The world’s critical edges point at natural resources, biocultural diversity and questions of autonomy

Borderlands are central to world politics despite their perceived remoteness. Ecological crises now underline their importance as centers for natural resources and of biocultural diversity. A new podcast and documentary film address these timely issues related to the world’s critical edges.

A shift away from the periphery?

Borderlands Studies was born as a multidisciplinary field that takes critical distance to advancing frontiers. Borderlands scholars have for a long time challenged the imaginary of critical edges as simple peripheries or conquering frontiers merely dependent on the supposed power centers. They have also critically addressed many essentialist binary divides typically attached to such remote regions, depicted often as what the supposed power centers are not: remote, authentic, wild, distant, marginal and frozen in time. 

Borderlands scholars have also shed light to the world’s critical edges as important to our world politics. Lately, a number of “peripheries” have emerged at the core of power politics, such as Greenland, Alaska, Lapland and the Panama Canal. Many of these regions have been also militarized.

Many borderlands scholars have suggested that instead of the traditional binary thinking related to peripheries, the world’s critical edges are rather about the encounters between different systems, as well as spaces for the formation of own, mixed identities or autonomous interstices.

Whereas earlier Borderlands Studies were predominantly focused on the well-known Mexican-US border region, recently new frames have emerged to identify very distinct borderlands, such as the Atlantic, which brings together transboundary coastal areas that share the same global history and mobilities related to colonialism.

Consequently, also remoteness has been subject to vibrant discussions. Now it is intimately tied to connectivity. In other words, remoteness is not only about the perceived physical distances that always depend on who is looking and from where. Rather, remoteness is about changing connectivities and mobilities, entangled with distinct economic, societal, cultural and political processes that are in a constant process of construction and deconstruction.

Submerging in the world’s critical edges with a new podcast

Our team has been inspired by the world’s critical edges, their role in world politics and the timely research related to them. Therefore, we decided to produce a new podcast in English that would allow us to deepen on the critical edges and to connect with different scholars addressing them.

This is important because we observe that despite their significant geographical, cultural and political differences, critical edges also share important features and processes, such certain state interests and control, megaprojects, use of natural resources or their conservation, Indigenous peoples, tourism and the pursuit of autonomy and self-determination.

Thus, in our first episodes, we pondered upon the endangered Amur tigers in the Peninsula of Korea, citizen activism in the Turkish Antakya in the aftermath of the earthquake that hit the region, Arctic Indigenous people and situation of the Sami along the bordering Deatnu River, and the margins of diplomacy.

In one of my own episodes, I interviewed the Mexican professor Ana Esther Ceceña, who has researched Latin American geopolitics by focusing on global water routes. In international relations, Latin America is often perceived as a lonely island-continent, when in fact, it forms an important geopolitical channel between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.

By employing social science-oriented complexity theories to geopolitics, Ceceña shows how even the most powerful and dominant systems contain different alternative systems, including Indigenous resistance. During the past years, Ceceña has been particularly focused on understanding the geopolitical dimensions of two mega-scale railway-projects in Mexico: The Maya Train in the Yucatan Peninsula, and the InterOceanic Train of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

A documentary film addressing people, biocultural conservation and contradictions in the Yucatan Peninsula

Also our newly published documentary film “Sakbe – Roads of Life in the Maya Forest” dives deep in the critical edges of the Yucatan Peninsula by addressing the crossroads between state’s megaprojects and nature conservation. The Maya Forest, which extends from the Yucatan Peninsula to Belize and Guatemala, is one of the world’s most biodiversity-rich regions. It is also home to the ancient Mayan civilization that attracts millions of tourists yearly.

In 2024, the politicized, tourist-oriented Maya Train was inauguated there. The train-project also involves geopolitical dimensions, as addressed by Ana Esther Ceceña in our previously mentioned podcast-episode. It has been defined as a national security interest, which makes it difficult to assess. What do local people think about all this?

The film accompanies local people especially in the Calakmul biosphere reserve and the Puuc biocultural state reserve. What are the possibilities and challenges of biocultural diversity and conservation in these places?

Biocultural diversity refers to the ways in which biodiversity and cultural diversity are interwined. The notion originates from Mesoamerica and Latin America. It was originally developed by ethnobiologists, who were worried about the loss of Indigenous knowledge, especially related to medicinal plants.

Nowadays biocultural conservation has been linked to the observation that most of our remaining continuous forest coverage is located on Indigenous territories. At the same time, biocultural conservation seeks to reduce the borders between nature conservation and livelihoods. How are the experiences in Calakmul and Puuc?

The documentary film is freely available on the Youtube Channel @SakbeMayaForest with English, Finnish and Spanish subtitles.

I warmly thank the Kone Foundation for support in these two science communication and dissemination projects – the Critical Edges Podcast and the Sakbe-documentary film. They have been created as part of the soon-ending project “Political Forests – the Maya Forest”.

The Critical Edges-podcast has been created by Hanna Laako, Vadim Romashov, Kerttu Matinpuro, Katherine Hall and Eleonoora Karttunen to address world’s critical edges – that is, borderlands, margins, remote regions. The episodes are available on Youtube, Spotify and Substack. You can also read an interview about the making of the podcast at the UEF website.

The documentary film ”Sakbe – Roads of Life in the Maya Forest”, created by Kerttu Matinpuro and Hanna Laako, was published in November 2025. The film is available on the Youtube Channel @SakbeMayaForest with English, Spanish and Finnish subtitles. You can also read about the making of the film at the UEF website.