Discussing Climate Resilience on Arrakis

Abstract

With this brief intervention, I want to highlight a critical perspective on climate resilience, which would ask for structural power asymmetries in systems of knowledge production and planning processes, while emphasizing historical legacies derived from colonial and capitalist exploitation of care and labor and the appropriation of nature (cf. Moore 2015). However, I want to read climate resilience critically with Frank Herbert’s novel ‘Dune’. First published in 1965 and lately adapted as a movie by Denis Villeneuve, the desert planet Arrakis makes us think about ecology and the connections to exploitation across time and scale in different ways. The city of Arrakeen, isolated, and adapted to the harsh desert climate, winds, and heat, is embedded in a system of colonization and exploitation. Therefore, something that appears locally resilient or adapted can yet (re‑)produce the resilience of an undesirable system. But ‘Dune’ also invites us to reflect on science and knowledge production, symbolized by the ecologist Dr. Liet-Kynes, who lives with the indigenous population (Fremen). Even though he dedicated his life to the science behind how ecosystems work and remain in balance, he ultimately fails in the plan to create a self-sustaining cycle. Moreover, Dune invites us to reflect on the nature of the self, the danger of excess, and that thinking must be multidimensional and open to change. Approaches that even sixty years later are reflected in current debates and struggles about climate change.

Reference:

Moore, J. (2015): Capitalism in the web of life. Ecology and the accumulation of capital. Verso, London and New York.