PLANT LIFE

How afforestation reveals the often concealed politics between humans and plantsIn Plant Life Rosetta S Elkin explores the procedures of afforestation the large scale planting of trees in otherwise treeless environments including grasslands prairies and drylands Elkin reveals that planting a tree can either be one of the ultimate offerings to thriving on this planet or one of the most extreme perversions of human agency over it Using three supracontinental case studies scientific forestry in the American prairies colonial control in Africa s Sahelian grasslands and Chinese efforts to control and administer territory Elkin explores the political implications of plant life as a tool of environmentalism By exposing the human tendency to fix or solve environmental matters by exploiting other organisms this work exposes the relationship between human and plant life revealing that afforestation is not an ecological act rather it is deliberately political and distressingly social Plant Life ultimately reveals that afforestation cannot offset deforestation an important distinction that sheds light on current environmental trends that suggest we can plant our way out of climate change By radicalizing what conservation protects and by framing plants in their t