Editorial

In the first three years of the third decade of the twenty-first century all human lives, billions-plus other-than-human forms of life, and multiple earth forms have been torn from ‘normality’. They now confront disconcerting uncertainty or uncertainties. I can list some ways, and you can add to my list your experiences of what is described as ‘turbulence’, multiple overlapping disruptions to place and lives.1 On every continent this decade, hitherto taken-for-granted freedoms retreat from grasp. For some that means adjusting to the ultimate loss of loved ones, those others who shape and give meaning to our love and caring. For those more fortunate among us not touched by the ultimate grief, a small, ever-changing virus has upended previous normality: workplace, school, shopping, friendly gatherings, sport fixtures, travel. Nestled within that list are major upheavals, changes to our daily routines that have severe impact on our lives and our expectations of an autonomous life. Other changes perhaps are less severe: but in total they amount to a sudden uninvited disconnection from the ‘norm’. Energy, that we might well not have, is called on to reorient and craft new sets of norms, ones within which we can again feel safe and certain, until ... Such safety and certainty may itself be ephemeral, for there are other perturbations causing tumult to this planet. As I write one-third of Pakistan is flooded after ‘exceptional’ monsoonal rains.2 The figures are staggering. Onethird of that vast nation is covered in water: insinuating its way into homes and shops, across factory floors and farmland, en route rapidly destroying – killing – crops and beasts, wildflowers and creepy-crawlies, and those humans unable to flee its path. The estimated number of human lives lost so far is over 1000. And there is more death to come: as aid workers struggle to reach isolated communities, as the slow violence (Nixon 2011) of disease and starvation unravel this year and in years to come. At this moment millions are clinging to life waiting, on roadsides, tiny islands of high ground, wherever they can, waiting for assistance, waiting for aid. The estimated rebuild cost – a Washington Post estimate – is $10 billion. And despite, or because of, the rippling cascade of emergencies – fire, flood, landslides, drought, heatwaves – to which the world stands witness this year, 2022, aid is slow coming. Seemingly endless months of rain or sudden intense falls from ‘atmospheric rivers’ (a term becoming familiar now in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand if not elsewhere) have precipitated floods and landslides. Bridges are gone, roads collapsed, homes and pastures wasted, communities cut off. That is one