managed by the state organisation Metsähallitus. The narrowing of the border at the end of the 1980s has significantly increased exploitation of the forest. Furthermore, exploitation of the forest has become compounded by economic needs. The Finnish-Russian Development Programme on Sustainable Forest Management and Conservation of Biological Diversity in Northwest Russia, administered in Finland through the Ministries of the Environment, of Agriculture and Forestry and for Foreign Affairs, denoted the forest as a natural resource that needed to be managed for the international “common good” for both economic and environmental needs (Berglund, 2000b, p. 26). The forest as a resource is a key rhetorical trope throughout this chapter. Even though agriculture and forestry are not allowed in the Finnish protected areas, nevertheless, the infamous old-growth forests 143 have become endangered due to excessive logging (Reicken et al., 2006, p. 5). On the Russian side of the border, where forests that were originally intact and free from logging until the collapse of the Soviet Union are now declining and begets interest from the forest industry in the region (Karivalo & Butorin, 2006, pp. 40-1). Overall, these actions reflect the constraints on the small population that resides in this region, whose majority of livelihoods are constituted by forestry, agriculture, and nonhuman nature tourism. Despite nonhuman nature conservation efforts, demarcation of conservation value does not automatically result in ecologically attuned action. The framing conceptual metaphor of valued resource goes beyond the climate mitigation imperatives of biodiversity. The forest as a resource for human inhabitants has thus become a key rhetorical strategy in order to reconcile human degradation of the forest against globalising biodiversity concerns. Resource also has a monetary, capitalist referent. As depicted in this section, we see that human–nonhuman nature relations in the FGB are strained through the constrictions of geopolitics. The former border is still heavily fenced, and thus somewhat hinders the migration of large mammals across the Belt (EuroVelo 13, n.d.e.). For example, Russian efforts are not so invested (personal correspondence, 2016) in the ecological importance and thus maintenance of the region. Official Russian concerns lay mostly with a claim to territory and the immediate resources the land offers humans, rather than the ecological importance of its flora and fauna. This also affects the region and Republic of Karelia, which has seen many challenges and concerns over its borders rather than the environmental milieu it provides. Furthermore, the Russian section of the FGB has only decreased in size, in opposition to typical government actions along the EGB. For instance, although 30 isolated nonhuman nature sites forming a narrow line along the border (an average width of 20-30 kilometres) were proposed to be included in the Russian FGB in the early 2000s, the proposed number of sites actually decreased to 20 and only included existing and project protected areas at both the federal and regional level 144 (Karivalo & Butorin, 2006, p. 41). Thus, these geopolitical obstacles result in changes to the intangible, tangible, and natural heritage of the region. 2.4 A futurist integrative bioeconomy. Measures have been underway for 25 years to conserve the nonhuman natures in the region. Today, four Finnish-Russian twin parks have been established. These parks consist of five separate Finnish protected areas constituting different statuses, alongside the Kostomukshsky Strict Nature Reserve on the Russian side (Karivalo & Butorin, 2006, p. 41). The constitution of the FGB is portrayed as a meeting of latitudinal cultures and nonhuman natures that defy European, EU, and Russian borders. The “FGB fact sheet” produced by the Finnish Ministry of Environment and the EGB Association (see Appendix B) depicts such collaborative notions in its vibrantly coloured map of the region. The bright colours, culturally connected to the effect of happiness, serve as a presumed appeal to children and adults alike as a hyper-real depiction of the former Iron Curtain. The colours coordinate with the text to enhance textual cohesion and saliency regarding the positivity and suitability of the project to all, as this ideational green is traditionally used as a Western grammar of hope (Kress & Van Leeuwan, 2002, p. 350)). From the brown bear in Russia and the reindeer in Finland situated within the old-growth forest along the Finnish-Russian border, faceless (all white) humans enact nonhuman nature type activities across borders, such as fishing, hiking, and foraging. Metaphorical human harmony (stipulated by EGB rhetoric) with the natural surroundings is multimodally argued through colour harmony and iconic depictions of nonhuman nature based actions. The depiction of faceless humans allows identification as it becomes a visual representative anecdote of the tourist enacting these activities. The green is salient semiotic argument towards the constitution of the FGB and what its represents. Just as the EGB itself is an actual green beltway, which is given presence through its more substantive nonhuman nature and colour differential between the biome and the surrounding landscape, the bright greens on the FGB Fact Sheet engage with several different semiotic modes. This use of green not only 145 semiotically refers back to the title of the project, but also culturally signals nonhuman natures through our experiential physiological knowledge of fertile lands. It is thus used to depict the literal and symbolical Green Belt of Fennoscandia. These striking hyper-real colours and visuals create simulacra of what it is to exist and perform touristic activities in the FGB. The supporting text accompanies this visual feast: Its greatest resource is its incomparable nature. The Green Belt’s clean natural areas, magnificent landscapes, versatile hiking opportunities, and its berry- and mushroom-filled forests, fishing spots and hunting grounds draw tourists from both Finland and abroad. Nature based sources of livelihood and businesses provide jobs and business opportunities for locals. The cultural heritage of the border region is also irrevocably linked to nature (Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2016) Here, nonhuman nature is conceived as a resource, for both the visitor and the native. Nonhuman nature is culturally prosperous, propagating livelihoods and the economy as it draws tourism. The public are expected to “safeguard” the future of the Belt in recognising and appreciating the natural values, benefits and abundant opportunities provided by the FGB biodiversity (ibid). But through this, they are also safeguarding the FGB’s cultural heritage, irretrievably interlinked with the nonhuman natures. The linking of nonhuman natures, resources and economics within the FGB is a key rhetoric as we reach the end of this decade. My analysis of FGB literatures, participant-observation and interviews with key FGB officials revealed that as conservation proliferate, turns are now being made towards future- thinking sustainability. Sustainability of nonhuman natures sees the natural world as a resource that needs to be maintained in order to create balance for both humans and nonhumans. Sustainability is current a hot topic for the EU, and over time transboundary collaboration within the FGB has been supported conceptually and monetarily by the EU, financing “projects seeking answer to shared challenges in the 146 border region between EU and its Eastern neighbours” (Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2016). Alongside the Guidelines (2017), cross-border collaboration that invokes sustainability is highlighted in the Green Belt of Fennoscandia Strategy 2020, with its latest document prepared in 2014 and adopted in 2016 Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2017e.). The 2020 Strategy emphasises common goals for trilateral cooperation and conservation, and how these aims should be communicated to other state, local and vernacular actors. As the FGB lacks an English website from its Regional Coordinator, the resulting 2020 strategy for the development of the EGB was that certain materials were in all languages of the countries in which it passed. For the FGB, promotional material became available in all local languages, including English, Inari Sámi, North Sámi, Skolt Sámi, Swedish, and Russian. This action collapsed the distance between the global and the local. As with EGB Association literature, such goals are denoted as a rhetorical “vision” that implies futurist-thought. The vision-based strategy is to “develop the GBF [Green Belt of Fennoscandia] into a widely acknowledged transboundary model area for biodiversity conservation, bioeconomy, social well-being, and environmentally sustainable economic growth generated by the region’s unique biological and geological diversity and cultural heritage” (Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2017e). The notion of these novel ecologies along the former border as constituting a bioeconomy is significant for future conservation work in the Anthropocene. A bioeconomy is environmentally sustainable economic growth that is generated by a region’s unique geological and biological diversity, including the cultural heritage of the region. (Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2017e.). As with an Anthropocene rhetoric, natural and geological histories coalesce. Nonhuman nature waxes and wanes between rhetorical and literal resource, as its designation as heritage indicates that which should be preserved for both human 147 and nonhuman future goals. Ultimately, sustainability becomes the antithesis to the topos of extinction: necessary for both natural world and Western neoliberalism. A biomic governance of a bioeconomy across borders in Western neoliberalism is situated in- between culture and nonhuman nature. Discrete ideologies as one figurative object—the FGB—is a symbol of European unification fighting climate change through biodiversity. A cold war can still have material consequences. Positing itself as a holistic project between Nordic countries and the Russian Federation, the FGB project sees European, EU and Russian environmental imaginaries coalesce. These are reconstituted over time through nation-state policies, CBC and nature conservation. In a bioeconomy of a material-cultural network constituted through biomic actions, cultural traditions are closely intertwined with nonhuman nature. Human trans-corporeality (Alaimo, 2010) of spirituality, bodies and livelihoods interconnects with the FGB nonhuman natures. Having thus examined how a biomic politics governs people, land, and heritage in the FGB, the next section examines the specificities of traditions and human- nonhuman nature relations in this region. I argue that the constitution of mutually governed nonhuman nature reserves and transboundary parks defies human-geopolitical boundaries and collapses human and nonhuman histories together on the land. This is a rhetorical geography in action in the Anthropocene. 3.0 The Forest as Intangible Heritage Natural, tangible and intangible heritage crosses borders with little heed to national sovereignty. And yet, a biomic governance must designate bios and zōē in a region in order to enable governance over peoples and land. This is the rhetorical identification of what is important and what is not. One strategy to unpack regarding the designation an area of importance for the state is to revisit the Western cultural notion of “heritage” as discussed in chapter two. Heritage is another act of identification, but this time with particular reference to a historical entity that most often has rhetorical memory work. Heritage is an index of past times that have value for the present. Indexes of heritage are not necessarily indexical to the 148 conceptual work of a singular nation-state, but work for any governing body that enacts power over its human and nonhuman subjects. Heritage can thusly cross borders as easily as nonhuman nature. Heritage can materialise in multiple fashions. Sites of heritage are typically memory sites whose presence invokes a cultural memory for a certain population. The FGB itself has very few of these archetypal memory sites—the grey infrastructures of the Cold War—in comparison its Baltic and Central European companions which are inundated with the (repurposed) remnants of European division. And yet, this dissertation still argues that heritage plays a significant role in the FGB. I argue that heritage action in this region is particularly prevalent with the conservation of intangible heritage. The notion of an elusive heritage thus suggests an important aspect of that past that must be conserved for the present and future common good. Intangible heritage just differs from its discernible bedfellow in its lack of an immediate materiality. Heritage and its intangible counterpart thus reside within similar conceptual fields. This argument is supported by UNESCO, where both repeated rhetorically–loaded terms denotate which artefacts have a conservation-worthy bios over that which do not. This is furthered by the UNESCO (1972) promotion of the World Heritage Convention, which argues that World Heritage sites are classified in accordance to two major categories: the “cultural” and the “natural” ones (Andrian, 2006, p. 21). Intangible heritage thus refers to the non-tangible heritage of a culture, such as belief systems, human–nonhuman nature relations, and so on. Intangible heritage is able to represent the material aspects of local cultural discourses and traditions. In this dissertation, I posit that such intangibility deserves material recognition. From the notion of rhetorical geography, intangible heritages are made tangible as they intertwine with and construct place on the physical land due to these human–nonhuman nature relations. This is supported by Osborne’s (2006) argument that such top-down hegemonic expressions of, and bottom-up social participation in, cultural heritage interacts at specific locales (p. 3). I argue that material, symbolic place is thus a part of identity 149 construction, even as the state becomes involved. The manifestations of cultural traditions and heritage through vernacular discourses, made lawful through state representation, are made manifest via relations to the land. Despite this, I also heed a warning from ethnologic scholars. For instance, Hafstein (2007; 2014) argues that the designation of heritage is a risky behaviour, as anything designated as heritage risks becoming stabilised and fixed. For instance, human–nonhuman nature relations from indigenous cultures risk becoming fixed through a state objectification to preserve these heritages. Furthermore, this stabilisation is a reaction towards globalisation, global change, and the resulting damaging effects (Hafstein, 2007, p. 80). Tensions arise in the need to bring the local with the global in the Anthropocene, as the stabilisation of heritage referents to speak to present and future needs can consequently be read as an act of biomic governance as these heritages often defy nation-state borders. The desire to conserve intangible heritages thus connotes a sense of urgency in the risky Anthropocene. This section considers the role intangible heritage plays in the FGB. I argue that the northerly border, lacking the material heritage of Iron Curtain, demonstrates significant conservation work through its preservation of intangible heritage. I argue that this is part driven through the cultures and human– nonhuman nature relations of the Sámi and Karelians in the region. The FGB furnishes conservation of both natural and cultural heritage through the sustainable action of a bioeconomy. The preservation of a cultural heritage is both depicted with, and within, lively and agentic nonhuman natures, as they become a container for human action. My argument that the FGB consists of intangible cultural effects materialising on the land dovetails off the ethnographic and anthropological work of Berglund’s examination of the Finnish side of the border (2000a; 2000b; 2010). Berglund’s work considers how Finnish relationships to the forest, as well as Karelian relationships to the land, are a materialisation of social discourses regarding nonhuman nature—local human–nonhuman nature relations. I portend that this line of thought is communicative work, especially when put in context of the nascent Anthropocene. For the FGB, I 150 contend that the cultural heritage of this region includes a closeness to the land that is used as a communicative argument that supports the EGB’s larger goals of establishing a united European identity and climate mitigation strategies. Furthermore, I argue that this line of analysis can extend towards the Sámi in the Arctic/Barents region of the FGB. Thus, this dissertation argues that the FGB exhibits human–nonhuman intangible relations are the most biomic through a latitudinal approach to transboundary cooperation and the movements of these cultures across nation-state boundaries. Overall, this section argues that the defiance of nonhuman nature and indigenous peoples has resulted in the sharing of traditions and human–nonhuman nature relations across the EU and the Russian Federation. Heritage, like nonhuman nature, does not know boundaries. 3.1 The Sámi as border defiant. The Arctic Circle and Karelia have traditionally shared peoples and nonhuman natures with little concern for geopolitical borders. With a capital, agentic N, “Nature does not respect these manmade boundaries, and ecosystems and species cross from one region to the other” (Steiner, 2006, ix). Nonhuman nature has thus acted as a dynamic natural heritage in these regions. The nonhuman natures map a road of nomadism for the Arctic peoples. Here, nonhuman nature is the dynamic agent that maps the land for its human objects. Although many Sámi have now moved from Sámpi , this chapter argues that the Sámi way of life provides the foundation for human–nonhuman nature relations and cultural heritage in the Arctic FGB. Living in an austere part of the world, Sámi livelihoods and ways of living have traditionally been determined by nonhuman nature, through yearly cycles and migration with the seasons (Lehtola, 2004, p. 19). The highs and lows create an extreme climate and landscape which humans and nonhumans must attempt to reconcile with. The Sámi thus adapted to nonhuman natures rhythms in order to adapt and thrive, working with and yet benefiting from its ecosystem resources. Mapping this land, Sámpi , is a dynamic exercise that follows the ebbs and flows of nonhumans. This chapter argues that the Sámi 151 position their traditions and human–nonhuman nature relations as ecological attunement against increasing industrialisation. The ecological attunement is posited to stem from traditional Sámi action that has revolved around the multitudes of the environment and the land through a nomadism, which now finds stricture from nation-state borders. Sámi, and Sámi scholar Veli-Pekka Lehtola (2004), argues that the Sámi have always relied on nonhuman nature, providing sources for both material and spiritual culture (p. 88). Whilst the older Forest Sámi have “followed a livelihood based on a closeness to nature and a diverse economy of hunting, fishing and gathering and, later, small scale reindeer herding” (Lehtola, 2004, p. 12), the younger reindeer Sámi (since the 1500s) have lived a nomadic life by migrating with reindeer herds across borders. Significantly, this migration has meant a continual crossing across nation-state borders over the centuries. For the different Sámi—the Skolt, Inari, Forest and Reindeer Sámi—who reside in different areas of the Arctic, they all enact an adaptation of their way of life to the yearly cycle of nonhuman nature and to their specific environmental locale. Sámi knowledge is thus used to govern zones of conservation. This continues with its representation in the Sámediggi, as the Sámi government is able to provide biomic support to these nomadic Sámi cultural traditions. This results in the Sámi, in comparison to Western standards, to have a thorough understanding of their environment, which supports a livelihood based on seasonal migrations (Lehtola, 2004, p. 88). Following the nonhuman nature is a journey of travel for the Sámi. 3.1a Ecological attunement with Sámpi . Following the human–nonhuman nature relations of the FGB reveals a new aspect to Anthropocene biomic work. In this chapter, I argue that biomic work began along the FGB before the Anthropocene entered Western vernacular and ideology. Biomic and rhetorical analysis of the FGB region reveals that human and geological histories were already collapsing in this northerly border region before 21 st century Anthropocene ideology took hold. I posit that the significance and continued presence of the indigenous peoples of the North has revealed a particular ecological 152 attunement to the land. Nonhuman natures, politics, and cultures work with and against each other in order to support integrative work across this EU/Russian Federation border. The FGB thus elaborates a particular Anthropocene articulation and realisation of human–nonhuman nature relations in the interests of the former border. But ecological attunement is also tricky. Human-nonhuman relationships are created and articulated through interactions with the land. Sámpi can only support a limited population and thus Lehotola argues that Sámi numbers have remained reasonably low. This Sámi action of balancing the humans with the nonhumans reflects a deep ecologist (Næss, 2015) approach to the natural environment with a frugal use of natural resources that seldom enacts radical change on the Earth System. But ecological attunement is tricky. Settlers and locals find discord in their relationship to the environment. Lehtola argues that the peasant societies from the Nordic countries and Russia who moved into Sámpi held conflicting worldviews. Both settlers and indigenous peoples “compete for the use of nature in the same place at the same time” (Lehtola, 2004, p. 88). The differences between settler and indigenous approaches to the land are vast. The Nordic settlers began to embrace local cultures, traditions and economies with nonhuman nature conservation. A foundational belief was that one facilitates the other. This resonates with Greene’s (2006) double articulation: an entity has both its identity and potential meanings articulated through both discourses and nonhuman–nature relationships (p. 55). During the Cold War, industrialisation halted. But with the fall of the Soviet Union, efforts once again intensified. This thus required trilateral cooperation in the region for the concerns of nonhuman nature conservation. For many years the Sámi lived separately to Russian, Norwegian and Finnish settlers in former iterations of the FGB countries. However, the settlers’ arrival in the early Middle Ages gradually vanquished their separation (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.g.). The land offers different readings to 153 different groups. Berglund argues that since the early 19 th century, Finland has conceptualised the vastness of nonhuman nature as seen along the former Curtain as the sublime: a bourgeois sensibility and Finnish imaginary of spending summers in the wilderness of terra nullis (a concept discussed later this chapter) in self-consciously simple cabins and cottages to be closer to an othered “nature” (Berglund, 2000a, p. 50). 10 Sámpi has thus become the site of the sublime for local settlers, pushing against Sámpi as the road map for a Sámi nomadic culture. Nordic and Russian settlers have attempted to harness and control nonhuman nature through forestry, hydro-electric power plants and reservoirs, mining and recreation (Lehtola, 2004, p. 88). This is furthered by Berglund’s argument that there is a cultural Finnish notion that Finns “live off the productive forest” (Berglund 200b, p. 31), where the forest is a livelihood resource for paper and pulp mills. Thus, indigenous communities have had to fight the normalisation of settler actions and performances on the land, as natural heritage became a resource for: tourism; extractive industries; industrial forestry; infrastructure development; large-scale agriculture; urbanization; inappropriate archaeological research; memorilisation by national museums; and secularisation (Herrmann & Heinämäki, 2017, p. 3). Tensions rise on how to live on the land and to serve both its human and nonhuman populations as access-preservation fights against indigenous ecological attunement. 3.1b. How the Sámi map the mosaic. These human––nonhuman relations and interactions within Sámpi have mapped a rhetorical geography on the land. Just as the previous section discussed the intangible heritage of the Sámi in the region, these cultural traditions manifest on the land in the form of human–nonhuman nature relations. Such action has been summed up by famous Sámi writer Nils-Aslak Valkeapää who wrote: “Nature abounds in plants and animals. The world is filled with different languages and cultures. We Sámi see ourselves merely as part of this nature.” (cited in Siida, n.d.a.) The first Pasvik- 10 This praising of pristine—or sublime—natural places, free from humans, has been questioned in environmental communication and environmental rhetoric (Wells et al., 2018, p. 22), and will be discussed in further detail in chapter three. 154 Inari Trilateral Park website agrees, describing the Sámi religion as holistically connected to nonhuman nature and culture: “Nature was full of spirits and holy places such as fells, springs and stones. Natural forces, the thunder, sun, wind and water were worshipped.” (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.i.) Overall, these writings depict a Sámi ecological attunement to the land that Wells et al. argued for in the urgency of the Anthropocene. The Sámi do not act a Cartesian dualism that situates humans apart from nonhumans. Rather, Sámi mappings of the land collapse human–nonhuman nature relations into the same conceptual sphere. Sámi mappings are culturally situated. But whilst heritage is a rhetorically stabilising affair, the Sámi have adapted with modern society whilst maintaining an ecological attunement. The Sámi have adopted values from the Nordic countries and technological advances, but have also come together to reinforce a Sámi identity that moves from a locally-based identity to a communal Sámi-identity tied to Sámpi (Lehtola, 2004). This developed when the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights added to its charter the priority of aboriginal peoples’ rights. These distinctions allowed the Sámi to have legal representation in defining an identity mapped to the land. This is part was developed semiotically through the replacement of the older name “Lapp” to Sámi, “claiming the right to define its own public image” (Lukola, 2004, p. 57). A significant turning point was the first Sámi Conference in Johkamohkki, Sweden in 1953, where Israel Roung, the chair for Same-Ätnami, set Sámi politics in motion with this declaration: The Sámi of the Nordic countries are a small minority and a distinct culture with its roots deep in nature and in the history of the North. Modern development, especially the expansion of technology into Lapland, has put this ethnic group into a difficult situation. In order to preserve the culture’s distinctiveness their adaption to new times must be highly active. Active adaptation means that Sámi cannot alone and without criticism adopt modern culture, casting aside their culture’s irreplaceable values, but that they hold fast to their cultural traditions in the new conditions. Active 155 adaptation must include, that Sámi wakefully follow every change in the new situation and themselves signal what touches Sámi cultural research and advantages. (Roung, cited in Lukola, 2004, p. 60.) Overall, Sámi self-determination through Sámi parliaments and Sámi organisations have maintained a political objective whilst furthering Sámi society across state boundaries in line with traditional practices (Henriksen, 2008, p. 34). I argue that this constitutes the Sámi as biomic actors in and of themselves. Their representation in the Nordic polity allows them to push back against nation-state borders in order to stay nomadic and follow the paths laid out by nonhuman natures. Naming ultimately begets action. 3.1c Ecological attunement to Sámpi as place. The recognition of the Sámi has been central to development and trilateral agreement in the area. Biopower has had significant effect on the Sámi, both positive and negative. In contemporary times, biopower finds support for the Sámi and their cultural practices. Sámi actions are given bios not only with the FGB but the larger governmental polity of the Nordic regions and the Russian Federation. Sámi actions stem from Sámi beliefs that the restoration of the environment from ecological degradation and climate change can only happen through respecting the knowledge the Sámi have gained through living close to nonhuman nature for centuries. Access- preservation thus, in part, reflects attachments to the land. The nomadic Sámi are inherently tied to place— to Sámpi —but yet dynamically. Sámi semi-nomadic reindeer herding intertwines with the landscape, and becomes a part of the dynamism of this natural heritage. (Karelia, University of Applied Sciences, n.d.b.). As Ingold (1987) argued, journeys are made through a space which has spatial segments. Place in the landscape is not “cut out” from a whole; rather, each places embodies the whole at a particular nexus within it. Place owes its character to the experiences it affords to those who visit it, and the kinds of activities in which the inhabitants engage. The vista of the Arctic is a taskscape of concurrent human and nonhuman movement. 156 As discussed in the next section, I argue Sami human–nonhuman nature relationships on the land displays an Anthropocenic rhetoric ecological attunement, enacted before such Anthropocene concerns existed. This concurs with Herrmann and Heinämäki’s argument that for many Arctic indigenous societies, there is a regard for their “living landscapes” (Herrmann & Heinämäki, 2017). Herrmann and Heinämäki argue that living landscapes are networks that contain Sacred Natural Sites that are associated with strong spiritual or cultural intangible values of the nonhuman natures (Herrmann & Heinämäki, 2017, p. 1). The authors posit this oft-results in well-conserved pockets of equilibrium in otherwise degraded Arctic environments. Thus, such sites are important for nonhuman nature conservation. The environmental imaginary for the Sámi blossoms through nonhuman nature–culture hybrids. Overall, I argue that Sampi in both name and concept writes, and is written by, Sami culture. Sami connections to the land, with an adhere to the cyclical processes of the Earth System rather than stewarding the land to human whims as their Nordic settlers did is unique in the Belt. Living landscapes proliferate a nonhuman nature–culture hybrid (Wells et al., 2018, p. 9), where the symbolic territory and “objective geometry of space is transformed into emotive places by living in place, memorizing [sic] place, narrating place and creating ‘symbolic landscapes’” (Osborne, 2006, p. 150). Thus, the Sami’s movements that follow the patterns of nonhuman natures land is imbued with Ingold’s (1993) temporality of landscape as a taskscape—where the land encompass a pattern of pretensions from the past and. The taskscape is a land onto which the movements of all can be read. Temporality and historicity but merge. In a “constitutive act of dwelling” (Ingold, 1993, p. 158), each task takes its meaning from its position within an ensemble of tasks. This makes temporality social because the performance of tasks also attends to the other tasks. Overall, I argue that this Sami movement with nonhuman nature makes rhetorical geography of the Arctic: a rhetorical geography that is in part mapping and place-making of the taskscape. 157 3.2 Karelia. Karelia’s history has become integral to Finnish-Russian transboundary politics and cultural identity. 700 kilometres of borderland and three border crossings, Karelia has a population of approximately 1.4 million people. Finnish-Russian Karelia share a similar narrative of Sámpi regarding a shared peoples across nation-state borders. The region of Karelia as a whole has been inhabited since 6- 7000 B.C. At the end of the first millennium A.D., its ethnic structure was noted as consisting of Finno- Ugarian language groups. Since then, ethnic, linguistic and religious distinctions have pervaded, despite border rivalries, claims to nation-statehood, perpetual wars, peace treaties, and contemporary cross-border collaboration (Liikanen, 2008, pp. 26–7). Although not classed as aboriginals, Karelians do have the demarcation of being a distinct ethnic and cultural peoples in the north. Karelians and Veppsians are considered the indigenous peoples of the Republic of Karelia. Karelian and its linguistic sub-groups, such as the separate South-eastern Karelian dialects of Finnish, remain contested regarding their status as a distinct language rather than being considered as dialect of Finnish (State Committee of the RK for ICT Development, 2014). The one notable difference between the Karelians is religion: whilst the majority of Finnish Karelians are Lutheran, Russian Orthodoxy is still maintained by many with an East Karelian background. But overall, Karelians remain distinct from their Russian and Finnish counterparts. Both Russians and Finns consider Karelia as a peripheral regional entity. Pirkkoliisa Aphonen (2011) echoes the EGB sentiment of the FGB region, and specifically Karelia, as being a mosaic (p. 145). This mosaic crosses nation-state borders. On the Russian side are Border Karelia, Ladoga Karelia and the Karelian Isthmus; Southern and Northern Karelia are Finnish provinces. These discrete regions are subsumed under the larger umbrella term of Karelia. This results in the word Karelian being used in multiple ways: it can describe the holistic Karelia of both Russia and Finland; it can refer to the two closely related but distinct ethnic groups of Finnish Karelians, and those with Finnish East Karelian roots as a regional and cultural sub-group of ethnic Finns; and finally, it may also refer to those with (Eastern) 158 Russian/Republic of Karelia heritage, as opposed to those who migrated from the Soviet Union during and after the Winter War. A Karelian identity is thus multiplicitous and with contention. Despite shared historical roots, time has resulted in notable differences and development in the region between the divided Karelians. Whilst the Finnish side of the Belt is characterised by a sparse population amongst extensive forests, the Russian side is considerably more “monocentric” with the capital of Petrozavodsk being the largest urban centre. This monocentricity of the Republic of Karelia continues as the region is also substantially more economically depressed than other regions of Russia as well as Finland. As Vadim Kononenko and Jussi Laine (2008) argue, whilst Finns often cross the border to save money as products in Russia are significantly cheaper, Russians come to Finland to spend their savings (p. 43). Thus, the shared forests and nonhuman natures of Karelia becomes a site of economic and sustainable development. Human–nonhuman nature relations thus create a cultural geography of the land in which relations are enacted. Just as Sámpi finds tensions between local and settler imaginaries of the land, Karelia finds similar difficulties. Cultural, environmental imaginaries have caused ecological similarities and differences between Finnish Karelia and the Russian Republic. In Finland, intensive economic development since the Cold War has seen similar intense agricultural methods, machinery and chemical inputs, leading to a decline in the number of natural pastures. For the Republic of Karelia, agricultural methods have been less intensive and thus change has taken place on a much smaller scale, including more abundant forests. Whilst fields, clear- cuts, saplings and young forests are more typical elements of the Finnish landscape, settlements, semi- natural grasslands and mature forests are most characteristic of the Republic of Karelia (Saarinen et al., 2001, p. 265). Ultimately, for Finland, this intensive land use has led to less original habitats, lesser quality in the remaining habitats, and lower connectivity between them, causing further decline in biodiversity in 159 comparison to its Russian neighbour (Saarinen et al., 2001, p. 267). Thus, development has pushed against the wilding of nonhuman natures. 3.2a The Kalevala as intangible heritage. Karelia is the site of a shared natural and cultural history across Finnish and Russian peoples. Joint work establishes the conservation of the different Karelian regions. And yet, this joint work, and joint Karelian heritage, has engaged activists and politicians over what is termed the “Karelian question”—whether Russian Karelia could return back to Finland. I argue that part of this question relies on an intangible heritage linked to the region. Authors on both sides of the border have noted how the region has become an important site for Finnish and Russian cultures region of Karelia. Karelia in part became the centre of the Finnish national consciousness due to enriched folk traditions and the heroic myths of the Kalevala – the epic poem of Finland that “contributed considerably to the formation of Finnish national spirit in the nineteenth century” (Ahponen, 2011, p. 147). The Kalevala has thus put Karelia in a unique cultural position. Authors note that a nationalism has become centred around the holistic Karelia as the Kalevala symbolised a quintessential national folklore: “the locus of the cultural authenticity which nineteenth century European nationalism needed in order to constitute the self as collective subject” (Berglund, 2000b, p. 30). Despite changing borders in the region, they manage not to negate the significance of the Kalevala. Anderson (2006[1983]) argues that Karelia is imagined to be the cultural cradle of Finnish identity, which Berglund notes as a long-term romanticism of the region by Finnish intellectuals. The Finnish government themselves argue for the culture of the Kalevala and the area’s history into practical wellbeing and experience tourism products in this unique environment, simultaneously creating growth opportunities for the local economy on both sides of the state border (Metsa, 2015). 160 For Finland, Karelia has come to symbolise the “true” Finnish national character. Folklore collected by young 19 th century intellectuals inspired an emergent vernacular and non-Indo-European literature, as folklorists worked to trace the genealogy of the national identity. Karelian oral traditions were documented and inspired high art in an action that embodies Mikhail Bakhtin (1981)’s folkloric time: an “idyllic chronotope” (p. 225) where people are imagined as being both in a time-immemorial past as well as a continuous present-future. As discussed in chapter two, the land thus became with an intangible cultural heritage for its Nordic inhabitants as the past is used to speak for present and future needs. 3.2b Intangible heritage tourism as sustainable development differences. I argue that the idyllic chronotope, with particular reference to the Kalevala, is an actor that drives development in the region. The forests that symbolise the Kalevala on both sides of the Karelian border become the “other” as a site of “nostalgia tourism” for Finnish folk tales tourism and cultural history. Beginning in the 1990s, nostalgia tourism began when elderly Finnish people visited their former hometowns and territories looking for traces of Finnishness, their own roots and what was left from the houses they had spent their childhood in. Such heritage tourism formed a key part of the Karelian identity, which was strongly geographically bound. (Izotov & Laine, 2013, p. 100.) The notion of heritage tourism prompted by peoples trying to capture their shared cultural past fuels the importance of intangible heritage in the FGB. Heritage tourism is the action of travel in order to experience sites of public memory. The myth of the Kalevala intertwines Karelian nonhuman natures and grey infrastructures to become a symbolic and material referent to what once was. Engagement with these memories becomes a unique form of capturing and solidifying intangible heritage through eco-tourism. This returns back to chapter two where I discussed Hafstein’s concern over stabilising cultural traditions through their demarcation as heritage. And yet, others expand on this to consider the caputuring of an 161 intangible heritage as a particular practice of othering. For Izotov and Laine, the familiarity of the forests of the cultural backbone of Finland breeds a cultural, economic and infrastructural unfamiliarity, as tourism relies on the attractiveness of the other (Spierings & Van der Velde, 2008; Izotov & Laine, 2013). Eco- tourism as the exotic other thus converges with sustainable development. The development of ecotourism to capture the other of intangible heritage in the region makes for a unique rhetorical geography. Nonhuman nature tourism becomes a site of political as well as public memory. The nonhuman natures in the FGB are the symbols of a Finnish folklore ecologically attuned to the forest. But this also makes these nonhuman natures as a resource as a natural cultural memory site. They gain traction as a destination for public consumption—the ideal tourist destination. For instance, Berglund noted the frequently used Finnish phase “to go into nature” means specifically to enter uninhabited and ideally uncultivated landscapes (Berglund, 2000a, p. 48). Izotov and Laine (2013) specifically examined the role of eco-tourism in identity and region building at the Russian–Finnish border. Here the authors posited that eco-tourism “presents a fitting historical example of such complexity. It impacts spatial identity formation, which to a great extent depends on the history memory of the population.” (p. 104.) The Finnish foreboding wilderness thus offers a unique vista for the eco–tourist. Eco-tourism thus requires substantial sustainable development work. The connections between eco-tourism and region building have continued to the present day. The border between the EU and the Russian Federation is strong, but movement is possible. With this increasing free movement, Karelia is increasingly attractive to tourists. The ceding of 11% of Finnish territory to the Soviet Union has solidified a sense of a shared Finnish identity across language and class boundaries. Finnish Karelia has thus become the spiritual home of the country as well as the holistic Karelia. On the other hand, Russian Karelia is as a place where time has stood still and Soviet power has “failed to crush the vitality of the Karelian spirit, one connected far more closely with Finnish than with 162 Russian or Soviet identity” (Liikanen, 2008, p. 24). Karelia thus denotes an unstable, liminal space where one Karelian visits the other. The forests argue for a once united Karelia. Nonhuman nature is symbolically and literally translated as a returning to one’s lost roots. The Suojärvi and Mujejärvi districts of Finnish Karelia have been awarded EU funds to make links between sustainable development and nonhuman nature conservation. These districts thus have become places of model sustainable development, conservation, and sites of nonhuman nature tourism. The authorities have created environmental education packages, built nonhuman nature tourism structures, created a GIS system for the whole district, and participated in road construction. Hokkanen (2004) argued that these activities have not only been to the benefit of nonhuman nature protection. They have also provided a lens through which local people can see nonhuman nature conservation as a resource that brings concrete benefits, as natural resources are used more sustainably and infrastructure is subsequently created. This biosphere mode of action sees the combination of nonhuman nature protection and development activities resulting in monetary flows from development funds to nonhuman nature conservation and sustainable resourcing, as development funds are vastly greater than nonhuman nature protection funds. As Hokkanen hypothesises, “If I have better roads to go for fishing, why not supporting the activities getting me better roads… A model area for sustainable tourism is a practical goal for the co-operation” (Hokkanen, 2004, p. 24). Nonhuman nature thus engages once again as a resource for human exploits. Another significant initiative is the designation of Karelia as a “Euroregio”, which designates Karelia as a noteworthy site of crossboundary work. In particular, the designation of Karelia as a Euroregio is significant as this was the first Euregio to be established between the Russian Federation and the EU. Established in 2000, EuregioKarelia was founded to enable cross-border collaboration and to better coordinate financing on the border, as also prompted by what is termed the Karelia CBC programme between the Republic of Karelia on the Russian side, and in Finland the regions of North Karelia, Kainuu 163 and North Ostrobothnia (Fritsch, Németh, Piiponen & Yarovoy, 2015, p. 2585). Overall, these varying biomic apparatuses repeat similar actions of crossborder collaboration across differing realms of governance. The protection of Kalevala as a cultural landscape has necessitated transboundary cooperation as changing borders become the catalyst for a new type of biomic, cross-border collaboration (Liikanen, 2008, p. 22). Ultimately, this section argues that like the mapping of Sámpi as the nomadic road for the Sámi, the mapping of the Karelian region creates an alt-rhetorical geography that looks to the geopolitics of the past to draw contemporary rhetorical and symbolic affordances. This inquiry portends that like Sampi for the Sami, the locale of Karelia has become a material-symbolic entity of nationalism. In particular, this is centred on forest as part of the cultural imaginary. 3.3 The intangible heritage of the forest belt. The border from the Barents Sea down to the Leningrad Oblast is dominated by forest. The Sámi and the Karelians share an intangible heritage situated amongst the flourishing of boreal and old-growth forests. The landscape provides the intangible heritage for both ethnic groups. I argue that this heritage is based on local human relations to the forest. I posit that because these forest constitute the majority of the landscape, its results in another apt representative anecdote repeated throughout the FGB literatures: the Finnish landscape as a “foreboding wilderness” (EUROPARK Federation, 2010; Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, 2009; Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.). The proliferation of nonhuman natures as a wilderness presents a foil to the FGB’s human occupiers. Forest vistas are thus living landscapes in which humans act with and against. Overall, the forest is more than just an industrial nonhuman nature resource. Rather, the forest itself is integral to cultural traditions and the creation of an intangible heritage for these peoples. 3.3a The intangible heritage of forest-nature. The Finnish-Russian border is a landscape of Finnish pride. Forests, and especially the old-growth boreal forests in the border afford related human– nonhuman nature relations. The FGB is both the homogenous landscape of industrial forestry as well as a 164 symbol of flourishing of environmentalist desire (Berglund, 2000b, p. 27). For Finland, second-order discourses depict cultural identification with the forest. The stereotypical character of a homogenised Finnish culture, and the resulting flora and fauna such as berries and wild game, has resulted in the ubiquitous claim that “Finns live off the forest” (Berglund, 2000b, p. 26). This phrase offers two different ends of a rhetorical spectrum, both of which validate the purported value of the forest for Finland as well as the EGB Initiative. Firstly, being within nonhuman nature is considered to be a prominent aspect of Finnish culture, and constitutes a rhetorical value referent of connections to the land and appreciation of nonhuman nature. But as discussed earlier this chapter, Finns are considered to live off the productive forest. This is peitho versus bia, as these ecologies are valued along two lines. The identity creation of a Finn constituted by the forest is a subject position of social discourses. For Hutchins and Stormer (2013), communities throughout the world will value certain spaces, not because they are the most beautiful, but because they are integral to a community’s identity (p. 24). It is “a product constituted with the matrix of linguistic and material social practices” (DeLuca, 1999, p. 339). The linguistic practices include the Finnish term Metsäluonto, which translates into English as the composite noun “forest- nature”. For Berglund, forest-nature is a national symbol of a shared Finnish heritage which continues to this day (Berglund, 2000a, p. 54). The University of Applied Sciences notes that when cycling through Karelia and “through the wilderness of the EuroVelo 13 route [the ICT], one can understand how important the forest is to Finnish people. Many people still earn their livings off of forestry and it is easy to forget ones [sic] worries there.” (Karelia, University of Applied Sciences, n.d.b.) The ideological conception of forest-nature is thus realised in a discussion of the Finnish tradition of “everyman’s right” to enjoy nonhuman natures in the FGB. Legally, this right can even be enacted on private land as long as people follow a strict environmental code to not cause disturbance to the nonhuman natures, land, fauna and environment (Ruka! Kussamo, n.d., p. 12). The notions of forest-nature and everyman’s right are thus 165 epistemic discourses that have been built from the state and other actors to create a not only a united ecological attuned Finnish identity (Wells et al., 2018), but also to encourage tourists to become part of the forest-nature as well. Forest-nature thus finds symbolic and material support. I argue that the forests of both Sampi and Karelia, and its consequent forest-nature, has an agency that drives human–nonhuman nature relations in the FGB. These constitute the metaphorical “Finnish national landscape”: a phrase oft-repeated throughout the pan-European Green Belt conference in Koli, Finland, across digital and analogue FGB materials, and even in the multimedia displays I came across on my fieldwork in the transboundary Oulanka-Paanjärvi National Park (see Figure 21). This display posits how In the rugged landscape of Oulanka National Park, you will see the ancient power of the running waters. . . The natural and cultural landscapes along the River Oulankajoki are part of the Finnish national landscape. The wide spectrum of forests, river valleys, rocks, herb-rich forests, and mires provide valuable conditions for different species and make Oulanka, established in 1956, an excellent outdoor area. Nature does not recognise State borders: the huge Paanajärvi National Park isolated on the Russian side of the border. These two parks carry out close operation.” (emphasis added, Figure seven.) 166 Figure 21: Eco-tourist information along the trail in Oulanka National Park, Finland. Photograph author's own. The Finnish authorities in charge of conserving the park constitute the Finnish national landscape as valuable for both humans and nonhumans. The above quote repeats significant themes identified in chapter two, such as the notion of nonhuman nature providing ecosystem services to both the human and nonhuman population. This is a rhetoric that places humans and nonhumans together into the same conceptual sphere. It is ecological attunement. This forest-nature, now woven into Finish society and bioeconomy, was encouraged after the ravages of occupation and Finland’s recent independence in 1917. But forest-nature also materialised through the practices of industry as a green infrastructure that support the Finnish economy and population. According to Berglund, sustained governmental interest in timber extraction led Finns to believe that the forests, and forest-nature, was a right to self-determination—a right just as natural as their 167 dependency on a natural resource. Social discourses, as this mix of linguistic and material-cultural practices, lead to an identity construction inherently based on the land. Such romanticism, fetishism, or means for livelihood, created a triple societal discourse of what the forest means to Finns, and for FGB conservation. But yet, within the Finnish second-order discourses, “nature” has also been traditionally conceptualised as a vacation away from civilization, and so the old-growth forests in the FGB can easily become the backgrounded environment. For instance, this romanticised notion of the forest and the distance borderland of Karelia has for Ahponen (2011) been inspired by the romanticism of poverty in the Republic of Karelia and its need for social improvements: a politics of yearning for a “lost” Karelia (p. 147). This romanticism echoes feelings of the wild frontier to be conquered—the desolate and primitive other to be objectified by the gaze of the coloniser or tourist. Orvar Löfgren (1993) argued similarly. Löfgren posited that landscapes that are perceived as national also become sites of emotional resonance, providing an arena for contestation over what it means to be a nation, or part of one. The forest thus becomes more than its materiality—they become symbolical territories tied to the land. Osborne (2006) describes this articulation of symbolic territories as: identification with story places is essential for the cultivation of an awareness… of their identity. The familiar material world becomes studded with symbolically charged sites and events the provide social continuity, contribute to the collective memory, and provide spatial and temporal reference points for society (p. 152). The symbolical territories thus create a place-based identity: from linkage of practice to location; from site to memory; from memory to territory; and from the land to politics (Hutchins & Stormer, p. 29). The Finn is firmly tied to the land, and the land thus constitutes the Finn and Finnish culture. The land becomes a site of symbolic, intangible, and also tangible heritage. 168 3.3b Forest-nature versus forest-resource. Peitho and bia drive human–nonhuman nature relations with the forest. The forest belt is at the heart of the intangible heritage of the region. But the forests undergo continual cutting and rewilding. Such land-use change can rewrite identities and communities. In Finland, the homogenous landscape alongside national identity has become entangled. The forest as tangible asset was made the focus of Finnish social relations until the 1980s, as the state’s role in defining social discourses and attitudes towards forests, as well as biopolitical policing, authorised knowledge about them (Berglund, 2000b, p. 28). This was the Finn living off the productive forest. The notion of the productive forest came to fruition during the Cold War and the Great Acceleration of the Anthropocene. Finnish forests were plundered as a human resource. Tension grew between environmentalists and industrialists. Karelia found itself torn between the hegemonic discourses of industrialism and invoking the Kalevala to prompt a deep ecological way of being with its nonhuman natures. In the early 1990s, environmentalists accused Finnish companies of plundering Karelia’s irreplaceable old-growth forests for short-term profit. These actions were pitted against the intangible heritage of the region. An intense public debate thus arose in that decade. Concerns were raised regarding the remaining wilderness areas in Finnish Lapland, escalating to include conflicts over the protection of old-growth forests all over Finland. As forestry activities began to truly penetrate the border areas, discussion grew over saving these rhetorically “identity-valuable” old growth forests (Karivalo & Butorin, 2006, p. 42). But many Finns protested against the use of forests as productive resources. Environmentalists embodied the forested identity. These biomic actors disregarded EGB principles of harmonising the security of both nonhuman nature and the socio-economics of local peoples. Overall, whilst the forest industry prioritised humans over nonhumans, for environmentalists, it was visa versa. Bios and zōē switched referents. Tension was thus seen between who, or what, would be granted bios over the other’s impending zōē, outside of protection of the democratic sphere. 169 Biomic governance of these forests put Finland and Russia in mutual opposition. The practice and intensity of agriculture and forestry differed significantly between the two countries. Berglund notes that as a frontier of territorial lines, the unfragmented boreal forests as the nonhuman natures of interest are more notable in Russia, but the resulting conservation interests have come from the Finnish side (Berglund, 2000b, p. 23). Whilst Finnish environmental activists “pitted themselves against corporate power on behalf of nature and sustainable lifestyles” (Berglund, 2000b, p. 24), this contrasts to Russian side of the FGB which is seen as purposely neglected (Berglund, 2000b, p. 24). As articulated to me by a Russian member of the FGB, Russian interests lie more in claiming their occupancy on the their territory rather than on conservation of the actual land. Thus, the contemporary contrast in vegetation between the Finnish and Russian side of the FGB, particularly in Karelia, makes a multimodal argument towards who is and who isn’t invested in FGB nonhuman natures. Cross-border collaboration thus proliferates both with and against forest-nature. 