Environmental Care in Anthropo(s)cenic Landscapes: Voices and Practices from Albania and Serbia

What do biodiversity habitats and sacred landscapes have in common, and how are they changing amid the accelerating climate and environmental challenges of the Anthropocene? How do people living in or near these places perceive and experience the current transformations, and how do they imagine their future? The core aim of this project is to explore the emotional and spiritual relationships, knowledge practices, and care that people grow and maintain in relation to the biocultural habitats in Albania and Serbia.

The political shift towards a neoliberal market economy after 1990 has triggered extensive urbanisation, development of tourism, infrastructural interventions, deforestation and other extractive activities that threaten protected habitats such as the Vjosa-Narta wetlands, the Prespa lakes, the Gornje Podunavlje/Upper Danube wetlands and the forests of the Fruška gora/Frankish Mountains. These sparsely populated areas, recognised as holy landscapes, embody spiritual connections for the locals through holy springs and other sites such as churches, monasteries and other tangible and intangible relics. Despite their “scenic” reputation, these habitats have changed over time forming what are known as Anthroposcene environments. This comparative anthropological research aims to address the existing gap in understanding the perceptions, experiences and imaginaries of protected habitats in Southeast Europe, a region whose voices are relatively less represented in discussions of today's climate and environmental challenges. As most of these habitats, with the exception of Frankish Mountains, are part of wetlands, they form transitional landscapes where the boundary between terrestrial and water areas is constantly shifting and habitats have been subject to continuous change over centuries. However, in recent decades, these changes are becoming increasingly abrupt and are leading to unprecedented transformations. To cope with the consequences, some policy and administrative institutions are trying to apply legal and economic regulations, such as Ecosystem Services (ES). The latter aim to create sustainable policies in the various ecosystems that are vital to human life. The project team posits that ES, in their attempt to impose one model and one solution for everything, can hardly take into account and perceive the plurality of worlds and practices of responsibility and care towards the environments. This research starts from the simple but important premise that sustainability and care for the environments do not come from politics and certainly not from economic systems, but from people themselves. To delve into the complex worlds on the ground, this research will employ the intersectional approach that combines thick, ethnographic and big, remote sensing data. In this way, a comprehensive understanding of the multitude of entanglements between the geophysical, historical, political, economic and social realms of respective environments will be gained. This will enable the research team to assess the implementation of ES in Albania and Serbia and to advocate for an inclusive understanding of the environment and people’s responsibility for it. The research aims to shed light on the “realities on the ground” and to document and analyse local experiences in order to empower communities. It aims to co- create a knowledge base for a comprehensive understanding of environmental care.