FILTERING FUTURES: CONTAMINANT FLOWS, LANDSCAPE GOVERNANCE AND THE MAKING OF NEW ANTHROPOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE FOR PLANETARY HEALTH

Filtering contaminating flows in water ecologies is a critical problem for planetary health. Current approaches e.g. One Health, favour collaboration among disciplines, governmental bodies, citizens and ecological (more-than-human) actors, to innovate new thinking and sustain interventions. Despite aspirations, efforts to pull human and ecological forces into play remain obstructed by disciplinary silos, vested interests, epistemic uncertainty and a lack of a shared vocabulary. FILTERSCAPE offers a groundbreaking research agenda for anthropology to address these limitations and drive new thinking in planetary health forward. It captures the overlooked human and more-than-human filtering work within water ecologies. Filtration is a mechanism that can mediate, exacerbate and ameliorate environmental contamination. Enacted in the relations between people, organisms and infrastructures, it works to separate and absorb wanted from unwanted matter. In doing so, it interrupts flows of contamination, to reveal their sources, effects and politics. FILTERSCAPE will analyze ecological (wetland), infrastructural (waste and water treatment) and embodied (kidneys; macroinvertebrates) filtering relations in Danish and Mexican water ecologies. By studying their histories, diagnostic capacities, governance and embodiments, this project will produce groundbreaking theoretical, methodological and empirical knowledge. It will connect the distinct subfields of medical and environmental anthropology and offer valuable insights for policy makers, practitioners and citizens. It will do this by reconceptualizing planetary health as a filtering assemblage, excavating the role it must play in shaping liveable landscapes. FILTERSCAPE provides a pluralistic, legible and collaborative platform. Anchored in an anthropology sensitive to space and time, it will ally with ecoscience, agroecology, engineering, environmental management and public health – fields where filtration is integral.