3.4 Rhetorical, intangible, heritage.The importance of forest-nature was clear during my own fieldwork along the FGB. This connection to place was highlighted during my fieldwork in Koli, Finnish Karelia (see Figure 22) for the pan-European Green Belt Conference. Many of the Finns from the local area spoke Russian due to the closeness of the border. Many also discussed their particular closeness to the region of Karelia, their activities in the forests and nonhuman natures, and cultural traditions. This came to a head at the end of one evening in the local café after a long day. Over food, wine and Russian liquor, the Finns and Russians came together to sing Karelian folk songs. One Russian FGB actor was brought to bittersweet tears. The Russian-Finnish history of war and division was forgotten over folk culture and a desire to secure the Karelian landscape in its natural state. The intangible heritage of the forest-nature brought heightened emotions and forgotten wars. In part, this unique moment can be explained by Berglund’s claim that Karelia has long been romanticised by Finnish intellectuals, and there are special 170 cultural connections to the region. This is not only for activists but the local population and state representatives. Karelia, and the areas of the FGB, are thus places invested with meaning in the context of power (Cresswell, 2004, p. 12). Figure 22: The view from Koli across the lake, facing towards Russia. This was taken during one of the organised walks around Koli during the 9th pan-European Green Belt in October/November. Photograph author's own. This examination of the entangled web of nonhuman nature, culture and politics reveals unique specificities of this region. The geography and geopolitics of the region perform communicative, rhetorical labour from the latitudinal move of cultural and natural heritage across the region. Although differences are inevitable across nation-state borders due to development, agriculture and conservation, significant sections of the FGB natural and cultural heritage continues to cross over such anthro-mappings. Built from Nordic notions of identity and traditional cultures of the indigenous peoples, I posit that if the nation-state is about homogeneity, then conservation of both culture and nonhuman natures work latitudinally as well as longitudinally across the Nordic countries and the Russian Kola Peninsula. This cultural attachment to the land becomes a model for sustainable development that holds an Anthropocenic human-nonhuman ideology for the EU. Like the nonhuman nature, the Sámi and as well as the Karelians have continually 171 defied settler nation-state boundaries in enacting their cultural way of life. In following the cycles of nonhuman nature, these actors are called upon to bring additional knowledge for the process of mapping nonhuman natures into the FGB. The Sámi council and indigenous peoples of the FGB become biomic actors as their valuable ecological knowledge about their transboundary land, the nonhuman nature and environment becomes used to justify geopolitical actions. Thus, I argue that anthro-action of the Sámi and the Karelians communities demonstrates a greater ecological attunement in comparison to the Western Cartesian dualism of Nordic settlers. Thus, I move to my case study that examines this latitudinal move of nonhuman natures in the very North of the Fennoscandian and European Green Belt: the Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park. 4.0 Trilateral Conservation: Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park. The Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park is situated far beyond the Arctic Circle. As the world’s most northerly transboundary park, the Park is situated close to the Barents Sea, and surrounds the small shared boundary between all three FGB countries. The Trilateral Park is a proverbial “mosaic” (Karivalo & Butorin, 2006, p. 38; Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, 2009) that incorporates three national parks and several different protected areas for conservation: the 12 protected wilderness areas called the Vätsäri Wilderness Area in Finland, Northern Lapland; Ørve Pasvik National Park and Øvre Pasvik Landscape Protection Area in Norway; and the joint Norwegian-Russian Pasvik Nature Reserve, identified as Pasvik Nature Reserve within Norway and Pasvik Zapovednik in Russia. Due to this unique location on the edge of European, Eastern, and Arctic nonhuman natures, over the last 30 years all three countries have slowly come together to work in tandem and share management for this region. The mosaic metaphor lends itself viscerally in attendance to its materiality, as the collection of these various areas creates a singular whole to be experienced. This dissertation argues that this cooperation and shared management of a park that crosses three nation-states is an Anthropocene biomic politics in action. Furthermore, I posit that this 172 region is dominated by an intangible heritage of the region—that of Sámi cultures and traditions—that materialises on the land through a unique rhetorical geography. This historical, rhetorical, and cultural geographic land is imbued with Ingold’s (1993) temporality of landscape as a taskscape. Just as Ingold argued that landscape is not solely nonhuman nature or land, but is a heterogeneous quality where you cannot see land any more than you see the weight of physical objects, I thus contend that the rhetorical geography of the Trilateral Park is the integration of its founding nonhuman natures shaped through materially manifested intangible cultural heritage. This is a rhetorical geography where human and geological histories collapse. Overall, this section concludes that the Trilateral Park is an exemplar of integrative work in the FGB as the surrounding wilderness encapsulates nonhuman nature, politics and cultures in the region. Human–nonhuman nature relations intertwine in the North. 4.1 Mapping the mosaic. The Trilateral Park features a large diversity of landscapes, vistas, eco- tourist activity, and local cultures. Despite undergoing changes, it remains a predominant river valley (see Figure 23). The Park follows the Pasvik river in the Pasvik Valley, which flows from the largest lake in Finnish Lapland—Lake Inari—to the Barents Sea on the border with Norway and Russia (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, 2009). The water system, via the Pasvik River which the Park centres on, has provided an important source of subsistence for locals for centuries (Trusova, 2011, p. 22). The Park was slowly established in various stages from 1970, with each section receiving protection. Lake Fjærvann, as part of the Pasvik River, was proposed as a nonhuman nature reserve in 1978, as an important nesting area and resting place for large numbers of migratory birds (Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, 2007, p. 4). In 1989, Russia and Norway signed their first bilateral agreement on environmental issues, which saw the nascence of a Russian–Norwegian nature reserve. Following an agreement between Norway and Russia in 1990, nonhuman nature conservation actors working in this border region then argued to have Finland as a key partner (Trusova, 2011, p. 23). Trilateral work in the region thus began at the end of the last decade. 173 Figure 23: The Russian-Norway border in Pasvik Valley, August 2016. Taken from the GRID Arendal Resource Library. Licensed under the Creative Commons License 3.0 on Flickr. The holistic park started to take shape in the early 1990s with the establishment of protected areas between the environmental authorities in Finnmark (Norway), Lapland (Finland), and Murmansk (Russia) (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park. n.d.a.). These environmental authorities first met in 1991 in Kirkenes, Norway, and then again in Nikel, Russia, and set the tone for annual trilateral meetings. From these meetings a conclusion was made for cooperative nonhuman nature protection and management of the nonhuman natures in the Pasvik-Inari region, at the local level, as a common holistic entity (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park). In the same year, the twelve wilderness areas of Vätsäri Wilderness Area in Inari, Finland, were established through the national Wilderness Act to protect both the natures and the Sámi culture. Following this, Pasvik Zapovednik was then formally founded through a resolution in the Russian government on July 16, 1992. The Norwegian section of Pasvik Nature Reserve then followed on October 15, 1993 (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.k.). In 1996, the Norwegian Pasvik Nature Reserve received further protection by gaining Ramsar status. Between the three governments, the objectives of cooperation 174 thus extended from nonhuman nature conservation, to promotion, and the sustainable management of the protected areas through environmental education and the development of joint research and monitoring programmes. Moreover, this commitment also included the cultural values of the area—what this dissertation has identified as the intangible heritage of the region (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.). Cooperation across the differing FGB areas continued to develop at the turn of the 21 st century. In 1999, the municipalities of Pechenga, Russia, Inari, Finland and Sør-Varanger, Norway, were included in the cooperation. These areas delimited the Trilateral region as it is still known today. In 2002, it was decide amongst all three nation-state actors to promote a common trilateral protected area in Pasvik-Inari, by connecting the already established adjacent protected areas. A working group was thus established to further this idea. In 2003, the Øvre Pasvik National Park was founded. Also in that year, a continuous natural area from Finland via Norway to Russia was protected (Trusova, 2011, p. 23). In 2003, the national park was then expanded and the Øvre Pasvik Landscape Protection Area was established, creating a continuum of protection. All of the protected areas in the extended border region thus became subsumed under the joint umbrella of the Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park. Boundaries were established, but biomic work was only just beginning. Conservation efforts continued to develop in the region at the beginning of this century. In January 2008, a Cooperation Agreement was signed by the Finnmark County Governor, Norway, the Lapland Natural Heritage Services of Metsähallitus, Finland, and the Pasvik Zapovednik State Nature Reserve, Russia. This agreement not only identified focal areas for cooperation, but the organisations involved. In 2008, an Advisory Board was also established, consisting of representatives of three main partners, and regional and local authorities of the three countries. This decision-making body began to put forward an Action Plan for Nature Protection and Sustainable Nature Tourism in the Pasvik-Inari Area, which “forms the foundation of the international trilateral cooperation, mutually agreed vision, future objectives of the 175 cooperation and joint strategies to achieve the set goals (Trusova, 2011, p. 24). The 2012 revised vision for the Trilateral Park was thus: Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park is a good example of trilateral cooperation on the operative level. A recognized [sic] network of nature protection areas, that creates good opportunities also for development of sustainable nature tourism in its surroundings. The specific characters of the wilderness area are based on the northernmost boreal pine forests, Lake Inarijärvi and the Pasvik River system. We aim at building knowledge of the biodiversity and cultural heritage of the area and through that implement joint management actions. The unique history of the area created by the connections between Saami [sic], Finnish, Russian and Norwegian cultures contribute to the development of the area. (Fylkesmannen i Finnmark, 2012.) The revised vision thus set the Park as it is today. Whilst aims were unanimous, the IUCN did recognise internal weakness such as differences in project management, legislation, the need for external funding, and the lack of a common mutual language between the Trilateral actors (Trusova, 2011, p. 25). Thus, international collaboration continued to ebb and flow. Towards the end of the 2000s, the Trilateral Park was still developing and extending outreach as a symbol for transboundary biodiversity conservation. The earlier establishment of effective cooperation was necessary for obtaining EUROPARC Transboundary Park status. In 2008, trilateral cooperation was formalised between Metsähallitus, Pasvik Zapovednik and County Governor of Finnmark. 11 The partners also applied for the Transboundary Park – Following Nature’s Design certificate, which was awarded to the Park 11 The main objectives of this cooperation are to: promote transboundary cooperation and contact on all levels, between managers of nonhuman nature protected areas, researchers, border authorities, municipalities, stakeholders, nonhuman nature tourism entrepreneurs and local residents; to preserve the natural and cultural values of the area on a long term basis through sustainable management and monitoring of the environment; to present and distribute knowledge about the area and promote area recognition; to improve the facilities and infrastructure of the area to make it more accessible and user-friendly; and to contribute to strengthening the economic development of the area by promoting sustainable nonhuman nature based tourism. 176 by the EUROPARC Federation (EUROPARC Federation, 2008). The EUROPARC Federation is a pan- European NGO, politically independent in its purpose to support promoted areas in Europe. Trans- boundary Park status is a set of 14 criteria, of which an area must meet 10 (EUROPARC Federation, 2010). Matching sentiment from the EU, these transboundary parks signal cross-border collaboration in “the conservation of Europe’s natural and cultural heritage” (EUROPARC Federation, 2008). As these transboundary parks are considered to be “following nature’s design”, the certificate echoes holistic EGB sentiment of nonhuman nature negating man-made borders. Nonhuman nature thus both supports and negate, the nation-state. Over time, the construction of the Trilateral Park through trilateral cooperation has become dense with memorandums, visions, rules, and goals as rhetorical Figures for future work. In October 2013, a conference on the FGB in Petrozavodsk, Russian Karelia, saw the Finnish Minister for Environment announce the trilateral project as intended to facilitate the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding. Its aim was to develop the FGB into a model area where sustainable development is supported through transboundary cooperation (European Green Belt Association, 2018, p. 2). Today, in 2019, international cooperation between the three countries has thus continued to develop, with three new but related themes listed for the Park: nonhuman nature monitoring; environmental enlightenment; and the promotion of sustainable nature-based tourism (EUROPARC Federation, 2018). The notion of enlightenment as a spiritual connotation is a purposeful semiotic choice, positing for the tourist the Trilateral Park as a place of rational amusement as environmental education takes them to a superior level of humanity. This act of rational amusement has extended cooperative action into folly, as the region’s annual bird registration includes a friendly “race” between the three countries. The competition requires representatives from each country to compete over who can count the highest number of birds and species. Although this may initially seem like a fruitless exercise, the contest has brought into play a 177 significant act of biodiversity conversation. Nonhuman natures find respite in the Valley, but so does its human population too. In the spirit of good-natured competition, EUROPARC reports that it is normally Norway or Russia who is the proverbial winner (EUROPARC Federation, 2018). 12 But this chapter argues that is not only the human population that wins, but nonhuman nature conservation. Nonhuman nature thrives in a region fraught with histories of tension on the border between Europe, the EU, and the Russian Federation. 4.1a Following the design of the wild. As discussed in the previous chapters, the creation of a conservation area requires a demarcation between bios and zōē . The Trilateral Park is no exception. The construction of the Trilateral Park since the 1970s has become dominated with bridging the various discrete areas in the Pasvik Valley into the same conservation conceptual sphere. I argue that this whilst this in part has been enacted by following nonhuman nature’s design along the Pasvik Valley, it is also to extent a human construction. These nonhuman nature locals around the river are considered to offer something unique to the continent that makes them worthy of conservation. I portend that for the Trilateral Park, this uniqueness comes under one particular guise: the meeting place of the forest-wilds. And yet, the linguistic and conceptual construction of the wild is tricky in the FGB. Language, symbols and narratives are human tools used to construct a hierarchy of human life over animals and plants (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, p. 3). In environmental, political and cultural geographic work, a land that is traditionally cultivated as without value becomes a wild terra nullis into which human actions take place. The land becomes the dramatistic scene of anthro-action. This is present in the language of “conquering” nonhuman nature and “taming” the wilderness, as it creates unnecessary and arbitrary discursive separations between 12 In 2017, Norway won by monitoring 50 species and 664 birds (EUROPARC Federation, 2017). 178 humans and nonhumans (Milstein, 2011). The wild is thus cultivated through human action to preserve this mapped ecological network that requires conservation. A Holocene rhetoric of human–nonhuman nature relations with regards to the wild has been addressed by environmental historian William Cronon (1996a; 1996b). Cronon traced the modern Western concept of the wilderness to US Pioneer days when the Western North American continent was considered terra nullis. This wild land is where the frontier strip was considered barren, onto which human actors could cultivate their own particular flora and fauna. The traditional myth of human mastery over nonhuman nature pitted nonhuman nature as an uncontrollable agent that needed “taming”. The sublime, to echo Berglund’s earlier argument, requires “domesticating” and hence contradicts the negative semantics of terra nullis. Nonhuman nature thus becomes an exercise in rhetorical world-building for humans. Different forms of socialisation lead to different symbolic conceptualisations of nonhuman nature and its potential destruction. American and European culture has traditionally consider wild landscapes as “deserted, savage, desolate, barren”—in short, a waste (Cronon, 1996b, p. 8). The North as desolate is certainly a key rhetoric for the FGB. According to Cronon, in the first decade of the 20 th Century, romanticism transformed the wild into the sublime frontier, which foreshadows Berglund’s argument. For Cronon, the frontier was symbolically remade with moral values and cultural symbols (Cronon, 1996b, p. 10). With this wilderness myth prevailing, Henry David Thoreau’s (1862) Walking thus took up the subject of the wild and the desire for man to be “a part and parcel of Nature [sic]" (Thoreau, 1862) in one of the first wave ecocritical 179 writings. The wilderness hence became that last remaining place where civilization, as that all too human “disease’, did not fully infect the Earth (Cronon, 1996b, p. 7). 13 This new ideological turn resulted in the wild becoming the background to human activities. Euro- Americans removed Native Americans off the land to supplant this myth of the wilderness as “virgin” land for tourism (Cronon, 1996a, p. 15). A Western cultural requirement emerged where tourism to the wide open country had to be a “natural” wild, otherwise the space was not to be considered “authentic” (Cronon, 1996b, p. 22). The Western conceptualisation of nonhuman natures was expanded from the backgrounded environment into the antithesis (Burke, 1973) of modernity. Nonhuman nature now had to wear a symbolic mask of realness against the simulacra of human action. Just as Finns holidaying in the forest is a fetishisation of nostalgia (Berglund, 200a), this emotive addition to nonhuman nature became an important vehicle for expressing a peculiarly bourgeois form of antimodernism (Cronon, 1996a, p. 14). Lands mapped as the wilderness become the landscape of choice for a specific type of elite tourism— escapism. Although this cultivation of the wild is no more natural than human infrastructure development under the auspices of modernity, nonhuman nature was conceptually remade in Western culture as its opposite. Nonhuman nature thus becomes the site of a particular type of modern Western consumerism: a retreat for not only fauna but human animals too. This ecological network as wild is deployed defensively against a topos of extinction—to resist incremental destruction. With human occupation as the largest threat to thriving, humanity’s role is to be the stewards of, but not participants within, this space. However, I argue that for the FGB, this is not a traditional wild of terra nullis as will be depicted in chapter four regarding the German Green Belt. I argue 13 Cronon argued against such notions, stating the wild “is not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of untouched, endangered, but still transcendent nature can for at least little while longer be encountered without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it is a product of that civilization.” (Cronon, 1996b, p. 7.) 180 instead that the construction of the wild in the FGB find resonances with an Anthropocene rhetoric that brings human and geological history together. It collapses distinctions that privilege human action against a backgrounded nonhuman nature. But this collapse of distinctions cannot remove human action from the land. Rather, it asks for ecological attunement. I argue that for the FGB, wilderness is not the scene in which an act is taking place, or the backgrounded environment, but is an object itself that deserves preservation. These wild objects are the unique boreal forests that make this region on the edge European and Asian taiga. Two differing flora and faunas of the wild thus collide in this unique meeting place that is also home to another rare living habitat—that of Sámpi . I thus return to my earlier argument that in the construction of Sámpi and consequently the Trilateral Park, both are built upon an intangible heritage manifested on the land. 4.1a.i Designing the integrative wild. The intangible and natural heritage of the Trilateral Park offers a variety of novel ecosystems that yet resonate together as a linked set of ecologies. From west to east, the Norwegian Pasvik Valley enacts the rhetorical trop of wilderness due to its location located on the north- western edge of the Eurasian taiga (IUCN, 2004, p. 25). Following the valley of the Pasvik River from Lake Inari towards the Barents Sea, the surrounding landscape includes large marshes and a continuous pine forest interrupted by small bogs and lakes between Lake Inari and the Russian border. Pasvik State Nature Reserve at the edge of the boreal forest zone extends northwards from the subalpine mountain birch forest. The low hills of the region are mostly covered in boreal forest—the world’s northernmost boreal due the location of the Gulf Current. These form a unique biome of old and highly fertile lowland scots pine and spruce. From 60 to 70 degrees latitude in the North, the age of these forests is over 9,000 years old, developing soon after the end of the previous ice age. In a recommendation from the IUCN to UNESCO for the Park as a World Heritage site, these forests are described as “a case of relict-like climax forests in the north, where elsewhere in the boreal zone pine is considered as a pioneer species of forest 181 succession” (IUCN, 2002, p. 25). Other flora and fauna are a mixture of European, Asian and Arctic species reaching “the ultimate limits of their existence” (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, 2009). The latitude of the Park thus sustains a unique conglomeration of flora and fauna despite pushing them to their limits. The northern nonhuman natures in the Trilateral Park thrive against such unwieldly odds. The close proximity to the Barents Sea affects the flora, with Dwarf Cornel and mosses abounding (Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, 2007, p. 4). Mires and wetlands lie next to the river, and orchids bloom amongst these mires and streams. The area is famous for the brown bear, as Pasvik is the only region in Norway where brown bears reproduce regularly; and yet, sightings are still rare (Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, 2007, p. 4). The land also serves as pasture for reindeer, the symbolic trope of the wild Arctic. Furthermore, due to the low level of human interference on the land, many eastern plants and birds that thrive in this region are rarely seen in the further developed south (Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, 2007, p. 11). The Trilateral Park thus enacts a conservation of both this “distinctive natural and cultural landscape with a rich biological diversity” (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.c.). Various nonhuman natures make unique bedfellows in the Trilateral Park. The wild, exotic nature of the human and nonhuman nature landscape spreads outwards to the Finnish–Northern Russian border. Eastern Finland’s border with Russia is populated with habitats of reindeer. The few human inhabitants of the region are described by the FGB literatures as the “welcoming locals” that welcome the invasive tourist and add a rhetorical colour to “one of the continent’s last wildernesses” (EuroVelo 13, n.d.e.). Pasvik Zapovednik in the Kola Peninsula extends narrowly from the Pasvik River along the Russian-Norwegian border. As the youngest nonhuman nature reserve in the Park with its pine forests, mossy bogs, brook ravines, and 327 species of vascular plants, the reserve is mostly 182 used for scientific research and ornithological research, 14 and thus remains particularly unspoilt (Pasvik- Inari Trilateral Park, 2007, p. 14). Pasvik Zapovednik is part of an environmental monitoring system in Russia, with year round control and notary of changes in the nonhuman natures, from meteorological data to flora and fauna. Thus, in order to visit the reserve, the Western visitor not only needs a Russian visa but special permission by the government to enter the nonhuman nature reserve, thus preventing my ability to visit the region. The wilderness is conserved against unnecessary human visitors. What is noted above is how this meeting of Western and Asian nonhuman natures also cultivates the notion of the Trilateral Park as vast wilderness, or terra nullis, in the region. The wilderness of the Trilateral Park is described in rhetorical multitudes of the nefarious wild. The original Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park website landing page situates idealised pictures of the landscape and indigenous peoples with a description of the park as “wilderness and history shared” (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, 2009). Nonhuman nature is thus a green infrastructure resource of this Arctic heritage. The website uses florid depictions of the nonhuman nature to set the terministic screen for the visitor: “a cloudberry ripens in the wilderness, a bear paws an anthill and a Sipper wings on a rock in the Pasvik River” (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, 2009.) The movements of nonhuman nature prominent on the website are described as the sublime silence by which to enjoy “nature’s peace (Karelia, University of Applied Sciences, n.d.). Nature’s peace is a typical phrasal verb that connotes Western framings of silence as to be a celestial soundscape. The celestial is found in an agentic, wild, nonhuman nature that is not depicted solely as the backgrounded wild to which human actors conquer. Instead, multiple nonhuman natures exist in conjunction with their human counterparts by which to make the wild. 14 Results from the monitoring systems are published in the “Nature Chronicles of Zapovednik” (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.d.). 183 This rhetorical exercise of the wild continues. For instance, Vätsäri Wilderness Area is already in name a wilderness deserving of tourism. Vätsäri is depicted as the quintessential remote and desolate wild, described as demanding for the inexperienced (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.a.). It is “a place to experience the serenity of true wilderness”, with a “rugged natural landscape [which is] at its most beautiful in this vast mosaic setting” (Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, 2007, p. 10). Similarly, Norway’s Pasvik Valley is described in a nonthreatening wilderness rhetoric, with “gently sloping hills” and “sparkling ponds” (Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, 2007, p. 11). The Norwegian Pasvik Nature Reserve continues with such rhetorical namings. Not only does the rich diversity of birds in the regions result in the name of the lake Fjærvann, meaning “a lake covered with feathers (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.f.), but a marked path for hikers from Grensefoss to Treiksrøysa in the Øvre Pasvik Landscape protection area is called “Three Nation’s Pile”, to indicate the significance of this intersection of the borders of Norway, Russia and Finland (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.c.). Such rhetorical namings thus supplant the Park’s own description of the Pasvik Valley as a true wilderness of silence and untouched nonhuman nature (Pasvik- Inari Trilateral Park, 2007, p. 12). Nonhuman nature and Sámi intangible heritage flourishes in the wilderness of the Arctic. 4.1a.ii The mosaic as natural resource. The Trilateral Park wilderness houses both human and nonhuman fauna as well as fauna. As discussed in section three, the Sámi have been native to the foreboding wilderness of the Trilateral Park for centuries. Due to its locale in the Arctic Circle, the Trilateral Park constantly a space of regeneration that has required its inhabitants to adapt to snow from many months of the year and no daylight, to suddenly endless hot summer days. Sustenance for the flora and fauna in the region is dependent on the liveliness of the water system of the river and lakes, whilst the river has been an important transportation route to market places close to the Barents Sea. Fishing and waterfowl hunting, reindeer husbandry, and general agriculture are all enacted on the grasslands as the shores are mowed to 184 provide food for domestic animals in the winter (Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, 2007p. 5). Agricultural livelihoods thus have dominated the life of the Sámi, even up to this present day, in part due to the central role the river plays. The river was and is an important inlet from inland to the Barents Sea, which saw trading of fur, wood, salt and tobacco with the arrival of Nordic settlers (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, 2009). Industrialisation facilitated by the rive began in the region at the beginning of the 20 th Century. The establishment of an iron mine in Kirkenes was the catalyst, as the Pasvik River was used to harness electricity. Extensive areas of forests were felled on the river’s shores in the southern part of Väätsäri from the beginning of the century until the WWII (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.k.). For instance, in the 1920s, great loggings took place as logs were floated to sawmills in Elvenes and Jakobsnes, whilst later saw the battle for nickel in Pechenga. This brought changes to the area as the rapids of the river were used to produce energy for smelting (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, 2009.). Later that century, the Cold War brought a standstill to industrialisation, but an agreement between the three countries was made in 1959 about the regulation of Lake Inari and the River. The construction of seven hydroelectric power stations by the end of the 20 th century thus brought positives to the local population, whilst damming caused detrimental erosion and loss of territory along the river banks (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.k.). The division of Europe thus enabled nonhuman natures to wax and wane against the devastating effect of Cold War infrastructure. Contemporary work today still enacts change on the land. Regulation has affected the fauna of the river in several ways: stations block fish migrations; the river thus flows more slowly and this has caused overgrowth on the shallow areas; in lake Inari, fish were planted in the lake due to a lack of various species from human interferences; the otter has not been seen for years; and as an important habitat for several bird species, several have essentially disappeared from the area, such as the white-throated dipper. The 185 regulation of Lake Inari has also affected the nesting of the black-throated diver by drowning the nests when the water level rises towards the end of summer (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.e.). Settler interactions have thus disturbed the Sámi culture of living within, and a part of, the landscape. Transboundary efforts thus work together to conserve this natural and cultural heritage of the region. 4.2 Eco-tourism as sustainable development. Transboundary cooperation in the area was initially focused on mapping the region as demarcating those sections that required conservation. But nonhuman nature conservation often begets further developmental ideas. Over time, human actors in the region have enacted various sustainable development projects in order to conserve nonhuman nature whilst implementing sustainable economic practices and developments that “harmonise” with the land. As Hokkanen argues, “if we have valuable nature, local people need to understand that the nature is valuable, and worth of protecting. Protection must, however, not destroy the local identity nor the local (traditional) livelihoods.” (Hokkanen, 2004, p. 24.) Such harmony with the land, flora and fauna is thus preserved alongside the intangible heritage of the Sámi (made tangible). Today, this harmony can even be observed monetarily, as in Finland, economic statistics state that 1 Euro of public investment pays back 10 Euro to local private incomes (Ympäpaistöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2017b). Sustainable development thus conserves and furthers. Nonhuman nature provides vistas for human reflection and play. One significant component of support to the FGB and the Trilateral Park is eco-tourism. Eco-tourism has long been significant to the EGB. The IUCN sees the eco-tourism potential in the FGB as fairly high (IUCN, 2004, p. 25). IN regards to the Trilateral Park specifically, one official website of the Trilateral Park states how “nature tourism is based on the nature, and it is therefore significant that nature tourism stands on a sustainable basis that the natural and cultural values are respected. With careful planning, the nature tourism can be directed to areas best suited to such activities.” (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.l.) Here, nonhuman nature conservation, 186 sustainable development, and eco-tourism are all brought together into the same sphere of action. This is furthered by the biomic actions of the 2012–14 EU Kolarctic ENPI CBC-programme, 15 ABCGheritage. ABCGheritage brought the areas of the Pasvik Inari region into the same network whilst arguing for their common Arctic heritage as both a human as well as an ecological resource: national borders are nothing more than artificial lines drawn on a map. These borders do not represent actual natural habitats or define traditional human livelihoods and ways of using nature. The nature and cultural history of the northern parts of Fennoscandia—Norway, Finland and Russia—form our common heritage.” (Metsähallitus, n.d.) The goals for ABCGheritage echoed that of the EGB Initiative: increasing public awareness of the project; furthering nonhuman nature conservation activities; and increasing investment into sustainable development efforts such as eco-tourism. In the spirit of the integrative belt, eco-tourism, biodiversity conservation, sustainability, and intangible heritage are brought together as a goal for the park. ABCGheritage thus brought nonhuman nature and culture into the same frame to create a new conceptual blend (Fauconnier & Turner, 2003) of heritage beyond purely human materials. This intertwining of actions—creating a networked project of conservation—sits at the heart of an Anthropocene rhetoric. Environmental actions—increasing sustainable uses of protected and recreational areas in terms of nonhuman nature conservation and tourism—intersect with symbolic visibility—increasing the regional knowledge of the nonhuman natures and the FGB project amongst students, teachers, tourists, local residents and eco-tourist operators visiting its protected and recreational areas (Metsähallitus, n.d.). Tourism and nonhuman nature conservation thus beget one another in the Anthropocene. The project 15 Currently, between 2014–2020, three CBC programmes are running in the FGB region: the Kolarctic (the Arctic region), between Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia; the region of Finnish–Russian region of Karelia; and south-east Finland–Russia. 187 enacts Chakrabarty’s Anthropocenic collapse as the Arctic region of the FGB is thus considered as a singular area of multiple ecosystems that create the natural heritage of the region. Eco-tourism is significant in the Trilateral Park. However, the remote location of the Valley is what constructs its unique nonhuman natures yet makes eco-tourism to the region tricky. Desires for creating a wild playground of rational amusement is pitted against scientific research as the border “a remarkable natural laboratory through boreal forest zone. The surrounding areas represent two different land use regimes” (IUCN, 2004, p. 25). Which land regimes the IUCN are alluding to are unclear, but suggest it is between eco-tourism and scientific endeavor. Eco-tourism already faces difficulties in the material environment of the region. The remoteness of the region makes marking permanent paths through the wild difficult. Paths and tracks evidence a habitual pattern of the movement of people—a taskscape made visible (Ingold, 1993, p. 167). Marked trails, tour operators, and information centres are erratic. A mapping of sites for the tourist to visit are sporadic. For instance, Vätsäri offers no paths to the human traveller, thus preserving its reputation as a true wilderness. The popular hiking trail Pilola Wilderness Trail, established between Finland and Norway, has sporadic semiotic pieces for marking the trail as well, although in a rare infrastructure action does provide fireplaces for human comfort (Trusova, 2011, p. 24). But overall, these trails are sparse and often impossible to use in the long winters. The Park hence pushes humans and nonhumans to its limits. Despite these difficulties, eco-tourism has made somewhat its mark in the Trilateral Park. The first documentation of eco-tourism within the newly boundaried Trilateral Park began in 2006. Partners in Pasvik-Inari agreed upon a number of sustainable nonhuman nature tourism principles: 1) nonhuman nature values are preserved, and tourist activities promote its protection; 2) that all activities are environmentally friendly; 3) that local culture and cultural heritage is respected; 4) the local economy is supported; 5) the promotion of visitor appreciation and knowledge of nonhuman nature and culture; and 188 6) an assurance in quality and safety in all business operations (Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, n.d.m.). Here, conservation acts within larger EGB aims. The Park’s partners positioned for local societies and identities to remain as part of the FGB: one of the initial aims of the Initiative. Furthermore, keeping humans as part of the Park resonates with sustainable development work. Overall, I argue that such action to conserve the natural and cultural heritage of the region gives both humans and nonhumans given equal weighting, or bios, in the FGB polity. As Ingold posits, “the world [is] constituted in relation to the organism or person whose environment it is” (Ingold, 1993, p. 156). Nonhuman nature is not the background, but constitutes the world with the organism who resides in it. The mapping of the Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park as vista contains the nonhuman natures, cultures, humans and environment within it. However, this places environment in terms of function: as nonhuman nature organised by an organism. Landscape, by contrast puts emphasis on form; but forms of landscape are not prepared in advance for creatures to occupy. Rather, the landscape incorporates a processual unfolding of embodiment (Ingold, 1993, 157). Thus, the Trilateral Park is an unfolding landscape, in which humans and nonhumans have equal significance. 4.3 Grey infrastructure to promote green infrastructure. Eco-tourism offers sites to be visited. The nonhuman natures are one such vista. But there is another element to the FGB—its grey infrastructure as both ruins and museums of the Anthropocene. The FGB, in comparison to its counterpart regions does not offer many materialities of war. But yet, the ones that still exist within the FGB appear prominently. This grey are infrastructures are the materialised heritage of human–nonhuman nature relations. One that is dedicated to the FGB’s volatile history is in Kirkenes, Norway. Grenselandmuseet (The Border Area Museum) that not only shows the history of the border and its transformation, but also exhibits art by a local Sámi artist. (EuroVelo 13, n.d.e.). A turn to the atrocities of the past results in a turn to the pleasantries of both now and the future. Further East, on the Russian side of the river, on the island 189 of Vaarlamansaari, the house of famous ornithologist Hans Schaanning was rebuilt in 1998, and nowadays serves as a field base and museum. Several old border patrol towers have also been repurposed for observation of the nonhuman natures in the park. Figure 24 shows the transformation of a Russian border tower in the Pasvik Valley into a bird observation tower. This repurposing was inaugurated as a symbol of new times in 1995, by former WWF president among others. Also in 1995, another old border patrol tower called “96 Høyden” (see Figure 25) in the Norwegian region was transformed into a symbolic “peace promoting” (EUROPARC Federation, 2010, p. 25) bird watching and observation tower of the landscape. From this observation point, one can view the town of Nikel in Russia. This technology of surveillance and security has transcended its original intentions. It is transformed into a functional argument of the EGB Association’s peaceful future of trans-boundary cooperation. To further its new function as a tourist attraction, a small café operates on the ground floor of the tower from June–August (Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, 2007p. 12). Photographs of a woman holding waffles with the tower in the background are bountiful across social media. Culture, nonhuman nature, and politics are brought together against a background of jovial Kairos. 190 Figure 24: Inauguration of old Russian border patrol tower into bird observation tower. Taken from the GRID Arendal resources library. Licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0, Flickr. Copyright Peter Prokosch. Figure 25: 96 Høyden looking out over the Norwegian/Russian border. Licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0, Wikimapia. Copyright 0biwan. 191 96 Høyden offers more than just a meeting over food. Through its rhetorical materiality, the tower itself both symbolises and performs its transformation, providing a watchful gaze on the flourishing flora and fauna across nation-state boundaries. But further reflection on the Kairos of experiencing this act at this particular time is enlivened. The restaurant invites the tourist to sit, enjoy and ponder the material surroundings of what was once used to observe people, not nonhuman nature. The tourist enacts a performance as a Cold War watchtower guard, as they execute a watchful eye over the land. To watch from the tower is to view the EGB vista as gestalt (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018). Like the guard, the visitor surveys their kingdom: that which is theirs to explore (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, p. 20). At the tower, the EGB Initiative’s argument over the preservation of cultural and natural heritage is multimodally cohesive. Nonhuman nature and ruins are not oppositional as in a discursive format, but are fused together in their presentational form. This makes an argument without the necessity of words, drawing upon the gestalt properties of visual arguments (Groarke, Palczewski, & Godden, 2016), alongside multiplicitous sensual modes of experience (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, p. 43). For Blair, Dickinson, and Ott (2010), this execution means the tourist is convinced of the argument most viscerally through attending to the material site. Connections to both the people of the past are felt alongside a “communal identification” with present visitors (p. 27). The visitor’s experience of seeing 96 Høyden against the nonhuman nature, and the experience of being inside this grey infrastructure as a multi-purpose site of public memory and eco-tourism, fuses these dichotomous elements into a new visual and experiential frame of transcendence. Nonhuman nature does not negate war but transcends it (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018). Grey infrastructures such as 96 Høyden are relics of the Anthropocene. Military heritage objects also fulfil this role. But ruins of the Anthropocene can also be answers to this contemporary time of global devastation. The Trilateral Park has a number of human-made infrastructures that enable the visitor to 192 learn about a shared natural and cultural heritage. A turn to the past is not necessary to speak of a united, environmentally concerned European. An example is the ornithological tower on the island of Vaarlamansaari built in 1995 to promote bird watching. The tower supports the island an important site of culture heritage, where the ornithological meets remnants of World War II and signs of Finnish settlement abound (Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, 2007, p. 14). Grey infrastructures new and old meet. 4.3a The Sámi’s grey infrastructure of intangible heritage. The development of eco-tourism in the Trilateral Park has required new infrastructure development. Across the Park, instances of support materials and infrastructure for the tourist are sporadic. Visitor facilities across the Park are regularly maintained. The Norwegian section of the Park has two museums—the Strand Museum and Bjørklund Gård—that educate the visitor on the cultural as well as natural heritage of the area. Further, across all three countries, visitor centres, libraries and schools have been visited by a travelling exhibit accompanied by a board game, that informs visitors and locals about nonhuman nature and cultural heritage conservation in the area. For instance, the Barents Environmental School in Rajakoski which works alongside a children’s memory game called “Birds of Pasvik”, produced in the three native languages of the Barents region (Trusova, 2011, p. 25). A simple folly becomes an environmental foil to ignorance. 193 Figure 26: The village of Nellim in the Trilateral Park, Inari, Finland. Licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0, Wikimedia. Copyright BishkekRocks. Modern infrastructures work to inform, as they turn the landscape into a site of rational amusement. For the Trilateral Park, the most significant infrastructures are those created by the Sámi, who perform a multimodal argument towards the consolidation of nonhuman nature and culture. One set of infrastructures are the collection of Sámi villages in the region. In Finland is the Sámi village of Nellim (see Figure 26). Nellim is described as “a meeting point for different cultures” (Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, 2007, p. 10), where Finnish inhabitants settled in the original Sámi village in the early 20 th Century to pursue log floating. The Sevettijärvi village, north of Vätsäri in Finland, is the centre of Skolt Sámi culture in country. Here is also the longest “gamme” in the world, a Sámi turf hut, that was reconstructed in 1922 and today is a historical memory site as a border history museum (Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park, 2007, p. 12). Once again, infrastructures are recycled over being rebuilt, thus offering an authenticity to their argument—in this case, depicting a former border life faithfully. Grey infrastructures offer symbolic reminders to cultural memory. 194 Figure 27: Siida Sámi Museum and Nature Centre. The building and its materials were chosen to resonate with the landscape. Licensed under Figure 28: Inside Siida museum, painted in various blues to semiotically represent the differing twilights of the region that are common this far north. Licensed under the Creative Commons License 2.0, Flickr. Copyright Ninara. 195 Figure 29: Another Siida permanent exhibition. Copyright Siida museum. A grey infrastructure that works with and against the land is the official museum of the Sámi in Inari, called Siida (see Figure 27). Siida is the strongest and most informative portrayal of a shared natural and cultural heritage in the region. Siida combines the National Museum of the Finnish Sámi with the northernmost and largest nonhuman nature centre of Metsähallitus. Siida describes itself as “a window into Sámi culture and Arctic nature” (Siida, 2010). The introductory exhibition presents both the nonhuman northern natures and culture via a timeline, interlaced with world history, whilst temporary exhibits and events depict the specifics of Arctic nonhuman nature, conservation, and environmental education (see Figures 28 and 29). Furthermore, Siida provides guided excursions “that focus on the diversity and the cultural history of nature in the surrounding areas” (Siida, 2010c). The visceral is brought to life. 196 Figure 30: The skylight that runs through the Siida museum at twilight, a colour seen repeated in the exhibition. Copyright Siida museum. Siida as a museum both informs and entertains. It is a site of rational amusement within the foreboding wilderness. But as a building, Siida is also a symbolic, rhetorical communicative infrastructure. Siida is built to align with the landscape: with the materials, colours and shape of the building. This architectonics connects structure to museum artefacts: “the colors [sic] and forms of the building suggest a connection to the substance presented in the building” (Siida, 2010d). The curves in the roof mimic the shapes in the landscape. A skylight window that runs throughout brings the outdoors in (Figure 30). The permanent nonhuman nature exhibition also brings the kisceral to life. The exhibition is positioned to be “almost like a real outdoor excursion”, as artefacts, photographs, drawings and texts are situated in a soundscape describing the range of seasons and events in the FGB (Siida, 2010e). The notion of the desolate wild is repeated in the language of survival in extreme conditions for both the nonhuman nature and the Sámi (Siida, 2010f). Overall, multimodal argument is made through a linguistic, visual, and 197 experiential positioning. With the soundscape activated by the visitor’s movements, this becomes an experience that appeals to many senses. It is the simulacra of a walk in the outside natural surroundings. Further, this simulacra is also priming for the actual outdoors. This rhetorical work recalls Aoki, Dickinson and Ott’s (2010) work at the Draper Museum in Wyoming, where the museum replicates the outside environment. The rhetoric is both embodied by the tourist and also activated by their presence. Presence thus activates experience. The permanent exhibitions have been produced so “the visitor experiences the cultural and natural contents of the exhibition as one integrated whole” (Siida, 2010e.). The main exhibition is based on human ecology theories that see an interdependency of nonhuman nature and culture. This is depicted through various symbolic action. The Sámi’s “rhythm of life” is depicted through temporal unfamiliarity to the tourist with eight seasons in Sámpi : spring, spring-summer, summer, summer-autumn, autumn, autumn-winter, winter and spring-winter (Siida, 2010.). Immersive photographs of Sámi life and culture are featured on the outer walls of the exhibition hall, illuminated from behind to show how the “natural [sic], the weather and the light conditions of Northern Lapland vary during the twelve months of the year.” (Siida, 2010e) (see Figure 31). The rooms of the museum are painted to match the specific twilight of such northern lands, “as blue as night” (Siida, 2010d.). The inside and the outside come to resemble one another. 198 Figure 31: The colours of the museum continue, as the blues depict the seasons for Sámpi and the Sámi. The zone of glasses cases in the main exhibition hall present the key interconnected themes of the museum. Copyright Siida museum. Museums replicating the natural world is tricky. Aoki et al. position that in certain, naturally focused museums, the tourist becomes the ahistorical Master Naturalists through modes of directed movement through simulated environments. Time is privileged over space. However, I argue that the Siida actually privileges neither. With its focus on both natural and cultural heritage, a rhetorically embodied, multimodal argument is made that time (history) and space (nonhuman nature) work together in this region of the FGB. This argument is visually made through Siida displays of Sámi culture and FGB nonhuman nature, where a zone of glass cases (see previous Figure) between them presents interconnected themes. From the 199 outer part of the exhibition, the artefact constitutes a natural phenomenon, whilst the raised floor of the inner part connects the same item within the cultural narrative of the exhibition (Siida, 2010e.). Space and time; nonhuman nature an history; all come together within a singular frame. Figure 32: The open-air museum of Siida. Copyright Siida museum. The Siida provides a guiding cartographic service to the eco-tourist. The nature centre within the museum guides the visitor to specific, important FGB nature sites. In the Sámi museum, collections of artefacts, archives, an art collection, photographs and a reference library place Sámi culture as inextricably connected to the nonhuman: “the collections are connected with living and dwellings, movement and transportation, clothing and handicraft, as well as beliefs, religion and customs” (Siida, 2010b.). Nonhuman nature and culture are brought together into the same dwelling (Ingold, 1993), one begetting the other. This dwelling is then extended outwards in the summer months. During these endless nights, Siida hosts an “open-air museum” (see Figure 32), in which a visitor can see a variety of Sámi dwellings, learn about 200 Sámi livelihoods and see finds from archaeological excavations. Against the visceral of the nonhuman nature replicants in Siida, its open-air museum embraces a more digital approach. Communication technologies with a mobile guide activated through QR codes provides archive photos, videos and recordings, rather than requiring the visitor to physically attend the archives. Overall, the museum-come- nonhuman nature centre becomes a site of rational amusement. The visitor learns that nonhuman nature and culture can become reciprocal. Both the human and the nonhuman are granted bios in the Trilateral Park and the overall FGB. Chakrabarty’s Anthropocenic collapse of human and geological histories is performed. 5.0 Anthropocene thinking in the FGB. As we near the end of the second decade of the 21 st century, the transboundary work of the FGB is still dynamically ongoing. Four Finnish-Russian twin parks have been established, consisting of five separate Finnish protected areas alongside the Russian Kostomukshsky Strict Nature Reserve (Karivalo & Butorin, 2006, p. 41). Despite difficulties with Russian conservation, two single nation-state national parks were also established in Russia on February 19, 2018—Khibiny National Park in Murmansk and Kodar in the Transbaikal region (Ympäristöministeriö Miljöministeriet, Ministry of the Environment, 2018). 