Fostering Refugia Amid Unfolding Extinctions

Abstract

According to Anna Tsing, Holocene resurgence, the multispecies work carried on to enable life among disturbance, and the ability to foster refugia where the living can recover from damage are crucial to oppose modern capitalogenic extinctions. I expand on this argument by looking at the geo-historical role that refugia have played (and perhaps can still play) during the Quaternary in nurturing the lives of survivors amid unfolding extinctions. Refugia have fostered multispecies life in harsh climatic and ecological times, which enabled individuals of different species to carry on the work of resurgence, because they have functioned as homes for refugees, allowing them in to recover from the hardships of the outside world for a (geo-historically long) while before they again went into the world when external conditions became more amenable. If this capacity of refugia to nurture life can be fostered, such sites might be important pieces in a political ecological strategy aiming to oppose the waste of life brought about by contemporary extinctions.