What is “ecobordering”, this notion brandished by the far right which wants to root individuals in their land

Every Saturday, we decipher climate issues with François Gemenne, professor at HEC, president of the Scientific Council of the Foundation for Nature and Man and member of the IPCC.

This week François Gemenne comes to talk to us about a curious concept: ecobordering. It’s a little difficult to translate, but easy to understand. This is a propensity to see closing borders as a way to protect the environment. This could be translated as “ecofrontierism” in French and it is the new credo of the European far right, explains François Gemenne. As Jordan Bardella expressed in April 2019 on France 24: “Borders are the environment’s best allies (…) It is thanks to them that we will save the planet.”

François Gemenne : It is an idea that comes from quite a distance, which is already present among Malthusian and conservative thinkers, who will insist on the idea of ​​the original purity of nature. Conservative philosophers like Edmund Burke, in the 18th century, or more recently Roger Scruton, believe that only those who own the land, who are invested in it, are capable of protecting it. And that those who do not own a piece of land are threats to the environment. Paradoxically, it is an idea that we will sometimes also find, in other forms, among radical environmentalist thinkers, who we would rather place on the left or even on the extreme left, and who will plead for a return to earth, because only those who work the earth with their hands could truly protect it.

In this logic, some make the same connection with borders. Those who come from elsewhere, who do not own land, are a threat to the environment, to the original purity of nature.

“We know that it is the richest who have the heaviest environmental footprint, but no matter: this is about using environmental protection as a pretext for closing borders.”

François Gemenne

at franceinfo

This is an argument that was already tested by the American far right in the 2010s, with the idea that immigrants were mainly responsible for the increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the country, since they increased the size of the population. And that immigration was bad for the climate in general, since immigrants came from a poor country to go to a rich country, and that they would therefore increase their individual carbon footprint.

This reasoning comes back to blame immigrants for the increase in a country’s emissions. It is therefore basically quite logical that the European extreme right has taken up the subject, and that the National Rally, for example, has developed localism as an ecological credo, with the idea that exchanges are, by nature, a threat to the environment. And we must therefore produce local, consume local, travel local, because our territories are ZADs, “zones to defend”. Self-sufficiency is established as a virtue, and each individual must be rooted in a land.

The diversion of the “return to the land”

Obviously, it is also an approach that is defended by many environmental activists, who will also plead for a return to the land, but not for reasons of identity, obviously. This is obviously where the danger of speeches of fear and collapse lies: it is to lead to a survivalist reflex, where everyone waits for the end of the world from their bunker. This survivalist reflex can even lead to ecofascism, which considers that those who come from elsewhere are a defilement of the natural environment. For example, the terrorists in Christchurch and El-Paso, in 2019, wanted to kill immigrants because they considered them parasites, like invasive species that threatened the purity of the territories.

Obviously radical environmental activists are not racist, it is often quite the opposite.

“I think we need to be aware of the risk of stirring up certain fears of collapse and the risk of withdrawal.”

François Gemenne

at franceinfo

The risk of reducing trade, closing borders, limiting our horizon to what is close to us would be absolutely dramatic for the fight against climate change.

We cannot deny that trade is also a source of pollution. But we are going to need these exchanges in the fight against climate change, because we will not succeed without international cooperation. The impacts of climate change, which will affect France, do not depend only on French emissions, but on all countries in the world. Never before, in the History of humanity, have we been so dependent on each other, linked in a community of destinies by the physics of the climate: elsewhere depends on here, and here depends on elsewhere. This is why nationalism, in my opinion, is the worst enemy of the climate, because it implies withdrawal. And I believe that the great ally of nationalism tomorrow will be the ecology of the avocado: green on the outside, but with a brown core.