16 The conservation work in the FGB is thus prismatic. Multiple actions work towards a unifying goal of conservation of this shared natural and cultural heritage across the region. Each EGB region strives to capture the ideal of holism set to some purpose or aim to the larger project. This inquiry argues that rhetorical analysis of the FGB has identified four themes that prismatically weave throughout the FGB: (1) biodiversity conservation and safeguarding of the connectivity of ecological network acts as a mosaic; (2) a rhetorical geography of creating an ecological network; (3) the conservation of the cultural, intangible 16 According to the EU and the EGB Association, Khibiny has cultural and historical value due to its location for the Sámi in the Kola Peninsula. 201 heritage of local peoples; (4) and the ecological attunement in the collapse of natural and cultural heritage into one. The aims are detailed, inclusive, and ambitious. 5.1 (Indigenous) intangible heritage drives human–nonhuman nature relations. This inclusivity is fraught in the notion of man-made borders and biomic governance. As with the Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park and the region of Karelia, the FGB sees human–nonhuman nature relations materialised and embodied by the surrounding environment, in a biomic step of governance of people and land beyond borders. Culture here is directly related to the land’s nonhuman natures, and in particular the forest. This chapter argues that this culture—predominately stemming from indigenous cultures—has thus become the model for sustainable human-nonhuman relations in these regions along the northern border. I posit that Sámpi and Karelia are dynamic landscapes that both incorporate a material and intangible, natural and cultural heritage. These boreal forest-wildernesses become foreboding alongside a centralising identifying force in Finnish culture that drives human–nonhuman nature relations. These local relations to place serve as a model operations of human–nonhuman nature relations in the Anthropocene. Nonhuman nature is giving a semiotic agency, and local actors are given power to articulate their discourses over more globalised, capitalist ones. As Timo Maran (2014) states The part of nature that has been included in cultural memory unavoidably belongs to the natural environment as a local entity—by describing nature, culture ties to it. As much as culture embraces nature, makes nature a part of itself and gives it meaning, this culture itself starts to resemble nature and specific locations in it. As much as culture has given meaning to nature, it has become like its natural environment.” (p. 87.) For Maran, nonhuman nature and culture is indistinguishable. Cultures serve as a foundation for a connection to the land that results in an intense biomic politics heavily invested in transboundary cooperation along EU and Russian Federation borders. I posit that this collapse of nonhuman nature and 202 human activities has been active in the region for centuries with the work of the Sámi and Karelian who have traditionally defied borders in the region. Just as “For the Benefit of the Boreal Nature” (Karivalo & Butorin, 2006, p. 45) is the vision of the FGB, I argue that this intangible cultural heritage drives an Anthropocene rhetoric and an ecologically attuned Anthropocene adaptation to contemporary environmental crises as the FGB brings humans, nonhumans and their histories into the same sphere. Ecological attunement proffers a shared natural and cultural history that is tied to locale. 5.2 Nonhuman nature identity politics. Locality has been care to a variety of environmentalist writers. Arne Naess (2010) argued for a return to the local in order to combat environmental concerns and enact sustainable human–nonhuman nature relations. Kuels (1996) argued for an ecopolitics—that which is neither national but not truly global either, despite it being played out within and against territorial logics. Rather, the logics are influenced by place, as conservation of nonhuman natures and cultures is located on and across lands. Goodbody (2011) concurred, by arguing that eco-critics cannot afford to ignore place as a cultural phenomenon as environmental consciousness derives from an awareness of connections between places rather than attachment to a particular place. Place for Goodbody is less about its geographical realities than its symbolic entities that serve critical political, social and cultural functions and are thus under constant reconstruction, as founding myths of communities are adapted to changing political circumstances. The local, vernacular exhibits pathos when it comes to the land. I thus consider the FGB as demonstrating considerable ecological attunement due to these identity politics with the land. Identity politics have never been earnest within Europe. Identities are drawn and redrawn against fraught European politics, nationalism, and concerns over the environment where moves to the right oppose such views. Thus, identity in the FGB has also developed with political change. During the late 1990s, Berglund noted that Finnish old-growth activism included a yearning for contact with “real” nature, a romantised notion with an environmental justice bent. Just like Berglund experienced during her field 203 work, I also experienced this yearning from Finnish EGB and FGB actors during my trip to the 9 th Pan- European Green Belt conference in Koli, Finland. I was often encouraged to get out into the actual “nature” to truly learn what it was that the Initiative was trying to conserve. Overall, in this chapter, I posit that this rootedness to the local creates models for nonhuman nature conservation, sustainable development and general human–nonhuman nature relations in the nascent Anthropocene. Top-down governmental discourses from the EU will not alone result in a true harmonisation of human-nonhuman relations; it requires local vernaculars and the discourses from indigenous peoples who have been living in their environments for centuries. Thus, it is significant cross- border transboundary collaboration, cultural links in these regions, and the uniqueness of the border area, that makes the FGB the strongest example of biopolitical relations turning biomic. A biomic power brings the human and the nonhuman together into a singular polity, whilst broadening boundaries further beyond the nation-state. The local becomes the glocal. 204 Chapter Four: The Central Hub Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it – George Santayana, The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense Chapter three explores the Central Green Belt (CGB) as a different materialisation of human– nonhuman nature relations on the land. This chapter focuses on the environmental biomic governance of the people and land in a heavily-ruined landscape, as public memory enfolds and intertwines with biodiversity conservation. Predominantly, this chapter focuses on Germany as the centralising force of not only the CGB but also the EGB Initiative as a holistic project. Whilst the FGB sees tensions and consolidations of environmental imaginaries between the EU and the Russian Federation, the rest of the EGB project is dominated by a centralised German supra-national governing and biodiversity conservation effort. The Initiative began in Germany, with the creation of the original conceptual merging of discrete ecologies into a networked biome as the Grünes Band, or German Green Belt (GGB). Today, the Central, Baltic, and Balkan Green Belts all have German NGOs as their Regional Coordinators: BUND Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania for the Balkan Green Belt; BUND’s main project office for the CGB; and the environmental charity EuroNatur for the Balkan. Whilst this chapter discusses the general activities of the Central European states, it is undeniable that Germany’s influence as the centrepiece of the EGB Initiative holds strong in the region. In this chapter, I put forth that a significant aspect to Germany’s involvement in the EGB is how history is treated as a material, cultural heritage to be preserved alongside biodiversity hotspots. This intersection of the material and symbolic is the height of an Anthropocene rhetoric. As discussed in the previous chapter, the rhetorical geography of the FGB has relatively few tangible relics from the Cold War. 205 This is in part due to its tenuous location as not Iron Curtain proper. Rather, I argue that the mature landscape is the home of a significant intangible heritage in the region that drives human–nonhuman nature relations at this natural border between the EU and the Russian Federation. In contrast, I portend that the GGB presents as the FGB’s material opposite. The German landscape is peppered with Iron Curtain ruins (see Figure 33). The EGB literature presents their material presence as forming an “unique living memorial of recent German history” (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2006, p. 46). Anthropocene ruins thus become catalysts of public memory. Figure 33: An example of one of the many Iron Curtain relics in the GGB. This abandoned watch tower features in northern inner-Germany border, overlooking the natural river boundary between German federal states. Photograph author’s own. German governance over nonhuman nature, ruins, and peoples is the focus of this chapter. Although the governance over a former inner-country border would suggest a return to biopolitics, I argue that Germany acts as central hub for the project as German NGOs coordinate nonhuman nature 206 conservation internationally, across nation-state borders. This is biomic governance. To make these claims, I turned to a variety of sources and multimodal analyses. I first began with an analysis of the extensive German and Green Belt materials available both online and on site. I then conducted rhetorical analysis in the field on three separate occasions across the German Green Belt (GGB), as well as at the German borders with Poland and the Czech Republic. This was supported with participant-observation at the 2016 pan-European Green Belt conference. Finally, my analysis was supplemented with data from interviews I conducted with key members from BfN and BUND in summer 2016. This kaleidoscope of data has made for a prismatic analysis and has brought two significant claims. The first posits the Iron Curtain ruins, descending down the former inner-German border as material manifestations of German public memory, as creating a site saturated with rhetorical geography through rhetorical transcendence. The second positions, and then extends, multimodal argumentation theory by arguing that these ruins, now oft-turned into museums, create a network of communicative infrastructures. I posit that these museums, memorials, ruins and other such memory sites work together to make the same proposition or argumentative claim. As an ecological network of human and nonhuman artefacts, these are all pieces that speak towards the same claim through differing mediums. Ultimately, I portend that argument through public memory is a networked affair in the GGB. The chapter follows as hence. (1) begins with an examination of the German influence in this region as the German Green Belt, Central European Green Belt, and European Green Belt Initiative developed. (2) then turns to the protection of Germany’s diverse natural heritage, arguing that nonhuman nature conservation within Germany, in counter to the FGB, is based on a peopleless border space. Nonhuman nature here moves away from integration with its human counterparts in the ecosystem. However, humanity’s influence is not forgotten. (3) then turns to an investigation regarding the GGB as a memorialising landscape through the ruins of the Anthropocene that both deteriorate and become 207 repurposed for eco-touristic consumption as a site of rational amusement. (4) turns to my case study for this chapter: Observation Point Alpha (OPA). This observation station turned memorial/nonhuman nature trail is situated in the Fulda Gap, the anticipated potential site of the beginnings of World War Three (WWIII). I posit this site as the nexus of nonhuman nature and history working together as a site for rational amusement. In turn, this becomes a multimodal argument for a united European identity that fights for climate change mitigation. (5) considers the multitude of these grey infrastructures as a network of communicative infrastructures. (6) concludes with an argument that the conservation of memory and nonhuman nature are an interwoven concern for the CGB biomic apparatuses. In the vein of Osborne, I argue that the nationalising-state scripts and edits the discursive materiality of collective memories for the purpose of a presentist project (Osborne, 2006, p. 152). I argue that the central European countries and the EGB Initiative (as both whole project and the related sub-regions) work towards creating a unified European identity that acts in the good of the European Union supra-national nation, as only a unified Europe can strike influential action in climate change mitigation. This is an Anthropocene rhetorical geography in action. 1.0 The German Influence The Iron Curtain was heavily defended in the Central European region. Out of all the 24 countries in which it ran, the German-German border was the most intensively fortified. Apart from Berlin, this division was mainly executed following German federal state lines. The tension of capitalism versus communism within a nation-state materialised as exaggerated border fortifications for the unique requirements of an inner-country border. Over 40 years, the resulting German landscape was punctuated with watchdogs, land mines, spring guns, barbed wire, metal fences, walls, and guard towers (Geidezis & Krutz, 2004). Within Germany, the 47 kilometre long Berlin Wall became the most intensively defended section of the Curtain due to a heightened risk of information exchange and escapees (Sepp, 2012, p. 7). 208 Over time, the Berlin Wall consisted of both an outer and inner concrete wall separated by the infamous “death strip”. With watch towers harbouring guards with searchlights and machine guns, overall over 900 lives were lost at the German border alone (BUND, 2017, p. 3). The fortifications of the central European Iron Curtain enacted a deftly crafted thanatopolitics. 1.1 Constituting the green and grey infrastructure of the GGB. The CGB constitutes the Iron Curtain between Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and Italy. The delineation of the German Green Belt as a distinct section of the CGB derives from its particularly heavy fortification as part of the Iron Curtain and the resulting geopolitical attention that an inner-country border receives. The German border was constituted between roads used for military vehicles and the federal state borders that divided the Western Federal Republic of Germany from the Eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR). At 1,393 kilometres long, this border passed through 17 states. Today, as the GGB biome, its boundaries extend beyond the original borders of the material Iron Curtain as its isolated location allowed for nonhuman nature to outspread into the surrounding countryside. Despite this, the GGB is narrow in comparison to its FGB bedfellow. At only 50–200 metres wide, conservation areas and protected ecologies run along the entire length of the German section of the EGB (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2006, p. 47). The GGB has thus become a figurative and rhetorical haven for nonhuman natures. The newly developing ecosystems were initially discovered along the Finnish-Russian border in 1970. Shortly following, all eyes turned to Germany and what secrets it may have held. In 1975, the first observations of the inner-German border were made, although this was only possible from the Western side. This was despite nonhuman nature conservation, and the designation of nonhuman nature reserves, being the responsibility of federal states. In 1979, BUND conducted a systematic ornithological survey along a 140 kilometre stretch of the border (European Green Belt Association, 2018c), and launched the 209 GGB project a decade later. However, it was EuroNatur who initiated conservation efforts along the site of inner-German division in 1987. This was the nascence of German nonhuman nature conservation in the border. The physical materiality of the division of Germany caused both discord and unification with the fall of the Berlin Wall two years later. Two contrasting sentiments from the fall of the wall emerged. The first and most popular opinion argued for the removal of all remnants of the former inner-border. With the motto “the Wall must go!” (Cramer & Bikeline, 2012, p. 9), former GDR troops had taken down most of the Wall by October 2, 1990. In contrast, others argued to keep sections of the inner-border as a reminder to never repeat such historical atrocities. Over time, the remainers won. Although fragments only remained where local district authorities, organisations and/or individuals prevented them from being torn down, the inner-border slowly turned from grey infrastructure to multicoloured memory site. The public catalyst of the Berlin Wall had inadvertently created a world-famous tourist attraction. Today, BUND echoes George Santayana’s words of warning that favour the fragments as memory aids (BUND, 2017, p. 2). The risk of historical repetition drives preservation efforts. The concurrent conservation of ruins and nonhuman natures created a new cultural symbiosis. In 1990, Professor Dr Klaus Töpfer made a declaration for the preservation of the inner-German border as a Green Belt—the GGB. This statement was soon followed by various political declarations in favour of such efforts within Germany. From 1991 onwards, several large-scale nonhuman nature conservation projects were funded by BfN, which today is the EGB Initiative’s National Focal Point for Germany. This was followed by transboundary agreements between different countries in central Europe regarding nonhuman nature conservation. In 1992, an agreement was made for cooperation between the Czech and Saxonian Ministries of Environment. Two years later, a Czech-German commission for the environment 210 was established, and included a working group for nonhuman nature protection (Miko, 2004, p. 47). Conservation thus began to make grounds. The topos of extinction that drove conservation efforts continued as sudden access to the border area naturally increased its land use. Species were threatened as Europe’s convergence required additional layers of infrastructure (Sepp, 2011, p. 8). Thus, what followed was a semiotic act of world-building and mapping. Nonhuman natures were given bios to previously designated areas of zōē . And yet, this mapping of unique ecological areas saw tensions against the increasing land use. In 2002, a nation-wide mapping of the habitats along the GGB was completed to analyse and categorise its successes and potential losses. Good news was found. This rhetorical geographic work revealed that even after 12 years of reunification, the border was still considerably intact as this symbolic ecological network. Furthermore, amongst intensively farmed land, the Belt was continuing its work as a space for many rare and endangered species and habitats (Sepp, 2012, p. 8). If this success was to be sustained, conservationists thus conceived to expand the project to include the entire former Curtain. A rough translation of the GGB’s name was therefore borrowed to conceptualise trans-national efforts. 1.2 The central backbone coordinates international transboundary effort. International conservation efforts in Germany over the 1990s and 2000s were supported by international ones. Just one year after the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted at UNCED in Rio de Janeiro, Germany ratified the Convention on August 30, 1993. 17 According to the Bundeministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz, Bau un Reaktosicherheit (German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU)), Germany was considerably involved in the Convention’s development, actively promoting its advancement through a wide variety of initiatives (Küchler-Krischun & Walter, 2007). Furthermore, in 17 Federal Law Gazette <BGBl.> II No. 32, p. 1741 ff 211 2008 Germany hosted the 9 th conference of the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The German influence in conservation efforts was expanding. In 2003, the first EGB international conference was held in the former West German capital of Bonn. Official representatives included participants from Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and Italy. 18 From the conference, the byline of “Borders Separate. Nature Unites!” was established as a rhetorical vision—a framing of future action for the project. This vision drove against stasis: the topos of extinction that the Iron Curtain symbolically stood for. But whilst visions are typically for individuals, this vision was pitted as requiring the unity of multiple agents. The creation of the EGB Initiative required a trans-national biomic cooperation to create the Fennoscandian, the Central European and the South Eastern Green Belts as distinct yet connected networks. Under this umbrella of the larger biomic project, the actions that constituted the GGB thus became “the important backbone with ribs to both sides building up the longest habitat connecting system existing in German and Middle Europe, respectively” (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 135). Germany was positioned as the centralising force of the project under this spinal metaphor as discussed in chapter two. With the GGB envisioned as holding up the entire product, the ribs became the biomic apparatuses from this centralising governance over other state and local actors. The project thus developed, with Germany at its helm. The first 10 years of the project saw the Central European influence grow with a German centre. From April 2001 – September 2002, a survey funded by BfN and BMU was done of the different habitats across the entire length of the GGB. 109 different habitat types were mapped, with 60% composed of aquatic ecosystems, different forest-types, used and unused grassland, and species-rich moist grassland (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 136). This survey identified 32 focus areas of high importance for nonhuman 18 In different literatures, there is also a suggestion that the Baltic regions – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland were also included as part of the CGB before the Baltic became its own Green Belt region. 212 nature conservation and development, with 21 of these areas rated as at least of national importance, to form core areas in a national ecological network (Schlumprecht et al., 2002, cited in Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 136). In June 2003, a “Biodiversity Day” organised by BUND along with the popular science magazine GEO used approximately 500 experts to map over 5,200 different species of animal and plant life in only 24 hours in nine areas along the GGB. Species thought to be extinct in Germany were thus rediscovered (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 136). However, much of this retreating land remained privately owned. Anthro-existence was thus causing rifts within this nonhuman nature conservation strategy. In 2003, the establishment of Goričko Nature Park in Slovenia begat trilateral cooperation in the CGB as part of the three country nature park Goričko-Raab-Őrség, situated in a border triangle with Austria and Hungary. In 2004, the second EGB international conference was jointly hosted by BfN alongside IUCN in Hungary’s Fertö-Hanság national park, held on the banks of Lake Neusiedl on the Austrian-Hungarian border in 2004 (BfNa, n.d.). 19 Over 70 participants from 17 countries attended, with its intended goal to introduce the idea of the EGB Initiative to national representatives and international experts from the different countries in which the former Curtain lay (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 137). In October 2005, Germany’s centralising force was felt for the Central region itself. The first conference for Central Europe took place in Mitwitz, Germany, and was once again organised by BUND and funded by BfN. During this conference, steps were taken towards the first application for a trans-national Interreg- project in the central European region, which ran from April 2006 – May 2008. Nonhuman nature and ruins brought together previously warring parties as transboundary cooperation progressed. 19 This national park began in 1977 as both the Austrian and Hungarian sides were deigned protected landscape areas, eventually becoming a biosphere reserve, a Ramsar site, and a national park. In 1988, a joint scientific commission and commission of experts between Hungary and Austria planned the national park, with Lake Fertö (Neusiedler See) declared the Lake Fertö National Park in 1991, followed by its incorporation into the Fertö-Hánsay National Park in 1994 (Kárpáti, 2004, p. 52). 213 Successors of the Interreg project ensued over the years. Interreg IIIB CADSES Project GREEN BELT focused on the use of the “natural potential” (European Green Belt Association, 2018r) of the region to encourage sustainable economic developments of the border areas. The flourishing of nonhuman nature as potential both de-legitimated nonhuman natures as an objectified resource for anthro-use, whilst at the same time ladening it with agency in terms of what it may do. Nonhuman nature was developing from material resource to symbolic argument. From April 2011 – June 2014, INTERREG IV-B GreenNet Project was initiated with 22 partners from six central European states. The German Thuringian Association for Rural Development organised the project in close cooperation with BUND. 20 It focused on legally non- or low-protected ecologically valuable areas in the CGB, as the basis for the “closure of gaps” (European Green Belt Association, 2018q) within the conceptual biome. Gaps as rhetorical Figures opposed pearls on a string, as each figurative description of the EGB or its associated sections symbolically linked the same geography but with different affective loading: absence for gaps; linked units of value for string. As with the FGB, individual ecologies were rearticulated through their symbolical assembly into an ecological network. Individual nonhuman ecologies were not a sufficient argument for conservation—they had to become a holistic entity. Gaps were earmarked as the result from human-degradation, whilst pearls became the flourishing ecosystems, separate from humans and human-activity. Perhaps unwittingly, human conservationists were enacting a Cartesian dualism where nonhuman natures are the categorical opposite of human, defined as “that which is not us”. Transboundary conservation efforts were hence both uniting as well as fragmentary. 20 One of the outcomes of the project was a “Lunch Debate” presented to Members of the European Parliament in Brussels in October 2011, followed by a presentation at the EU Environmental Committee in December that same year (European Green Belt Association, 2018a, p. 2). Another outcome was another photography competition that promoted tourist-collaboration and the inclusion of vernacular, local voices to the project.. 214 1.3 Recent transboundary acts. The series of efforts continued into the next century. BUND and BfN were two significant stakeholders in the EGB Initiative. With the addition of the Balkan Green Belt in the late first decade of the 21 st century, the additional BUND branch Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania became the fourth Regional Coordinator, strengthening BUND’s role in the project. This is in addition to becoming the joint coordinator (alongside EuroNatur) for the entire Initiative when the IUCN pulled out in 2010. Germany’s central role in the CGB thus extended to the many notable transboundary conservation projects within the region: the Bavarian Forest/Sumava (Germany/Czech Republic); Thayatal-Podyj (Austria/Czech Republic); and Neusiedler See-Seewinkel/Fert. Hanság (Austria/Hungary). The river-landscapes and floodplains of the Danube, March, Thaya, Drau, and Mur are also significant locales. For instance, the Danube-March-floodplains (Austria/Slovakia) are the largest pristine floodplains in Central Europe, thus ratified according to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (Geidezis & Krutz, 2004, p. 137). During the GreenNet Interreg project, in May 2013 the 10th anniversary of the EGB Initiative was celebrated with three international events in Berlin. Most recently, another long-term project run by German factions just ended. From November 2015 – January 2018, “The European Green Belt as part of Green Infrastructure” project aimed to strengthen the governance of the EGB Initiative and to initiate a common strategical process as part of the European Commission’s GI initiative. Run by BUND, BUND Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and EuroNatur, the project was also funded by BfN (European Green Belt Association, 2018a, p. 3). Finally, in February 2016, the 10 year implementation period of the large scale German nonhuman nature conservation project “Grünes Band Rodachtal-Lange Berge-Steinachtal” began. Rather than supporting a more global transboundary collaboration in the CGB, this project concentrates on just a 127 kilometre stretch of the GGB in Thuringia and Bavaria. It is, however, once again, financially supported by BfN, in conjunction with the states of Thuringia and Bavaria, four rural districts, BUND, and 215 the charity Bird Life (European Green Belt Association, 2018a, p. 3). German efforts have thus solidified as essential part to the German, Central, and European Green Belts. One current project of note is from UNCED. The UNCED Convention required the development of a national strategy, which was adopted by the German Federal Cabinet on November 7, 2007. From immediate deadlines through to 2050, this effort at sustainable development is considered a programme for society as a whole (Küchler-Krischun & Walter, 2007, p. 7). This programme is the dynamic enaction of a vision, represented in the BMU’s framing of biodiversity conservation as a national strategy. The BMU argues for biodiversity to not only be considered from an ecological viewpoint, but also from economic and social needs. This is the “ecosystem approach” in resolution V/6 of the Convention (Küchler- Krischun & Walter, 2007, p. 9). Strategies are the dynamics of a vision being put into action. Citing the German Federal Nature Conservation Act, this national strategy exhibits comparable objectives to BMU: By virtue of their intrinsic value and as a basis for mankind’s existence, and also as a responsibility to future generations, nature and landscapes both in populated and non-populated areas shall be conserved, preserved, developed and, where necessary, recreated, so as to permanently safeguard • the efficiency and function of the balance of nature • the regenerative power and sustainable usability of nature’s resources • fauna and flora including their habitats • the diversity, uniqueness and beauty of nature and landscapes, as well as their recreational value” (Küchler-Krischun & Walter, 2007, p. 9). These objectives portend various key elements. The “balance” and regenerative skills of nonhuman nature suggests that nonhuman nature has a corrective function against human actions upon the Earth System if it allowed to flourish. Secondly, it also suggests that nonhuman nature, once again, can provide ecosystem services for both the natural and the human world. Nonhuman nature as an ecosystem resource is 216 conceptualised within a Næssian frame—its “intrinsic value” and basis for mankind’s existence. Value invokes the problematic nonhuman nature as resource conceptual metaphor. Nonhuman nature, as the backgrounded environment, once again becomes a resource for humans, flora, and fauna. Recent transboundary acts thus show problems to be addressed as well as potential to be harness for the future wellbeing of both humans and nonhumans. The ecosystem approach as conservation hence has conceptual work to be done. Nonhuman nature becomes that which is then plundered. Its objectification reduces it to an environmental backdrop against which a fulfilling, complete German identity is enacted: “only an intact natural world will allow current and future generations to enjoy a high quality of life, i.e. with natural products, an appealing environment in which to live, and recreational landscapes which also give human beings a sense of regional identity” (Küchler-Krischun & Walter, 2007, p. 10). Like Naess, environmental philosopher Freya Matthews (1995) argues that an identity of the self is incomplete without considering nonhuman nature. Whilst the BMU considers German identity and human well-being against the land, these nonhuman natures are resources for the positioning of German identity. As Matthews argues, “what is wrong with our culture is that it offers us an inaccurate conception of the self. It depicts the personal self as existing in competition with and in opposition to nature… If we destroy our environment, we are destroying what is in fact our larger self.” (p. 132.) Competition, and opposition; all are terms within a larger framework that positions one agency against another. Unlike the Finnish forest- nature that demonstrates a particular ecological attunement, identity here is built through the ecosystem services that nonhuman natures provide. Conservation thus appears less about attunement, but rather about the stewardship of these natural services in part for their usefulness towards the German peoples. Stewardship of the central region has been a relative success. Today, the CGB and GGB fauna are plentiful. BUND depict the CGB region as a conceptual container for endangered wolves, bears, river otters and lynxes that have “found” their new “home” in the former border space. As wolves migrate from 217 Poland into East Saxony, the Belt hence “hosts” numerous areas of migration for birds. The Central Belt’s flora becomes a background seen in which winged and non-winged beasts are given a respite from human activity in the Belt and have resettled the area. To steward and conserve this region into an ecological network is a human-act of rewilding following from the rewilding actions of nonhuman nature itself. But this resettlement of beasts across borders is enacted through a transboundary, biomic governance. As Flath argues, the “successful protection and consistent management in the sphere of nature conservation is only possible through transnational action” (Flath, 2004, p. 15). As discussed in the next section, this has happened whilst the Central Region and in particular Germany’s materialisation of history has transformed the Anthropocene ruins in the former border space into a model sustainable tourism who’s economic gain to the region provides the necessary funds for stewarding biodiversity conservation in the area. Border- defying agents thus still require an international authority. 2.0 Governing the Central Hub’s Natural Heritage Sustainable action in the CGB and GGB is enacted in the conservation of the flora, fauna and grey infrastructure. As discussed in previous chapters, the conservation of grey and green infrastructure requires a delineation of that which needs protection, has value, and is different from others. The first section of this chapter addressed the mapping and of flora and fauna as pearls against rhetorical gaps. Gaps and pearls are rhetorical Figures. Cartography is not an objective science, but a political one. Maps represent a cultural politics through symbolic practices. They semiotically organise a space through value judgements. Cultural geography speaks. The delineation between these concepts is in part dependent on how Western cultures symbolically interpret human–nonhuman nature relations. These are the actions of a rhetorical geography in an Anthropocene action of biomic politics. 2.1 Mapping requires differentiation. As discussed in previous chapters, the organisation of the Belt regions took time. A mapping of the boundaries of the Central and German Green Belts began with 218 the differentiation between valued and non-valued referents in the delineated border spaces. 1980 German environmentalists pre-empted modern-day environmental action within the former border by calling for national and international conservation of the newly developed ecologies in the inner-German border before the Iron Curtain fell. These new ecosystems were given a German polity bios due their intensity of flora and fauna and hosting of rare and endangered species, in comparison to the surrounding German land. As discovered in chapter three, however, nonhuman nature knows no boundaries, and thus expanded beyond the Iron Curtain blueprints as the areas surrounding the border were also sparse with human interference. The demarcation of bios and zōē thus lay on interpretation by the state and its biopolitical actors. In the early 1990s, a newly united Germany necessarily saw infrastructure development closing in on this former border. Action thus needed to take place to designate a value referent for the protection of these ecologies within the former border space. This distinction between ecologies that deserved preservation against the “outside”, backgrounded land became imbued with a Foucaldian biopolitics. The drawing of boundaries in part was reliant on where valued nonhuman natures and ecologies were situated in relation to the original Iron Curtain borders. Ecological entities within the border space the Belt were given an ecological bios against a nonhuman nature zōē . Entrance to the EGB polis waxed and waned as ecosystems, habitats, nonhuman nature reserves and national parks defied former boundaries and expanded into the backgrounded environment in which the Iron Curtain formerly resided. Moreover, further ecosystems gained entry into the ecological network in order to fulfil semiotically potent gaps against ecologically sound pearls. The GGB thus supported, and continues today to flourish, as a cross- section of German natural biodiversity and historical landscapes, combining coasts with border towers- turned-museums, lowlands forming the Fulda Gap, rivers as former borders, forests as eco-tourist haunts, 219 and low mountain regions as human habitats. Culture and rhetoric have converged through a rhetorical geography. 2.2 A retreat for the threatened. Conservation of habitats along the former inner-border has been a key policy since the last century. The mapping of those ecosystems and habitats to be conserved in part has depended on what was considered threatened. The classification of an ecosystem as at risk necessitates action in the Anthropocene. The GGB has been designated as a space for flora and fauna facing extinction in the Anthropocene. In 2012, the GGB was categorised as home to over 1,200 threatened animal and plant species. 63.3% of the GGB area, including no less than 76.4% of the open countryside, was accounted for by endangered habitat types (BfNb, n.d.). Consequently, in that same year, 68% of the GGB was protected through conservation, biosphere reserves, national park status, or becoming a Natura 2000 site, with threatened habitats including fallow grassland, shrub land, dry grassland, pioneer forest, wet meadows, water bodies and bogs (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2006, p. 47). Conservation spaces for those at risk in the Central Belt abound. The designation of bios for these novel ecosystems in the GGB enacted a dual function for the central states. They not only increased the range and number of biodiverse ecosystem in and of themselves, but as flora also provide a home to other threatened fauna. Situated within an intensively used landscape, the CGB has thus become a last “unique retreat” for the mapped endangered species in the region (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 136; Geidezis & Kreutz, 2006, p. 47). Foreshadowed in the previous section, this notion of the EGB spaces as a retreat from the ruins of modernity is still invoked throughout GGB and CGB literatures. Semiotically, a retreat for flora and fauna implies a break from that which exhausts them as resources—specifically, human intervention. Nonhuman nature is thus conceptually invoked in two different ways simultaneously. It is both agentic flora and fauna, as well as backgrounded “landscape” into which this lively nonhuman nature is placed. The background, figurative retreat is materially 220 constructed out of various threatened habitats. The retreat thus flourishes with life against the sixth extinction of the Anthropocene. 2.3 The wilderness of the peopleless German Green Belt. This mapping of valued life eventually extended from the nonhuman to the human as the construction of the Belt took hold. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German government has faced significant resistance from environmental groups regarding human repopulation of the border space. Humans have swung from the conservationists of nonhuman natures to their geographic rivals. In 1996, a border land law decreed that former Belt landowners who had parcels of land seized by the GDR government could have these plots returned. But conversely, conservationists invoked the topos of extinction and framed the law as posing a significant threat towards the GGB biome. A study in 2004 did find that 13% of the GGB was “impaired or destroyed” by development, afforestation, intensive grazing, arable farming, tipping and quarrying (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 136). Although this Figure alone could not provide a comparative examination of land outside the GGB, or a comparison between other Belt regions, as time wore on, nonhuman nature conservation has prevailed. Humans who used, or currently did, reside in the former border zone, were beginning to be reclassified as zōē . This action within the GGB has differed significantly from its Fennoscandian counterparts. FGB conservationists have sought to highlight human–nonhuman nature relationships in a circular act of facilitation—an enaction of an Anthropocene rhetoric. Conversely, this section argues that the GGB conservationists have been turning backwards towards a Cartesian relations with the natural world. The land as the backgrounded environment within which flora and fauna could flourish, segregated from human hands, has become a key GGB rhetorical frame. Whilst the Fennoscandian region continues a tradition of supporting local cultures situated latitudinally as well as longitudinally, GGB conservationists see human action on the land as the biggest threat against a truly holistic biome (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, 221 p. 136). Such discrepancies are the materialisation of a power dynamic in which humans are the masters and interpreters of nonhuman nature and the environment. Whilst normally it is human culture that is granted legitimation over nonhuman nature needs, I argue that GGB biomic actors turn the tables in a separation of humans and nonhumans situated within a Cartesian dualism. German actors attempt to rectify normal imbalances rather than attempting an Fennoscandian harmonisation of human and nonhumans. Placing nonhuman nature in a literal separate region from humans may conserve biodiversity, but it still speaks to an ideology in which humans are the cultivating masters over the environment. This ideology does not encourage significant deep change in human–nonhuman nature relations. Thus, rather than asking for ecological attunement, I portend that the German biomic actors have taken concerns regarding human action to the extreme: removing human populations from the land against a topos of extinction. 2.3a A topos of wild extinction. Today, the GGB and CGB are still threatened by agriculture, the tightest road network in Europe, industrial parks, and the rewilding of the Belt with non-indigenous species. A topos of extinction in the Anthropocene has created a narrative in which humans, and human action, are threatening villains. For the GGB, the federal government itself was considered a danger to the biome as it started to sell mapped GGB land on the free real estate market. NGOs protested the sale and a 2003 agreement put forth by the Minister of Environment declared that federally owned land within the GGB could be transferred to state ownership for nonhuman nature conservation purposes (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2006, p. 50). However, by 2004, this mission, although agreed by the government, had not been implemented. Approximately 65% of GGB land was federally owned; 20% of land was privately owned; 13% was owned by municipalities; and around 2% was owned by NGOs, specifically mostly by BUND (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2006, p. 50). Following a lack of action, in November 2005 the new federal government reframed the GGB land as “national natural heritage” in their coalition agreement. A national, 222 natural, heritage specifies the GGB as an ecological memory site. This thus gave the GGB the important position as ideological keeper of a nationalistic legacy. In keeping with this action, the government then announced the transfer of the land into state protection once more (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2006, p. 50). Today, this has resulted in approximately 85% of the GGB yet to be degraded through intensively used arable or grassland, forest plantations, or streets and buildings. To reframe the GGB as valued, national heritage recalls the string of pearls analogy. Prized, protected land provides an antithesis to a topos of extinction. The notion of pearls was and is a semiotically significant choice that frames ecosystems as rare precious jewels to be cherished, upon which the string is the degraded land. “Gaps” are a symbolic move of the negative—for Burke a human creation—to that which does not exist. Pearls are the precious resource that must be fought to be conserved. For the CGB and the GGB, these gaps were constituted primarily through villainous human action—accelerated development along the Belt since 1989. This rhetoric thus presents a conflict between conservation and human land usage (BfNb, n.d.). In 2019, gaps still exist in the EGB and its individual regions. BUND and BfN consistently use the analogy of the EGB string of pearls to become a ribbon—a fully formed, complete biome. This ribbonous biome thus thwarts extinction, and creates a topos of thriving. Such a desire for thriving has led BUND— as a local actor acting on behalf of the state—to buy private land that is GGB territory in a move of biomic reterritorialization (Personal correspondence, 2016). This becomes a possibility by BUND, and the German government offering a land swap to locals who are living in GGB designated space to another area outside the Belt. This buy-out is financed through donors buying “Green Share Certificates” for 65 Euros, who then become a symbolic shareholder in the GGB. BUND argues that Land purchase is mostly the only way to protect habitats in the long run from destruction. In four areas along the Green Belt BUND is buying unique habitats from private owners—up to now 223 around 210 ha. On the BUND-owned land implementation measures for protection and development of the Green Belt are carried out. (Geidezis & Kreutz, 2004, p. 136.) Moving people off the GGB land is thus not only a biomic move that conceptualises the GGB pearls as a ribbon through political economic practices, enclosing the land for conservation. Rather, it is specifically creating a thriving ribbon that is considered “wild”. 2.3b Holocene thinking of the wild. This inquiry that the notion of the wild is once again a key notion in the Belt. The FGB cultivates a rhetorical wild in relation to the remoteness and difficult in human habitation of the Arctic. Further south, I argue that a comparative yet different notion of the wild is created. In the GGB, I posit that the wild is constructed specifically without human actants, rather than humans needing to become ecologically attuned to the land in order to thrive. In a terministic screen of retreat, I argue that the conceptualisation of the GGB land as landscaped, cultivated “wilderness” is what allows for floras and faunas to return and regrow in the region. Goodbody and Rigby (2011) argue that the wild in Europe opposes the relatively dense population on the continent, and thus differs to American concepts of the vast untamed wild, as European world build has tended towards the culturally landscaped wild—the pastoral. This is a domesticated and even artificial nonhuman nature dependent for its survival on the diversity of European human agency, socio-political structures, narratives and cultures (pp. 2-3). Whilst GGB actors are trying to rectify power imbalances in human–nonhuman nature relations, this inquiry portends that the GGB framings of nonhuman nature in a peopleless wild is still a human-centric lens through which nonhuman nature is viewed. The wild is made meaningful both as an empirical term of measurement and as a symbol that posits a direction and goal to marshal resistance. This Cartesian dualism returns action back towards a Holocene rhetoric. 2.4 Stewarding the wilderness. The constitution of the wild is a complex endeavour of the pastoral Europe’s geography. I argue in this dissertation that to an extent, all the wilds of the EGB nonhuman 224 natures have been cultivated by human stewards in one form or another. The creation of a wilderness itself requires human action—a stewardship to map and preserve this peopleless land against the evils of human exploits. In creating the wild, humanity is Aoki et al.’s Master Naturalist, as a cluster of human actors that define and conceive of nonhuman nature by its anthro-use (p. 239). The Master Naturalist infers stewardship over the Earth, nonhuman nature and natural resources, because human agency is always remaking the “natural” world (Aoki et al., 2010, p. 240). I thus see human agency in the EGB as enacting this Master Naturalist strategy despite the best of intentions regarding the natural world. For the EGB, humanity’s recognition of these novel ecologies to be conserved necessarily brings back the human interference whose lack necessitated these ecosystem’s existence in the first place (Allison & Bloomfield, 2019, p. 14). In contrast to the FGB, I argue that the GGB has been cultivated by human hands into a 21 st century wilderness where, conversely, humans are welcomed only as visitors. As a retreat for flora and fauna to literally rewild the nation-state, the GGB is stewarded into a unique site that opposes human productive labour or settlement. Rather, the GGB wilderness has been cultivated to represent a sublime retreat for nonhumans to live, and for humans to play, in the Anthropocene. As human actors paradoxically speak on what they consider as the behalf of nonhuman natures, ultimately, I argue that this creation of the wild in the peopleless Belt is used as a rhetorical act of reparation against humanity’s ills in the Anthropocene. This stewardship is considered an anthropocentric move that is at odds with certain environmental practices. As Allison and Bloomfield (2018) argue, stewarding the wild as nonhuman nature conservation inevitably preserves a culture/nonhuman nature binary. Timo Maran (2014) posits that the preservation of natural environments should be necessary include their non-material component—cultural traditions, or intangible heritage—which differ from dualistic nonhuman nature preservation based on a conception of wilderness. Maran’s argument is akin to Rachel Carson’s argument, the ethics of deep ecologists, and 225 Bennett’s vital materialism as discussed earlier in this dissertation. All authors attempt to give nonhuman nature an agency and an inherent value beyond human valuation. And yet. Unlike action in the FGB that sees a harmony between indigenous peoples and the nonhuman, the desire to cultivate a peopleless wild results in local vernacular discourses in the CGB being discredited as lacking an ecosystem designation. The removal of local central European people off the land, whose claim to it may accumulate centuries (except during the Iron Curtain years), risks losing important local environmental knowledge that could contribute to conservation efforts. Rather than a balance in the polis, the locals are currently appraised with zōē . I portend that ecological attunement between humans and nonhumans in this region is thus unbalanced. Local, vernacular voices are denied a voice in the polis, thus denying their ecological experience from their attachment to the land. Humans are ultimately are considered as potential pollutants of the natural landscape. Land use regulations made by NGOs, as well as governmental actors, can result in: a few cases, [where] perhaps especially tragic local groups have been displaced to create national parks and reserves to ‘conserve’ the forest. Fortunately, most conservation bodies are now aware that, if a group has been using and managing a forest for several thousand years, throwing it off the land is more apt to destroy the forest ecosystem than to preserve it. (Sutton, 2004, p. 302.) This inquiry argues that humans in the CGB and GGB are ultimately reduced to zōē , whilst nonhuman nature is promoted to bios in the polis of biomically governed nonhuman nature conservation. The Central European NGOs, acting on behalf of the state, ask for access to be limited to eco-tourism. This peopleless land pushes against an EGB framework that promotes sustainable human-nonhuman nature relations. Cultivating the wild in the pastoral is tricky. This negation of civilian human action in the former Central border finds tensions. Despite concerns from certain environmentalist scholars regarding the cultivation of the symbolic, peopleless wild, this still offers vast appeal to other environmentalists and 226 biomic actors in the EGB Anthropocene. As we see with the GGB, the cultural convergence of a retreating wilderness with biological diversity has created an imperative to preserve peopleless landscapes as an act of repentance against humanity’s ills on the environment in the Anthropocene, rather than supporting what I argue is a true Anthropocenic pastoral: humans and nonhumans together in the same conceptual sphere. These conclusions were ultimately supported by information collected in my interviews alongside my participant-observation at the Pan-European Green Belt conference. Here, it became clear that the biomic power enacted by the CGB Regional Coordinator, and the GGB Focal Point on behalf of the state, was being used to create this European peopleless wild. A peopleless landscape where the former Curtain once laid was revealed to be a leading preservationist rhetoric for this region of the EGB. Despite this wild being peppered with grey infrastructures of the Cold War, ultimately, contemporary human actions within the designated CGB have not, and continue to be, unwelcomed. 2.4a Stewarding the wilderness in an Anthropocene rhetoric. The creation and continued existence of the GGB is enabled through human action in the Anthropocene. This thus leads to a question: what does an Anthropocene rhetoric provide to the survival of these novel ecosystems that is also dependent on future human action and stewardship? German biomic actors govern local cultures and peoples by dictating where they live, their livelihoods and how they practice local traditions. This cultivation of a particular type of wild landscape both negates human interference and at the same time is dependent on it. Furthermore, the remnants of humanity and the Anthropocene cannot be denied as they constitute the Belt with their nonhuman neighbours. Human and nonhuman history are entwined. This inquiry argues that the Iron Curtain relics of the Anthropocene position nonhuman nature in two differing frames. The first is a peopleless wild; the second is the anthropo-landscape. Both are stewarded by humans. Ultimately, I argue that human agency remaking nonhuman nature is an Anthropocene-causing activity, but also provides a counter to an Anthropocene rhetoric. Whilst Holocene 227 thinking regarding nonhuman nature privileged the wild as a backgrounded environmental space, an Anthropocene rhetoric considers human and geological histories (which is in part configured as time) alongside the space in which they symbolically perform. This is the material turn as outlined in chapter one as essential for an Anthropocene rhetoric. The material of the EGB is highlighted in its proclamation of “Borders Separate. Nature Unites!”, which turns an inter- and inner-country border of separation (whether between east and west or delineation of different ecosystems) into a unified whole. This creates an Anthropocene politicised and historical topographical space: a “natural monument” to human and geological histories (European Green Belt Association, 2018a, p. 2). Nonhuman nature has turned time into a dynamic, politicised public memory that reinvigorates a European identity in relation to the land. 3.0 A Memorialising Landscape The FGB was a remote wild with little ruins to attest to the division of Europe. The CGB acts as the FGB’s opposite. With the CGB including the inner-German border, these remnants of history litter the landscape. These Iron Curtain relics are vital to the construction of the biome as the EGB-defined natural monument. This chapter considers how the grey infrastructures intersect with the nonhuman natures in the region in order to create a multimodal argumentative, memorialising landscape. Ruins from the Anthropocene work together with nonhuman nature to create a unique Janus-faced vista. As discussed in the previous section, the cartographic work in mapping, cultivating and conserving the GGB is an exercise in rhetorical geography. The nonhuman natures of the land perform semiotic, argumentative work for human actors. The communicative toil of the landscape significantly hinges on the symbolic work the nonhuman natures accomplish. This rhetorical work expands argumentation beyond language into the visual and multimodal. Visual and multimodal argumentation pushes the boundaries of traditional notions of argument (Blair, 2015; Birdsell and Groarke, 2007; Gilbert, 1994; Groarke, 2015; Kjeldsen, 2015; Lake & Pickering, 228 1998). Visual arguments require the construct of an interpreter or audience (Blair, 2015), where an “invitation to inference” (Groarke, 2015, pp. 68-9) involves premises and conclusions that go beyond the propositional. Gilbert argues that beyond reasoned linearity, the emotional, visceral and intuitive realm becomes part of the argumentative structure (Gilbert, 1994). Non-linguistic communicative objects “in the wild” are interpreted by a human audience: the who, what, where and why. The colour, shape, size and placement of a (material or natural) object in comparison to other objects and the wider landscape has a semiotic function. Linguistic supports may be found in conjunction with these objects. Furthermore, second-order discourses can be inferred through cultural knowledge. But being exposed to a discourse is not the same as physically experiencing the artefacts of conservation or other such material sites. Rather, Gilbert’s visceral, kisceral experience, as language, visuals and materials are experienced, are interconnected and dynamic argumentative resources that work with media and cultural discourses. The material has a symbolic, argumentative, and propositional function that needs to be accounted for. The kisceral then becomes the emotive feeling of the experiential. The CGB finds tension as both a site of conservation and historical memory. Relics, as abandoned spaces that are time capsules—material performances of a culture from the past—bring a new aspect to the concept of wild. The constitution of the GGB as a “natural monument” by the German federal government in 2009 is a conceptual blend of two differing notions: a wild, unbordered nonhuman nature as green infrastructure; and human-erected grey infrastructure to signal an object of cultural, historical significance—a catalyst of public memory. The IUCN posits the primary objective of natural monuments as “to protect specific outstanding natural features and their associated biodiversity and habitats” (IUCN, n.d.). Termed “Category III protected areas”, they can include natural geological and geomorphological features, culturally-influenced natural features, natural-cultural sites (such as sacred natural sites), and cultural sites with an associated ecology. The GGB intersects a number of these different Category III 229 areas, but speaks strongest as a culturally influenced site, as human hands make and remake these individuals ecologies into a holistic ecological network. The multimodal argumentative work of the GGB hence invokes cultural, second-order discourses as a memory site as well as a space of environmental importance for present and future concerns. The GGB is a propositional Figure in the hands of the nation- state. 3.1 The vista is rhetorical. To explore the GGB as a multimodal argumentative site, my fieldwork in Germany led me to trace the descent of the GGB from the Baltic Sea to the border with the Czech Republic. To conduct such research in the field, I had to significantly prime my fieldwork through cultural knowledge and public memory of the Cold War and the EGB, passed along through discourses present in the media. As I began this inquiry, my first experience of the GGB was through the extensive reporting on the GGB region as the model example for the larger EGB project. The GGB is by far the most extensively covered section of the GGB, in part due to its Iron Curtain material presence as well as the significance of German governance for the project. I thus began my examination of the EGB from its German vantage point. I analysed these extensive materials before planning my fieldwork along the GGB itself, thus exposing myself to the second-order discourses regarding the history as well as future intentions of the project. The linguistic and visual argumentative work of the GGB foreshadowed the multimodal argumentative work that was to come in visiting the GGB itself. In the summer of 2016 I travelled the entire length of the former inner-border, following as closely as possible the winding biome across and down the country. Planning my route with stops at particularly interesting sites was conducted via a variety of digital and analogue materials, including Michael Cramer’s ICT Bikeline books. Practically, it was not possible to cycle the GGB and EGB. Rather, I drove the route as closely and carefully as possible, in order to spot unique spots, vistas, ruins, eco-tourist sites and more. 230 My attendance at the GGB was thus to move from outsider to participant in the cultivation of a public memory. Figure 34: Road sign indexing where the German Green Belt, or Grünes Band, weaves from the main road in Berg, Bavaria. Note the use of the EGB icon. Photograph author’s own. The GGB vista is an unique multimodal experience for the conservationist or eco-tourist. A vista is conceptually a pleasing view, a mental view of a succession of events, or both. Additionally, Pezzullo argues that a vista is an avenue or passage, especially when formally planned (Pezzullo, 2007, p. 96). As a vista, the former border is both a passage for travel and a view of the landscape. Throughout my fieldwork the GGB was the only section that identified the Green Belt consistently in road and other signages (see Figure 34). And yet. Even with my contextual knowledge, and the desire to make a visual distinction between the GGB and the non-designated nonhuman natures, this proved a difficult task. I often found it 231 difficult to distinguish the GGB additional flora and fauna in comparison to the German countryside. The vista for the GGB (and the rest of the EGB) consequently also becomes a far-reaching mental view: it became part of my environmental imaginary, rather than a truly experiential understanding. A potential source of priming is the bird’s eye view (as seen in chapter one in Figure five) offered by EGB official, promotional materials. This priming comes from the contextual knowledge in visiting these often indistinguishable nonhuman nature spaces punctuated with ruins. The multimodal argument comes alive in these liminal spaces. For myself and the majority of tourists, it is impossible to reach a high or vast enough position in order to pick out the green ribbon for yourself, except for a sporadic glimpse as you travel across tall bridges. However, through an environmental imaginary I was able to make a virtual distinction, with a deeper, contextual understanding of the landscape before me. It was only through mediated sources such as photographs or videos that accompanied me on my fieldwork, accessible on a simple smartphone or tablet, that I was able to feel more present as truly within a separate, delineated space. The environmental imaginary thus became a hyper-real experience. One question thus became significant during my fieldwork. If the GGB is not distinguishable, how does the eco-tourist fully experience these sites? The kisceral, visceral, multimodal experience of the GGB (as well as EGB) often lacks detailed and immediate discursive information. Whilst travelling the GGB, maps, contextual knowledge and modern-day satellite navigation allowed me as a scholarly tourist to distinguish zōē countryside from the bios of conserved EGB nonhuman natures. However, it is unlikely that the everyday tourist is equipped with such information. For example, Figure 35, in the Middle Elbe Biosphere Reserve, Germany, is the only linguistic-offering that provides the contextual information needed for the traveller to discern that they have moved from simple “countryside” to the designated conservation status. It is this cultural knowledge that infuses the nonhuman natures as a symbol of unifying peace, as well as a climate mitigation strategy. 232 Figure 35: An example of nonhuman nature information within the GGB countryside. Photograph author's own. 3.2 Multimodal argument of ruins and nonhuman natures. The experience of the Belt combined with the environmental imaginary sets the scene for this unique experience along the GGB. Within a few days of my journey following the route of the former inner-German border, I saw a variety of ruins from the Cold War. The GGB was juxtaposing multiple contradictory green and grey elements. For the GGB, what separates out these green spaces is its functioning as an open-air museum. Ruins interspersed with nonhuman natures, often overgrown, began to construct a narrative of what makes these spaces unique as I traversed the Belt. The pastoral landscape became a frame for the attention of a listener into its narrative (Ingold, 1993, p. 153). This peopleless pastoral vista Figured differently in time and space in comparison to the FGB. Nonhuman natures in the FGB were often more dramatic to my British 233 sensibilities. Wide dividing rivers, mountains, rare forests and reindeer are unusual sites that prompted the kisceral. But these landscapes also were an enduring record and testimony to the lives and works of past generations. During the 2016 conference, we were constantly inundated with information about the local Karelians. We visited buildings—sacred, old, but in use. The traditional use of saunas, in an outside wooden building surrounded by snow, was encouraged after long dinners followed by local, Sámi liquor. In the FGB, the forests and Sámpi landscape were a testimony to the indigenous peoples and settlers that reside and work in the region. In contrast, my experience along the GGB was far different. Rather than presenting culture in situ in real time anthro-action, GGB cultural infrastructures were static artefacts in the service of an argument. Overall, I argue that semiotic pieces to designate the GGB’s cultural heritage go far beyond the symbolicity of plaques, signs and other such items. Argumentative artefacts include the ruins of Soviet and capitalist ideology at war: border defences and border towers. Figure 36: An example of GDR roads that are preserved weaving throughout the German landscape. Photograph author’s own. 234 Although unique relics such as the potato feeder on the German Baltic Sea remain (this is discussed in the next chapter), in fieldwork I noted three significant, repeating infrastructures: former GDR roads now preserved by the German government, hinting at the route of the former border as they weave in and out of the GGB landscape (see Figure 36); GDR country signposts with the GDR colours (see Figure 37); and former East German border watchtowers (see Figure 38). protected by the German government, are kept as pathways through the GGB nonhuman natures. Traversing these GDR pathways is a catalyst for public memory, as one moves past rusting ruins from the Cold War now overrun by the GGB nonhuman natures. The knowledge that you are travelling on a road that previously divided the country, now unified by boundary defying nonhuman nature, requires cultural priming. This is in part offered through the sporadic appearance of a repetitive contemporary sign (see Figure 39), that provides the needed contextual framework to these oddities amongst the landscape. A united Germany has installed brown heritage signs on the non-GDR roads that run alongside these historical paths. Written in German, the sign approximately translates as “Here Germany and Europe were divided until 18 November 1989 at 6 o'clock”. Marking where the country was formally divided, these relics and signs celebrate the reunification of Germany across the former border line, amongst the Green Belt nonhuman natures. The relics combined with the nonhuman natures makes for a rhetorical as well as historical vista. 235 Figure 37: An example of the GDR signs dotted through the German countryside along the former Curtain border. Photograph author's own. Figure 38: One of the many border towers and memorials that pepper the German landscape. This tower is part of Hötensleben Border Memorial. Photograph author’s own. 236 Figure 39: One of the many brown heritage signs that mark the site of German division across the country. The sign roughly translates to "Here was Germany and Europe divided until the 18th November 1989 at 6 o'clock". Photograph author's own. In this inquiry, I argue that the wealth of relics in Germany compared to the rest of the EGB is significant. Many are overgrown by nonhuman nature: unrecognisable and alien. Many also lack descriptors. Their diversity makes them puzzle pieces; signifiers in the landscape to a former time. They require historical and cultural knowledge to understand what they are, why they are still there, and what the reasoning is for their preservation. These ruins are positioned specifically to a time immortalised, never forgotten but never truly forgiven either. Ruins and nonhuman natures portend a different argument: the destructive force of humans and their relics of war—of Anthropocene action. The border thus frames past action is in silent traces, seen in an argumentative preservation. 3.3 The constitution of memorialising relics in the wild. The many material indicators to the division of Germany are still present along this former border. But I argue that the nonhuman natures that “ha[ve] been left to [their] own devices here, not because we want to forget, but because we want to remember” (BUND, 2017, p. 3) also act as indexical to a war now gone. The artefacts of ideological and corporeal division in Germany offer repetitive multimodal artefacts that speak to the past, present and 237 future simultaneously. In speaking to the present and future, this inquiry portends that the Iron Curtain ruins of the Anthropocene have been modified and repurposed by the discourses of the German biomic apparatuses for present consumption (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, p. 10). Relics have become re-used for consumption and performance; for both passive viewing and active engagement with their human visitor. The repetition of relics alongside contemporary heritage signs (see Figure 39) solidify the argument made by the nation-state that the atrocities of division should never again be repeated. Overall, the second-order discourses that frame the argumentative, multimodal work of the ruins makes for a rhetorical geography of this living, natural ecological network. As symbolic, actualised memory pieces of the sins of the past, they also look to an ecological future. In one of the few scholarly writings on the GGB, Jüri Pärn (2011) examined the relics of the Balkan Green Belt and refered to relics from (any) war as “military heritage objects”. The continued presence of grey infrastructures as military heritage objects becomes a Kairotic act that depends on several characteristics: re-usability; recyclability; propaganda value; and durability (p. 16). Re-usability exists in various forms. Some relics, as with the border towers of the EGB, become re-used for present gains; others are re-used as memory sites. Memory sites invite reflection and contemplation from the tourist through the kisceral. The presence of these military heritage objects in conjunction with second-order discourses create a multimodal proposition regarding remembering and forgetting the past. The preserved presence of these artefacts of war may not stretch towards propaganda, but their conserved existence does have propositional value to the state, the EGB Association, and the EU. Their durability, on the other hand, is questionable. Most of the relics I came across at the border lacked a structural permanence. Rusting and falling apart, this lack of durability is a product of post-1950s construction called “economisation”—the use of the cheapest, most readily available materials (Pärn, 2012, p. 21). These relics do not spring confidence in their ability to last in comparison to other ruins of war. The German state 238 insists on their presence, but their lack of durability appears to be part of their signification. Purposeful neglect pushes against a public memory that is boosted by a tangible, material artefact. The ruins’ lack of durability is almost a testament to unenduring Soviet ideology. 3.3a Border towers speak to transcendence. Out of all the relics across the EGB, the border towers represent a repeating theme. From disrepair to renovation, the border towers offer a continuous, networked reminder of history. Part of the rhetorical power of these border towers that have remained standing has been their repurposing beyond the narration of human history. Many have become watching towers for the observation of nonhuman nature, as visitors enact their ecotourist gaze either upon these relics or, climbing in and upon these monuments, the bird’s eye vista that elevated position affords. One notable tower is in the town of Gosdorf, Austria which has the particularly rare instance of a newly built tower—the Murturm Nature Observation Tower (see Figure 40). Both the border tower at Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park and the Murturm Tower are past and present representations of human interference in the Belt. They are the materialisations of a non-conventional, cold war—former iterations of security, surveillance and distrust—and the resulting green and grey infrastructure. 96 Høyden in Norway asks for a forgiveness: its juxtaposition against the nonhuman nature and its repurposing is an atonement to the sins of the past. In contrast, the Murturm Tower offers the opportunity to gaze over the already anthropogenically-cultivated CGB nonhuman natures by providing a dedicated space whose primary function is nonhuman nature observation (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018). This move goes beyond reuse of the ruins of the Anthropocene. Rather, this new structure purports Anthropocene adaptation. 239 Figure 40: Murturm Nature Observation Tower in Gosdorf, Austria in the Central European Greenbelt. Copyright Elias Panner. The Murturm Tower is unique amongst the ruins of the Belt. And yet, it still symbolically and physically resonates with many of the converted watch towers. Its positioning as a tall observation station provides the same function as 96 Høyden. Its difference in argumentation lies in materials and origins, but both represent human interference and the meeting of human desires in the Belt. Murturm’s symbolic action is not of environmental degradation but as a symbol of worship for nonhuman nature—for peace. In a spiralling metal framework resembling DNA, the Murturm Tower visually and experientially nods towards the collapse of architectural technologies and organic material, while simultaneously refusing to blend in or contribute to the surrounding nonhuman nature. From an ecosemiotic standpoint, the environmental perception of organic, “natural” structures was built into the construction of this 240 environmental structure. Whilst seeing old, decrepit ruins against the flourishing nonhuman nature is a inharmonious sight of decay versus life, the Murturm Tower is jarring for its differing visuality. An unorganic shiny bright silver in comparison to dull rusty ruins, the Tower is a rare example of modern technologies embraced in the EGB. It imbues a sense of progression and vitality in the visitor: appealing purely to hope without guilt. As the visitor traverses its spiralling shape, such optimism crescendos with anticipation as they ascend to the promised visual feast at the top of the tower. And yet, the view at the top of either tower makes a visual argument towards the same claim—that life, peace and unification has won over the division of Europe. Through their rhetorical materiality, these towers symbolise transcendence while also performing it, as they provide a watchful gaze on the birds enabled by peaceful, international conservation efforts. In ascending either tower, this bird watching becomes a bird’s eye view over the environment. The Initiative’s argument regarding both the preservation of cultural and natural heritage is thus multimodally cohesive. The Initiative’s argument is presented without the necessity of words as nonhuman nature and technology are once again fused in their presentational form. To watch from both towers is thus to view the EGB vista as gestalt. Aoki et al. argue that this bird’s eye view at the top of the museum is the perfect embodiment of the Master Naturalist, who is able at once to perceive nonhuman nature and read it, remake it, occupy it and possess it. The tourist gaze offered to the visitor at Murturm and other such towers is created to honour the EGB nonhuman natures through this panoramic view. But yet, to offer a panoramic vista upon the EGB is also to become a representation of human intervention in the former border space as discussed in the previous section. The panorama denotes how that the EGB is preserved by human objectification of the wild frontier. Ultimately, the directed movement in these towers is a major rhetorical move that directs the visitor to read the material and symbolic supports in a particular way—to view nonhuman nature as 241 owned by the human. The nonhuman nature in the CGB, landscaped in this open-air museum, is a simulacra: the pastoral presented as the wild. 3.4 Eco-tourism as rational amusement. This memorialised landscape of the open-air museum of the GGB becomes an invitation to eco-tourism. As with the FGB, traversing the GGB is promoted as an eco-tourist option through its existence as the ICT, although the weather in this region is certainly kinder to the cyclist than further north (see Figure 41). Here, GDR roads, pathways and other former traversable relics are repurposed as this eco-tourist gambit. Accompanying signs are normally situated where paths are not obvious or diverge. EuroVelo 13 signs depicting where the ICT lays are far more occasional, despite the long-distance cycling network originating in Germany. Overall, during my fieldwork I witnessed the largest variety of signage for either the ICT or the EGB descending the GGB. Indexical to the project, these signs pointed to pathways, nonhuman nature reserves, conservation areas, museums, trails and more. And yet, their existence was sporadic at best. Many were just visual, symbolic indicators to a larger cultural scheme beyond pathways and conservation sites for the eco-tourist. Words were often absent, thus invoking a multimodal inference. Figure 41: Sign pointing to the repurposed GDR road, now EuroVelo 13 cycle path, in Amt Neuhaus, District of Lüneburg, Lower Saxony. Photograph author’s own. 242 The correlation between the number of signs and the number of tourists in Germany is perhaps indicative of a larger cultural behaviour. Apart from my attendance at the 2016 conference, I encountered in Germany by far the largest number of tourists and locals along the EGB. Cycling holidays are extremely popular in the region, which may account for this phenomenon. Furthermore, the desire to not forget the atrocities of history is now an inherent part of German culture. And yet. The combination of ruins, nonhuman natures and accessibility in this region also offers a particularly remarkable site for the tourist. Even more, the GGB provides a great opportunity for the environmentally-conscious tourist. Trail markings, educational sites and informational materials situated along the Belt invite visitors to objectify the GGB spaces to be consumed. Access-preservation reigns again. Tourists and locals engage with sites of the former border through promoted eco-tourist activities, and learn about history and nonhuman nature conservation at the same time. Pezzullo argues how “transportation choices have cultural histories and political consequences” (Pezzullo, 2007, p. 123). In vein of Pezzullo, I argue that cycling along the GGB as the ICT becomes a rhetorical argument towards ecological choices and the way in which the tourist experiences these nonhumans natures and ruins. Furthermore, these pathways afford a far more accessible site for walking and hiking in the region. In particular, this is comparable to the extreme landscapes and resulting weather in the FGB. Walking thus generates a connectedness to the land and the ruins, despite it appearing as an unremarkable and instrumental form of mobility (Pezzullo, 2007, p. 124). Eco-tourism is the zeitgeist of contemporary, climate-concerned times. 3.4a Eco-tourism as witnessing. The intangible and tangible heritage of a region draws the tourist. Tourists that are on an ecologically-minded vacation are considered to be eco-tourists. Pezzullo posits eco- tourism as a more specialised market within environment tourism, as it comes to distinguish touring not only at pleasurable, picturesque environmental sites, but those that include an overtly political agency (Pezzullo, 2007, p. 48). In such a sacrifice zone, ecotourism is a resistance to historical atrocities, and 243 encourages locals to become engaged in European climate mitigation actions despite the state governance over locally-perceived ownership of the land. The eco-tourist thus resembles the well-travelled tourist who is worldly and engages in different cultures and issues as a multicultural diplomat accruing Bourdieu’s cultural capital (Pezzullo, 2007, p. 25). The eco-tourist aims to witness a valued referent through the cultural, rhetorical geography of the land. The eco-tourist at the GGB serving as a witness to the aims of the project is an act of “witnessing” turned advocacy tourism (Di Chiro, 2000). By visiting these sites of division, Emma Willis (2014) argues that tourists can perform a commemorative, witnessing function that inscribes a commitment to prevent future occurrences (p. 18). But, these sites can also perpetuate a separation between tourists and those atrocities, thereby “suggest[ing] a total disavowal of any moral responsibility” for its occurrence (Willis, 2014, p. 29). Eco-tourism is thus not only about leisure, but is a mobiliser to give access to unfamiliar places a wider range of people. Ultimately, this then brings disparate populations together in a democratic movement for environmental justice (Pezzullo, 2007, pp. 12–3). 3.4b Sites of rational amusement. Concerns over ecotourism still reign today in the GGB. The German biomic actors begrudgingly accept eco-tourism as an important aspect to the project. But eco- tourism also serves as a foundation for rational amusement in the GGB. My interviews with key German staff revealed a frustration over the significant preference for eco-tourism for civilizans over any other German or European Green Belt initiative. Interviewees hinted at the fear of ecotourism as “selling out”. However, this concern over eco-tourism for the biomic actors in the GGB found one exception. Both GGB biomic actors were willing to engage with environmental education for the young, as this had a hidden agenda: the (hopeful) creation of a new generation of environmental activists. Children, with impassioned adults, are encouraged by these actors to visit the GGB as a site of educational entertainment—as discussed in chapter one, what I call a site of rational amusement. To encourage such 244 actions, one of my interviewees at BUND was proud to introduce me to “Bundy” (see Figure 42) a bright green soft toy of purposeful, indiscriminate species. Bundy was still in the final throws of production, but the interviewee had one to hand. The creation of Bundy is to engage children with the project and environmentalism, with his appealing animalistic yet anthropomorphised features. Bundy is a supplement to direct education in the field. Bundy’s colouring was chosen to echo the palette of greens used in the EGB official materials. Furthermore, his green stipe from his nose, along his back, to his tail, was to visually echo the green ribbon of the German project. Bundy is the unofficial material representation of the project. Figure 42: Bundy", the plush soft toy used to engage children in the GGB project. Photograph author's own. 3.4b.i The Educational Border Trail. Bundy is just one example of how education, nonhuman nature and ruins are intertwined along the GGB. During my fieldwork, I analysed a number of sites of rational 245 amusement along the border. I encountered many of these through detailed research, via following Cramer’s ICT Bikeline books that depict sights of interest, but more importantly, often luck. Off the beaten path were numerous, often relatively small and easy-to-miss sites of educational promise as ruins and nonhuman nature met. I present some key analyses in order of descent along the GGB. Figure 43: The Education Border Trail, documenting the development of the corporeal Iron Curtain in Germany. It begins as a wooden structure and moves over the years to fortified concrete. Located in Saxony-Anhalt. Photograph author's own. Within the first few days I encountered one unique example of eco-tourism in the GGB. The three and a half kilometre long Educational Border Trail (see Figure 43), situated as a nonhuman nature trail and site of rational amusement between the towns of Böckwitz in what was Eastern Germany and Zicherie in Western Germany, in the contemporary federal state of Saxony-Anhalt. The ICT book for the Central 246 European region itself suggested this as a site of importance. And yet, in the field, nothing argued in the affirmative that this site even existed, never mind as a significant memory site. The educational border trail is situated in a clearing amongst the lush GB nonhuman natures. This trail repurposes and documents the development of the border that divided these two towns. It takes the materials of division and refashions them into an education and cultural memory artefact for nationalities. This is Anthropocene recycling. The “border” on view is actually recycled parts from the Soviet section of the Iron Curtain in its different stages, showcasing a time-series of different iterations over the 40 years. Small signs accompany each section of the border, indicating when each transformation took place. The first iteration is a wooden fence that existed between the two towns as of May 1952. Almost 10 years later, this wooden fence was replaced with a double barbed wire fence as of August 1961; a meshed metal fence as of 1968; and then an actual concrete wall from 1979 onwards. The material transition of the border wall is indexical to the materialisations of increasing European tensions and division during the 20 th century. History is thus brought to life. It is one thing to learn about this in the history books; it is another to experience lessons from the past in four-dimensions, as different iterations of the border are presented side-by-side. This is once again juxtaposition at work. The kisceral offers a new dimension to the cultivation of public memory and learning. Situated alongside the recycled Educational Border Trail are SM70 mines, which were installed in July 1979 and dismantled in October 1984. These are supplemented by anti-vehicle ditches which secured the border from 1968 (ICT trail book 2, p. 136) and a signal fence at the end of the trail, erected as border security after 1968. Surrounded by the nonhuman natures of the GGB, these artefacts offer a literal frame for the Educational Border Trail, as they surround the repurposed GDR path that the tourists traverses. The trail crescendos towards an original East German observation tower (see Figure 44), with just a single sign in 247 German supplementing this visually argumentative trail. Ecotourism thus find conservation whilst equally necessitating conservation in order to maintain these natural artefacts to be observed by the tourist. Figure 44: Abandoned watch tower at the end of the Educational Border Trail in Saxony-Anhalt. Photograph author's own. The Educational Border Trail remains a conservation area despite its heavily ruined landscape. Whilst some informational materials on the nonhuman natures and the ruins signify the trail’s dual existence as an eco-tourist and historical memory site, little words are needed; cultural knowledge is expected. The Trail’s material relics become vibrant as historical artefacts that take a Janus-faced turn as they look to both the past and future simultaneously. The visitor is to imagine what “once-was-there” (Blair, Balthrop & Michel, 248 2013) through reading the landscape, the ditches, the road on which they travel, and the border’s partial reconstruction. The visitor is to imagine the border over a 40 year time span—a border that only exists in remnants, overtaken by nonhuman nature. But the visitor also learns about “what-now-is”: the former division and its resulting natural ecologies. The linden tree planted by the former German foreign minister Hans Dietrich Genscher on August 26, 1998 along the trail represents a now unified Germany (Figure 45). This small, literal Figure of peace is presented against the backdrop of the GGB nonhuman nature—its flora, forests and open fields. As both an educational and eco-tourist location, this Trail is an exemplar of rational amusement sites. Figure 45: The linden tree planted at the end of the Educational Border Trail in Saxony-Anhlat. The sign roughly translates to “German foreign minister Hans Dietrich Genscher planted this tree on August 26, 1998”. Photograph author’s own. 249 Figure 46: Sign to indicate the beginning of the West-Eastern Gate Trail in Eichsfeld. Note that the sign also incorporates the Grünes Band logo. Photograph author’s own. Figure 47: The West-Eastern Gate trail along an overgrown GDR convoy road. The trail is surrounded by a flourishing GGB nonhuman nature. Photograph author's own. 3.4b.ii West–Eastern Gate. Das WestÖstliche Tor (The West–Eastern Gate) in Eichsfeld is another hidden nonhuman nature trail set along a former GDR convoy road (see Figures 46 and 47). From the road, this trail weaves through an inclining and expanding vista of the GGB to the commemorative “gate”: two oak trunks which form an open gate, and two stainless steel bands—a western and eastern portion— 250 that are welded together on the ground (ICT book inner German border, p. 176). This gate commemorates that the two German states were divided along this trail, but are once again unified. The monument was selected through a design competition and officially opened on June 19, 2002 by Mikhail Gorbachev and the federal Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin. As with the Education Border Trail, the planting and gifting of trees—a Western grammar of peace and hope—enacts a symbolic olive branch towards previously warring factions. A grove of young beech trees planted at the commemorative opening of the West—Eastern Gate enact this repeating trope for peace. A s the inner-German ICT book argues, the grove is to stand “for a thriving growth between Western and Eastern Europe and for the attentive interaction with the nature reserve the ‘Green Belt’ which was created on the former border” (ICT book inner German border, p. 176). Figure 48: Juxtaposition of warning sign along with information on the GGB along the West-Eastern Gate Trail. Photograph author's own. 251 But this trail is not only an argument for peace. Along the nonhuman nature trail the visitor is warned about lively military heritage objects (Sepp, 2012)—landmines leftover from the border defences. These signs are jarringly juxtaposed with a signifier pointing to this as the Grünes Band (see Figure 48). The tourist, traversing the weaving former GDR convoy road through the scenic GGB landscape to the gate, is reminded of what it was that allowed these flourishing nonhuman natures to exist. Nonhuman nature and man-made objects interweave to allude to a public memory of the division of Europe as a literal sacrifice zone transformed into biome of natural beauty. And in reaching the monument, this serves as a reminder to the ecotourist that even a sacrifice zone can be transformed. Public memory serves its present function of a peaceful, continual reconciliation. 3.5 Biomic aversion to eco-tourism. Public memory and eco-tourism intertwine in the GGB. The presence of Cold War relics offer a unique landscape of rational amusement into which the tourist can experience and learn about history as well as future goals for the nation-state and Europe more generally. And yet. BUND and BfN find such eco-tourist exploits tricky. My interviews with key staff at these NGOs, as well as during the 2016 pan-European conference, revealed an inherent aversion to using eco- tourism to engage locals and visitors alike. Rather than eco-tourism, these biomic actors wanted locals and tourists to inherently understand the goals and needs of the project in and of themselves—a deep ecologist goal. Staff members involved in the EGB project felt that eco-tourism did not get to the heart of the issue. But engaging locals with a project that ultimately requires their removal from the land is problematic. Furthermore, such climate mitigation strategies are Timothy Morton’s (2013) hyperobjects—difficult to grasp as they are far beyond the immediately visible and visceral realms. Ultimately, I posit that this aversion to the benefits of eco-tourism echoes Pezzullo’s assertions in Toxic Tourism. Pezzullo notes that even though tourism is the largest industry across the globe, in Western culture we are not fond of tourists: tourism itself is seen as toxic (Pezzullo, 2007, p. 2). The disdainful 252 notion of “acting like a tourist” is “a prevalent euphemism for looking out of place, making inappropriate remarks, and generally displaying cultural ignorance without subtlety” (Pezzullo, 2007, p. 24). It engages with a notion of high and low culture—tourism being the latter—which Raymond Williams (1974) debunked in his argument that all culture is itself ordinary. All culture can attract tourists. The green and the grey infrastructures of the Central and German Green Belt offers an exemplar of rational amusement and eco-tourism on the continent. To examine this in further detail, I thus turn to a key site of eco-tourism in the GGB—Observation Point Alpha in the Fulda Gap. 4.0 Observing Observation Point Alpha To examine this relationship between green and grey infrastructure in the CGB, the case study for this chapter is Observation Point Alpha (OPA). OPA is a critical site of memory in the CGB and GGB that embodies an Anthropocene rhetorical geography. OPA was a Cold War observation post between Rasdorf, Hesse in what was West Germany, and Geisa, Thuringia in former East Germany. OPA was a US Army observation post that overlooked the Fulda Gap. The Fulda Gap, as a corridor of lowlands, is an area that occupied the inner-German border and was thought to be of greatest risk for the start of WWIII during the Cold War. The West had great fears of the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies making a surprise attack with tanks in the Fulda Gap in order to cross the Rhine River and attack West Germany. The Point Alpha memorial therefore presents “at this authentic historical site… the confrontation of the two world power blocs during the Cold War, as well as the painful time of division within Germany” (Point Alpha Foundation, n.d.a). The Fulda Gap is a natural reminder of the actions of humanity. 253 Figure 49: The left photograph depicts the Soviet watchtower, whilst the right shows the US border tower in the OPA Photographs author’s own. OPA itself does not stand alone. The site encompasses a variety of installations and commemorative artefacts framed by the lush environment. The memorial is situated across three Cold War facilities: the ruins of a watchtower on the GDR side of the former border; a US military base (see Figure 49); and a newer constructed museum entitled “House on the Border” whose galleries display Cold War artefacts on the lower half, and information on the EGB and GGB on the upper level. Between these infrastructures is a preserved and partially reconstructed border wall from the GDR era (see Figure 50). Two watch towers stand guard over this wall—one from the GDR and the other from the Allied US The US side of the border also includes the original US Observation Point Alpha buildings of the military post and camp, transformed. Whilst the military post remains as an architectural witness and opposition to the GDR watchtowers seen throughout the region, the US camp buildings house displays including eyewitness accounts from former GIs which “provide first-hand insights into the lives and emotions of soldiers 254 stationed on what was once the front line in the Cold War” (Gedenkstätte Point Alpha, n.d.). Building on pathos it creates a sense of identification with the visitor to imagine what it must have been like to live in such a sacrifice zone. Figure 50: These photographs depict the varying border towers along Observation Point Alpha (OPA) in the Fulda Gap. On the left is the GDR watchtower; and the right is the US Point Alpha tower. Photographs author’s own. 4.1 Memoryscape. I visited OPA one rainy grey afternoon in July 2016. Due to OPA’s position on the Fulda Gap, the route to the site winds through the Thuringa or Rasdorf countryside through the valley of the Fulda Gap. Precipitation-rich and with harsh plateaus, pastures, meadows, forests, and red and black marshes, this flourishing section of the GGB provides a natural refuge to approximately 20,000 animal species (Point Alpha Foundation, n.d.b.). Travelling to OPA through the lush landscape is an exercise in material rhetoric and rhetorical geography. The division of Europe, the Iron Curtain and the Fulda Gap is framed within GGB flourishing nonhuman natures, even if the tourist does not know about development of the Iron Curtain into the Belt. OPA grey infrastructures are circled by nonhumans nature trails cut out from the “wilding” of growth in the former Iron Curtain border. OPA is a literal sacrifice zone-turned- 255 peaceful biomic action against climate change. The richness of the Gap and the flourishing of nonhuman natures thus primes for the visitor for the arguments made by the site itself. Travel through the gap to OPA, the visitor becomes primed experientially as “within” rural nonhuman nature before they arrive to the memory site proper, as it is these nonhuman elements that the visitor experiences first. Although my own knowledge and understanding of this region was primed through descriptions of the site in the ICT literature, signposts in the region towards these nonhuman natures as Grünes Band clue the uninformed visitor towards the significance of these ecosystems. Priming of the rhetorical work of OPA thus began with the richness of nonhuman nature. This priming via the natural landscape is what Dickinson, Ott and Aoki (2006) called an “experiential landscape”—the location of visitor’s bodies in a particular space as to be argumentatively read. (p. 29). Dickinson et al. expanded the notions of material rhetoric and the concept of a discrete text. Rather, the authors argued that museums and memorials such as the OPA are diffuse texts because they are situated as part of a larger landscape. Dickinson et al. argued that the experiential landscape invites visitors to occupy particular subject positions which in turn, literally shape perceptions—the certain ways of looking and excluding others. Spaces of memory (rather than places) thus frame and shape the visitor’s practices of looking and suggesting the appropriate interpretive eye/I within a landscape (Dickinson, Ott & Aoki, 2006, p. 30). Any historical knowledge the tourist brings with them is part of their own experiential landscape (Dickinson et al., 2006, p. 240). The multimodal argument of this experiential landscape thus begins with the natural. Access to OPA winds through a rich, lush landscape that primes the visitor to the argumentative transcendent work the memorial makes. The drive to the OPA through the surrounding countryside eventually opens to the memory site via a winding uphill road. The surrounding landscape changes from lush green marshes and forests to a vista where the different infrastructures of OPA juxtapose each other. 256 Two approaches are possible. The first is for the tourist who travels by car to the site. The visitor slowly winds their way through the Gap towards the site, which appears dramatically at the top of the valley. The second is the eco-tourist cyclist, whose physical path to OPA is constituted by former Iron Curtain infrastructures, and thus foreshadows part of the OPA experience. The cyclist who travels on literal GGB ruins attends to the rhetorical work of the EGB created in its sense of authenticity by its materiality as memory place (Blair et al., 2010, p. 27). This priming and travel along the former border route becomes the ultimate consummatory act. 4.2 The museum on the border. Figure 51: The flags and Iron Curtain memorial sculpture outside the newly constructed OPA museum, House on the Border. Photograph author's own. For both visitors, their journey to the site ends at a car park situated between the newly built museum on one side, and the relics—the Soviet watch tower and the partially reconstructed border 257 defence—on the other. A cursory glance upon entrance to this memorial site signals transboundary cooperation with the multiple European and EU flags outside the House of the Border’s entrance. An Iron Curtain memorial (see Figure 51) embraces a modern, sleek design, juxtaposed against the Soviet architecture of the GDR watchtower, and the blue House on the Border against the sumptuous green background (see Figure 52). The visceral thus becomes rhetorical. Figure 52: The bright blue, newly constructed OPA museum entitled “House on the Border” starts the beginning of the trail through the Iron Curtain relics. Photograph author's own. It is most likely that the visitor begins at the House of the Border, as I did. The museum is closest to the car park, and offers the foundational background regarding OPA, the Iron Curtain and the EGB/GGB for the other green and grey infrastructures. This new, purposeful built so-called House on the Border is dedicated to the East German people living in the restricted zone under the GDR border regime, transforming this site from abandoned ruin to sacred site of remembrance. The museum incorporates three large permanent exhibitions, multimedia installations, and contemporary eyewitness accounts. House on the Border both functions as authenticating OPA as a memory site, alongside attesting to its public memory as true and objective. Through these exhibits, a particular public memory is cultivated by both the 258 state and the EGB Initiative. First-person accounts of lives destroyed and lost offer an authenticity to the state’s narrative of the atrocity the division of Germany wrought. However, a narrative of hope is also constituted at the site through the presentation of archival resources and artefacts from the Cold War. Stories of survival, resistance, of allied forces preventing WWIII, people crossing the “death strip” to freedom, and the eventual realisation of the novel ecologies defying the border, all work together to build a sense of prevailing European perseverance. A communal desire for unification and peace thus becomes the culmination of these interweaving vernacular and state narratives. The entrance to the museum offers two immediate choices. Straight ahead on the lower floor is an exhibit on the division of Germany, with a particular focus on the German Soviet regime. Tucked away to the left is a staircase that leads towards the upper floor, which houses various displays on what happened to the Iron Curtain border after the disbandment of the Soviet Union. Typical Western behaviour to begin at the bottom of a museum is enforced with the desire to work through the chronological timeline in a linear fashion. The lower floor provides a unique angle to the repeated narratives told about the division of Germany at almost every ruin/ruin-turned-museum I visited. OPA and the Fulda Gap, although situated deep within the Thuringia and Rhön countryside, afforded heightened political tensions through its positionality and ability to enable WWIII. Although stories, photographs and important events offered a resonant repetition of that which I had already witnessed, this particular site offered additional information and emotional experiences to the repeat Iron Curtain ruin visitor. Repetition and exceptionality provided a fresh perspective. The lower floor was a welcomed element to my continued attendance to Iron Curtain ruins-turned- sites of rational amusement. But the upper floor was where House on the Border offered something truly unique. Although I had seen to some extent this presentation of both Cold War history and contemporary EGB Initiative work at a singular site, House on the Border was by far the most detailed and extensive. 259 The museum thus offered a clear narrative of division turning into peaceful trans-boundary biodiversity conservation work. The EGB Initiative’s rhetorical work that associates unification, transboundary cooperation and peace was symbolically confirmed through the exhibits on the upper floor. Figure 53: Entrance to the second floor of the OPA museum, which houses a permanent installation on the Green Belt in Germany and the Rhön region. Photograph author's own. Figure 54: German and European Green Belt displays on the second floor in the House on the Border. 260 The EGB exhibit begins as the tourist climbs the stairs to the upper floor of House on the Border. Photographs line the stairwell walls. A leaflet stand provides information for the GGB visitor on the different eco-tourist attractions and conservation efforts along both the former inner-German border as well as the Central and European Green Belts. As the tourist reaches the entrance to the upper floor, they are primed by the infamous “deathzone to lifeline” phrase proudly displayed next to entryway (see Figure 53). The phrase arms the tourist to consider the nonhuman natures under the EGB Initiative’s semiotic interpretation of the rewilding of the Belt. First glance reveals exhibits that offer comparative but age- specific information for both adults and children, furthering the EGB Initiative’s commitment of informing a new generation in the hope of their future actions (see Figure 54). In fully attending to these exhibits, the colour change from the lower floor is arresting. The varying interactive displays invite the visitor to fully immerse themselves into nonhuman nature conservation. The tourist learns about the surrounding countryside, the significance of biodiversity, and climate change mitigation in general. In comparison to the predominately grey visuals on the lower floor, this floor itself flourishes with bright colours, especially variations on green. The visual semiotics of colour, as discussed in the previous chapter, resurface as symbolic affect. The upper and lower floors of House on the Border echo the grey infrastructure of the Iron Curtain ruins as well as the green infrastructure of the GGB nonhuman natures. The deployment of varying greens and other bright colour reverberate as Westerns symbols for hope and peace. 4.3 Following the road. Once I left House on the Border, it was time to follow the path of the former border itself. This continues traversing the experiential landscape, but this time following a path infused with history. From the museum, the tourist is guided to follow a former GDR road, where one can witness a partially reconstructed border as they pass by an East German Watch Tower (see previous figure, Figure 49). Signs in German, English, French and Russian detail the border’s construction, its monitoring 261 during its occupation, and life at the border zone (see Figure 55). Reaching the GDR watch tower, another sign conveys information about its construction. Situated almost opposite to the GDR watch tower, close to the US side of the border, is a birch cross that signals where Bernhard F. unsuccessfully attempted to cross the border on Christmas day 1975. The cross now symbolically stands for all victims of the German division (Point Alpha Foundation, n.d.b.). Through the reconstructed border, one can glimpse (and visit when open) the US camp, Point Alpha. Figure 55: Following the path from the museum along the former GDR convoy road to the GDR watchtower (right) and Point Alpha barracks (left). Signs are dotted along the path providing contextual information. Photograph author's own. Figure 56: The memorial at the end of the partially reconstructed border, looking out to the countryside. Photograph author’s own. 262 The GDR paths offer an experiential walk for the visitor. I argue that the narrative of division to unification is literally relived through the border walk—no less on a ruin from the past—as the tourist ends their memory site experience immersed in the flourishing, defiant EGB nature (see Figure 56). This is what Allison and Bloomfield (2018) referred to as a material transcendent argument. Transcendence is typically considered a linguistic strategy to overcome guilt by reimaging transgressions in a new light. Walking from the historical accounts of the division of Germany to nonhuman nature’s freedom provides a visual and experiential enthymemic argument—it involves probable premises and conclusions, with an accompanying emotional and ethical dimension of the argument. These dimensions depend on the agreement and active participation of the visitor to reconstruct the argument (Kjeldsen, 2015). The visitor walks along the material relic of the former GDR road, participating in the material reality of the OPA site to perform this act of transcendence away from the atrocities of the division of Germany. Along the OPA “route” that the tourist makes from museum to ruin to nonhuman nature, the tourist travels from sites of division to “natural” unification along GDR convoy roads. The tourist thus moves towards freedom and unification symbolised by nonhuman nature alongside the “Path of Hope”—a 14 sculpture piece to celebrate the 20 year anniversary of the reunification of Germany. The lived transcendent experience continues for the visitor as they continue their journey away from House on the Border and towards the Fulda Gap vista. The end of the path-come-road reaches a conclusion with a memorial to those who lived in East Germany and the Fulda Gap, as well as to the entrance to the US camp. This memorial is compounded by an opening of the forested landscape, revealing multiple nonhuman nature trails and signs designating the OPA as part of the Grünes Band infrastructure. This includes the German Owl sign (used for nonhuman nature trails), the Iron Curtain Trail depicted as EuroVelo 13, and the Grünes Band symbol. The different nonhuman nature trails take the visitor into either a wooded areas or along a pasture. The narrative of division to unification is literally 263 relieved through the border walk from witnessing the border defences to its final outcome in the open pasture of a flourishing nonhuman nature. Along these trails, signs depicting the flora and fauna in this area educate the visitor on what nonhuman natures have flourished in this section of the GGB, echoing the information in the House on the Border’s upper floor. The visitor can then enact the tourist gaze along the fervent colours and flourishing of the land, celebrated as the only positive outcome from the atrocities of war. Nonhuman nature reconfigures barbarisms into pleasantries. 4.4 The road as hope. Towards the end of the OPA journey is another peace-making memorial. Marking a 1.5 km stretch of outdoor museum, the Point Alpha Foundation created the “Path of Hope” (see Figure 57) in celebration of the 20 year anniversary of the peaceful revolution and reunification of Germany. Artist Dr. Ulrich Barnickel was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of Thuringia and the Federal Government delegate for art and media, to create and install a total of 14 commemorative sculpture groups along the former border. According to an English leaflet about Point Alpha, these were based on the 14 biblical Stations of the Cross, telling a story which has many versions. The OPA as institution argues that suppression, despotism, suffering, courage, hope, belief, and change all form constant elements of this story (Gedenkstätte Point Alpha, n.d.). The Path of Hope is “meant to inspire people to be reminded of the paths their own destinies took in times fraught with hardship and to reflect on them in similar sense of ‘never again’” (Point Alpha Foundation, n.d.a). Once again, a particular public memory is created: division and atrocity was overcome, but with the proselytising that no European could want such a thing again. A common identity is thus sought after by the GGB actors, the EGB Initiative and the EU. 264 Figure 57: Path of Hope Figures against the brown heritage sign that dots the German landscape. Copyright Point Alpha Foundation. The literature states how the Point Alpha Foundation launched the Path of Hope project to serve as a public memory reminder of the peaceful resistance to the communist dictatorships of Central and Eastern Europe—a resistance that was never completely suppressed at any stage. The Path of Hope commemorates the resistance and the popular uprising in the GDR on June 17, 1953; the Hungarian of 1956; the Prague Spring of 1968; the Solidarnosc movement in Poland in the 1980s; and the large-scale demonstrations for peace in the GDR in 1989. The literature posits how all these courageous forms of revolt were expressions of an inextinguishable longing for freedom and, at the same time, of the faith in the ability of human beings to change the nearly impossible when courage born of desperation moves them to stand up for their convictions and they are prepared to make sacrifices in acting on them (Point Alpha Foundation, n.d.a). 265 Once again, the rhetoric of freedom is cited as the ultimate goal for both past as well as present needs in the cultivation of public memory. 4.5 Experiential landscape. The OPA offers a unique experience for the eco-tourist. The vista is truly Janus-faced as it interprets the past in the service of the present and future. The OPA is a true example of the GGB living memorial. The is a multiplicitous landscape of the post-1990 museum, the Iron Curtain relics from both the Soviet and the Allied side, the EGB nonhuman nature and nature trails, the memorials to Soviet resistance, the memorials to those who survived the East Germany regime, the memorial to public memory to “never forget” what was able to happen in regards to the division of Europe; and the Rhön region itself. I argue that dwelling in a taskscape has never been more prescient. As this living memorial that conquered the frontier strip, such an experiential landscape of a taskscape does not feel adequately realised as solely a memory place—what Cresswell (2004) would refer to as typically bounded sites of meaning making. The OPA disturbs rhetorical expectations of a memory site by cultivating a public memory figuratively and symbolically through nonhuman nature, defying traditions of place. For instance, the visitor performs the rhetorical consummatory action of the GGB’s public memory in walking the trail from museum to nonhuman nature trail at OPA. As an inherent component of OPA’s rhetorical memory, the flourishing nonhuman nature at the end of the transcendent trail counters traditional memory places by being open, abstract and undesignated. In making my own approach to the OPA memorial site through the Thuringa and Rasdorf, I too felt compelled to view this experiential landscape in a certain manner: as a sign of hope against the infrastructures of war. The two counterparts of symbolic and transformative thus work together to turn OPA into a rhetorical memoryscape. The argumentative action imbued in the OPA makes the geography of the land rhetorical and constructs Dickinson et al.’s reverent eye/I. I argue that this visitors to this memorial site are also offered an absolution of Western guilt through an ultimately happy ending from the atrocities of war. This unique 266 double articulation—combining the ideologies of admiration and difference—performs the symbolic function of transcendence (Dickinson et al., 2010, pp. 28-9). It is this argumentative work performed as part of a network of green and grey infrastructures that I turn to next. 5.0 Ruins as Networked Communicative Infrastructures. My fieldwork along the GGB demonstrate the argumentative power of the material. It revealed how both green and grey infrastructures have semiotic affect, both individually and together. Of course, semiosis cannot happen without interpretation, whether from the human or the nonhuman (cf. biosemiotics). But my fieldwork also revealed how the power of a claim can by increased through multiple artefacts repeating the same argument, to the extent that we can interpret them as a multimodal network that leads to one larger invitation to inference. I posit that the ruins-turned-sites of rational amusement punctuating the GGB form a network of communicative infrastructures that work together as a larger multimodal argument. Each ruin, even if dilapidated and abandoned within the German or Central European countryside, acts like a quasi-museum that informs how a human history has constituted a unique geological one. Their mere presence becomes an argumentative artefact of history, never mind their content. If argument is a premise backed by reasons to support it, these ruins along the former border portend a natural and man-made unification that eclipses divisions within the continent, using their physical presence and discursive presentation as support for the EGB’s unification claim. As sites of cultural memory, they are Janus-faced: they look towards the past, but in the service of the present and future of promoting European unification and commonality. Through my fieldwork, I posit there is a significant multimodal experience of physically attending to these memory places/spaces as a network of differing but connected sites. As an eco-tourist gambit, these sites both inform, educate, and entertain through sights, smells, touch, sound and the consubstantiality 267 with those affected by the division as well as the other (international) tourists. These relics-come-museums create a larger argumentative communication infrastructure that tells a narrative of division overcome. 5.1 Material argument. Material artefacts support linguistic claims. The EGB narrative is supplemented by the Iron Curtain ruins across the German and Central European Green Belts. The preservation and repurposing of these ruins into sites of education, remembrance, and ultimately rational amusement, is an intentional symbolic act to communicate the biopolitical, or biomic, intentions of the German, EU and EGB project. Such arguments are made not only discursively but through the multimodal experience in attendance and witness to this infrastructure. Significantly, this infrastructure extends beyond the grey (i.e., abandoned war relics) and into the green (i.e. the re-emergence of nonhuman nature in the border spaces). As Pinto and Groake argue, the audience is invited to infer what the conservation of these relics and nonhuman natures means, making their inferences through the available argumentative resources beyond the verbal. This includes: visuals of the ruins-come-museums in their natural or city environment; the smells of the countryside; the sounds of the city in bustling Berlin; the physical movement through the museum along a narrative timeline, as well as up and down border towers; the tactile sensations of the infrastructure; and overall “other non-verbal phenomena that arguers often use in their attempts to provide support for their conclusions” (Groarke, 2015, p. 134). The 3D world offers far more possibilities. Part of this landscape is the physical transformation of a number of these ruins. Watch towers have become bird watching towers; military facilities have become museums. These incorporate both the historical legacy of geography as well as their current material iteration as creating a green and grey biome. Such repurposing of a ruin is a transformation of arenas of destruction into material sites of rational amusement. These new and improved infrastructures delight the visitor’s senses through cycling as well as the Western culture-encoded experience of authenticity that is being “amongst” the “natural”. At the same 268 time, they also teach and narrate the division of Europe and its eventual overcoming. From ruin, they transform into a sacred space for remembrance. To pay homage to McGeough, Palczewski and Lake (2015), their natural surroundings recontextualise the site into a new visual frame, and thus their polarity is modified through this new visual association (p. 235). As a network of infrastructures within the biome, these objects and memory sites cannot exist in a cultural vacuum. Rather, Chakrabarty’s collapse of human and geological history in the Anthropocene is enacted. These ruins and nonhuman natures in the GGB are biomically governed to become sites of rational amusement. They are a testament to an Anthropocene history: the human actions that led to this natural flourishing. Furthermore, these sites work together as constituting a network of communicative infrastructures that narrate a European history of division and unification through climate mitigation. The former border has become the geographic blueprint for a multimodal, argumentative, ecological network. 5.2 Ruin as museum. The GGB is an exemplar of networked communicative infrastructures. A significant aspect to this network in the German and Central Green Belt is the argumentative inference these ruins enable. As discussed throughout this chapter, these ruins become sites of rational amusement in the service of a state and international narrative. These ruins often become repurposed into memorials or museums, whether in a traditional or non-traditional manner. The transformation of these ruins from relic to informational site of importance is significant. Museums are a human invention that determine something’s importance by designating it as “valuable” and worthy of commemoration (Sharer, 1999, p. 121). The ruin-as-museum is an interesting rhetorical, semiotic conundrum. The argumentative power of an artefact relies on cultural inference. Toulmin’s ([1958]2003) notion of argument fields posit that the symbolic systems we are using to make claims can be field-variant and field-invariant; the former requiring specialist knowledge within your particular discipline, realm or perhaps even generation. But yet, there are some infrastructures that are designed specifically to be field-invariant, and some arguments that are 269 intended to have as large an international audience as possible. One such example is that of museums. Whilst argument fields can be useful to provide context to a speech act, I argue that there is cultural knowledge to be communicated to its specifically field-variant audience. These are designed to make cultural knowledge as accessible as possible to a specifically outside audience. The GGB is an exemplar of this shared knowledge across argument fields. The repurposing of these ruins often extends beyond traditional notions of museums, by also becoming functioning grey infrastructure for the purpose of supporting the GGB’s green infrastructure. Along the GGB, different memory sites—border towers, graveyards, memorials—depict different aspects of life within the division of Germany. But yet, all the structures support and work together to repeat and reaffirm crucial information, despite their architectural variance. These ruins, museums and other semiotic infrastructures tell differing narratives of the same inherent foundation, but also work towards the same conclusion: peace and unification despite the strife of war. The museums along the GGB and Iron Curtain Trail are part of a network saturated with communicative labour. The border, both former and today as an ecological biome, is a rhetorical construction that couples ruins and wild spaces. Different materialities converge into a public space of discourse. Authorising discourses from the EU, the EGB Initiative, the state, and local actors, enact conservation efforts that use semiotic pieces and material infrastructures along this network to guide, point, and frame displays at particular lookouts. Both the EGB nonhuman natures and their fossil counterparts are lively, semiotically infused agents in this communicative network. 5.3 Networked ruins for the wild. This claim requires further examination with an example. One such illustration is the transformation of 62 German former military bases into wildlife sanctuaries. The choice of the word sanctuary is made itself by the German government, and itself invokes a symbolism that echoes the notion of the GGB as a retreat for agentic natures. Germany’s Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks noted that “we are fortunate that we can now give these places back to nature” (Davies Boren, 270 2015). This phrase depicts the human actions of the Cold War as a wrongful taking of space, land, and life from a perceived agentive nature. Thus, humanity in its new found stewardship role has an obligation to return it to its natural, intended state (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, p. 30). As Allison and Bloomfield argue, here the GGB actors are performing a type of penance as a biomic apparatus of the EGB Initiative—a mortification of the self in acknowledging past actions. This is what Brummett (1981) notes is another route to purification in addition to transcendence. Past actions are given the responsibility for taking ownership and destroying the land. However, contemporary times sees new arrangements. As biomic apparatuses of the EU supra-natural, the EGB actors follow Dunlap’s and Van Liere’s (1978) Dominant Environment and Dominant Social Paradigm in their conservation goals. The GGB attempts to value equally nonhuman nature and humanity. But it is also fuelled by tourism, the need to mark a wilding along the Belt for human navigation and labelling, and the presence of human relics in nonhuman nature’s space. Thus, in rejecting the notion that nonhuman nature exists only for human use, a rhetorical act of transcendence restores the land from its human ownership to its “original”, “rightful” position of an environmentally situated natural habitation (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018, pp. 25-6). The human ruins are repurposed for agentive, lively nature’s rightful rewilding. 6.0 The Memoryscape as Identification. The GGB offers a unique sight in the EGB. Whilst the FGB is dominated by forests and indigenous intangible heritage, the GGB is characterised by this heritage made material in the form of Iron Curtain relics. And yet, whilst the FGB naturally cultivates the wild in the typography of the land, the GGB is wild due to the purposeful lack of humans in the former border space. This creation of the wild border means that the CGB continues to be mapped at the end of 2010s, as it width waxes and wanes as ecosystems move in and out of the CGB polity. Mapping both binds and frees nonhuman nature as an invitation to inference. The constitution of the CGB and GGB is thus founded upon the materialities of nonhuman 271 nature and ruins. These green and grey infrastructures of the Belt serve as temporal reference points to articulate the mental recall of public memories (Yates, 2001, p. 3), but these sites of remembrance are not located in geographic places as an environmental stage for acting our history. Rather, place and memory are thoroughly intertwined as temporally layered elements are reconstituted as part of our complex identities (Osborne, 2006, p. 151). My fieldwork along the GGB documented many ruins repurposed to narrate a sense of united identity and belonging. My own experience was that the tourist extends witnessing beyond the visual through their co-presence at these sites of remembrance and biodiversity conservation. In narrating a common identity, public memory offers symbolic connections with a group and a sense of belonging to it. Although other tourists were scattered, conversations were shared about where we were from, what we seeing, and in particular our memories of the division of Europe. Public memory thus become animated by affect, as events, people, objects and places are deemed worthy of preservation based on some kind of emotional attachment (Lowenthal, cited in Blair et al., 2010, p. 7). I encountered the emotive as significant to my fieldwork for this project. In attending to these sites, for Blair et al. (2010) the recognisability of other visitors at the site differentiates these as rhetorical memory places. I predominately encountered only other Europeans, except in Berlin, and thus noted a commonality between our otherwise disparate countries, jolted by the grey infrastructure of the ruins. Whilst green infrastructures mostly generated an experience of peaceful reflection, the combination of grey with green infrastructures prompted learning and consubstantiality. Ruins provided the needed historical context to the peace of natural surroundings. As Blair et al. argue, as a visitor, connections were not only invoked to people of the past. The experience of traversing this network of communicative infrastructures also connected me to people in the present. 272 I found that consubstantiality was generated as monuments offered instruction in public memory through its symbolic and material supports. Discourse was not the only indicator. As ruins are transformed into educational and memorial tools, such cultural infrastructures literally instructed the visitor through their presence. As the visitor travels and visits monuments and ruins, they are guided through a multimodal experience of the continent’s historical division. Semiotic pieces instruct the visitor to grieve for those who lost their lives in trying escape communism, whilst freedom was rhetorically constructed as the ultimate goal for both humans and nonhuman nature. As one official discursive material argues, From the Barents to the Black Sea, there ran a barrier which displayed its inhumane side most strongly in Germany. It cut up a country into East and West, separated families and friends for decades. And yet nature conquered the frontier strip. The "Green Belt" was created, with valuable habitats full of rare animals and plants.” (Grünes Band Deutschland, n.d.) Such identification by which people come to be participants in a collective renders “belonging” a rhetorical configuration. This is the reach of a collective through public memory that must be felt and legitimated rhetorically through its signifying character (Blair et al., 2010, p. 17). 6.1 Imagining what was, and what is. Much of the grey infrastructure of the Cold War resulted in environmental object. However, today these Military heritage objects oscillate as fossils of a previous time alongside their use as multimodal argument for a unified, sustainable future. The relics of the Iron Curtain create this Anthropo-scene in which nonhuman nature itself repurposes humanity’s ruins. Just as most of the Anthropocene narrative requires a re-writing of geological history to account for their negative impact on the Earth, nonhuman nature is also re-writing this history through the repurposing of relics of war into symbols of unity and peace. It was during fieldwork that the grey infrastructures of war were immediately upon me. The relics of war are both symbolic and materials support to each other. As with Blair, Balthrop and Michel’s (2013) 273 Mood of the Material: War Memory and Imagining Otherwise’s examination of the relics in the village of Fleury and its resulting destruction in the Battle of Verdun, a real-life narrative of German division and unification exists along symbolic indicators of the Cold War. Just as Fleury is the activator of the past perfect subjunctive—it is impossible to imagine Fleury being destroyed without imagining what was destroyed before the first shell was fired—so does this imagination extend to Germany. The power of the past perfect subjunctive is that it accepts and even affirms the certainty of past action but desires to introduce contingency into that past (Balthrop and Michel’s, 2013, p. 14). Just like Fleury, many of the GGB sites introduce contingency as historic cultural discourse provides a narrative to the materiality of these sites. If we consider materiality to include nonhuman nature, then the materiality of the GGB is contradictory to itself without the EGB Initiative’s narrative. These ruins of the Anthropocene are transformed through an entanglement with nonhuman natures. Both the local and holistic nonhuman EGB natures defy history— they enact Blair et al.’s grammatical verb complex of the past perfect subjunctive of “as-if-not-having- happened”. But at the same time, they only exist because of it. Nonhuman natures argue for imagining a life without war by looking to the past and to the future, whilst at the same time grey infrastructure cannot negate the Cold War. The GGB requires the visitor to imagine “what once was”—the Iron Curtain—and “what now is”—a natural space that knows no borders, rhetorically symbolising the trans-boundary cooperation of the EGB Initiative. 6.2 Repurposing the border. Preparations for fieldwork can only somewhat prepare you for what will need to be addressed from attending to the subject in person. As I travelled the length of the former inner-German border, this framing of these ruins, entangled with nonhuman nature, brought me to a question that I have been wrestling with what does it mean to reuse sites of atrocities as opposed to creating new museums? I propose that the materiality of these structures provide an additional resonance to this narrative of division and unification through nonhuman nature. Ruins allow the tourist to imagine 274 and experience the reality of life during a divided Germany and the Central EGB by seeing, touching and emotionally relating to these infrastructures. Whilst such narratives can be told digitally and in purposed- built structures, receiving such information in this networked open-air museum, creates a 4D, multimodal experience for the tourist. Take for example my visits. Although I had read extensively on this history and the EGB project, it was only once I viscerally experienced these sites outside a museum that I fully began to understand the weight of conserving both ruins and nonhuman natures together. For Blair, Dickinson, and Ott (2010), this execution means the tourist is convinced of the argument most viscerally through attending to the material site. The visitor not only imagines connections to people of the past but experiences “communal identification” with present visitors (27). In particular, the repurposing of ruins into present-day uses added an experiential, additional authenticity to the EGB argument. Travelling over 2 weeks in Germany alone during my initial fieldwork, this became further and further compounded as I kept visiting more ruins, museums, and other memory sites in this network of communicative infrastructure. Repetition beget the importance of this work, and provided a weighty presence to the argument of only a united Europe can tackle the humanitarian and ecological crises of the 21 st century. 6.3 Networking multimodal arguments. Throughout my fieldwork and analysis of these sites, I made some significant claims. I posited that multiple ruins, museums, memorials and other such grey infrastructures, in combination with the nonhuman natures, are creating a cohesive singular argument that is only strengthened by the additional material objects. I would not go so far as to say they are a singular proposition or claim, for such notions become muddied with both space and time. But I do see that multiple objects of differing designs, types, placements and locations can be in the service of one overarching argument. This is supported by the performance work of a tourist visiting the site (Bowman and Pezzullo, 2009). Here, Bowman and Pezzullo argues that the tourist performs an EGB rhetoric. These 275 tourists are primed by both cultural knowledge and these discursive claims that these sites tell a narrative of division to unification. The museums can work as standalone sites: each individual ruin, repurposed into various guises, has communicative strength. But conceived as accumulating into a network of cultural infrastructures, the premise becomes further and further entrenched. Travelling the former border, the multimodal experience of one ruins resonates with other, similar but different, infrastructures. As a network, these work together to create an even stronger multimodal claim. The GGB thus uses multimodal argument to warn against repeating historical atrocities and the transboundary cooperation of previous division that now preserves the nonhuman nature as a symbol of peace. This can be made discursively in the digital sphere, but it is far more resonant with the physical experience and attendance to these objects as a network. I posit that this grey infrastructure, in the environmental milieu of its green counterpart, creates a biomic network of communicative infrastructures that support but also enlarge a discursive proposition through tourist inference. Further, this route of the former border is both a scar of a country divided as well as a healing bandage. These museums repeat and reaffirm this scar as a set of cultural infrastructures, appearing to the international tourist as part of a larger proposition of a united German, and European, identity. Thus, traditional discursive arguments regarding unification and cultural memory are supported by the affect of material multimodality felt and experienced. Ultimately, I see these museums are nodes—communication infrastructures—in a networked argument, that has come to serve as a site of rational amusement: that which makes claims, educates, and entertains. The museum is also a network. 6.4 Biomic networking. Ecological and museum networks could not happen without a governance of people and land in order to enact its narrative. The story of division to unification for Germany may be held strongest as an inner-country building, but since 1989, Germany has extended its influence far beyond its own country. Germany is now the home for three out of the four regional coordinators. German 276 actions centralise the CGB. Further, Germany was not only the nascence of this entire project, but is essentially the home of the EGB Initiative. As the primary stewards of the project, Germany extends its reach to other countries and regions by providing both monetary support and conceptual guidance. German stewardship of their border is a unique enaction of conservation policies. Germany prioritises nonhuman nature over humans, giving the latter zōē in comparison to a flora and fauna bios, but this imbalance also reflects an imbalance in German conservation attitudes to the goals of the EGB project. The repurposing of the Iron Curtain as the GGB at both the local, national and trans-national level has transformed the barrier to a point of contact: from topographical to symbolic; as a place and space that cultivates public memory through the interaction of human–nonhuman relations. But yet, these interactions are primarily focused on the eco-tourist as opposed to people living in the land. Whilst we saw the FGB bring local vernaculars and included its peoples as part of the ecosystem, the GGB takes a more contradictory approach. The ruins of the Anthropocene are repurposed and utilised for eco-tourism, in novel Anthropocene adaptation. However, German biopolitical actors are also objectifying the nonhuman natures as Edenic, where present day human interaction with these nonhuman natures is restricted. The GGB as a taskscape becomes Cronon’s sublime wild playground for the eco-tourist, despite the landscaping of a densely populated central Europe. Nonhuman natures and ruins become topographical containers of nationalism, transformed into symbolic vistas as a map for future sustainable development and climate mitigation. Such vistas are complex communication structures. 277 Chapter Five: Mapping the Contentious Belts The natural landscape is being subjected to transformation at the hands of man, the last and for us the most important morphological factor. By his cultures he makes use of the natural forms, in many cases alters them, in some destroys them. – Carl O. Sauer, Morphology of Landscape, 1952 Tensions flourish between human and geological histories. Chakrabarty’s desire for an Anthropocenic collapse of geological and human histories both waxes and wanes against political desires, cultural geographies, and human–nonhuman nature relations. The previous chapters delineated how biomic governance affects biodiversity conservation and public memory catalysts against regional human– nonhuman nature relations. This final chapter reveals a unique set of Anthropocene tensions through a comparative analysis of the final two Green Belt regions: the Balkan Green Belt and the Balkan Green Belt. The story of the Baltic and the Balkan regions is a tale of divided sections. In comparison to the Fennoscandian and Central European regions, the Green Belt has not been a secured feature for the Baltic and Balkan regions. Instead, both regions experienced a hindered entry into the EGB polity. This ultimately delayed the completion of the EGB as an holistic ecological network. Drawing boundaries is complex. Geopolitical constraints complicated Baltic and Balkan membership into the EGB project. The Baltic region was initially denied a position within the overarching EGB Initiative. Difficulties lay in the delineation of a boundary in the sea. Water-based conservation brought additional complexities to biodiversity preservation that could not be supported by EGB expertise. The Balkan region, as a terrestrial site, also experienced hinderances. The Balkan region features the complexities of nations collapsing, diverging and rebuilding. Balkan countries devastated by the Cold War 278 needed to rebuild economically before conservation initiatives could be considered. Even further, countries such as Yugoslavia were broken apart with the Yugoslav wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Amidst accusations of war crimes, this resulted in the creation of new nations on the former Iron Curtain border. As Carl O. Sauer argued, a cultural geography is drawn and redrawn by human hands and politics. The Balkan and Baltic regions experienced differing limitations for their initial entry into the EGB Initiative. However, two notable similarities reign. The first is that Baltic and Balkan national conservation efforts faced, and continue to face, difficulties with intensive infrastructure development, agriculture, and environmental degradation. The second is that both regions lack the scientific expertise to enact regional conservation efforts in the first place. Whilst the Baltic region lacked the appropriate experts regarding sea- conservation, the Balkans lacked conservation-actors in general. Thus, conservation efforts were outsourced to non-regional EGB actors. As the Baltic and Balkan regions were eventually mapped as part of the EGB project, conservation in these regions continued to be outsourced. Regional Coordinators for the Baltic and Balkan regions were designated, but to NGOS residing outside their own biogeographical regions. Baltic efforts became governed by BUND Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania in Schwerin, Germany. For the Balkan region, EuroNatur in Radolfzell, Germany, was named as Regional Coordinator. Biomic governance thus found and posited challenges. Each area has its own history, documents, and governance. A biomic analysis for the Baltic and Balkan regions necessitated an examination of the peculiarities of each region. This was initially conducted via desk-based research. Formative analyses were then developed from interviews with BUND Mecklenburg for the Baltic region, and EuroNatur for the Balkan. Conversations with local and state actors during the 2016 Pan-European Green Belt Conference confirmed preliminary evaluations, and also brought great insight into historical, present, and future actions. Finally, attendance to key sites along these 279 two Belt regions brought perspective. The key sites were chosen for their representativeness of their respective regions, as well as their unique attributes and human-nonhuman nature relations. For the Balkan Green Belt, I conducted my research on both ends of this sea-road—the German Baltic coast and the Northwest Estonian coastline. I began my research on the German Baltic coast in summer 2016. I flew into Hamburg and drove to the Baltic coast at Kühlungsborn, Mecklenburg-West Pommerania. This site was chosen for the repurposed border tower and museum on a newly developed coastal promenade, the Ostee-Grenze and Ostee–Grenzeturm as depicted in chapter one, respectively. I argue that this Baltic Sea tower and museum now act as a site of rational amusement, dedicated to the education of the division of Germany whilst providing a coastal retreat for tourists. Two years later, I then continued my fieldwork along the Balkan Green Belt by travelling to Estonia. Flying into Tallinn, I visited two key sites east and west of the capital: Lahemaa National Park in Lääne-Viru County, North East Estonia, and the Pakri Peninsula in Harju County, North-West Estonia. These sites along the Estonia shoreline were also chosen for the significance of their green and grey infrastructure. Lahemaa has the fortune of being the first designated national park of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, during the 1980s, certain coastal sections of the Park’s border were opened up to visitors. In contrast, the Pakri Peninsula offers a different vista: the largest of the grey, Anthropocene ruins in the EGB. The Peninsula is home to the most important nuclear submarine training site of the former USSR. However, the training site is now undergoing development as a nation-wide first: a self-proclaimed geopark for climate mitigation. I position this recasting and transformation as an Anthropocene rhetoric adaptation that rewrites a rhetorical geography on the land. For the Balkan Green Belt, I also travelled to one of its respective ends. At the Bulgarian border with the Black Sea, I conducted fieldwork at the southernmost tip of the EGB project, where the EU meets the transcontinental reaches of Eurasia. Along the Bulgarian border, my rhetorical work in situ included two 280 key sites. The first was the Strandja National Park—the largest conservation area in Bulgaria, with a unique array of flora and fauna in comparison to the rest of Europe. The second was near Silvengrad, where the borders of Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey meet. I specifically visited the latter as this is where Iron Curtain border has been rebuilt by Bulgaria in the auspices of securitisation of nation-state borders. Rather than Estonia’s Anthropocene adaptation, I argue that Bulgaria is returning to singular nation-state Holocene thinking. Borders are drawn and redrawn against the complications of biodiversity conservation. To unpack these hurdles, the chapter follows as thus. The first and second sections sketch the histories of the Baltic and Balkan regions from the Iron Curtain to present day. This inquiry shows the complications of redrawing the border with and against biodiversity and public memory conservation. From Baltic and Balkan histories, I then move to describe the biomic work involved in order to create and conserve these biogeographical regions. (1) considers the constitution of the Baltic as the military sea green belt—its flora, fauna, and transboundary cooperation—against the continual environmental pollution caused by Soviet nuclear fuels in the Baltic Sea. (2) moves from sea-side study to the Balkan Green Belt as the mountainous Belt on the edge of the European Union. Following the sketchings of history to contemporary biomic governance, I then move to a detailed comparison of two case studies resulting from my fieldwork in these regions. (3) examines the Estonian Green Belt, specifically considering the Pakri Peninsula as Anthropocene adaptation against the nuclear waste threat and complex coastal environmental degradation. (4) considers the Bulgarian Green Belt. Here I pit the conservation of the unique Strandja Nature Park against the consequential zōē of humans and nonhumans resulting from the newly built border defence along the Bulgarian/Turkey border. I posit that the rebuilding of the Iron Curtain in the Bulgarian Balkan region, along Anthropocene blueprints, is both a humanitarian as well as ecological crisis. (5) thus brings the conclusions made from the previous sections together. Overall, I posit that whilst the Balkan Green 281 Belt had a difficult start, today it looks towards climate mitigation strategies. In contrast, I position the Balkan region as struggling to enact biodiversity conservation, and conversely turns inward towards nation- state development. Geopolitics constrains and complicates environmental action in the Anthropocene. 1.0 The Sea Belt: Combining Coastal and Terrestrial Conservation Figure 58: A view over the lush Estonian coast from the Pakri Peninsula that was closed off during the Cold War from the Pakri Photograph author’s own. The Balkan Green Belt as former Iron Curtain runs along the coastline of Southern Baltic Sea countries. The Baltic Iron Curtain began at the Estonian/Russian border and travels West across the Northwestern shores of Estonia (see Figure 58); it descends along the western shores of Lativa, Lithuania 282 and the Kallingrad Oblast; it then continues along the Northern coastline of Poland; and finally reaches its conclusion along the Northern shorelines of Germany’s Baltic Coast (see Figure 59). In contrast to the Atlantic Ocean, the Baltic coastline is shallow and geologically young. But the land also incorporates many varying habitats due to a variance in geological substrates, the shaping of the coasts by Ice Age glaciers, and in more recent times, estuaries and marine currents (Sepp, 2011, p. 9). Overall, this makes the former border a rhetorical geography—the shape of the land is both affected and was affected by human culture. Figure 59: View from the German Baltic Coast line in Kühlungsborn. Photograph author's own. Alike the Fennoscandian Green Belt, the geography of the Baltic region follows natural barriers in order to draw geopolitical borders. These include raised bogs, river valleys, and forests (Viesturs Urtans, 2004, p. 25). But Soviet occupation of the Baltic countries changed the coastline. Natural features alongside Soviet infrastructure were used to create a coastal no-man’s land. Similar to other terrestrial EGB regions, 283 military restrictions restricted access. Soviet armed forces erected barbed wire fences along the shoreline before the Cold War began (Pärn, 2011, p. 26). In Estonia, work was started five years before the Estonian SSR’s secret regulation of 1945. Restrictions thus led coastal residents to be resettled inland, after approximately 70–80,000 fled the country. 21 Coastal residences and places of work were either taken over by Soviet military or left uninhabited (Sepp, 2011, p. 7). Over time, continually restrictive measures excluding the residential population were taken. Work and residence permits along the Baltic coastline were only granted by the military in exceptional circumstances. Boats for the coastal Estonians were sawn in half to prevent escape. Gigantic spot lights lit the beaches of the Baltic coast at night. In Germany, peninsulas were turned into mine fields, whilst the Latvian shoreline was combed and patrolled everyday (European Green Belt, 2009, p. 1). The extinction of topos was enacted against the Baltic way of life. The grey infrastructures were grand in size and threat along the Baltic coast. Between 1945 and 1953, there were approximately 100 Border Guard stations; from 1976 to 1993, 42 more were added. In addition, these Border Guard institutions included: a Border Guard Boat Brigade (subordinated to the Border Guard Navy); a flight squadron; a construction company; and other smaller military units and institutions (Pärn, 2011, p. 26.). Along the coastal border, each station had 2–10 posts. And yet, in the 1980s, restrictions began to be relaxed in the shadow of these infrastructures. Designated beaches and coastal areas were opened up for holidaymakers, against the continuing restrictions along the majority of the Baltic coastline. Beaches thus remained pristine and teeming with nonhuman life due to the lack of human residents and tourists. 21 The human population has never recovered such numbers. 284 1.1 Ecosystem discoveries. Environmental discoveries along the Iron Curtain began in the 1970s. Shoreline fences, patrols, and surveillance restricted human activity on the shore line. Conversely, it encouraged a diverse array of marine underwater habitats to flourish alongside the rich diversity of coastline with long beaches, large dune fields, secluded lagoons, and cliffs (European Green Belt Association, 2018i). Soviet restrictions along the Baltic coast preserved a unique set of coastal and sea ecologies in comparison to the rest of the EGB regions. Above and below the waterline, sea weed forests and sea grass meadows, lagoons, bogs, beaches, bays and many other habitats grew. This flourishing of habitats and nonhuman life in part resulted from Soviet intervention. The lack of humans on the shoreline allowed a variety of habitats to grow. In turn, these habitats supported a diverse set of species, despite significant biodiversity loss across the continent. The Baltic coast was thus characterised by the EGB Association as a shelter for the flora of the region and its environmental milieu (European Green Belt Association, 2018i). The sea and coastal flora provided a Burkean dramatistic scene from which fauna was thriving, including millions of migrating birds, marine animals such as ringed and grey seals, European bison, wolf, lynx, brown bear, the European pond tortoise, stone curlew, capercaillie, short-toed eagle, booted eagle, golden eagle, and Aesculapian snake (Rakowski & Sienkiewicz, 2004, p. 39). Nonhuman life thus proliferated in this deathzone against Soviet Anthropocene destruction. And yet, this coastal vista also experienced significant environmental degradation that posed a risk to this flora and fauna—a substantial increase in eutrophication. Eutrophication is the enrichment of normally excessive nutrients characterised by excessive plant and algal growth. Human activities accelerate this process through sewage, fertilisers and phosphate-containing detergents entering aquatic ecosystems (Chislock, Doster, Zitomer & Wilson, 2013). Thus, Soviet infrastructure and human intervention challenged the unique biological vistas that their absence let flourish. 285 Years after wild spaces emerged and were demarcated as deserving conservation, extensive Soviet action on the land continued. Following the breakdown of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the eventual opening and resettlement of this sea border quickly changed the coastal landscapes. Soviet departure was followed by development. The once-forgotten borderland saw a tremendous boom of quick economic development. Tourism significantly increased, alongside harbour and marine development. Harvesting of natural elements such as sand and wood extraction intensified as infrastructure increased with bridge and power constructions. Overall, a rapid and expansive development accommodated a sudden influx of people as well as goods through newly-created border crossings. The grey infrastructures along the Baltic coast challenged the green. The increases in grey infrastructure and development put the local environment in danger (Rakowski & Sienkiewicz, 2004, p. 33; European Green Belt Association, 2018n). The land became “an expression of ambitions of men and they are not taking into account the wholeness of the existing ecosystems which in border areas in many cases are of very high uniqueness” (Urtans, 2004, p. 25). The coastline experienced a relentless pressure for development and exploitation. Areas that were protected as one type of sacrifice zone became another, as they became intensively used for timber, industry and hunting. Furthermore, the construction of international routes cut through the landscapes that flourished during the Cold War. Whilst Germany began conservation of their natural and cultural heritage immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the conservation of the natural elements of the Balkan Green Belt saw complications as they became rhetorical, “resourceful assets” (European Green Belt Association, 2018i). Nonhuman nature as resourceful assets symbolised a post-Soviet Baltic progression and growth. Challenges thus lay for nation- state building, development, and conservation. 1.2 The sea as a rhetorical gap. Soviet intervention along the Baltic coast resulted in both the loss and flourishing of nonhuman natures against these grey infrastructures. Ruins peppered the Baltic 286 landscape. The conservation of these green and grey infrastructures were a recognised concern. And yet, the Baltic coastline fuelled logistical quandaries for conservation efforts. The EGB was conceived as a terrestrial project, but the sea-based environmental degradation in the Baltic region challenged terrestrial conservation aims (European Green Belt, 2009, p. 1). If a conservative rhetorical geography is the mapping of spaces of the known and unknown, the loss of biodiversity and eutrophication in the sea was the latter. Baltic coastal erosion and degradation constituted rhetorical gaps in comparison to the EGB ecosystems as known pearls in the GGB and mosaics in the FGB. The Baltic regions thus faced challenges from the overarching EGB Initiative. The Baltic region was not a coherent line on the EGB map. Rather, the supposed sea border was laid out as a set of dotted marks. Rhetorical references to the sea road echoed this visual arguments. The Baltic coast was a “blemish” upon the project. In turn, this created a “missing link” of the EGB network (European Green Belt, 2009, p. 4). The notion of a missing link became a rhetorical trope repeated through other conceptual terms such as dots and blemishes that symbolise the lack of connectedness of the EGB as an ecological network. This dissertation argue that this notion of blemishes symbolically posits imperfections in an idealised visual frame of reference, and that missing links are Burke’s anthropo-negatives. The effect was foreboding rather than inviting. But I also argue that these dotted markers offer the possibility for future action. Dots on a map normally symbolise potentiality. The dotted line suggested a hypothetical completion of the EGB network. However, disagreements on how to constitute a sea border continued to be relentless in the face of such rhetorical work. Some argued that the Iron Curtain followed the outer borders of the Soviet Union’s exclusive economic zone: therefore the resulting border was a marine border in the middle of the sea. Others countered that the “typical features” of the Belt—former restricted zones due to military use—were to be found along the Eastern and Southern coastline of the sea (European Green Belt, 2009, p. 4). For the latter, the border was 287 along the actual terrestrial shoreline. Overall, history had arrived and was being remade, but in fragments. Gaps offered space for the reflection of an inquiry that fascinates; but, I would portend that they are likely off-putting to the tourist crowd. Conservation of the Baltic Sea was thus to remain the work of the Baltic nations themselves until the late 2000s. 1.3 Biomic governance of the sea road. The beginning of conservation work in the Baltic region was shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. Transboundary cooperation was not far behind 1989. However, the means of piecing cooperative work together on transboundary landscapes was a historical puzzle in action. For the Baltic regions, transboundary efforts begins in 1990 with the establishment of the NGO Coalition Clean Baltic (CCB) in Helsinki, Finland. CCB is a collaboration among environmental NGOs from Baltic region countries. 22 In this ecological network, cross border collaboration deploys a mixture of lobbying, environmental education, and support to field projects of its member organisations (Coalition Clean Baltic, n.d.). The establishment of this NGO thus paved the way for transboundary collaboration in the area. Transboundary work developed rapidly in the 1990s. Shortly after Polish independence in 1992, the Polish Institute of Environmental Protection in Warsaw begins its transnational work. The institute established three Euroregions on the Polish eastern borderland (Rakowski & Sienkiewicz, 2004, p. 38-9). In the years 1992–1994, Poland signed bilateral agreements with all its eastern neighbours. Polish–Russian, Polish–Lithuanian, Polish–Byelorussian, and Polish–Ukrainian working groups for environmental protection were created. These agreements developed from initiatives set by the Polish Ministry of Environmental Protection, Natural Resources and Forestry. 22 Today, the CCB promotes environmental protection—with a variety of ecosystem services—in the Baltic Sea area. The NGO coordinates and oversees a network of 19 organisations from Belarus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Sweden. 288 The late 1990s saw transboundary efforts grow. Nation-states worked across borders to protect demarcated areas of ecological value and risk. One example is the Curonian Spit—a 98 kilometre long, narrow sand-dune whose northern position lies in southwest Lithuania, and its southern section in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia. The notorious strip boasts the highest sand dunes in the Baltic Sea region. The site thus links Baltic countries, the EU and the Russian Federation in the task of common, conservation efforts. As continual difficulties arose regarding erosion of the Spit, Lithuania and Russia began transboundary cooperation in 1997. The site soon achieved World Heritage status. Ruta Baskyte (2004) noted that despite conservation-based intentions, challenges to determine the necessary and best means for cooperation and to resist erosion persist. Some appear trivial. For example, different visa requirements prevent access. But such difficulties also expands towards a lack of a general scientific research and monitoring programme that inevitably hinders conservation. Furthermore, more serious issues arise in the national differences in legal, territorial planning and informational systems that prevent agreement in the first place. Differences thus render collaboration tricky (p. 29). In the latter 1990s, the Baltic region was developing collaboration between neighbours. But it was still without a proposed EGB delineation. Efforts thus continued inward. Poland lead the way amongst its Baltic neighbours. With the commission of the Polish Ministry of Environmental Protection Natural Resources and Forestry, Poland initiated transboundary cooperative work in the region. The aim was to provide a complex system of protection for the most “valuable” areas in Poland and its neighbouring countries—the Baltic Sea countries—through a system of “transboundary protection areas ” (Rakowski & Sienkiewicz, 2004, p. 34). These were to “fulfil the function of ecological corridors at a macro-scale” (Rakowski & Sienkiewicz, 2004, p. 34), utilising the corridor as a biomic network analogy. Transboundary nonhuman nature protection areas were created in order to support ecological conservation along nation- state borders. A Baltic ecological network was being established, but without initial EGB delineation. 289 Moving to the next century, in the early 2000s, the EGB was coming together. But conservation efforts along the EGB were predominately focused on the interactions between people and nonhumans on the land. In contrast, the shore and islands on the Baltic coast presented water-vistas. Thus, the Baltic region’s entry into the EGB polis waxed and waned. Sometimes the region was considered as part of its neighbours—the Fennoscandian or Central European Green Belts—but this ultimately depended on human interpretation. The Baltic region thus remained the ominous dotted road. During these developments in transboundary cooperation, international conservation eventually had to turn to wetlands, seas, and oceans. The protection of wetlands has been, and continues to be currently governed by, various transboundary delegations: the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, Especially as Waterfowl Habitat (Ramsar Convention 1971); the Convention on World Heritage (Paris Convention 1972); the Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Washington Convention 1973); the Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area (Helsinki Convention 1974, updated in 1992); the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (Bonn Convention 1979; the Convention on the Conservation of European Wild Fauna and Flora and Natural Habitats (Bern Convention 1979); the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (Helsinki 1992); and the Convention on Biological Diversity (Rio de Janeiro 1992). (Rakowski & Sienkiewicz, 2004, p. 38-9.) Conventions slowly turned to address the needs of particular sea-roads without official recognition from the state. At the turn of the century, the Balkan Green Belt was without official EGB designation. Thus, the region turned to biodiversity conservation guidance through overarching EU environmental policies from the European Bird and Habitat Directivities. As Baltic countries prepared for EU memberships, EU initiatives became more prevalent. These initiatives included Baltic-specific recommendations of the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission, and the Baltic Marine Environment Protection 290 Commission—Helsinki Commission (HELCOM). In 2002, Baltic conservation saw significant action. The EU began to create governance of its member states in what is termed Integrated Coastal Zonal Management (ICZM). ICZM, enacted under HELCOM, resulted in the Balkan Green Belt becoming a conceptual reality in the late 2000s. The Baltic region moved from mere coastline into a coveted Green Belt. Zone focus resulted in numerous studies, evaluations, reports, plans, and implementation projects. This was a unique strategy that combined conservation and sustainable development of a coastal area. Regional sustainable development became a process for coastal areas that integrates all aspects of the zone, including political and geographical boundaries. Such zone thinking thus unified the EGB as ecological network. 1.4 Forming the sea-belt. This wet-lands governance ultimately pushed thinking in the region. Delineation of the Balkan Green Belt as a specific, separate sea road thus started approximately in 2007. Integrating the coastal into a rhetorics previously concerned with land required additional conceptual work for mapping a cultural geography. Such recognition of the unique importance of a coastal border finally pulled the Baltic region away from its northern and western neighbours and into its own Belt. As we have seen depicted earlier in this dissertation, both geological and human-caused boundaries are fluid. As the initial Balkan Green Belt came together, three universities collaborated: The Coastal Geography branch of Kiel University, Germany; the Coastal Research and Planning Institute of the University of Klaipeda, Lithuania; and the Institute of Agriculture and Environmental Science of the Estonian University of Life Sciences. The Balkan Green Belt began as a collaborative partnership between University of Kiel and Coalition Clean Baltic, the IUCN, 13 NGOs and public partners, and 10 associated organisations from Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany (European Green Belt, 2018p). Technical knowledge reassured safe development. Further cooperation appeared promising with The Baltic Sea Region Programme (formerly INTERREG IVB), funded from the European Regional Development 291 Fund. The Fund intended to help reduce imbalances between regions of the EU. As the first coordinated effort to develop the EGB along the Baltic Sea as the Baltic Green Belt, the project ran from 2007–13 (European Green Belt, 2009). 23 The construction of governance required networks that link together partners from Riparian states that raise and distribute resources. With the grounds of cooperation having been constructed at the beginning of the century, partnerships thus grew. Regional coordination through ICZM policy became integrated into Baltic Belt governance. As experience progressed, plans consequently adapted. In 2007, HELCOM released its international management plan for the Baltics—the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan (European Green Belt, 2009, p. 3). In 2008, the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive was adopted by EU member states to improve and achieve “Good Environmental Status” for marine waters by 2020. This supported conservation work in the burgeoning Balkan Green Belt. In February 2009, the annual Baltic Green Forum began in Travemünde, Germany, involving international partners from Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany. A month later, the Balkan Green Belt website was launched, although today it is currently defunct. In spring 2009, BUND initiated the INTERREG IV B-project ‘Balkan Green Belt’. In total, 15 partners from all Riparian states of the southern and eastern shore line of the Baltic Sea from Germany to the Finnish-Russian border worked together on the development of a functioning network for the Balkan Green Belt. The partners even raised money for the project, before signing a partner declaration. Under HELCOM’s Baltic Sea Action Plan, the Programme’s goals were to make the Baltic Sea region “an attractive place to invest, work and live in” (European Green Belt, 2009, p. 3). To achieve these goals, 12 partners and 9 associated organisations were involved, including environmental NGOs, municipalities, scientific institutions, public authorities and 23 The team at Kiel were also supported by the Institute for Tourism and Recreational Research in Northern Europe for project management, and the Landgesellschaft Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for administrative support. 292 economic stakeholders. Furthermore, in 2011, Coalition Clean Baltic evaluated the implementation of EU regulations and HELCOM recommendations on sustainable coastal development and made policy recommentations for the Baltic Green Belt. Multiple directives from the EU were being enacted as biomic governance over the Baltic landscape. 1.5 The contemporary sea-road as sustainable Anthropocene resource. The constitution of the Baltic Green Belt developed as conservation requirements continued to differ from traditional land-based concerns. The repurposing of relics in the service of public memory and environmental conservation faced, and continues to face unique challenges along the sea road. Soviet coastal defences were uniquely damaging to the environment, due to the degradation caused by the sea. Sea-side conservation work requires specialist knowledge that surpasses most Baltic efforts. Thus, the governance of conservation, repurposing, and sustainable development was recast under German rule, in order to stabilise biodiversity. The European Commission defined the principles of ICZM as a European strategy, integrated with terrestrial and marine components. Long term control would need to take into account “environmental, economic, social, cultural and recreational objectives, all within the limits set by natural dynamics” (European Commission, 2000, p. 25). As with the FGB, the balance of time and space echoed Ingold’s dwelling perspective. But furthermore, this was the start of an Anthropocene rhetoric of the land as a rhetorical, cultural geography, constituted through the intertwining of natural and anthropo-processes. Transboundary conservation is biomically governed by local and state actors, but the German NGO BUND Mecklenburg was designated as to oversee conservation work. The biomic constitution of the Baltic Green Belt has thus come into full Anthropocene effect Network maturity is always work in development. Integrated networks do not eliminate conflict. Today, the Baltic Green Belt is a functioning programme of action. Currently, a follow-up Interreg programme began in 2014 (with an end date of 2020), also in part funded by the EU. Its aims are listed 293 regarding the conservation of the Baltic Green Belt sea “pearls”, as many still lie undiscovered, unrecognised and unprotected (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, 2015). Once again, the missing depiction of rare missing jewels, but this time of the sea, are used as a rhetorical trope to encourage ecosystem conservation. This repeated rhetorical trope as seen in the previous chapter regarding the Central and German Green Belt’s speaks to the overall constitution of the Baltic Green Belt by German biomic apparatuses. The apparent lack of expertise in the Baltic region over sea-conservation has solidified German efforts in the region. Rather than turn to a biomic actor within their own region, biomic efforts have spread further to the country of nascence for the project. The Baltics have thus become governed by the German Regional Coordinator BUND, as uncertainty has generated ad hoc arrangements. As seen in the work garnered in the previous two Belts, the realities of an EGB designation over an ecosystem normally results in more than just conservation. Sustainable development of the area oft- becomes a key working figure for the region. Sustainable development is a term that places burdens of uniting preservation and progress, the rhythms of nonhuman nature, and the political economic well-being of a region. Differences of opinion about risk produce conflict. Within the Baltic Green Belt, I argue that quibbles of risk in the region are situated against the Anthropocene devastation of the Baltics, thus driving forward contemporary efforts in biodiversity conservation, public memory, and (infrastructure) development. Contemporary devastated regions include: Polish agriculture as a main source of sea pollution, causing eutrophication; the Curonian Spit-Kurskaja Kosa National Park in Lithuania, as it lies in danger of oil extraction; and the largest section of the German Baltic Sea Belt (Germany’s Mecklenburg- Western Pomerania), constituted as a very dense network of coastal lagoons, sandy beaches, reefs, cliffs, islands and estuaries. The latter are all threatened by power plant construction, large hotel complexes, gravel and sand extraction, pipelines alongside marine regions, and general terrestrial pollution in the region 294 (European Green Belt, 2009, p. 4). Conservation exists alongside, and sometimes against, (sustainable) development. Today, human interests and human activities conflict with biodiversity conservation across the Belt. Western human–nonhuman nature relations have created certain conceits of how a cultural geography forms, even at this coastal region. Power generation, shipping, near-shore mining and bridge constructions are huge infrastructure developments to support the human population. This follows in a set of contradictory legislation upon the land and the sea, even as the coast finds significant impact from sources that lie far inland (European Green Belt, 2009, p. 3). The conservation of green and grey infrastructures in the region find tensions. Grey and green infrastructure face competition for resources. The development of green infrastructure finds itself pushed against the development of grey. Eco-tourism risks becoming a regional burden for the Baltics. Overall, coastal preservation continues against political and cultural desires, and nonhuman natures risk becoming resources. 1.6 Repurposing the grey relics of memory. The risk of nonhuman nature being conceptualised as a resource is significant. So far, throughout this dissertation I have argued for the various ways in which nonhuman nature has been conceptualised as a resource not only for biodiversity conservation but also regional development. However, I argue that conservation also expands beyond the nonhuman natures that flourished in the border zone. Conservation extends past the grey and moves towards the grey: towards to the materialisations of public memory. Once again, this material turn is laid out in this inquiry as an Anthropocene rhetorical geography. Frequent Cold War watch-towers and other built facilities were laid metres to the shore to maintain strict control over the region. The end of the Cold War saw many removed from the landscape. But other grey infrastructures from the War underwent a transcendent recasting (Burke, 1984). The contradictory elements of nonhuman natures and ruins were united by a new perspective. The seemingly dichotomous 295 grey and green infrastructures of the EGB became united under a coherent narrative of the “correct” way to view and experience the recounting of European division and unification. Evidence of human involvement and technology became transformed from past sins into necessary evils for the recovering of nonhuman nature. Remnants of border fortifications became recast from symbols of separation into symbols of hope, unification, and a cohesive European identity. The symbolic interpretation of the war relics’ presence was replaced with new understandings and ways of seeing in service of a transcendent argument. Figure 60: Ostsee Grenzturm Kühlungsborn (Baltic Sea Border Tower in Külungsborn, Germany). Type BT 11. An example of the “living memorial” in the EGB and at the Baltic Green Belt. Photograph author’s own. Figure 61: Anleger Wohlenberg, a strategic agricultural pier for the Soviet Union in Wohlenberg, on the German Baltic Coast. The pier is now located in a European bird sanctuary. Photograph author’s own. 296 This repurposing was most prominent in the German section of the Baltic region, as nation-state governance is enacted. As an example, I began my exploration into the rhetorical work in the EGB at the German/Polish border in Rostock. The first relic I encountered in my fieldwork was the Ostsee Grenzturm Kühlungsborn (Baltic Sea Border Tower in Külungsborn, Germany), type BT 11, along the German Baltic coast. Here the craggy German coastline at the Baltic Sea creates a small inlet between the islands of its Danish neighbour. On my first day in the German section of the Baltic Green Belt, I experienced two significant sites along this German coastline alone. The first, as will be discussed later, was the transformation of an old coastal watchtower into a museum that explores the division of Germany, the Iron Curtain, and the eventual return of the coastline as a holiday destination for tourists (see Figure 60). The second was an unexpected chance discovery as I traversed the coast. 24 At Wolenberg on the North East German Baltic coast, I discovered an old Soviet potato feeder with rusting military spotlights (see Figure 61) jutting out from the coast. The platform offered a unique opportunity to reflect back on the kisceral experience of coastline, beaming with nonhumans and humans enjoying a warm German summer’s evening. Numerous cyclists were following the ICT bike path and taking a detour to explore the feeder. Several tourists—interestingly, all Germans—were intrigued by my presence, as I documented and studied the old potato feeder with serious intention. Conversations abounded about my work, their memories of division and conservation of ruins. Exploring the potato feeder, I discovered a series of decayed electronics and ruins overrun with flora (see Figure 62). This vista of decaying ruins, and the stark contrast between 24 As discussed in chapter four regarding the GGB, the ability for the tourist to distinguish Green Belt sites—particularly the nonhuman natures—is tricky without prior knowledge of the EGB Initiative. For instance, the vista that the potato feeder offered upon the German Baltic Sea coastline was informed by second-order discourses and historical knowledge of the coastline as previously part of the Curtain. The potato feeder offered a material argument of Soviet infrastructure and decay. But context was needed to understand its history as well as the flourishing nonhuman natures situated simultaneously. 297 technologies of humans that destroy life against the sea from which all life emerged, was emotionally and visually jarring. This juxtaposition of disparate elements allowed myself and the other tourists to see “one order in terms of another” (Burke, 1968, p. 216). The flourishing of life is felt more prominently and catches our attention more noticeably because it has been paired with its opposite. In that liminal space is the recognition of the past and the negation of its erasure. In contrast, it also finds space for nonhuman nature to re-emerge. Even a potato feeder can be rhetorical. Figure 62: Remnants of a Soviet past on Anleger Wohlenber. Photograph author's own. Next to the border tower, a small museum has been built to tell the narrative of the division of Germany and its reunification. The tower and museum sit along the coast and the newly formed promenade to enable holiday makers access to the coastal vista. The tower itself can be climbed, to provide a bird’s eye view of the coastline and the flourishing nonhuman nature situated back from the shore. Both traversing the tower, and viewing the tower in its coastal vista, is a recasting of nonhuman nature and ruins in a new light. To be in the tower and museum enacts the argument for unification. The embodied experience of spiralling up the tower is a key rhetorical strategy that Pezzullo (2016) argues for in the rhetorical examination of environmental sites. Further, this spiralling is what Aoki notes as mimicking the 298 movement of hiking a mountain, emphasising the natural in a culturally constructed space. The differences between ruins and nonhuman nature are thus brought together in a new transcendent frame of unification regarding climate change in order to yield agreement. Overall, this chapter argues that these relics in the Baltic Green Belt, although sparser in comparison to their Central European counterparts, are still signifiers amongst the landscape. They function deixically towards routes and areas in the former Curtain as rhetorical memory places. The vista of the Baltic Green Belt has semiotic power. 2.0 The Mountainous Belt The Balkan region forms the Southeastern region of the European continent. The name derives from the mountainous Balkan Peninsula that stretches from the Serbian/Bulgarian border to the Black Sea. The former Iron Curtain zigged and zagged across these countries. Yugoslavia and Albania were able to extract themselves from the Soviet Union in 1948 and 1961 respectively. Greece and Turkey were not part of communist rule, and allied with the West. The fall of the Soviet Union saw countries in this Balkans collapse and born. Yugoslavia was disintegrated and formed six new sovereign republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzogovnia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Montenegro, and Serbia. The former border, now the Balkan Green Belt, in 2018 consists of Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania, FYROM, Albania, Greece and Turkey. These former Balkan nations have turned away from communism and look towards the European Union. The Balkan Green Belt follow the former Iron Curtain border as it descends and spreads west and east across Southeastern Europe. A mountainous geography results in an extremely diverse “mosaic” of landscapes, a rhetorical construction that was dissected in chapter three regarding the FGB: lakes and coastal zones; alpine ecosystems; forests; and steppe habitats all are pictured in the Balkan border (European Green Belt Association, 2018j). The high mountainous areas afford a vast diversity of plant species—more than 6,500—where Illyric and Mediterranean flora meet in Sharr/Sara Mountains, and 299 Korab Mountains in the southwestern Balkan region (ibid., p. 6). The trilateral border region of Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia is mountainous resulting with an extensive array of species and habitats, an extensive hydrological network and more than 2,000 plant species alone. The southwestern part of the Balkan Peninsula is considered to be a rhetorical hot spot of biodiversity (Strauss, Pezold & International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 2009, v). Significantly, the regional flora is also framed by the EGB Association as a rhetorical container for the last remaining rhetorical “retreats” for large European carnivores. The exceptionally rare Balkan lynx, wolf and bear are afforded rhetorical respite from human action in this mountainous region. The Balkan region is heavily influenced by geopolitical work. The Balkan region’s turn towards the EU resulted in affective transboundary governance from an overarching European biomic politics. Biomic biodiversity conservation in the Balkan region has been predominately governed by three supra-national actors: the EU, the Natura 2000 network, and the EGB Initiative. For the latter, the Balkan Green Belt received initial attention from the German NGO EuroNatur. In 2005, a European Green Belt Coordinator started work in the IUCN Office for South Eastern Europe in Belgrade, Serbia. To this day, EuroNatur has hence remained the biomic actor for the EGB project in the Balkan region. However, EGB designation does not make conservation an easy process. The drawing and redrawing of nation-states in the Balkans post-1991 has hampered conservation and sustainable development. I argue in this chapter that the Balkan Green Belt finds tensions in human mappings of the area in part due to territorialisation of the land in the aftermath of the Anthropocenic Cold War. The Cold War wrenched the Balkan region apart after the disbandment of communism in the region. The end of the Cold War resulted in sustainable development and biodiversity difficulties as geopolitics were laid to bear in order to gain stability in the Balkan region. Although many of the Balkan countries today now hold EU membership, I still argue that the Balkans as a region continues to see political instability, a lack of 300 infrastructure, a deficiency of sustainable development initiatives, significant economic concerns, and territory disputes at large which have led to delays in conservation initiatives. Significantly, local and state actors thus find their resources divided by economic and sustainable development (2016, personal correspondence). Despite good intentions, human geopolitics are still a significant actor in the region. Biomic actors are, in theory, positive regarding nonhuman nature and biodiversity conservation. However, proposed policy measures are rarely implemented in the area (Schindler et al., 2011, p. 194). The difficulties of balancing economic and ecological development were also noted to me by a member of the Balkan delegation during the Pan-European Green Belt Conference. For those in the Balkans, nonhuman nature conservation was second to economic and geopolitical security in the region. The division of land, the ethic relations of peoples, economics, and educational development, were seen as significant contemporary conditions that must be addressed. Thus, infrastructure development has been a governmental priority and includes some significantly damaging infrastructures to the environment along the former border: ski-ing areas, dams, motorways and even wind parks. Overall, all developments stress on the newly flourishing flora and fauna (EuroNatur Stiftung, n.d). Biodiversity conservation hence takes a back seat in the polis in comparison to the regions of the previous two chapters. 2.1 Mountainous biomic governance. The polis of EGB biodiversity conservation requires election into the project. Election requires a designation of that which has ecological bios and which has zōē . As the Balkan Green Belt came into existence, this thus required an increasing biomic governance in the region in order to both open, yet keep, the burgeoning ecological network along the former border. After the Cold War, initial desires for infrastructure development and economic progression hindered conservation efforts. The Balkan region faced difficulties in nation-state enaction of nonhuman nature conservation. Thus, EuroNatur took initial interest in biodiversity conservation in the Balkan region. The 301 implementation of the EGB in the Balkan region began in 1999, as EuroNatur was already involved in the region. Thus, as the project developed, EuroNatur became its Regional Coordinator. 25 EuroNatur oversaw initial transboundary governance in the post-Soviet region. But historical accounts of further development of the Balkan Green Belt are rare. Sources regarding the construction of the Balkan Green Belt are missing from the EGB literature. Despite extensive research, I found it difficult to find detailed accounts of how the Balkan Green Belt came into being and continues its conservation work to the present day. This is particularly notable in comparison to the other three region where information, especially regarding the German section of the Green Belt, proliferates. Sporadic reports identify the Balkan region as encountering significant variations in its conservation work despite delineated spaces for protection in the region are noted as containing a vast array of flora due to a diversity of habitats and the position of the region in meeting the Mediterranean. Thus, despite needing an extensive and varied section of conservation methods in order to protect this flourishing landscape, details of such work have provided only snippets of individual nation-state actions and occasional transboundary cooperation. 2.2 Looking for biomic cooperation. A bare collection of national and transboundary conservation creates an incomplete narrative. Individual projects find descriptions across the Balkan Green Belt literature. However, in my literature I looked specifically for larger transboundary projects, as the description of more complex initiatives are scarce. Snippets do attempt to convey a larger whole. For instance, the Eastern Rhodopes at the Greek/Bulgarian border have been designated as an important ecological network and conservation site. Thus, it has not only has maintained a high level of biodiversity but also has been relatively well studied. Furthermore, in 2009, a joint statement for the protection of the 25 The Baltic Green Belt did not exist at this time. Thus, the Balkan region stood alone against the Fennoscandian and Central European Green Belts who had NGO oversight from within their own biogeographical regions. 302 Prespa Park was confirmed by the prime ministers in the trilateral area of Albania, Greece and FYR Macedonia (European Green Belt Association, 2018, p. 2). Transboundary cooperation was thus found in discrete projects. Another significant example of detailed transboundary governance began in 2009. In All along the watchtowers: Field guide for the south eastern European Green Belt (2009), this informative document serves as a field guide for nonhuman nature conservation and cooperation along the Albanian, FRY Macedonia and Kosovo border. The border includes the 80 kilometre long, and 10-30 kilometre wide, Sharr/Sara Mountains. These mountains extend from southern Kosovo and Northwestern Macedonia to Northeastern Albania, and define the trilateral border area around the Sherupa peak. The Sharr Mountains are home to several species, extinct in the rest of Europe. In these mountains, many rare and endangered animals exist: mammals such as the brown bear, the lynx, the wolf, chamois and wild board exist alongside birds such as the rock partridge, capercaillie, the golden eagle, the lesser kestrel, the eagle owl and the griffon vulture. The varieties of flora support this mountainous retreat, with the Sharr/Sara Mountains being a particular haven for water. The mountains are both used by the beasts of the region alongside harbouring springs and feeding the rivers of the regions. This results in a vista of natural features, including waterfalls, rivers and lakes. Conservation in this region has thus felt the urgency of conservation in the nascent Anthropocene. The project All Along the Watchtowers was the result of a joint IUCN and BfN project entitled “Civil- military cooperation for the promotion of transboundary nature conservation along the European Green Belt (south eastern Europe)” carried out in 2008. The was in addition to the long-term trespassing ban in the region in order to allow nonhuman to flourish in the mountainous region. 26 The overall project aimed 26 Alone, each trilateral country also enacts nation-state conservation. Albania conserves 9.89% of its territory, including 4 nature reserves, 13 national parks and 750 natural monuments. Macedonia intends to increase its percentage of protected to 12%. For 303 at combining nonhuman nature conservation alongside peace-securing activities of border police, nonhuman nature conservationists, and local communities in their shared border region. Brought together, these stakeholders were to identify common interests in nonhuman nature conservation and to agree on potential grounds for cooperation (Strauss et al., 2009, v). Overall, the implementation of EGB initiatives were listed as to “better harmonise human activities with the natural environment, and to increase opportunities for the socio-economic development of local communities” (Strauss et al., 2009, p. 4). Biodiversity conservation thus spoke not only to the nonhuman but also the human life in the region. 2.3 A biomically governed natural paradise. Information regarding biodiversity conservation development in the region is sporadic and thin in details. And yet, through my research I have noted several key rhetorical tropes in the literature that do exist regarding the Balkan Green Belt. The first was posited by EuroNatur long before the EGB was a concept. As EuroNatur became invested in conservation work in the region, the NGO began to campaign for the preservation of a “natural paradise” in Southeast Europe (EuroNatur Stiftung, n.d.). The phrase natural paradise echoes earlier metaphors of retreat, as a symbolic paradise away from the trials of life and modernity. Against geopolitical instability and a lack of economic development, these border regions were positioned as a retreat away from modernity’s stressors. This led the Initiative to describe the Balkan Peninsula as playing “a key role in the history of European flora” (Strauss et al., 2009, p. 6). Furthermore, Strauss et al. (2009), speaking on behalf of the IUCN and BfN, described this green infrastructure as a shared natural heritage amongst European countries. Just as “nature knows no national borders” (Strauss et al., 2009, p. 6), neither did transboundary cooperation. Kosovo, 75 protected areas cover approximately 4.25% of its territory, with the majority encompassed in the Sharr Mountain National Park (Strauss, Pezold & International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 2009, pp. 64-5). 304 The creation of a natural paradise required implementation. EuroNatur came to be the self- appointed steward of this heavenly region. As steward and Regional Coordinator for the Balkans, EuroNatur’s Balkan Green Belt website reveals its certain aspects regarding its past conservation work in the region as well as contemporary top-down actions towards the Balkan region from Germany in both English and German: the two working languages of the EGB project. The website proclaims the byline “connecting nature and people” (EuroNatur, n.d.a.), in an attempt to collapse human and geological histories as well as current actions. EuroNatur continues this rhetoric across web pages. The following is an example of such rhetorics: Natural treasures are subject to overexploitation everywhere. EuroNatur stands for a different way. The foundation’s nature and species conservation projects help preserve Europe’s nature in its beauty and diversity. EuroNatur protects large-scale natural landscapes as well as ecologically valuable cultural landscapes throughout Europe […] We strive not only for the protection of wildlife and its habitats in Europe, but also for an ecologically sustainable development of the respective region – in harmony with nature. (EuroNatur, n.d.b.) Nonhuman nature conservation thus becomes imbued with language of capitalism and exploiting nonhuman nature as a resource, invoking the conceptual metaphor of human use of nonhuman nature as discussed throughout this dissertation. At the same time, EuroNatur decries the overconsumption and exploitation of capitalism whilst using the language of over-consumption. Intentions are hence good- natured and well-intentioned, but imply a harmonisation of humans and nonhumans rather than perhaps desire for reparation of human influence. EuroNatur has laid claim to, and continue to engage with, the metaphor of the Balkan region as a natural paradise for flora and fauna in the Anthropocene. But as with the rest of the EGB, the creation of such a natural beauty requires demarcation. A paradise has to be delineated as that which goes beyond the 305 everyday. To build that paradise requires governance from some appropriate body. The EGB and the Balkan Green Belt are no exception. This dissertation argues that biomic apparatuses of the EGB posit a set of organisations that enact its transboundary conservation goals in the Balkan region. Lower, nation- state, partner organisations, and NGOs are amongst those involved. Biomic actions vary in work. Some include the preparation and development of trans-boundary nonhuman nature reserves. This work can then diverge into the networked performance of linking up these spaces. Biomic actors are also involved in the training of other environmental actors to care for the border region. Further, these biomic actors build up local and vernacular discourses in tune with the project. Overall, these actions bring local and vernacular voices into the reconciliation of peoples once divided into a uniting space of nonhuman nature (EuroNatur, n.d.a.). This reconciliation of peoples and nonhuman nature into the constitution of a heavenly shared natural and cultural history requires implementation. According to various sources consulted during my archival, desk-based, and field work analyses, transboundary cooperation in the Balkan region suffers from a lack of administrative cross-collaboration and general isolation (Schindler, et al., 2011, p. 198). Stefan Schindler, Nuno Curado, Stoyan C. Nikolov et al. (2011), in a meta-analyses of conservation literature in the Balkan Green Belt, found that one significant issue of evidence-based conservation in the region is that initial scientific research rarely reaches the local level. In particular, for Bulgaria, scientific papers very rarely contain conservation recommendations. Thus, people do not receive the full information in order to enact conservation activities. As with the Baltic, the Balkan countries have thus posed significant difficulties in the implementation of the conservation initiatives suggested. Hence, EuroNatur, Germany, and the EGB have had to step in in order to provide the administrative and scientific competence to run the region as a biogeographical region of this pan-European biodiversity conservation network.. 306 2.4 Caring for beasts. Scientific competence in the governance of the Balkan vista expands from flora to fauna. One element of biodiversity conservation has significant transboundary work in the Balkan region: the caring for larger animal life. This caring for Balkan beasts can be considered as another rhetorical trope that also resonates with the Balkan region as a natural paradise. In comparison to the Fennoscandian, Central European and Balkan Green Belts, European beasts such as the Balkan Lynx, the wolf and the bear are a central feature in the Balkan regions. EuroNatur’s website places much emphasis on the protection of the regionally-local endangered animals through a rewilding framework: “We want to lay the foundations for brown bears, wolves and lynxes to return to their former habitats, and raise awareness and acceptance among the people in these areas” [emphasis added] (EuroNatur, n.d.b.). The Balkan region becomes a paradisiac retreat for nonhuman life—their rightful return to their homeland. Caring for beasts began in April 2005–October 2006. EuroNatur, now as the Balkan Regional Coordinator, began EGB programming with the “Balkan Green Belt as an Ecological Corridor for Wolf, Bear and Lynx” in the Southeast region (Sepp, 2011, p. 9), funded by BfN. The project focused on preparing for the declaration of a transboundary national park at the Jablanica-Shebenik mountain range that forms the border between Albania and Macedonia. In 2008, the Albanian part of the Jablanica- Shebenik-Mountains was established as national park. The implementation of the project engaged with a significant rewilding rhetoric. The protection of bears began with the complexity of needing to de-threaten the fuzzy giant. Bears posit a threat to the human population in the Balkan region. Conversely, humans posit a threat to bear habitats. EuroNatur’s byline positions bringing humans and nonhuman nature together. The EuroNatur website thus extends this connection to dangerous humans and nonhumans. The website posits that it creates perspectives for both people and bears in the Balkan region. To convince humans over the plight of the bear, it is offering “local people economic perspectives that are in harmony with nature protection 307 so that they are won over to protecting bears and can in this way increase the success of protection measures. Developing nature tourism is one such initiative.” (EuroNatur Stiftung, n.d.c.) Economic concerns are thus connected with biological conservation. But such conservation cannot happen without rhetorical work. The object of conservation needs to be rhetorically designated as worthy of human intervention. Bears, considered dangerous to their human counterparts, struggle for concern by local citizenry. EuroNatur thus enacts rhetorical work to de-threaten the animals. EuroNatur posits the brown bear in non-threatening terms: it is “predator with a sweet tooth, a much loved model for soft toys yet outlawed and hunted down as a blood-thirsty beast” (EuroNatur Stiftung, n.d.c.). Soft toys are posed as oxymoronic in comparison to hungry predators. Rather, EuroNatur positions the importance of the conservation of bear habitats. The habitat of the brown bear is under threat. Thus, as seen in the GGB, the initiative of land buying is posited in order to increase the bear population of these “furry, brown giants” (EuroNatur Stiftung, n.d.c..). The human experience of furry animals as safe, pettable animals is use to de-threaten this giant of the European continent. The bear is a feared endangered animal in the Balkans. Another less fearsome yet even more endangered companion to the European brown bear is the Eurasian lynx. Eurasian lynx habitats and numbers are under significant threat from human action on the land. The Eurasian lynx only exists in a few regions of Europe, including the southern Dinaric Mountains of Greece, Macedonia and Albania. But the home of the Balkan lynx, a subspecies of the Eurasian Lynx, is under further threat. Currently the Balkan Lynx has an extremely small population of less than 100. The Balkan Lynx is most significantly notable in the Mavrovo National Park in FYR Macedonia. Its existence in the Balkan region has thus been dubbed of exceptional biodiverse importance. The presence of the large rare cat motivates eco-tourists and nonhuman nature lovers towards the Park (Strauss, Pezold & International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 2009, p. 31). The exotic other drives tourism to the wilds of the Balkan 308 Peninsula, although chances of glimpsing a Balkan lynx are extremely rare. The thrill of the chase is the driver for eco-tourist action. It was nation-state rebuilding after the ravages of the Cold War that necessitated a Balkan Lynx recovery programme. The first programme was run in the early 2000s in the Mavrovo National Park. In October 2006–September 2009, the second recovery programme was initiated. This expanded from the research of the park into other Balkan Lynx habitats in order to establish a reliable monitoring programme. The monitoring programme relied on strong links between different biomic apparatuses across nations in which the Balkan Lynx survives against the odds. This included governmental and non-governmental institutions at the national and international level, an increased public awareness that include spotting the allusive cat, and capacity building in wildlife research, management and nature conservation (European Green Belt Association, 2018s). This project incorporated coordination efforts of: EuroNatur; KORA— the Swiss expert organisation for large carnivore; NGOs Macedonian Ecological Society and the Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania; and other implementation partners. Financial support came from the MAVA foundation.. Caring for beasts through biomic apparatuses across these borders continues until the present day. 2.5 From beasts to biomic politics. Overall, the rhetorical tropes of stewarding a natural paradise for beasts in the Balkan Green Belt is a driver of biomic action in this southern region of the EGB ecological network. Nonhuman nature is considered to finally be receiving its dues after the ravages wrought by men on the land. Recreating the flora of nonhuman nature into a retreat for the fauna of the region is a tricky conceptual guise as discussed in the previous chapter, but yet still is a leading preservationist rhetoric in the Anthropocene. The Eurasian lynx and the brown bear are not only rare and endangered animals to individual nation-states, but to the pastoral European continent as a whole. Thus, their conservation is seen as an action done on behalf on the whole of the continent in order to preserve 309 (or preserve what is left) of our endangered species. This biomic governance thus reigns in the Balkan Green Belt, but from a German steering committee. Having laid out the foundations of biomic governance in the Anthropocene for both the Baltic and the Balkan regions, this chapter now turns to a cast study comparison of what I consider significant actions of Anthropocene conservation in the region. The next two sections consider the conservation action of the grey natural heritage in both the Estonian and the Bulgarian/Turkish former Iron Curtain borders, with particular consideration of the grey infrastructures that I argue offer new thoughts regarding conservation action in the Anthropocene. The green and the grey coalesce in unique yet resonant ways. 3.0 Case Study Comparison: The Estonian Green Belt My fieldwork in the Baltic and the Balkans took me to two countries and their respective nation-state borders: Estonia and Bulgaria. This section examines Estonia and the biomic governance of people and land. Estonia was chosen due to its position in the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea. Estonia’s position on the Baltic Sea resulted in a fortified infrastructure against its coastal nonhuman nature. Today, this includes significant military heritage objects interspersing the coastal-vista: border towers, coastal defences, open-air prisons, and a nuclear submarine testing centre. The last remains particular dangerous to the current day. Its causes environmental degradation of the coastline as it continues to pollute the water. For this inquiry, my fieldwork extended to two significant sites along the Estonia sea-border in a 50 mile radius of Tallinn’s coastline. The first was Lahemaa National Park—the first area in the Soviet Union to receive outside visitors. The second was the Pakri Peninsula which houses the shell of the nuclear submarine training centre. Today, the training centre continues to pollute. I argue that the symbolic and material work that these rhetorical field sites offer, offer alternative Anthropocenic transcendent action as seen in the previous two regions of the holistic Belt. The posit that unlike the repurposing of relics as seen in Fennoscandian and Central European Belts, the Baltic Iron Curtain corpses are left to rot in and 310 amongst the EGB nonhumans natures. I then offer two contrasting yet resonant readings of this rhetorical labour. I argue that these infrastructures can be husks to their past lives against contemporary times, but also posit that these husks can be considered as repurposed in an act of transcendence but in unexpected ways that go beyond the more simplistic transformations of watching towers and museums. In order to expand on this claim, a historical genealogy of the Estonian Green Belt is first required. 3.1 Constituting the Estonian Green Belt. The Estonian Green Belt is cultivated from a complex set of human–nonhuman nature relations, Soviet occupations, and geopolitics. Like Finland, Estonia has a turbulent political history of varying occupations. Even its flag is built from its Danish occupiers almost 800 years previous. The Soviet occupation wrought a particularly unique cultural geography upon the Estonian land. The renowned geologist Anto Raukas (2011) draws three important conclusions of Estonian Cold War history: (1) the Soviet and Russian military caused immense environmental damage; (2) the remediation process is long-term; (3) and this process can only be achieved through international cooperation. A cultural geography positioned human actions affecting the geography of the land in which they are enacted, and vice versa. A cultural geography is in part built from human–nonhuman nature relations. Maran argued that during tempestuous times, Estonian human–nonhuman nature relations diverged from overarching Western relations. Estonian relations resonated with their Nordic counterparts as depicted in chapter two. For Estonians, the land is not just a container for human action but is an integral part of their culture. The land has a cultural geographic importance. Together, humans and nonhumans cultivate the natural, historical, shared vista. Relations thus divide from the Cartesian dualism inherent in wilderness and culture– nonhuman nature oppositions (Maran, 2014, p. 79). Argo Peepson (2011) concurred. Peepson argued for Estonian culture as symbolically and literally intertwined with the landscapes and ecosystems. This has been practice since at least the 15 th Century. For 311 instance, 1297 marked Estonia’s first act of environmental protection, when the Danish King Erik VI Menved banned tree felling on Naissaar Island due the importance of the forest as a landmark (p. 53). Nonhuman nature conservation thus developed through four phases: the preservation of nonhuman nature in the Tsarist era; “preservationism” continuing during the Republic of Estonia of 1918-40, despite the Nature Conservation Act of 1935; conservation with an economic twist, as the Nature Conservation Act of 1957, and the resulting Lahemaa National Park; and conservation/stewardship as the republic of post-1991 Estonia (Peepson, 2011, p. 46). 27 Unique vistas were thus challenged by human intervention. 3.1a Soviet control. 20 th Century Soviet occupation brought change. Between 1940 and 1993 (apart from the German occupation in 1941-44), the entire hydrography service of the Estonian Baltic Sea was subordinated to the Soviet Navy. During World War II alone, Estonia was occupied three times. The last occupation by the USSR lasted for over 50 years. With the Iron Curtain, Estonia’s coastline of 3800 kilometres and 1500 islands saw a border defence slowly descending from the Estonian/Russian border, along mainland Estonia in the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea. It then reached a more indeterminable border as it moved from the mainland to a non-visible border following the northern coast of the Western Estonian. This border remained in place until the fall of the Berlin Wall, and eventual Estonian independence in 1992. This was furthered with the last of the Soviet troops leaving three years later in September 1995. The troops’ continued presence on the land was due to one key military object: the nuclear submarine training centre on the Pakri Peninsula which was a key asset to the USSR. Communicative labour was, and continues to be, at play in this significant military, coastal, sea-green belt. The Pakri Peninsula where the nuclear submarine testing centre resides in unique. Sepp (2011) notes how before WWII, Estonia’s coastline was not heavily populated nor acted as a recreational space for 27 This is despite Soviet attitudes towards nonhuman nature have an economic symbolism, characterised in terms of natural resources. 312 wealthy elites. However, the 1944 Soviet occupation prevented free access to the coastline and sea (pp. 9- 10). The Soviet Union placed the majority of the marine coastal area, up to a depth of 20km, under strict military control. Between 1944 and 1991, two types activity were the sole habitus of the coast—mineral extraction and fishing kolkhoz—situated alongside Soviet military forces (ibid., p. 10). Residency was not one. To access the islands, one required a family connection to receive an access permit. Consequently, Estonia’s entire coastline became a de-populated zone. A de-populated, no-man’s land became a sought after vista. One panorama was Lahemaa National Park, situated east of Tallinn. Lahemaa became the first nonhuman nature reserve to be established in the Soviet Union. Secondly, in the 1980s, Lahemaa was the initial site after Tallinn to be opened to visitors. This began at Võsu (see Figure 63), a small beach town situated within the park. Tour groups were allowed to travel without a special permit, although they could not stay overnight in Lahemaa until the late 1980s. During my fieldwork in the park, the desertion of the land from Soviet establishment continued. Despite it being the height of European summer, the beach was empty (although the weather was ominous). The only tourists I came across were a group of British cyclists at a small cafe next to the shoreline. The beach thus remained uninviting. Figure 63: Deserted beach in the height of summer in Võsu, Lahmeaa County, Estonia. This was the first location opened up to visitors outside of Estonia during the Cold War. Photograph author’s own. 313 3.1b From Soviet occupation to conservation. As depicted in Finland, Germany and the rest of the EGB, flourishing ecosystems were discovered in the Baltic Iron Curtain boundary during the Cold War. The Estonian preservation rhetoric returned. Preliminary activities in the post-1991 Soviet period were initially focused on allowing former land-owners to reclaim their land, such as with introductory German efforts. However, the Estonian government also understood that conservation is best controlled when the state owns the land. Thus, the government took control of all conservation areas that were under Soviet control. This action both replicated but also furthered German conservation efforts. And yet. Conservation efforts on the same boundary foundations as the other EGB Belts does not a coherent narrative make. Beginning conservation work was not under the transboundary biomic work of the EGB. Rather, these were internal efforts of the Estonian nation-state. European wide directives became of influence as Estonia moved towards EU membership. The initial phase of the Estonian coastal region as Green Belt was an expansion programme of protected areas. Many were along its coast. As Estonian coastline was relatively undiscovered before the 1944 Soviet occupation, Estonian independence in 1991 wrought new discoveries of favoured ecological habitats for many endangered species (Sepp, 2011, p.10). Although some areas became nature reserves or national parks, many were situated at the water line, both above and below. Hence, much of this Baltic beltway was “undiscovered, unrecognised and unprotected” (Pärn, 2010, p. 1). A call for biomic governance was made. Inventories of habitats and species along the coastline were taken between 1991–2003. Consequently, authorities established that conservation measures were needed. Estonia’s position to Russia and the Baltic Sea resulted in a higher concentration of more devastating fuels: from intensive fossil fuel usage to nuclear fuels. Groundwater pollution thus became a concern from the Soviet airfields and missile bases in the Estonian Green Belt. All were heavily contaminated by sewage, chemicals, oil, jet-fuels and 314 demolished buildings. Although military norms only allow jet-fuel up to 0.1%, in the late 1990s estimated amounts from Soviet airfields were rated at several percent (Raukas, 2011, p. 37). The ruins of the Estonian sea belt (and its comparative case study, the Bulgarian Green Belt) were deadly. In comparison to their Central and Fennoscandian counterparts, these ruins from the Anthropocene had far more detrimental consequences to the environment. Coastal sea defences and the density of military objects resulted in significant pollution and environmental degradation. Military activity during the Cold War became increasingly reliant on “malignant” materials and technologies towards the environment. Conservation concerns thus lay over groundwater as sea-beds, such as in the Northern and Southern Paldiski harbours, were filled with large quantities of rubbish, iron bars, barrels and metal constructions. This resulted, and continues to result, in elevated concentrations of heavy metals in the sea- bed sediments (Raukas, 2011, p. 44). The consequent cleaning-up of the Baltic coastline after Estonian independence included the “the collection and disposal of hazardous waste at authorized sites; the collection of mineral oil containers, the utilisation of waste materials where feasible, and the construction of oil separators at sites of major soil contamination.” (Raukas, 2011, pp. 44-5). After Estonian Independence, the major concerns over groundwater continued with concern that the pollutants posited a topos of extinction that could spread through to neighbouring areas in the Baltic Sea. Transboundary concerns were thus slowly turning biomic. A topos of risk emerged that drove biomic action. Transboundary cooperation became necessary as pollutants threatened neighbouring countries, but Estonian scientists were not prepared for the task. Germany thus stepped in, foregrounding its eventual role as Baltic Regional Coordinator. With the post- 1991 clean-up, specialists from the Federal Republic of Germany began training Estonians to carry out the inventory and elimination of the damage caused to the environment. Thus, during 1992–98, the Ministry of Environment’s Commission assessed the environmental damage of 194 Soviet military sites at 80,000 ha. 315 (Raukas, 2011, p. 45). Military heritage objects became unwittingly integrated into landscape as the vista changed. The grey infrastructure of the Cold War was instigating social and natural changes. And yet. In contradiction to the environmental devastation, flora and fauna thrived without human interference. The coast became a rewilding zone as restoration became conservation. 3.1c From conservation to Balkan Green Belt. Significant conservation action became solidified with Estonia joining the EU in 2003. The Nature Conservation Act of 2004 28 followed. This Act provided key legislative framework for Estonian nonhuman nature conservation along the coast. A contemporary Estonia saw benefits in integrating its own conservation efforts with EU conservation strategies. Consequently, the EU became the supra-national governing body for Estonia. Estonian conservation actions thus became a biomic apparatus of the EU “state”. This inquiry argues that this turn towards supra-national governing agencies resulted in the Estonian government becoming a biomic apparatuses for the “state” of the EU. In the early 2000s, the government expanded its areas demarked for nonhuman nature conservation. The Estonian government conducted an audit of Estonia’s “natural objects”. This resulted in the establishment of 38 newly appointed protected areas in the Estonian Belt. And yet. This audit extended help beyond its nonhuman audience. The audit formed the foundation for a Government subsidy scheme, which allowed land-owners to apply for financial help in nonhuman nature conservation efforts. Human and nonhuman action thus became reciprocal as EU conservation strategies expanded into Estonian biodiversity conservation initiatives. A significant act was the Bird Directive and Habitat Directive that forms the basis of the Natura 2000 network. Two-thirds of Estonian-directed conservation eventually areas became categorised as Natura 28 The 2004 Nature Conservation Act recognises six types of protected sites, whilst the Forest Act focuses on woodland habitats. In addition, Estonia has also instituted the Heritage Conservation Act, the Environmental Monitoring Act, and the Water Act. 316 2000 areas. Thus, in 2007 as the Baltic Green Belt started to form and Estonia joined the EU, Estonia had a total of five national parks, 129 nature reserves and 149 landscape protection areas and nature parks (Peepson, 2011, pp. 46-8). EU conservation efforts supported Estonian ones. In 2007, Estonia became a part of the EU. And yet. The Baltic region was still a rhetorical gap in the EGB ecological network. European Green Belt membership was thus on the horizon, as an ecological network can only be fulfilled if it is continuous. Time thus wrought action. Despite disagreements over where a coastal border would be positioned, the EGB worked to make the previously neglected Baltic region part of the project. In 2006, the post-Soviet Estonian government agreed to include its coastline in the EGB Initiative. Previously, the region was sometimes categorised as ecological terra nullis, sometimes as part of the Fennoscandian Green Belt, and sometimes under the Central European Green Belt. But it was in 2009 that the Balkan Green Belt became mapped and symbolically bridged as a unique region. Unification and division met the same rhetorical goal. Following this biomic work, Estonia’s Green Belt became a 25km wide coastal strip around the mainland and islands that were under Soviet military restriction during the Soviet occupation. And yet, the Estonian Green Belt, in its unification, also underwent a four zone split: zone I, constituting of the North coast; zone II as the open sea coast of the Western Estonian Archipelago; zone III is the West coast; and zone IV is composed of the “hinterland”— the remainder of territorial Estonia where movement was relatively unrestricted during the Soviet Occupation (Pärn & Peepson, 2011, p. 14). With German biomic actors at its helm, the EGB as ecological network became complete 3.2 The Military Sea-Green Belt. A topos of extinction drove conservation action and the eventual creation of the Estonian Green Belt. Conservation over the biome was necessarily biomic as international collaboration was called for. But as discussed in the previous chapters, conservation in the Fennoscandic and Central European Green Belts extended far beyond nonhuman nature. Ruins from the Cold War have 317 been repurposed and transformed into catalysts for public memory conservation. In the Estonian Green Belt, I posit that ruins from the Cold War find conservation similarities and differences to its biogeographical regional counterparts. I take as my case study Lahemaa National Park and the Pakri Peninsula as sites immemorian. 3.3a Recording Anthropocene relics. Estonia’s location as the gateway to Russia has left it frequently prone to invasion and occupation (Pärn & Peepson, 2011, p. 15). The Soviet Union occupation of 1994–1991 was the most invasive. Soviet infrastructure was grand, and included military facilities, factories, nuclear sites, and assorted administrate facilities. Between the end of WWII and the withdrawal of the Soviet Military in 1995, there were approximately 3,000 military units within Estonia. Thus, each invasion not only partially or completely destroyed the grey infrastructure of previous invaders, but left behind a new layer of infrastructure and set of artefacts (Pärn & Peepson, 2011, p. 15). For example, the Pakri islands were found to be strewn with out-of-date military equipment which had served as bombing targets. In 1995, this prompted the Estonian Rescue Unit’s bomb disposal section to destroy 2538 explosive devices, including 432 live shells (Pärn & Peepson, 2011, p. 44). Ruins were lively materials of the Anthropocene. These lively Anthropocene materials are Pärn’s Military heritage objects that pepper the Estonian Baltic coastline. Estonia’s sufficiently small land area—the longest diagonal measurement from the north- west (Paldiski) to the south-east (Napi) is approximately 300 km—means few areas have been left untouched by military activity in the last eight centuries (Pärn & Peepson, 2011, p. 44). Estonia’s military history led the country to lead the charge with an intensive mapping of ex-Soviet military objects. Numbers remain open to interpretation by different authorities, but all are large. The Estonian Ministry of the Environment places them at 1,565, the Estonian Ministry of Defence at 1,581 and the Russian authorities at 4,900 (Pärn, 2011, p. 19). A 2009–2010 inventory of cultural and national heritage in Estonia ultimately 318 recorded more than 300 objects of “cultural heritage” from the Soviet occupation (Körner, E. & Maack, S., 2011, p. 3). These were mapped into a GIS database with photos and essential information, freely available. Anthropocene ruins thus became catalysts for public memory. 3.3b Ruins as catalysts for public memory. Ruins of bunkers, fortifications and storages provide a unique vista. Soviet military heritage objects offer “a unique chance for modern touristic development following the rules of sustainability in ecological, economical and social terms” (European Green Belt, 2009, p. 5). Tourist development is most oft-in the service of public memory. Western culture sets precedence in visiting historical sites, as venues that invite public memory. And yet, public memory sites can also be sites of trauma. With immediate Estonian independence, the value in preservation of Estonian military heritage was immediate. Rather, locals initially posited for the removal of objects. Conjuring memories was painful. One example of removal was on the Estonian island of Ruhnu, where the Soviet military left behind all key equipment of a radiolocation company—3 radars and 2 height finders. The locals, in opposition to treating this equipment as potential tourist attractions, took apart the equipment for recycling and selling as scrap-metal (Pärn, 2011, p. 29). This action prompted the establishment of the NGO Hiiumaa Military History Society in 2005, in order to research and record the war history of Estonia on the Western Estonian Archipelago islands. The desire to conserve public memory catalysts pushed against trauma. 319 Figure 64: Abandoned Cold War border tower and Soviet bunker on the island of Võsu, Lahemaa National Park, Estonia. Photograph author's own. The sparking of memory relies on symbolic indicators. A contemporary Estonia repeats German public memory efforts as conservation efforts extend to Anthropocene relics. Ruins of the Anthropocene—the military heritage from WWII and the Cold War—have become prominent features of rational amusement along the Eastern Baltic coast. Records suggest 50 vessels from the Soviet Navy are lying in Estonian coastal waters. Figure 64 is one example of a Cold War ruin, situated in the coastal town of Võsu, Lahemaa National Park. Here, an abandoned border tower and Cold War bunker overlooks the coast. The presence of these ruins are a reminder to a past. However, unlike many German relics, the tower is not repurposed. Rather, the abandoned tower is a corpse of a now defunct ideological war. Public memory is thus jolted along coast. This is also seen in Figure 65, where the old Soviet prison and Rummu quarry in the region which flood and thus has created a man-made ruins and water feature that serves as a background for the Estonian holiday-maker. The quarry used to serve as a site of hard labour for prisoners at both Rummu and Murru prison during the Soviet era. Today, the site, left to decay amongst the 320 Estonian countryside, has become a unique spot for local Estonian tourists in-the-know. As Sepp argues, “for future generations the Iron Curtain will not only be an ecological and cultural memorial to the division of Europe in the 20th Century but also a modern symbol of unity joining rather than separating people in a converging Europe” (Sepp, 2011, p. 7). Janus-faced public memory has thus been enacted in the service of future goals as ruins have been left to decay and find their repurposing in the most strange of ways. Figure 65: An old Soviet prison and at the Rummu quarry that now exists as a ruins that provide a respite for the Estonian tourist and holiday- maker. The quarry flooded and thus has become a man-made lake that ironically is flooded by tourists in the summer months. Photograph author’s own. 321 3.3c A place time has forgotten. The Pakri Peninsula is the largest and most significant site of public memory on the Estonian coast. The Peninsula is an exemplar site of trauma, public memory, and sustainable development in Estonia. This inquiry argues that the Peninsula acts as a time capsule to the Soviet occupation of Estonia. Amongst the numerous military heritage objects found in Estonia, they are highest in density on the Pakri Peninsula. This Peninsula includes the coastal town of Paldiski, which is the site of the soviet nuclear submarine training facility (Sepp, 2011, p. 36). The Peninsula is thus depicted as time immemorian—a living, harmless memorial to history. But it also presents a unique vista. 3.3c.i Recycling the ruins. The relics and ruins of the Pakri Peninsula have prompted unusual recycling efforts beyond the old Soviet prison. My fieldwork to the Peninsula first took me to an unexpected site— an unnamed Soviet graveyard. One kilometre from a working military base in Hariju county, off the main road, Anthropocene ruins are repurposed at this site. This graveyard is not mentioned in any EGB, Estonian Green Belt. or Iron Curtain Trail literature. Rather, it was a chance finding in my research on the Paldiski area. Although I had some guidance through Internet reports of the unmanned and unnamed Soviet graveyard, I drove past the site four times, moving back and forth from the private military base. Moving in and out from forested inlets from the deserted road, I eventually found the graveyard. A small clearing had been made in the forest for gravestones of Soviet pilots who died during the Cold War. No clarifications could be made, but my presumption made from the information available was that these pilots were occupying Estonia and this base during the occupation. 322 Figure 66: Unnamed gravestone site of Soviet Pilots using their aircraft wings as headstones. Photograph author's own. This graveyard replicates the traditions of cultural memory sites in its existence as specifically a memorial. This is the more traditional site of rhetorical fieldwork in regards to cultural memory. I posit that the graveyard recalls the village of Fleury which also included a graveyard as part of its site as war memorial. Fleury’s graveyard became part of the narration of its dark history. For the Paldiski Peninsula, this is the graveyard to the Peninsula as the larger war relic, and repurposes the relics of the Anthropocene in unique rhetorical ways. Instead of traditional headstones, the wings from the planes in which the pilots died are used (see Figure 66). Words of remembrance are written in Russian. In the quiet of this desolate unnamed area, the use of these winged headstones provides a deeper reverent experience. Further, photographs of the pilots situated on the wings brings a visual fidelity to the creation of consubstantiality. But this consubstantiality is also unique. Here, tourists are encouraged to find a common identity with the 323 oppressor of the country. Such action is exceptional against Estonian political action that have tried to erase public memories of Soviet occupation through entrance into the EU and political leanings towards Finland and the Nordic countries. And yet. This small, unnamed site, unmarked on any map, provides a humane, kisceral glimpse into life for the Soviet occupants of Estonia during the latter half of the 20 th century. Figure 67: Signifiers to a Soviet past in Paldiski, Pakri Peninsula, Estonia. Photograph’s authors own. 324 3.3c.ii A husky memory. Ruins are reused and recycled. Memory is engaged. On my way to visit the nuclear submarine training centre, my next site of public memory was the town of Paldiski itself (see Figure 67). Uninhabited by civilians during the Cold War, the town was barely populated during my visit. Rather, it appeared to be an open-air, living museum to its Soviet past—a husk of memories. The languages I heard were both Estonian and Russian, rather than the more commonly used English in the capital. The town was essentially deserted, barring a handful of tourists attending to its Soviet ruins. The architecture was predominately of Soviet origin, falling into disrepair. Paldiski did not immediately offer the tourist vistas of other EGB regions. 3.3c.iii Ruins ruining the environment. Traversing through the desolate Paldiski, I came upon my next memory site—the nuclear submarine training centre. The nuclear submarine testing centre, 4km from Paldiski in a deserted stretch of EGB nonhuman nature, is the largest ruin that I have knowledge of, or have seen, in the EGB. Construction of this centre began in the early 1960s. The site was a land-based training centre for nuclear submarine crews of the Soviet Navy. Soviet submarines with nuclear reactors were commissioned over the years, with one becoming critical in 1983. The collapse of the Soviet Union and Estonian independence resulted in the signing of an agreement in transferring the facility to the Republic of Estonia on July 30, 1994. And yet, difficulties ensued. Estonian domestic nuclear expertise was non-existent, and thus the Estonian Government sought assistance to decommission the site. Nuclear fuel was shipped back to Russia, and a new actor, A.L.A.R.A., was established to clean up and decommission the site. This left the site desolate: an empty material reminder to Soviet occupation in the middle of the Pakri landscape. The nuclear submarine training centre was, and continues to be, not like any other military heritage object. Firstly, the Peninsula continues to be contaminated to this day due to refuse from the centre. The topsoils of the Pakri Peninsula present little protection to the underlying rocks, and its coastal location 325 possesses an environmental hazard if pollutants and liquid wastes are not handled, stored or treated correctly (Sepp, 2010, pp. 37-8). The pollution caused by the Soviet military bases such as the Paldiski nuclear submarine training centre posit an environmental biomic hazard to both people and animals with Estonia and its Baltic neighbours. Further, such degradation becomes a biomic hazard in the auspices of global risk. Environmental degradation from the centre is a hazard to both its human and nonhuman populations. The protection against hazards requires specialist work. With Estonian independence, the handover of the centre from Russian to Estonian hands was complex. The terms of the bilateral handover agreement in the early 1990s meant that Russian technicians removed the fuel from the reactors, dismantled the non- radioactive components and some associated facilities in October 1994. However, the Russians were not obliged to handle the radioactive waste or clean up the contaminated areas. Thus, this environmental degradation continued to pose a radioactive threat to the environment. Furthermore, the presence of oil products posed major groundwater, soil and surface hazards. From 1995–2005, the Estonian Government did carry out extensive decontamination and clean-up, but due to a lack of finances and technical expertise, the main building of the training centre, containing the sarcophagi of the nuclear reactors, has remained in situ. 3.4d.i Ruins as the catalyst for Anthropocene adaptation. Rhetorical work in situ drove me to visit the nuclear centre. Priming from research was to necessary in order to know what I was encountering. The first immediately noticeable elements, in contrast to broken down Soviet-era buildings and abandoned border defences, were the relatively new wind turbines (see Figure 68). Dirt stone roads took me through the centre of this wind turbine farm. Passing several old border defences from Soviet Occupation, I was able to drive right directly to the bottom of these environmentally symbolic giants. 326 Figure 68: Abandoned border defence in the surrounding fields of the old nuclear submarine testing centre. These border defences were surrounded by the newly constructed wind turbines (right). Photographs author's own. 327 What these wind turbines materially symbolise is that the region is finally undergoing a transformation under the auspices of environmentalism. The nuclear submarine testing centre is being transformed into Estonia’s first geo-park. Estonia, as the birthplace of Skype, is attempting to become Europe’s most technologically forward country. The country has begun these exploits by offering free WIFI across all major Estonian cities. On Pakri, the catalyst for future thinking is founded by environmental change and Anthropocene adaption. Beyond the wind turbines in the surrounding vicinity to the old nuclear submarine testing centre, the building and site of this centre is undergoing transformation into a science and industrial park called PAKRI Smart Industrial City. This smart city, according to its official website, is “Northern Europe’s most progressive Greentech manufacturing center [sic]” (Pakri, n.d.). Nonhuman nature reclaims ruins from the Anthropocene. Ruins become repurposed for future securitisation against global risk. As discussed in chapter four, ruins in the GGB have become repurposed in an environmental frame. Most of these are for the propagation of eco-tourism of the local vista. But for the Pakri Peninsula, some of these military heritage objects have become a catalysts themselves for environmental action, rather than a repurposing of their materiality. This is an alt-rhetorical geography where materials from the Cold War become performing communicative infrastructures regarding EU climate mitigation strategies. At the nuclear submarine training centre, its materialism has become the catalyst for environmental efforts. PAKRI Smart Industrial City is perhaps one of the EGB’s most Anthropocene adaptive responses to the environmental degradation of the USSR. Rather than repurposing these ruins of the Anthropocene, PAKRI is utilising the desolation caused from the nuclear submarine testing site as a catalyst to rethink human–nonhuman nature relations in a technologically focused, 21 st century frame. This is the Burkean recasting of an object from one frame to another as an act of rhetorical transcendence. Here, this frame is not symbolic but is materially built through the renewable energy sources of wind turbines. These material artefacts are the 328 recasting frame that surround the land as metonymically standing for ecological devastation through nuclear submarine testing. Wind turbines and a smart grid generating renewable energy become part of the EGB environmentally friendly sustainable development and its rhetorical geographic work. Its connections to biodiversity are not immediate, but yet works in the hope of supporting human needs alongside nonhuman ones through this visual, juxtaposing recasting. The benefits of this Anthropocene adaptation also extends beyond Estonian interests. Estonia sells half a million tons of reduced greenhouse gas emissions to Finland under this project. The project, beginning in 2005, was setting a regional precedent in the carbon pollution market, set by the EU to carry out provisions of the Kyoto environmental treaty (New York Times, 2005). As reported by the New York Times in 2005, when the first wind turbines were being erected, spokeswoman for Paldiski Regina Ress posited that “We are very positive about the wind farm. . . It's the complete opposite to what we had in the Soviet time: green energy versus the nuclear submarine training center [sic] and other military installations." (New York Times, 2005). Anthropocene adaptation is thus a transcendent recasting for Estonian efforts in the service of the larger EGB. The Iron Curtain ruins are recast into a new transcendent frame. Rather than solely viewing their damage to the environment, the ruins of the nuclear submarine training centre become the necessitators for global sustainable development. The site of this previously environmentally destructive grey infrastructure is being transformed into a catalyst for green infrastructure support, not only for the nation-state, but under the auspices of global climate mitigation. The guilt of pollution and environmental degradation is purged through this new transcendent frame. This dissertation ultimately argues that the recasting of Anthropocene ruins in the Estonian Green Belt positions the Balkan Green Belt as future-orientated. Initial conservation of the ruins was met with resistance. The Baltic has not embraced these relics as German efforts have. And yet, Estonia has also repurposed its sites of destruction into Anthropocene adaptive vistas. The creation of the smart grid on 329 Pakri Peninsula does not bring the eco-tourist to the region, but its speaks to a larger cause. Grey infrastructure becomes supportive of its green counterpart. Green energy generation is a larger global larger action of support for biodiverse, nonhuman life. In contrast, I now turn to the Bulgarian Belt, which I posit is the antithesis to such Anthropocene action. 4.0 Bulgarian Borders as (zōē ) Green Belt. Bulgaria has a significant position in this project. Bulgaria is the locale for the last border of the EU against Turkey, a transcontinental country positioned within both Europe and Asia. The Bulgarian/Turkish border marks the final Southern reaches of the former Iron Curtain. Such an ending thus felt pertinent to visit. Travelling across the lower regions of the country, I conducted fieldwork at two specific sites along the Bulgarian Green Belt: the Strandja Nature Park in South East Bulgaria, and just outside of Silvengrad amongst the Eastern edges of the Rhodope mountains. Strandja Nature Park is the largest conservation area within Bulgaria. In contrast, outside Silvengrad is where the Bulgarian, Turkey and Greek border meet. Although of not immediate environmental interest, I visited this section for its geopolitical resonance. Here, Bulgaria has rebuilt the border fence between itself and Turkey, following along the former Iron Curtain divide. Within Europe, Bulgaria and Hungary are the only countries that have rebuilt sections of their Iron Curtain under the auspices of nationalism and concerns regarding immigration, mostly fuelled from the Syrian refugee crisis. I posit that this rebuilding has profound humanitarian and conservation consequences. Thus, my research in this region took me to sites of biodiversity conservation alongside geopolitical tensions in the Anthropocene. 4.1 Constituting the Bulgarian border as Green Belt. The Bulgarian region straddles two terrestrial ecoregions: the Balkan mixed forests and the Euxine-Colchic deciduous forests. The mountainous region of the Rhodopes is a flourishing biodiversity hotspot of flora and fauna. However, as with the rest of the Balkans, it is particularly unique for its rare species of birds. The Balkan region hosts a 330 vast range of bird species in comparison to its other counterpart sections. Endangered species include the Egyptian vulture, the griffon vultures, and the black stork. Birds and beasts are the species that require significant nonhuman conservation work in the region. Biodiversity conservation work in the Balkans is tricky. A theme in Bulgarian conservation is the will for implementation of conservation initiatives against actual action. Since the end of the Cold War, undisturbed biodiversity within the Bulgarian border regions has suffered major devastation. For example, between 1992 and 2000, 70% of the riverain forests along the Maritz River were cut down. Thus, tree felling had the consequential effect of a 70% decrease in local populations of colonially breeding birds (Schindler, 2011, p. 199). Personal correspondence with local actors in the region notes that conservation fights against human social issues—poverty, economic development, and the land preservation act enacted since 1996. Further, Schindler notes that local NGOs and environmental policy makers lack the prowess necessary to make rhetorical action corporeal. National strategies on biodiversity are ratified, and yet remain ineffective by a lack of implementation. The lack of implementation of national strategies results in Bulgarian post-1991 biodiversity conservation stemming from outside sources. The conservation of Bulgaria’s bird population fell to biomic actions of international operators shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union. The actor of significance is BirdLife International. Established in 1922, BirdLife International—a biomic, globally governing NGO similar to the EGB Association—has worked with Bulgarian state and local actors regarding its bird population. Since June 3, BirdLife gained biomic state apparatuses in Bulgaria—the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds (BSPB). The BSPB became the first nonhuman nature organisation to be registered in the country after the fall of communism (Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds, n.d.a.). Further, it was the first national scheme for monitoring biodiversity in Bulgaria. Echoing the rhetoric of the EGB Initiative, the BSPB argues for the bios of nonhuman nature (specifically birds) whilst supporting the 331 sustainable use of natural resources for both human and nonhuman populations (Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds, n.d.b.). The protection of birds thus began designation of the Bulgarian border region as needing conservation work. The Soviet Union fell. Transboundary cooperation over biodiversity conservation in the former border region began. Transboundary conservation developed with the Bulgarian-Swiss Biodiversity Conservation Act of 1994. This act was an intergovernmental initiative for the procurement and execution of Swiss help regarding Bulgarian nonhuman nature conservation. The Swiss were delineated as the overarching actor of conservation and sustainable development in the Balkan border regions. One of its first prominent acts of conservation was in the Eastern Rhodope Mountains of Bulgaria and Turkey due to their species diversity, endemism and rarity (Schindler, 2011, p. 194). Nonhuman nature conservation thus gained a sense of urgency through outsider help. The topos of extinction drove an Anthropocenic urgency regarding biodiversity conservation. The Bulgarian Biodiversity Foundation becomes the successor to the Bulgarian-Swiss initiative (Bulgarian Biodiversity Foundation, n.d.). From 2006, the Foundation began to implement and raise awareness of activities within the EGB Initiative. Once again, a national society became the biomic apparatuses of a larger, transnational sovereign. Rather than an apparatus for a world-wide organisation, the Foundation became a state apparatuses of the larger biomic forces of the EGB. As this apparatus, the Foundation cooperated with national, regional and local authorities, academic institutions, and NGOs. This also extended to transboundary cooperation between neighbouring countries (Bulgarian Biodiversity Foundation, n.d.). Bulgarian Transboundary cooperation has thus been oversaw by larger, European-wide sovereigns. 4.1a Transboundary help needed. Transboundary cooperation in the 2010s is still complex. Bulgaria has difficulties in implementing rhetorical conservation ideas for this region. Problems arise from 332 the dissemination of information from one group of biomic apparatuses to another. The majority of Bulgarian biodiversity scientific literature do not discuss conservation problems or offer recommendations. This is furthered by reports made by nonhuman nature-protective NGOs that are unable to undergo publication in the country (Schindler, 2011, p. 198). Schindler argued that this discrepancy is due in part to Bulgarian values and styles of scientific writing, where priority is given to the purely descriptive studies (i.e. faunistics and floristics). This contrasts with the nonhuman nature-protective NGOs that are often constrained by other priorities, which inhibits publication in scientific journals. Rhetorical experts versus rhetorically objective evidence thus finds pause. This inquiry this posits that Bulgarian conservation efforts lack cohesion in the region and thus finds difficulties to truly embrace an Anthropocene rhetoric. Miscommunication and a lack of overall conservation prowess results in all Bulgarian Green Belt programmes requiring additional transboundary support. Natura 2000 has been one transboundary actor for the region. Many designated areas of border conservation by the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds, as well as the whole of Strandja Nature Park, have been demarcated by Natura 2000 status. And yet, even Natura 2000 status does not immediately resolve conservation concerns. Bulgaria, 10 years after joining the EU, is still considered far behind in implementing conservation directives. Local authorities posit intentions for enacting conservation initiatives, but do not follow up such ideals. An understanding of what is granted bios and what is granted zōē is a challenge in the region It is this to which the next section turns. 4.2 Searching out flora, fauna, and zōē in the Strandja Nature Park. To examine conservation work along the borders of Bulgaria, I began my Bulgarian and Balkan fieldwork at Strandja Nature Park. Strandja Nature Park is the largest conservation area in Bulgaria, situated within the Strandja Mountains. I thus chose Strandja Nature Park for its importance to the region, as well as its physical locale next the Black Sea. At the most southernly tip of the EU, the position of the Park is striking. The Mediterranean 333 climate is influenced by Bulgaria’s proximity to the Black, Marmara and Aegean Seas. This location posits the park as “inextricably connected to the water and the sea. The rich ore and marble deposits, combined with the dense oak forests providing abundant high quality wood for the construction of ships, create favorable [sic] environment for the development of mining, seamanship and trade.” (Strandja Nature Park, June 1 2015.) Overall, the Park’s geographical location is both favourable and unique in regards to biodiversity conservation and public memory. The Park was initially constructed of isolated nonhuman nature reserves. However, the Park in its holistic endeavours was initiated on January 25, 1995. This included five nonhuman nature reserves, eight natural landmarks, and 14 protected areas. It was categorised as a Nature Park on July 14, 2000. Within Bulgaria, Nature Parks have multiple purposes. The first is biodiversity conservation. The second is the sustainable development of scientific, educational and recreational activities—to be sites of rational amusement. The third is sustainable developments in regards to the local peoples in the region, which includes supporting traditions and livelihoods. The nonhuman nature in the Strandja Nature Park is unique. The Park is the sole European representative of the broadleaf deciduous forests with evergreen laurel undergrowth within a temperate climate. It is the host of a variety of Southern Black Sea habitats. Furthermore, it is also host to millions of migratory birds, in addition to the Park’s 283 species of birds, of which more than half are nesting. Overall, the Park’s unusual climate results in a favourable environment for tertiary species in the region. The administration of the Park even self-refers to itself as a “tertiary living museum”, echoing the rhetoric of the Iron Curtain Trail as a natural living memorial Tertiary species span from 65 million to 2.58 million years ago. Currently, 63 of these species exist in the Park, whilst seven are unique to the Park’s mountainous refuge. And yet. Strandja Nature Park also offers a uniquely European vista—the largest oak massif on the continent. Forests once again become central to conservation efforts in the border, as these 334 forests cover 80% of the Park, with 30% being old-growth forests. Forest-nature reigns again as this mountainous forested region, with a significant proximity to the Black Sea, is a demarcated region worthy of conservation that incorporates land, wetland and coastal concerns in its environmentalism. Sadly, both the Brown Bear and the Balkan Lynx have been driven from the Park due to human influences. The Strandja Nature Park has a significant variety of biodiversity. However, the Park still lacks not only its own administrative units but also the linguistic deixis of “National Park”. Nature Park does not convey the importance the Park plays in the region. The lack of linguistic designation as biodiverse significant confounds. But further cofounds abound. Despite the ecological significance of the Park, it is yet without its own administration. Rather, the Park is administered by a directive based in Malko Tarnovo, under the subordinated Executive Forest Agency of the Ministry of Environment and Water of Bulgaria. Without its own administrative guidance, the Park relies on transboundary operators. The Park itself is governed by three supra-national governing bodies: the EGB Association, European Union initiatives, 29 and Natura 2000. Multiple networked ecology motifs thus come into play under the auspices of conservation. 4.2a Nonhuman nature tourism as part of conservation action. Conservation work in the Park is sustained in part through eco-tourism. As with the rest of the EGB, nonhuman natures and ruins work together in an action of rational amusement. The Park specifically denotes education, tourism, and biodiversity conservation as of equal importance in the region. Nonhuman nature tourism thus becomes a driver of conservation action. The Park’s significant digital presence (in both English and Bulgarian) signifies the Park’s importance in not only nonhuman nature conservation but also eco-tourism for the nation-state. The website posits the many tourist sites can be visited, providing an extensive history of the 29 For instance, from 2007–13, the directorate of the Park worked on the EU funded project “OP Environment 2007–2013” (Strandja Nature Park, 2015). 335 region. Furthermore, it provides maps and guides towards eco-tourist trails in the Park. This includes two cycling routes through the conservation area. These routes are not part of the ICT but exist as separate pathways. The ICT in this region is currently in the rudimentary planning stages. The ICT trail is thus depicted as the suggestive dotted line of future action. Its provisional path follows the Greek/Bulgarian border from Serbia before it succumbs to its mountainous landscape. The trail weaves in and out of border regions in an attempt to find a humanely hospitable route. Roads are not only for anthropo-use. Roads have also become routes to nonhuman nature. The tourist to the Park is guided to experience nonhuman nature conservation in several ways. As I moved across the Park, signs were prevalent in both English and Bulgarian. The signs direct the eye of the tourist against the vista of flourishing nonhuman nature. Flora and fauna is delineated throughout these signifiers that identify separate yet unified areas of natural flourishing. Produced by the Directorate, these signs offer contextual ecological and cultural knowledge to the vista in which the signs reside. Across these informational guides in the Park is the byline ”Strandja—Undying source of wisdom, beauty and inspiration. It is our duty to protect it for future generations.” This is a rhetorical call to action for the eco- tourist to conserve the landscape in an act of future-thinking. This is an Anthropocene rhetoric. Signs are not only visual aids. They also offer further guidance towards the kisceral. The signs in the Park also mark trails and eco-tourist activates along the different reserves in Strandja. The trails offer a weaving route of travel throughout the park, as semiotic pieces indicate sights of interest for the traveller through detailed information signs. One example is near the town of Gramtikovo (see Figure 69), where the directorate offers a tourist centre (that was unexpectedly closed during my fieldwork). Near to the town, a forest nursery offers an environmental friendly activity for the eco-tourist. This performance is repeated throughout the official literatures of the park, and was even included as part of the project activities for the 2007–13 EU funded grant. Overall, such semiotic pieces that guide the visitor invokes 336 Senda-Cook’s tension of access-preservation as maps simultaneously seek to preserve the natural space but also guide people to visit them, thus potentially causing unwelcome intervention and affecting conservation. Figure 69: Sign detailing the village of Gramtikovo and the nearby forest nursery. Photograph author's own. 337 4.2b Eco-tourism as intertwining human culture and nonhuman nature. The Strandja Nature Park is an eco-tourist gambit. Significant nonhuman natures are pieced together by the tourist as they travel this section of the ecological network. The Strandja Nature Park presents these eco-tourist routes as “complex cultural route [sic], which can enrich our understanding of the way European culture has changed over time” (Strandja Nature Park, June 6 2015). Advertised throughout the towns and nonhuman nature vistas in the Park, the directive posits that conservation is not only for biodiversity: it extends towards human–nonhuman nature relations of a culturally geographic, intangible and cultural heritage of the region. Situated among the nonhuman natures of the Park are also relics from the past that denote conservation. This is Hafstein’s patrimonial work of heritage. Overall, the ruins in combination with the nonhuman nature offer vistas to be viewed and experienced whilst traversing the Park. This allows for the Park’s Directorate to position the Park as not only offering tourist opportunities throughout the year, but as the foundation for this bold statement: “it is in a good and civilized taste to choose a vacation in an environmentally clean area and to consume products manufactured there. There is a great deal of exotics in the whole experience too.” (Strandja Nature Park, June 6 2015). Exotic denotes colonial ideas of the exotic other. The directorate thus positions an orientalism within the park, as both material object and rhetorical foil to other nonhuman nature vistas. The oriental other of the Park is of both humans deceased and alive in the region. The visitor is described in the unusual choice of the second person in order to invite future action. The directorate positions that you will encounter the remains of Thracian tombs and enjoy the blooming rhodendron in May. You will wade in the crystal clear rivers and feel the mystical spirit of the mountain in the ancient rituals that have survived through the ages and have been lovingly preserved in Strandja villages” (text from information board in the Park.) 338 This rhetoric positions 21 st century villages, conserved nonhuman natures and ancient Thracian ruins together in a new transcendent frame far removed from the Park’s Iron Curtain origins. These ruins depict the cultural memory associated to the intangible heritage of these ancient peoples. Thus the conservation of the ruins becomes a part of the intangible heritage of the region. The Park’s rhetoric immediately posits the Park as a significant taskscape. 4.2c Fire dancing in and out of the EGB polity. The taskscape of Strandja is vast. Humans exist, and have existed, in the Park. The land has a human history. As of 2011, the Park had 21 settlements with 6,220 inhabitants. However. Inhabitants of the park reside in a liminal space. Their existence is denied entry into the conservation polity, as they are not considered part of the Park’s territory. And yet. The Directorate acknowledges that the inhabitants of Strandja Park offer unique traditions that are of both cultural and touristic importance. The local peoples straddle bios and zōē simultaneously. The Strandja locals are considered to be close with nonhuman nature, using local dialects, customs and rituals based on their cultural geography. But one tradition draws the tourists: fire dancing, or Nestinarstvo (see Figure 70). The Park describes fire dancing as leading to Dionysian roots—inhabitants without inhibitions. This ritual is certainly exotic to European eyes, as it involves a barefoot dance on smouldering embers. A rare site, the ritual was added onto the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009. The ritual became secured but also frozen in time. 339 Figure 70: The tradition of fire-dancing in Balgaria Village, Strandja Park. Licensed under Creative Commons 4.0, Wikipedia. Copyright Apokalipto. Authentic fire dancing performed in the villages of Strandja Nature Park is rare. Its enaction drives tourists to the region, although they often witness commercialised performances in the surrounding provinces instead. These are inauthentic accounts of a significant intangible heritage to the region. But one other ancient attraction drives tourists to Strandja—ruins from the Thracian, Hellenistic and Roman eras, situated amongst the EGB nonhuman natures. These materialisations of an intangible heritage requires a conservation of material cultural heritage, realised in differing ways across the biogeographic regions. This becomes a preservation biomic rhetoric of far older concerns within Bulgaria and the Balkan Green Belt. The region’s significant ruins diverge from our Anthropocene grey infrastructures. Instead, the ruins of historic European peoples pepper the landscape alongside ruins from the Cold War. 475 ruins of ancient cultures are situated within Strandja Nature Park. 133 are considered of national importance. Within Strandja Nature Park, I visited the famous, yet difficult to find, ruin of Mishkova Niva, far off the beaten track (see Figure 71). Under Soviet rule, these ruins were unavailable to majority of the population, situated 3 kilometres near the border town of Malko Tarnovo. Today, the ruins are still without much direction, and requires off-roading in the heavily dense forest. The Mishkova Niva complex includes a tomb- 340 sanctuary, a fortified building, a necropolis, ancient plumbing, a castle, and a mine (Strandja Nature Park, June 1 2015). As featured in Figure 71, the Thracian Cult Complex depicts an iconic visual. The photograph is of the tomb of the Thracian chieftain priest and hero. Once again, a graveyard becomes a catalyst to imagine a different time. The experience of ancient ruins amongst relics and nonhuman natures from the Anthropocene is a visual, kisceral frame which collapses human and geological histories into one. The conservation of a site of cultural history denied to the population in the Cold War posits new human– nonhuman nature relations in the Anthropocene. Figure 71: The ruined tomb of Mishkova Niva, Strandja Nature Park. Photograph author’s own. 341 4.3 Protecting the nation-state. Strandja Nature Park offers multiple vistas. Eco-tourists uncover historical ruins from centuries past, the more recent ruins of Anthropocene, and its present, unexpected, wilding. Local peoples exist in a liminal space in which they inhabit both bios and zōē simultaneously. And yet. This liminal space continues west along the Bulgarian/Turkey border. In 2014, just as I was beginning preliminary research, the Bulgarian border was receiving international press coverage. In January 2014, Bulgaria announced the beginning of construction of a border fence between itself and Turkey. This was presented under the auspices of nation-state protection. The building of the border fence began in a response to the European migrant crisis—an inflammatory response that negates the increasing number of refuges as well as migrants to Europe, travelling across the Mediterranean and often through Southeast Europe. Construction began in January 2014 with just a 30 kilometre long stretch. A year later, the Bulgarian government announced that a 130 kilometre extension would be made. Today, although near completion, some parts of the border remain without these fortifications. Whilst conducting my Bulgarian fieldwork in the Strandja Nature Park, I wanted to capture this dovetail far beyond EGB visions. I initially started near the Bulgarian/Turkish border crossing at Malko Tarnovo—an area known as Sinemorets. At this site of the mouth of the Rosovo River as it flows in to the Black Sea, I noted that the border fence had not yet been completed. Rather, the three flags of Turkey, Bulgaria and the EU flew in a single vista (see Figure 72). Old watch towers surrounded the mouth. The area was closely controlled during the Cold War, as it constituted the natural border between Turkey, a member of the Atlantic Alliance, and Bulgaria, a member of the Warsaw Pact Division of the EU. And yet today, Sinemorets appeared easily crossable between the EU and Eurasia by wading through the mouth of the river, just a few metres wide. Signs detailed the nonhuman nature to be found in Resovo village, with only one reference to the Cold War—that the border regime diminished the number of properties in the village. No other reference to the river mouth’s Cold War history were made. Overall, the scene was 342 peaceful as a few families played on the beach and in the water at the river mouth. I was the only tourist who appeared interested the other side of the border. Figure 72: The river border between Turkey and Bulgaria at Sinemorets. Flags denoting the different counties fly in tandem. An old Soviet watchtower is situated just out of view. Photograph author's own. Roads going close to the border are extremely rare. Border crossings are also. I thus attempted to visit this border at a second location, just outside of Silvengrad, Bulgaria, situated near the Bulgarian, Turkey and Greek border crossing of Kapitan Andreevo (Bulgarian side). Finding the border required travelling down one of the many ungravelled roads I have traversed during this fieldwork. Slowing moving closer towards the border, the fence came into view (see Figure 73). The border fence is a fortified construction—it is a double fence with approximately a foot in between, with razor barbed wire on top 343 (see Figure 74) and in some places in between the two fences. This section also included a small border patrol booth, as well as cameras overlooking the fence. On the other side of the border patrol road was an original, decaying border patrol tower from the Soviet Union. Figure 73: The newly constructed border fence between Turkey and Bulgaria, situated near Silvengrad, Bulgaria. Photograph author's own. Figure 74: A close-up of the border fence. Photograph author's own. 344 I argue that the border fence acts a symbolic foil to the EGB Initiative. In comparison to the Anthropocene adaption of the nuclear submarine testing centre in Paldiski, Estonia, the materialisation of the Iron Curtain division has been restored. The rebuilding on Iron Curtain blueprints offers a simulacra of contemporary concerns. The fence is surrounded by an overgrown wildling of nonhuman natures, and on initial viewing offers a peaceful site for the tourist. Except for the slow hum of traffic heading towards the border crossing, nonhuman nature’s peace did its work for human visitors. The gentle buzz of wildlife in the daily moves of life is at odds with this inconspicuous symbol of nationalism and political moves to the right in the Anthropocene. Nonhuman natures have been, and continue to be extinguished, in the establishment and presence of the fence. Across international news media, photographs from the construction of the border show a decimation of the local land in order to construct the fence. I have encountered similar visuals regarding the initial construction of the Iron Curtain border fence during the Cold War. Photographs become public memory catalysts in and of themselves as human actions repeat. 4.3a A biomic state of exception. The rebuilding of the fence is significant not only for its nonhuman but its human populations. This inquiry has examined the EGB and its individual biogeographical regions as a biomic politics: a rhetoric of governance built from the foundations of (an environmental) biopolitics. Throughout the EGB, this inquiry has delineated the differing human– nonhuman nature relations and the resulting bios and zōē in the EGB polity. But at this last sight of fieldwork, a unique set of relations are enacted. Refugees and migrants caught crossing or attempting to cross the border are sent to a purpose-built camp at Pastrogor, in Southeast Bulgaria (Thorpe, 2016). Nonhuman natures are extinguished through nation-state fortification development, and are denied the conservation agreed upon by the EGB Initiative and the EU. Thus, neither humans nor humans are granted bios in this section. Rather, Agamben’s state of exception comes to the fore at the 345 Bulgarian/Turkish border. Nonhuman nature is at risk, and the people at the border also come to lack political power. The denial of refugees a legitimised polity is not new for Agamben. For Agamben, the nation-state is greatly concerned with natural life, distinguishing within it between the conceptually difficult “authentic” life and a life lacking political value—a bare life (Arendt, 1957). Refugees, in lacking political value, thus break the continuity between man and citizen, nativity and nationality (Agamben, 2005, p. 131). The concept of the refugee must be resolutely separated from the concept of the rights of man. For Agamben, a refugee is nothing less than a limited rhetorical concept that radically calls into question the fundamental categories of the nation-state. The refugee makes it possible for a long-overdue renewal of categories in the service of a politics in which bare life is no longer separated and accepted. A state of exception has thus been created at the Bulgarian/Turkish border. Any care for the EGB nature is negated as the former Curtain is being rebuilt. The effect of bare life is compounded in a state of exception, where the individual through this radical change in law is reduced to bare life and thus loses any agency. EU rules of the free movement of people become lost and border controls are heightened. As Agamben posits, if the law employs the exception—that is the suspension of law itself—as its original means of referring to and encompassing life, then a theory of the state of exception is the preliminary condition for any definition of the relation that binds and, at the same time, abandons the living being to law (Agamben, 2005, p. 1). Life rhetorically comes to be conceptualised as bare life (Arendt, 1957), in the polity. This is zōē —those to be sacrificed outside the boundaries of traditional juridical order in a state of exception. This is the wastefulness and arrogance of the Anthropocene that drove a topos of extinction in the division of Europe. Time and history is circular. 346 5.0 Conclusion Conclusions made in this section derive from personal correspondence, interviews, rhetorical fieldwork and desk-based research. However, the latter found stumbling blocks. The Baltic and Balkan Green Belts, like their parent organisations, lack comprehensive information in English. This includes their contemporary digital presences. The Balkan Green Belt website initially presents more information in comparison to the Balkan Green Belt. This information is presented by the Balkan Belt’s Regional Coordinator EuroNatur’s website. However, this information is far from complete. Rather than telling a history of the project, the website concentrates on eco-tourism efforts. Piecing together a history of the Balkan region thus proved very difficult. Furthermore, information on my specific case studies of the Green Belts in Estonia and Bulgaria was also lacking the detail I found in the previous two chapters. This lack of discursive availability drove research. The absence of information prompted initial comparisons of the two Belts. I discovered that not only did the Baltic and Balkan Belts have difficulties in mapping their regions into the EGB polity, but this was also a sign in difficulties in biodiversity conservation governance. The Baltic and Balkan regions are considered lacking the conservation skills necessary to enact transboundary biodiversity conservation work. Thus, their conservation work has become offloaded onto biomic Germanic apparatuses. An ungenerous reading would consider Western EU powers as propagating their specific cultural human–nonhuman nature relations by supervising the human and nonhuman in a land that is not theirs to govern. A more generous reading suggests German actors stood in when help was needed. German biomic governance allows for conservation work to go on peripherally. And yet. Discrepancies exist between biomic, state and local voices. For the Baltic, this is the complexities of taking typical terrestrial conservation efforts and applying them to the coast. For the Bulgarian border, difficulties lie in prioritising nonhuman nature conservation against economic development and border securitisation. 347 This is despite a Balkan Green Belt photo competition being launched in 2016 and 2017 by EuroNatur, in order to encourage local nonhuman nature enthusiasts and visiting photographers to promote the Initiative amongst the local population. Difficulties are thus faced in enacting transboundary conservation work. The devastating legacy of the Cold War continues to govern the Baltic and Balkan regions. For the Baltic region, the degradation of the land by Soviet grey infrastructure was particular damaging. The nuclear submarine training centre has wrought untold effects. It may be catalyst for environmental action against the Anthropocene, but the pollution from the centre is still felt on the Pakri Peninsula. Thus, the creation of a geopark is not so much a fresh start as it is a band-aid attempting to cover a still festering wound. It is an attempt of Anthropocene adaption, but only time will tell if it brings the successes it promises. For the Balkan region, the effect of the Iron Curtain is felt as the border is rebuilt. In a response to political changes and fears over European migration, Bulgaria has almost completed a new fortified border defence along its Turkish border. The environmental devastation wrought upon the Bulgarian nonhuman natures has received significant media coverage. But further is the newly built border as a humanitarian crisis. Both the human and the nonhuman enter into a state of exception at this border point. Overall, this chapter argues that Estonian and Bulgarian analyses have explicated how the communicative infrastructures of these two Belts invade rather than support biodiversity conservation as we saw in the previous two biogeographical regions. Although the EC argues that the EGB should integrate “environmental, economic, social, cultural and recreational objectives, all within the limits set by natural dynamics” (European Commission, 2000, p. 25), questions remain whether an achievement is possible when governance is positioned against the materialisations of the Cold War. Both the Baltic and Balkan regions have developed an alt-rhetorical geography of the land, as communicative labour is instilled on these human–nonhuman nature relations. Nonhuman nature conservation has thus taken unique turns in these 348 regions. Whilst Estonia looks forward towards Anthropocene adaptation, Bulgaria adapts to human ebbs and flows in the Anthropocene. Overall, whilst the Baltic region has made up for time lost, the Balkan region appears stalled in conservation action. Ultimately, ideological barriers have become felt, environmental ones. 349 Chapter Six: The European Green Belt as Anthropocene Road What does travel ultimately produce if it is not, by a sort of reversal, “an exploration of the deserted places of my memory”, the return to nearby exoticism by way of a detour through distant places, and the “discovery” of relics and legends. – Michel de Certeau, The Practices of Everyday Life The European Green Belt is a material-cultural network that was created as a response to political and environmental crises. The division of Europe after World War II was an imperfect solution to prevent further war and unrest on the European continent. Over the second half of the 20 th century, the division of Europe pushed against the Marshall Plan and the creation of the European Union as they attempted to move the continent towards a prospering unification. And yet, the Iron Curtain continued in increasing fortification. In the 1970s and 1980s, the discovery of ecosystems growing amongst and despite the Iron Curtain infrastructures of capitalist-socialist divide ran parallel to increasing environmental concerns and the development of green movements. The division of Europe may have forestalled a larger global catastrophe, but its implications for the land and those in the Soviet territories leaves a sour note in European history. But as the Iron Curtain crumbled, the scar it left on the continent also offered opportunity. The flourishings of nonhuman life against the ruins of the Curtain represented the chance for formerly divided regions to work together in order to protect these ecosystems. Crisis turned into opportunity. This study examines how the flourishings of nonhuman nature become the catalyst for a continent- wide response to past-political, and contemporary-environmental, crises. Historical human-nonhuman nature debates were brought to the fore in my analyses as I began this inquiry by considering the millions 350 of novel ecologies as situated in a long strip of connecting nodes zoned by the delineation of bios and zoe. The aspects of a sight and its rhetorical urgencies invited an exploration in order to situate the border’s human–nonhuman nature relations in its contemporary Western cultural and political climate. Furthermore, I wanted to explore how the material intersects with the symbolic. Through fieldwork, I found that experience of being in the Belt brings affect, but it is the mediated images and second-order discourses of the project that bring another semiotic dimension of visual understanding as a literal green belt descending the continent. In particular, I would argue that nothing have brought second-order discourses in environmental communication into a fervour than the Anthropocene and its surrounding ideology. The Anthropocene is currently a hot spot in environmental humanities and communication. Thus, this inquiry necessitated an examination of what environmental communication in the Anthropocene—an Anthropocene rhetoric—brings to rhetorical work. The major psyma, or nest of rhetorical questions, necessitating the project were thus opened by a practical concern: How are human– nonhuman nature relations interrelated to European environmental actions in a globalising time? How does the local/global work with and against each other in times of global, wicked problems? And how does the development of the Anthropocene in Western thinking frame this project? These psyma thus invited the European Green Belt as an obvious choice for analysis. I chose the EGB as a case study of the Anthropocene due to its progressive and unique response to climate concerns as a material–cultural network. The EGB governs a mix of biotic, symbolic, and material landscapes. But significantly for these dynamic times, neither are the EGB nor the Anthropocene finished products. The meaning and significance of the EGB for locals, nation-states, and the EU remains opens and gathers. The acceptance and possibilities for the Anthropocene as an official geological era remains unknown. This openness renders my conclusions provisional rather than conclusive. 351 My findings are what I categorise as an Anthropocene rhetoric. The result of analysis for this dissertation has revealed the transformation of the Iron Curtain into an ecological biome. Further, I argue that this has created an eco-tourist network of ruins and nonhuman nature working together as a set of communication infrastructures. These are then governed under the biomic auspices of a European wide- governing body in the name of global aspirations. This juxtaposition between local and global actions characterises much in environmental communication research. Environmental communication is the study of how humans symbolically world- build and disseminate conceits in relation to the natural world. In Cartesian terms, the natural world is considered a stable, agency-less, referent. In an Anthropocene rhetoric, the nonhuman is lively. Such liveliness denotes an inherent dynamism; such dynamism offers multiple, Janus-faced, vistas. It accounts for the dynamism, both temporal and spatial, in the mapped space. Furthermore, I argue that current environmental work must go beyond these locales and individual nation efforts due to global call to risk of the Anthropocene. The juxtaposition between global and local became a predominant guiding logic to inquiry into the EGB as project, Initiative, and NGO Association. The EGB Association, in conjunction with the EU, is a European-wide initiative and supra-national governing body across 24 countries. In a globalising action to preserve biodiversity as a climate change strategy, the Association enacts a biomic subjectification of both humans and nonhumans across these 24 nations. Moreover, the presence of conserved nonhuman natures and preserved Iron Curtain relics is a material symbol of the hard-won efforts of European unification and the resulting transboundary cooperation. This is a rhetorical biopolitics as it governs the past actions of humans and nonhumans in service of future needs. The development of an Anthropocene rhetoric thus moves from the general to the particular. First, this chapter revisits the development of an Anthropocene rhetoric in relation to the EGB, and considers its symbolic materialisations of a rhetorical geography built from communication infrastructures. I start off 352 with demonstrating how the topos of extinction is a preliminary guiding factor of an Anthropocene ideology, and thus rhetoric. This Anthropocene rhetoric then generates three clustered concepts: a biomic politics; an alt-rhetorical geography; and communication infrastructures. Biomic politics constitutes governance of a planetary region. Alt-rhetorical geographies are constituted by ecologies that are coded as sites of passage and visit. Communication infrastructures are material and immaterial networks of legacy exchange and new media. If you put the terms together, the conclusion becomes: sets of communication structures that cross national borders lay out an alt-geography that necessitates biomic governance. 1.0 An Anthropocene Rhetoric of the EGB Revisited. The EGB project is a response to a perceived crisis for both humans and nonhumans. Whilst the division of Europe and the resulting division of Europe was a response to the crisis of war, as the Iron Curtain was fortified during the latter half of the 21 st Century, the crisis shifted from purely globalised concerns of preventing future war, to global concerns over the environment. Robert Cox (2007) called conservation biology a “crisis discipline”. Rapid changes in the Earth system, severe environmental degradation and a mass sixth extinction a crisis of great danger or even catastrophe. The crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss is a crisis of extinction, for both humans and nonhumans. A topos of extinction thus became a catalyst for change in environmental action. The foil of extinction is an antagonist that threatens, competes, and obstructs. 1.1 Extinction and risk as Anthropocene ideology. The anticipation of extinction prompts a counter. Extinction is the topos that functions as a warning and call to accountability. This crisis is the risk of extinction for Crutzen’s et al.’s 9 boundaries for Planetary Hospitability; biodiversity loss is one of the four that have already surpassed this hospitability. Climate change, global warming and extinction are descriptors of action, but do not deixically point to causation. Thus, Crutzen’s positioning of climate change as being a symptom of a new, human-caused geological era became a defining logic of 21 st 353 environmental work. The creation of the Anthropocene as an adjective for changes in the Earth System specifically denotes human actions as the catalyst for contemporary climate change and environmental degradation Crutzen’s neologism of the Anthropocene posited fear over human-caused irreparable damage to the contemporary climate. The Anthropocene became a metonym for detrimental, irreversible change. For some, it can also offer an ideological hope for human recognition of humanity as a global force of nonhuman nature, and the potential for changing our detrimental actions. This is what has been termed by some as the “good Anthropocene” (Ecomodernists, 2015). The Anthropocene as noun, concept and ideology thus stages a reality (Beck, 2009) of the global risk of extinction for our current climate, species, and a hospitable Earth System for our current forms of life. To prevent the “bad” Anthropocene (Hamilton, 2014) precautionary measures are required, alongside increased cooperation and governance. Although the Anthropocene still lacks an epistemic designation into geological discourses, the neologism still stages a risk that becomes real. The term influences present decisions as a “self-refuting prophecy” (Beck, 2009, p. 10). The staged anticipation of the Anthropocene obliges preventive action, whilst the abstractness of the anticipated effects of climate change and other Earth System issues are ultimately difficult to prove or disprove on the basis of everyday experience (Beck, 2009, pp. 71-2). A rhetoric for these new times thus needs to resonate with Anthropocene calls for greater accountability, even if the conceptual formation and epistemic methods of sustainable, adaptable, adjustable living are incomplete and in the making. Thus, whilst an Anthropocene ideology presents risks, an Anthropocene rhetoric presents mitigations to such risk. An Anthropocene rhetoric is a response to Holocene, Cartesian thinking. Holocene human– nonhuman nature relations placed human actions inside an environmental container; one separate from the other. In opposition, nonhuman materials are lively in the Anthropocene. An Anthropocene rhetoric 354 rethinks human–nonhuman nature relations in a global time of crisis. Humans and nonhumans become part of the same integrative, dynamic sphere. As Chakrabarty argued, the Anthropocene collapses human and natural history. Human and nonhumans enact on one another as unanticipated situations presented by climate change, extinction, and other disintegrative actions that necessitate human response and action, against human causation. These are global concerns that require global responses, supported at the same time by local actions. The global and the local are of equal significant in an Anthropocene rhetoric. Climate change is a global humanitarian problem that requires global actions. 30 But these global actions are not a singular agent but a network of local concerns. This, under the global, hyperobject, and wicked problem of climate change, the self-attempts to govern against that which they cannot embodily experience in their everyday life. The lay person experiencing changes in weather patterns alone is not scientific proof of global warming; only the expert can see receding glaciers as a global climate risk (Beck, 2009). As Schneider and Nocke (2014) argue, because climate is a scientifically constructed object, there is no way to learn about it other than through media devices—symbolically and rhetorically mediated apparatuses. This is Beck’s staging of risks. These staged apparatuses thus become biopolitical apparatuses of the governing state where a rhetorical biomic politics writes a rhetorical geography on the land. 1.2 An alt-rhetorical geography of communicative infrastructures. A cultural geography is the land as constructed by people, acting with cultural norms, and nonhuman nature. Nonhuman nature and the environment are critical to geographies, but are also defined by these social ties to the land. Nonhuman nature is a social construction with different meanings to different populations, varied over time. Culture, politics and nonhuman nature all write the land. Natural and memory spaces are part of the cultural 30 This includes taking into account critiques of Anthropocene speciesism (Malm and Hornborg, 2014) that sees all humans as equally responsible for the Anthropocene’s nascence. 355 geography that write the land. This is what this dissertation terms a rhetorical geography—a cultural geography that considers the communicative labour a cultural landscape performs. Rhetorical geographies are the communicative labour of patterns and interactions of human culture in relation to the natural environment and the human organisation of space. These rhetorical geographies are the materialities of the land: a reflection of those governing rules regarding human–nonhuman nature relations. A rhetorical geography considers the material and discursive work in a cultural geography. It positions the materialities of the land and the discourse surrounding it as having the ability to perform multimodal argument. This includes both man-made objects, cultural heritages, and the actions of nonhumans themselves. A rhetorical geography thus engages with similarities and differences across cultures as it reads the cultural landscape as multimodal and considers the communicative labour it performs. A rhetorical geography organises, frames, selects and deselects rhetorical pieces through presence and negation. A rhetorical geography is in part a symbolic, world-building exercise. 1.2a Transcendence is communicative. As a memory space and biodiversity conservation project, the EGB is one such rhetorical, communicative landscape. The bridging of green and grey infrastructures into an argumentative frame is a rhetorical move. The EGB is a site of rhetorical geography as the holistic ecological network, made up of individual rhetorical geographical-ecosystems. The symbolic, rhetorical, communicative power of the EGB goes beyond traditionally mediated texts. The EGB is constructed as dynamic rhetorical geography, constituting green, grey and digital pieces that work together as multimodal argumentative network of communicative infrastructures. Further, the EGB project intersects the discursive, visual and emotional to create an immersive communicative experience for the EGB visitor. Touch, smell, sound, and nerves source genuine cognitive knowledge of surrounding ecosystems. Such liveliness that makes meaning in the world is symbolic. The EGB is hence an exemplar of rhetorical artefacts as being lively. 356 Due to its Janus-faced position that oscillates between a historical site and a space of unprecedented, ahistorical growth, the EGB brings an additional development to a rhetorical geography by posing as a site of alt-rhetorical work. In an act of environmental recycling, these grey relics of the past are repurposed for both passive viewing and active engagement. An alt-rhetorical geography is concerned with reconfiguring the past to present action and future goals. The rhetorical biopolitical analysis in this dissertation argues for the EGB as a product of its history, as it attempts to make good on the sins of its past and origins through an act of transcendence. Grey places are reconstituted, and relations are restored and resumed, as watch towers become bird watching towers and museums. The monuments situated within the ecosystems in the EGB space create an embodied experience for the tourist who reads the material and symbolic systems that cultivate a public memory regarding the Iron Curtain history and European identity. This is how a rhetorical geography expands towards the material. These communicative infrastructure become the biomic materials of governance. They are not inert passive objects of consumption. They are lively (Latour, 2007; Bennett, 2010). Tourists as invited to cycle on the roads of Soviet occupation and visits old border fortifications turned museums. Being present at these sites where ruins meet nonhuman nature, the tourist sees and experiences the visual expression of the EGB Initiative’s argument that nonhuman nature has unified a divisive past. The “material” has thus come to extend beyond concrete physical objects and fixed places, reaching towards the study of how we immerse ourselves within the world and articulate with it (Wells et al. 2018: 21). This contextual and physical repurposing is dependent on the tourist seeing and engaging with these sites. Tourists are ultimately pushed towards seeing the grey infrastructure of this former border space as arguing for something different than its original purpose. This pushing is performed by the EGB Initiative’s online presence and marketing campaigns, which seek to recast and reframe the presence of war 357 under a new perspective. Burke (1984) referred to this process as transcendence, whereby things that were perceived as contradictory are united by a third perspective or way of looking. Similar to the material remnants of war that are still present and not removed at the EGB, enacting transcendence does not erase dichotomies but imagines new frames through which those dichotomies are put to new purposes (Allison & Bloomfield, 2018). For the Initiative, the division of Europe is humanity’s previous transgressions, for which European actors, through governance from the supra-national EU, performing a penance in allowing nonhuman nature to reclaim the lost land. The EGB’s communicative infrastructures thus create an argument of transcendence in uniting the dichotomies of war and nonhuman nature under a new, environmentally-focused, united vision of the future. All of this is read through a Burkean recasting of the grey relics of war into a new frame of European unity and care for the environment. 1.2b The ecological network of communicative infrastructures. The rhetorical geography of communicative infrastructures thus involves the mapping of spaces and infrastructures, literal and symbolic, between the known and the unknown. A rhetorical geography maps the human relations to symbolic and material spaces, things, and sites. Communicative labour moves beyond symbolic cultural discourses and the media. Communicative labour is the networked communication infrastructures, grey and green, that in part construct a rhetorical geography. Infrastructure is that which meets the basic needs of a people in social living. Sound infrastructure is required for the smooth running and organisation of society in this material setting. Communicative infrastructures are thus that which acts discursively towards a larger aim or argument. In this inquiry, I argue that the alt-rhetorical geography of the EGB is made up of communication infrastructures – the networked totality of material and immaterial objects that become part of a group’s rhetorical, argumentative work. Just as the green makes the EGB network, so does the grey. The grey infrastructures—the ruins of the Anthropocene—form part of the EGB’s infrastructure, especially in its alternative form as the ICT. Thus, the green and grey infrastructures of the EGB come 358 together to create this living memorial/outdoor-museum. Ultimately, I posit that the EGB is an ecological network of communicative infrastructures as an alt-rhetorical geography. Material communication infrastructures include the Kairos of green and grey infrastructure resonating in time and space. The combination of green and grey infrastructures are framed by the discursive work of the EGB Initiative into a singular relation. It is a biomic politics that has to read the land in order to enact governance over humans and nonhumans. In turn, it is then the communicative, rhetorical geography of the land that drives biomic action in turn to conserve and cultivate this demarcated, pastoral landscape. Just as climate change transcends nation-state boundaries, an Anthropocene rhetoric transcends geopolitical and national boundaries to achieve a global sustainable environmental policy. Rather than a nation-state biopolitical governance, the Anthropocene requires a global governance of humans and land that goes beyond the nation-state. This is what I determine a biomic politics: a rhetorical biopolitical analysis of governance over humans and nonhumans in the Anthropocene. 1.3 Biomic Politics. A biomic politics seeks a new world of unity and care for the environment. Global extinction is the underlying catalyst of the Anthropocene. To halt and prevent future extinctions, extinction becomes the driver of action in the Anthropocene. But global risks require global actions. An Anthropocene rhetoric thus requires a new type of governance: a biomic politics. A biomic politics is the governance of humans and nonhumans beyond the singular state. The importance of the nonhuman in creating and sustaining a hospitable planet for humans is to consider the needs of the natural world in our governance over social change and the fundamentals of human–nonhuman nature relationships in the West. The crises of climate change, environmental degradation, and the sixth extinction are Western as well as global problems that necessitate multiple local actions in the pursuit of a singular, larger goal: to halt these changes to the Earth system. Biomic practices thus weave the local and the global. 359 The EGB project is one biomic example. The EGB Initiative makes calls for a globalised efforts to fight climate change through biodiversity conservation as a designated climate mitigation strategy regarding the preservation of biodiversity. The former Iron Curtain boundary’s nonhuman natures ebb and flow as biodiversity levels increase in accordance with the EU 2020 accords. Rewilding practices with flora and fauna infer a symbolic terra nullis of the EGB land. Conservation, and biodiversity conservation, is the primary object of governance: the intangible and tangible green and grey infrastructures of the biome. It even connects with certain EU initiatives. The EGB Initiative is communicated as a holistic project with certain centralising features—the sovereign—, but its governance is carried out on its behalf through nation-state and NGO action. The EGB is thus a larger supra-national actor that has biomic apparatuses. However, the EGB Initiative does perform some actions by mapping that which and that which does not deserve conservation: bios versus zōē . This is geographically and ideological configured through a mapping of humans and nonhumans mapped as either belonging or not belonging to the EGB polity. The EGB as whole has become been biogeographically mapped as a selection of connected ecologies transformed and transforming the lifeworlds of regions inhabited by human and nonhuman creatures. Once bios and zōē is demarked, a biomic governance across nation-states can be enacted. The EGB project thus promotes biomic, climate security in risky times (Beck, 2009). As Corry (2012) argues, risks by their very nature cannot be eradicated (just as biodiversity loss is irreversible), and thus is a politics of permanence and long-termism (p. 245). The EGB as a model Green Infrastructure project symbolises and actualises long-time commitment to sustainable development practices that become part of the EGB’s biomic actions. The biomic preservation of ecosystems in the EGB is therefore not just an altruistic act but one of risk-security for the EU. The EGB is a novel take on “catastrophe insurance” (Beck, 2009) by the EU against biodiversity loss and its parent, climate change mitigation. As Grove (2014) states, “catastrophe insurance articulates techniques of pre-emption and preparedness with those of 360 sovereignty to intensify the ability of both capital and state agents to visualise, manage, and increasingly produce life in an emergent environment” (p. 28). Thus, these changes necessitating biomic work are not an emergency measure but a permanent feature representing a conceptual change in the EU’s relationship to its ecological surroundings. EGB biomic politics contributes to the glue that holds together contemporary environmental commitments such as the Paris Accords. Overall, this inquiry argues that against the threat of extinction, the EGB Initiative and EU are securing its referent object, Europe, both from climate change and in keeping its relatively open borders by instilling a sense of collaboration and freedom, and lessons from the past. A biomic politics thus generates a new-wor[l]d order where such politics can be reactive or progressive. The EGB is a progressive biomic politics because it remembers and preserves the past whilst transcending its limits. A topos of extinction acts as a catalyst for human action in the Anthropocene. This has been embodied by calls for global actions and thus a globalising governance over humans and land. This governance has resulted in an alt-rhetorical geography that reconfigures the past to present action and future goals. 1.3 Summary. This biomic action by the EGB Initiative presents the creation and conservation of the EGB as a holistic endeavour. Thanatotic impulses oscillate throughout the biome. From its origins as Iron Curtain corporeal ideology to death as the nascence for new nonhuman life forms, the traditions of biopolitical governance lead into an environmental biomic of humans, nonhumans, and land. Hence, from public memory to biodiversity, the Belt travels. Whilst the EGB strives to prosper as a site of ecological conservation, equally important is how the border turned biome is also a “memory road” to be travelled, or, as we shall see, cycled, as an eco-tourist gambit. The biome thus pulses as a connecting network, creating a zone for historical memory projects. The EGB is a networked biomic politics where the governing structures of the EU identify who and what qualifies as bios and zōē in a rhetorical act of naming the infrastructures on the land. Named as a 361 “living memorial” (European Green Belt Association, 2016a), the EGB moves from the historical atrocities that gave birth to this natural phenomenon; to a contemporary conservation of the relics of the former Iron Curtain alongside novel ecosystems; and it bridges towards a future-orientated narrative of a divided Europe now united through ecological preservation. If Tsing’s (2015) mushroom offered the possibility of life in capitalist ruins, then the creation of the Initiative ultimately models caring for life in the ruins of the Anthropocene. The EGB’s foundations became the spoils of war as border ruins transformed into Anthropocene fossils. And yet. Detailed analysis demonstrated that the road is not a singular enterprise. The making of a rhetorical geography is fully indebted to communication work. The EGB as a network of ecologies is dependent on the symbolic construction of a nonhuman nature referent. This materialises an interdependency on improved but still Cartesian human–nonhuman nature relations and conceits. Humans, reliant on biodiversity to combat climate change, are dependent on keeping this border-come- biome thriving. And in return, the EGB nonhuman natures rely on human stewarding to keep their habitat free from destruction from other human hands. The EGB is thus a social, materialised construct in the Anthropocene. Although European unity appears to be a primary goal of the EGB, this will likely never be achieved, particularly in our current political climes of a surge in nationalism and xenophobia, moves to the political right, Brexit, concerns over immigration, and the Syrian refugee crisis. The Belt symbolically and literally argues as a site of unity and represents an overcoming of the problems of the past and the deaths of war through tending and maintaining this flourishing landscape. The symbolic interpretations of the war relics’ presence that is replaced with new understandings and ways of seeing in service of a transcendent argument to assert “never again” to the divisions of the past and hope for a brighter future that will not be 362 attained but should be striven for. The Initiative positions each country and region as working towards the same efforts of European unification and green politics. 2.0 Holistic Conclusions The holistic claims of the EGB Initiative exist in resonance and tension with localities. The EGB as biome is neither unified nor fragmentary, but is dynamic as the project unfolds against regional exigencies, politics, and culturally infused human–nonhuman nature relations. To address the tensions between holism and locality, I thus divided my analyses of the project. In chapter two, I examined the project as it represents itself as a holistic entity, now named a model Green Infrastructure project for the EU. Chapters three, four, and five examined each biogeographical region, looking at least one site in detail per region: the Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park at the border region of Russia, Finland and Norway; Observation Point Alpha in the Fulda Gap in Germany; the Pakri Peninsula in Estonia; and the Strandja Nature Park and the Bulgarian/Turkish border. Each region and site proved distinctive, with varied landscapes, economic stresses, governance, and cultural networks. Together, these regions demonstrate how the holistic presentations of the heterogenous whole waxes and wanes; is integrative and disintegrative; is both network and discrete ecosystem. The following thus presents my conclusions. 2.1 The rhetorical whole. I began with the project as a whole. Analyses addressed how the EGB Initiative presents the project via its analogue and digital materials. Information gathering and analysis also extended to personal correspondence, interviews and participant-observation at the 2016 pan-European conference. From this analysis, the beginnings of the project were laid out as the response to an urgency. This is the securitisation of risk against a topos of extinction. 2.1a Beginnings through extinction. These urgencies for action are under a topos of extinction. The origins of the project began with a wilful nonhuman defying odds under the Cold War that threatened its human populations. Conversely, this threat and danger switched over to the nonhuman populations that 363 flourished at this lack of human zōē with peacetime. Desires for human progress became at odds with environmental thriving. Humans threatened to become a rhetorical apparatus of extinction. The project recognises its human caused-nascence. As both corporeal and ideological border, man- made materialisations of a war, despite being cold, came to constitute the unplanned biome. Time cannot erase this history. Green and grey infrastructures thus work together: they are a rhetorical geography of both the past and the future. Extinction is both its origins but also its folly. The threat of extinction becomes a rhetorical driver of action to conserve. But conservation can only be enacted with a delineation of that which is to be preserved and that which does not. Mapping of where conservation becomes necessary is a biomic delineation of bios and zōē. 2.1b Cultural and natural heritage. The demarcation of bios and zōē has another allocation across the EU. That is the notion of intangible and tangible, (cultural) heritage. Heritage is a rhetorical notion that implies a fixed referent, which comes from the past, and is important in the present and future. Heritage is normally used in reference to cultural items, but for the European Green Belt it also refers to the nonhuman. As argued in chapter two, I position heritage and resources as complementary figures. Nonhuman nature is a non-traditional resource, but has symbolic use beyond its biodiversity affect. The notion of a cultural and natural heritage in the EGB conceptualises a referent from the past as providing resources to support a foundational, united European identity. For the EGB Initiative and the EU, what is posed as heritage is also considered a shared heritage. Thus, heritage extends beyond the importance for the individual nation-state, to the European continent. Further, the designation of heritage items as valued thus implies an action of conservation. Conservation to protect against a topos of extinction rears around again. The conservation of a heritage item becomes of urgency for both the individual nation-state and the larger continent. 364 2.1c Mapping the discrete into a network of climate mitigation. Naming is an act of rhetoric. The naming of a referent as an object of shared natural heritage positions its importance in the EGB polity. Discourses can then accumulate surrounding the envisioned or asserted meaning of this referent object. A shared natural heritage—the delineation of spaces as bios and zōē —is a mapping in the services of a rhetorical geography. The EGB goes under continual reconstitution that undermines its boundedness. By undergoing its geo-mapping project to designate discrete boundaries for the EGB, it transforms from wilderness to a bounded, pastoral setting for supermodernity’s (Auge, 1995) ruins. Mapping both makes and remakes the wild. The mapping of the EGB project began with the flourishing of nonhuman natures. But its continuing success became a speech act driven from a topos of extinction. In part, mapping was enacted from the construction of rhetorical visions for this European-wide project in its beginning stages. One noteworthy extended vision was published in the IUCN report, The Green Belt of Europe: From vision to reality (Terry, Ullrich & Riecken, 2006). The opening paragraph of the forward provides a conceptual frame for the holistic project: The European Green Belt has the vision to create the backbone of an ecological network, running from the Barents to the Black Sea that is a global symbol for transboundary cooperation in nature conservation and sustainable development… Overall the Green Belt offers an exceptional tool to support Europe’s natural and historical heritage that can help to draw attention to rural border areas and thus can enhance sustainable regional development in these border regions. Thus new sources of income can be opened up and increase opportunities for the socio-economic development of local communities. We hope that the Green Belt will serve to better harmonize human activities with the natural environment and will foster transboundary cooperation between people, regions and neighbouring countries. On this basis the Green Belt can enhance cooperation 365 between the old and new EU member states, across the new EU borders or the still sensitive borders in South Eastern Europe. It offers a great chance to highlight the importance of ecological networks in truly linking people and nature. (ibid., viii.) As discussed in chapter two, a pleathora of bridging metaphors are used in these visions, as bridging brings disparate spaces into a cohesive whole. Bridging is the metaphorical backbone of the land constructed and governed through transboundary work. Thus, the symbolism of backbones, ecological networks, and other such spine metaphors provide a rhetorical terministic screen throughout official documents in various semiotic conceptions. Bridging as rhetorical work communicates a cohesive European identity that moves from the sins of the past towards a united European climate mitigation action. For all regions, the EGB land is a rhetorically constructed container for action. Flora and fauna rewild the landscape—as both that which lives inside in, and that which is itself, the environment. But the EGB project also makes an enabling connection and lives as an embodiment of place where humans and nonhumans alike interact. Nonhuman nature is not contained in catalogues, seed packages, or planting instructions. It lives as the driver of conservation action, and itself drives a public memory. 2.1d Green-Grey infrastructure as communicative labour. The project is holistically constructed by bringing together the nonhuman nature, ruins, and peoples that have been denied bios into the same conceptual frame. But the designation of bios is a political act. The EGB, constructed by nonhuman natures and ruins, becomes a material as well as symbolic resource. Resources are often referred to as infrastructure. The nonhuman natures becomes the green infrastructure of the project; the ruins and human interventions become the grey. Green infrastructure is the rhetorical counterpart to ecosystem services—a natural structure that necessitates good living. Although conservation biology traditionally aims for maintaining and encouraging biodiversity (Sarkar, 1999, p. 406) against the destructive forces of human 366 actions upon the natural world, I argue that this national preservation of relics is a tried-and-tested human response to atrocity for the benefit of future generations to “never forget”. As de Certeau posits, this is the conserved road of human–nonhuman vistas and cultural memories. But together, these infrastructures result in the EGB becoming a resource for the EU as a model Green Infrastructure project regarding sustainable development and conservation action. Here, conservation as green infrastructure becomes a securitisation against the risk of extinction, caused by climate change, for both human and nonhuman life. Infrastructure becomes a model of good practice. 2.1e (Memory) place and space. The EGB is a living memorial providing a space for travel as well as place for rest, pause, and reflection. A living memorial is constituted of memory spaces, which in turn delineate that which is worthy of remembrance. This delineation becomes ingrained into that which should be conserved—a heritage. It becomes part of the rhetorical geography of the land. The support of grey infrastructures by the EGB Initiative and the EU is Janus-faced as it looks towards its past to make symbolic and material arguments for conservation. Through biomic governance and transboundary cooperation, nonhuman nature conservation versus preservation of ruins meet. The preservation of heritage speaks to future European generations. The EGB frames its vista as “no future without a past”. A united European identity of climate mitigation strategists seek transcendence for its past sins through nonhuman nature conservation. Nonhuman nature and ruins are united as memory spaces that also speak to current and future aims. The infrastructure of the Iron Curtain past, leaves a cultural and natural public memory that enters the present as living experience. Such a space promises to assemble visitors, bureaucrats and national leaders into an EU-lead future of biodiversity gains, sustainable development, and climate security. 2.1f The living memorial as sacrifice zone. The EGB is a sacrifice zone. A sacrifice zone is at the margins of the everyday form of life exchange. The space is so distinctive that the who, what, why, where and 367 when of communication may pause in some ways and reconstitute itself. A disturbance of rhetorical communication marks the crossing of a frontier, which should of course be envisaged as a border zone rather than a clearly drawn line. For the sacrifice zone of the EGB, its disturbance of the rhetorical expectations of a memory place, in cultivating a public memory through nonhuman nature, defies the traditions of place. As the Iron Curtain Trail it is a place of transit. It is an example of supermodernity through its transformation of the Iron Curtain to the EGB. It is thus space—measured by volume, a passage for tourists and travellers—and then place—with its traditional figures of monuments, memorials, plaques and so on. Augé argued that supermodernity transforms history into a specific spectacle with exoticism and local particularity. Nonhuman nature here transforms history into a natural spectacle. It tells a public memory configured to specific ideas of a present European ideology. 2.1g Networks of change. The European Green Belt enters into a realm of international governance as it manages biogeographical regions against holistic aspiration. Despite a totalising EU rhetoric, the concept of cosmopolitanism, whether eco- or not, for a “post-national” European identity and citizenship, has been questioned (Liikanen, 2008, p. 19). In this critique of overgeneralising a fictional united European identity, the locus of this study needed to consider holistic discourses of the EGB project as well as local relations. The EGB Initiative itself has drawn and redrawn cultural, political and geographical localities within the project. The challenge thus became to recognise the many different ways in which national and European elements co-exist in the construction of biomes and borders both within and between different political cultures. The local and global work with and against one anotherr. The creation of a conservation network such as the EGB is not a naturally occurring entity but is a socially constructed and stewarded, material- cultural network of protected areas. Its creation results from debates over human–nonhuman nature relations, changes in the environment, and human responsibility to these changes. As Latour argues, 368 nonhuman is staged through scientific expertise—from material-semiotic traces of associations (Latour, 2004; 2007; 2014) through to spokespersons who give voice to nonhuman actants’ goals and agency. This is thus the intersection of nonhuman nature, human culture, and politics, both local and global. The EGB project is built from the local tensions with globalising governance. This inquiry thus invited a comparative analysis between these divisions. Following a holistic analysis of the project in chapter two, the following three chapters examining the four biogeographical regions, the resulting biomic governance across geographical regions, and an attendance to the materiality of communicative infrastructures as green and grey. These three content chapters thus addressed the EGB by (biogeographical) region, localities and alternative expressions of the road. The global and local combine. 2.2 Fennoscandian Belt. The Fennoscandian Green Belt (FGB) is a biogeographical region that integrates human-nonhuman nature relations. From a biomic perspective, both humans and nonhumans are afforded bios in the FGB polity. Both humans and nonhumans are considered dynamic agents that reciprocally act back at one another and without dominance. Bios is afforded in part from the traditions of the local peoples in this region that value nonhuman nature, and cultural ties to the land. I exemplified these human–nonhuman nature relations by examining two cross-border peoples: the nomadic, aboriginal Sámi, and the Russian/Finnish Karelians. In this chapter, I posit that that human–nonhuman nature relations in this border region, with significant cultural ties to the land, histories of border crossings and changing geo-political boundaries, have afforded a latitudinal approach to human-nonhuman nature relations in the Fennoscandian Green Belt. This is evidenced by Nomadic Sámi livelihoods finding support once again after the division the Iron Curtain wrought. The chosen case study for the Fennoscandian region exemplified cross-border collaboration. I chose as a representative site in the FGB Pasvik Inari Trilateral Park, a home of the Sámi in Sámpi . The Trilateral Park is co-managed between all three FGB countries. I argued that the Park symbolically and 369 materially promotes an environment where humans and nonhumans exist together in the same sphere. Overall, I posit the FGB as the most integrative region of the Belt regarding an Anthropocene rhetoric, as both humans and nonhumans enact a reciprocal relationship of bios in the northerly Belt. 2.3 Central hub. The Central European Green Belt (CGB) is constituted by German conservation on the ground, as well as its biomic work across the Baltic, Central, and Balkan Green Belts. Unlike in the FGB, conservation efforts have resulted in humans being denied bios. Germany enacts a reversal patriarchal governance over humans and nonhumans, as it is the latter that is granted bios in the EGB polity. In this chapter, I posit that the German Green Belt (GGB) biomic actors attempt to create a European peopleless wilderness rather than pastoral. Traditions are overturned. In the auspices of nonhuman nature conservation, it is the nonhuman that is afforded bios against humanity’s zōē as a peopleless, wild, beltway is constituted. The GGB has the most number of ruins in the Belt; thus, the anthropo-nascence of the GGB cannot be denied. Furthermore, these ruins in combination with the nonhuman natures have resulted in an eco-tourism that has become the primary source of funding as well as awareness for the project. Thus, I posited that commodification and ownership of the nonhuman natures is enacted to encourage ecological conservation within this anthropomorphised ecological network as the backbone of European identity and climate mitigation. I argue that this stewardship does not inherently posit an agentic nonhuman nature, but rather gives humans the upper hand in terms of power dynamics and action. It represents nonhuman nature’s activity through human culture: first biodiversity levels were diminishing due to industrialisation; then they began to flourish and new ecosystems appeared due to the human construction of the Iron Curtain. Nowadays, I argue that nonhuman nature is allowed to continue to thrive through the protection and conservation of the EGB Initiative and its rewilding practices. This takes on Cronon’s (1996a; 1996b) argument that nonhuman nature is a thoroughly human constructed entity. 370 These analyses resulted in evidence for my notion of networked multimodal argument. In this chapter, I argue that the GGB commodifies nonhuman nature as nonhuman natures combine with ruins to form a network of communicative infrastructures. The EGB argument of unification and biodiversity conservation is not made by one site alone. Rather, the GGB presents a network of sites—communicative infrastructures—that wind down the continent. Topographical containers of nationalism become transformed into connected, symbolic vistas. In turn, these vistas become a singular, complex communication infrastructure. This holistic orientation suggests that the singular is a unique whole. Observation Point Alpha is an exemplar of these ruins and nonhuman natures being used as a multimodal argument for the EGB Association. Overall, I posit that the grey and green infrastructures of the CGB work together as a set of Janus-faced networked communication infrastructures. 2.4 The contentious Belts. The Baltic and Balkan Belts invited a comparative analysis due to the contentions of their existence. Mapping for the FGB was built by following the latitudinal cultures and nonhuman natures. For the CGB, a mapping of conservation followed the ruins. However, for the Baltic and Balkan regions, borders have been drawn and redrawn. The Baltic Green Belt was negated in the origins of the EGB project, as questions were raised regarding the logistics of a sea-belt. For the Balkan, conservation in the mountainous range was acknowledged from the start, but geo-political barriers prevented conservation efforts as nation-states were absolved and born. Despite the difficulties of creating a stable rhetorical geography on the land, the Baltic and Balkan Belts are unified under a German biomic politics. Both regions were considered unable to provide the governance needed for biodiversity conservation. Thus, German operators took control of these two large regions, and today their Regional Coordinators are situated in Germany. This brought, and continues to bring, tensions between local human–nonhuman nature relations and a biomic governance that brings its own set of relations to the governing table. 371 In the Baltic and in the Balkan regions, debate still rages over the future of the Green Belt. Discord characterises Belt planning. Human-nonhuman relations have not, and do not, develop in a vacuum. Rather, they intersect with human culture and politics that write the land. For instance, I argue that the Baltic human–nonhuman nature relations appear similar to its FGB counterparts. In my case study of the surrounding coastal landscapes of Tallinn, I argued that Estonia is recycling its significant grey infrastructures in a move of Anthropocene adaptation. In contrast, I contend that the Balkan Green Belt struggles to balance the needs of humans and nonhumans. In my case study of Bulgaria, I argued that the country performs a comparative opposite: it denies both human and nonhuman bios in the fervour of nation-state boundaries. My ultimate takeaway from the contentious regions was finalised in fieldwork at the far southern reaches of the EGB and Balkan Green Belt—the border between Turkey and Bulgaria. Whilst the other regions promote a transboundary cooperation in the auspices of a unified Europe, I argue that Bulgaria is enacting a new division along former Iron Curtain lines. Securitisation in the Anthropocene takes on many contrasting forms in the Belt. 3.0 Reflections on Fieldwork I chose the EGB as a case study of an Anthropocene rhetoric in action due to its progressive and unique response to climate concerns as a material–cultural network. But neither are the EGB nor the Anthropocene finished products. The meaning and significance of the EGB for locals, nation-states, and the EU remains open and gathers. The acceptance and possibilities for the Anthropocene as an official geological era remains unknown. This openness renders my conclusions provisional rather than conclusive. Thus, I turn to reflect on the positionality of present work and future possibilities. My initial discovery of the EGB was by chance. I was not taught about the EGB in any of my schooling. Neither did I learn about it as an adult through new media. Rather, the Iron Curtain, once disbanded, ceased to exist. I thus began this inquiry through research into human–nonhuman nature 372 relations against the increasing urgency of climate change. Over time, this was followed with a deliberation over the Anthropocene and its meaning potential. One day I happened upon the EGB under the guises of rewilding Europe, and the rest was Anthropocenic history. The two weaved similar yet different narratives, responding to the developing urgencies over the climate and the sixth extinction of species. Print media and digital traces provided historical and biomic foundations, before I expanded outwards to research in the field. I followed the paths laid out by eco-tourists before me. The singular noticeable difference, apart from my role as scholar, was that I approached my travels of the EGB mostly by car. Cycling was the ideal, but an unreasonable feat as travelling academic needing to visit multiple sights per day, and across 10 country boundaries. So instead I took the road on four wheels. During my fieldwork, I conducted material rhetorical analysis of the ecological network. I also collected many varied analogue materials to create a digital archive. I supplemented this work further with interviews with key figures in the project. Later that year, in the autumn of 2016, I was a participant-observer at the 2016 pan-European Green Belt conference in Koli, Finland. This attendance was highly fruitful, bringing both nuances to the project as it is holistically framed, as well as offering more detail on how individual state actors enact their biodiversity conservation work on behalf of the state. Thus, I completed my fieldwork in summer 2018 to finalise what work was possible in the field under time and monetary constraints. 3.1 Personal experience. From Los Angeles to the quiet pastoral, my work along the EGB was a multimodal feat for the senses. I arrived contextually primed by both history and visual depictions from my research. I entered this continental landscape as the eco-tourist who aims to visit select sites or perhaps cycle the biome. What was first clear is how remote the land mostly is (except for Berlin). The divisions of Europe continue to be felt not only through grey infrastructures of the Cold War or their memorialising, but through the lack of development since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The space and quiet was 373 reminiscent of modern-day memorials that offer the space to pause and reflect. The argument of the EGB Initiative was multimodally clear, in part constructed from the subjective, emotional space that it builds for continental Europeans. Arrival at the EGB posed a new set of complexities. The scalar levels of this project were attempted to be teased out through a truly interdisciplinary approach. And yet, throughout such work, it has been important that the researcher, especially the critical rhetorician, remains aware of their own positionality (Bloomfield, 2016). As a European, but not a continental one, my understanding of histories, connections between countries and EU climate action has aligned me towards the goals of the EGB project. However, at the same time, attempts towards objectivity have been paramount. I aimed to remain as reflexive of my personal opinions on this aspect of European history as well as the environmental aspects in my role as a participant-observer. I was aware that my nationality but also association with a US institution warranted a cautious approach by others involved or touring the project. These people generally met me with both an expectation of mutual understanding and also concern as a quasi-foreign academic. However, my positionality as an overall European mostly enabled me to “break the ice” with a mutual understanding. This was critical to my full acceptance into the Pan-European EGB conference, where much of my personal correspondence in this dissertation comes from. Furthermore, I believe that my positionality enabled the success of my interviews with key actors in the EGB Association, as I received honest yet critical feedback regarding what the interviewees considered successes and failures of the project. 3.2 Building terminology from the experiential. This personal experience was the catalyst of building terminology to capture the complexities of the project. The clustering of concepts is multifarious, especially when addressing communicative labour both global and yet local. In part, my work in the field revealed the density to the materiality of the EGB as contextually dependent on the grey/green infrastructure in the border space, human–nonhuman nature relationships, and the larger political context 374 of global relations. But context is not simply a frame for interpreting meaning, because what became clear was that the EGB text itself was to be read as a network—dependent on linkages that makes meaningful discourse (Hutchins and Stormer, 2013, p. 26). Understanding discourse as a system of interconnected practices was key. Over time I found that the material and discursive work together to create multimodal arguments that are themselves signifiers. It was the rhetorical work of the discursive and material together that lead to theory development to account for the communicative labour materialised on the land. 4.0 Future Work The EGB is a progressive invention of global governance and climate action that orients the past in a new light. Many sites of memory offer a double experience as the past is used in the service of future goals. This dissertation guided the traveller to Janus-faced sites, not only looking at the past and future at the same time, but green and grey. The colours of rhetoric created visual spaces for argumentation and have offered a new opportunity for environmental communication. The EGB as a case study has provided the opening for other studies on the material turn in environmental communication against urgent calls for action. The potential of future work extends into other Anthropocene sites that posit catastrophic changes for humans and nonhumans, such as climate refugees or gendered environmental justice. However, four arenas for future work are promising. The first is a consideration of the EGB regressive orientations: this includes the consideration of the EGB in relation to larger EU green policies, with particular reference to current European citizen unrest regarding climate change and a lack of action by European states. The second areas in expanding the theoretical backing for this project and to conduct analysis of the EGB in relation to border studies. A third significant area of research is to consider the project and in particular its grey infrastructures as a networked site of dark tourism. Finally, it would belie to engage in a comparison between the EGB and the Korean DMZ as two sacrifice zones of rewilding. I explore the latter two below as examples. 375 4.1 Where colourisations lead to darkness. These Janus-faced, colourisations of the EGB as a rhetorical geography lends in part to border studies. Borders are the typical location for sacrifice zones. Sacrifice zones imply a darkness in their colourisation. These sites of trauma both pose opportunities and challenges for the rhetorical scholar in attending to memory places. Attendance to these Janus-faced sites leads to a dark tourism as part of the public guide for future work. First introduced as the concept of “Black Spots” by Rojeck in 1993, dark tourism argues for “the presentation and consumption (by visitors) of real and commodified death and disaster sites” as an intimation of post-modernity (cited in Sharpley & Stone, 2009, p. 14). According to Sharpley and Stone, from a rhetorical standpoint, considering these material sites as “dark” offers an opportunity for rewriting the history of people’s lives and deaths. Bowman and Pezzullo (2009) argued, as with Blair et al., (2010) that these traumatic material sites of death are not just about the past but rhetorically function by opening up a negotiation of memory that shapes the present and future. This thus provides particular rhetorical interpretations of the past events and offers the chance to change the public memory of the site (Sharpley & Stone, 2009, p. 8). Connotations of dark tourism have evolved into different nomenclatures such as Seaton’s (1996) notion of thanatourism: a biopolitical, and potential biomic, site of states of exception. A rhetorical biopolitical analysis of this project could thus extend from the notions of biomic governance to a biomic politics of trauma. The colourisations of Janus-faced work brings the possibility for solidarity or identity building, particularly at sites of environmental disasters. By not only providing forums for mourning and remorse, tours, and eco- tourists, can help assess damage, educate and galvanise much needed support. Thus, acts of remembering what has and may still be happening can provoke cultural change (Sharpley & Stone, 2007, p. 21). 4.2 Comparative networks of hazards. Another project is to consider a companion sacrifice to the EGB. The Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) has been in effect since 1953, not long after the division of Europe and the Iron Curtain. The DMZ is another inner-country border that has created a unique sacrifice 376 zone that has become a refuge to the nonhuman in these times of the Anthropocene. The DMZ, with its border defences and no-man’s land, has seen the same nonhuman narrative of the EGB play out. This dividing border has become rewilded with flora and fauna of the region. Recognising the importance of such flourishing, the South Koreans contacted the EGB operators in Germany for help regarding the conservation of these ecosystems as the sacrifice zone continues to divide. Visits between both peoples ensued, including a GGB personnel trip to the DMZ to consider in its unique habitats. Called the “Two Lines” project, German and South Korean state actors have been working together to sort the unique specificities of biodiversity conservation in a border during its own cold war. Moreover, South Korean delegates are not only interested in the immediate present. Remaining hopeful that the division of Korea will eventually be disbanded, the South Koreans are implementing actions in order to keep this biome-in-a- border a coherent protected network once the DMZ falls. Thus, a comparative study and continuation of this Anthropocene rhetorical biomic work would benefit from an extension from the EGB to the Korean DMZ as another ecological sacrifice network. Future prediction and action against Anthropocene risks ensues as borders of division turn global 5.0 Limits of the study As with all inquiries, there are limitations to this study. The first is scale. This is a large study, both in symbolic and material scope. Data collection could span several more years. The inability to complete fieldwork across all borders, and with sometimes sketchy information for particular countries and their EGB/EU conservation efforts raises concerns regarding the risk of over-generalising. In this study, I counter for this by considering both the overarching biogeographical human–nonhuman nature relations of each region, as well as the work done in individual countries. However, addressing these larger biomic acts of governances risks missing the nuances of individual nation-states and specific actions that go 377 against the grain. Although interviews and turns to personal correspondence have filled in some gaps, there are always limits to a project as a large as this. This project required extensive data collection. However, the nature of this project thus brought limitations surrounding data collection. Websites come and go, change domain names and original sources become defunct. When I first began this inquiry, the official EGB website itself was not updated, thus significantly hindering research. But hinderances became even more significant regarding language. There is a natural language barrier in looking across the work of 24 countries, none of whom have English as their national language. English may have been chosen as the working international language of the project, but much of the work by individual nation states was not accessible to me. I collected as much data regarding biodiversity conservation as EGB work as accessibly possible, but gaps were inevitable. The Fennoscandian and Balkan Green Belts do not have current (May 2019) working websites detailing the work in their regions. Furthermore, specific knowledge regarding the EGB in Bulgaria is also lacking. I cannot know if this is just not available to the public, if it is but it is not available in English, or whether there is a lack of Bulgarian coordination altogether. The pieces of the jigsaw that have been put together have thus done so through personal correspondence. The size and scope of the project also prevented more localised fieldwork. Visa restrictions prevented access to Russia as a whole. Money, time and unforeseen circumstances prevented further work in the Nordic countries, such as visiting the Pasvik-Inari Trilateral Park. Overall, more site visits would have further enriched the project. Furthermore, the fieldwork would have benefited from repeat visits to the same sites during different seasons. I conducted my fieldwork in the summer months, where tourism is at its highest and the visibility of infrastructures is clearest. Visiting these sites in the winter would inevitability have a different kisceral experience. Traversing the Green Belt becomes far more difficult on snow and ice. Human interactions with the nonhuman nature and environment adapt. For instance, I 378 visited Koli, Finland, in the winter for the 2016 pan-European conference. The below freezing weather, with snow on the ground and slowly freezing lakes, was a far different experience to visiting northern Karelia in the summer of that year. The winter thus provides a different vista. Thus, this small visit at the conference provided a unique glimpse into the dynamics of the EGB during its yearly cycle. 6.0 Coda In 2018, I visited the southern tip of the EGB at the Bulgarian, Turkish (and Greek) border. This visit was to bookend my fieldwork by ending where the Iron Curtain also came to a close. But this vista was unlike any other I had seen. Instead of conservation, the materialisations of a new war were apparent. A new border fence has been built along the former Iron Curtain blueprints. Environmental concerns may be grave, but nationalism, moves to the far right, and political crises had evidentially trumped ecological risk. This move is significant. As I write, climate change is in full material force. My US home state of California is burning whilst heat waves ravage the European continent. But my other home, that of Europe, is also in crisis. The EU is in a state of flux as Brexit makes daily headlines. Germany is seeing an unprecedented growth in neo-Nazism. The traditionally socialist Nordic countries are seeing elections of right-wing parties. Populism oft-denies climate change and biodiversity conservation as urgent crises deserving attention. Rather, nationalism focuses on the protection of nation-state borders rather than engaging in transboundary global work. Citizen protests regarding climate change reign, and yet responses by governments are vague and non-committal. The grandiosity of the EGB project in the grip of the Anthropocene is thus commendable, but yet faces inevitable challenges beyond biodiversity conservation. European politics are both a help and hinderance as they intersect with nonhuman nature and Western cultures. Contemporary human–nonhuman nature relations wax and wane as desires for unobstructed 379 infrastructure development push against environmentalist words of warning. The material-cultural network is thus a social construction and reflection of an Anthropocene rhetoric. The EGB as social construct in the Anthropocene is thus where this inquiry ends. The EGB is an Anthropocene road for both human and nonhuman life. Life in the EGB has developed in and amongst its Anthropocene ruins. But the EGB project, set against the ideology of Anthropocene, is still ongoing. The sixth extinction evolves as the Anthropocene posits a topos of extinction from which securitisation methods are needed. But in the 21 st century in these precarious times, securitisation is more than just the fortification of nation-state borders. 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