‘Precarious Lives’: Climate Change and Ecoprecarity
in Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin’s Global
Dr.
Jemima Sakum Phipon,
Assistant
Professor,
Department of
English,
M.U.C Women’s
College,
Burdwan, West
Bengal, India.
Abstract: This
research paper offers a close reading of Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin's Global (2023) which is a graphic fiction
that articulates the complex, interconnected reality of anthropogenic climate
change and ecoprecarity. Ecoprecarity is the material and psychological state
of insecurity induced by environmental instability and resource depletion. The
narrative oscillates between the Sunderbans and the Arctic juxtaposing
geographically disparate, Global South and North yet linked by climate change
and it’s ensuing crises such as the flooding of the Sunderbans with the
ever-rising sea water level and the melting permafrost in the Arctic. Global strongly dismantles the
perception of climate change as a distant, abstract threat by fostering an
intensified sense of global empathy and localized urgency in its readership.
The analysis focuses on the parallel ‘precarious lives’ of Yuki and Sami and
their dependence upon “precarious environments, people and processes” (Nayar 7)
as Yuki an Inuit girl navigates an Arctic landscape ravaged by rapid ice melt
and threats by the hybrid grolar bears and Sami, a boy facing the immediate
socio-economic collapse of his Bay of Bengal fishing community due to rising
sea levels and cyclonic intensification. This juxtaposition serves to
illustrate two critical facets of the climate crisis: the destruction of
pristine wilderness and the displacement of vulnerable populations. The
characters' struggles are shown to be products of a shared, systemic failure,
demonstrating that environmental breakdown is a non-linear, multi-scalar phenomenon.
The study argues that the graphic novel's structure acts as a literary call to
action. By making the climate catastrophe intimate and immediate through the
eyes of relatable, resilient young protagonists, the dual narrative model
transcends mere illustration to become a powerful mechanism for educating
readers on the necessity of collective, transnational responses to the global
precarity crisis.
Keywords: Precarious
lives, climate change, eco precarity, resilience, ethical responsibility
Eoin Colfer and
Andrew Donkin's powerful graphic novel Global, stands as a crucial piece
of contemporary young adult literature, addressing the most pressing
existential crisis of the anthropogenic climate change. The novel moves beyond
abstract data and scientific projections and sets the reality of the crisis
within two deeply personal, geographically disparate narratives. At the core of
the novel is the concept of ecoprecarity, which Pramod K. Nayar defines as the
“intertwined set of discourses of fragility, vulnerability, power relations
across species and imminent extinction” (Nayar 6) Global sheds light on the
material and psychological state of insecurity, vulnerability, and systemic
threat resulting directly from the degradation and collapse of local and global
ecological systems due to human activity. The narrative structure of Global
alternates between the stories of Yuki, an Inuit girl in the rapidly melting
Canadian Arctic, and Sami, a boy struggling for survival in a flood-threatened
fishing village in the Sunderbans in the Bay of Bengal. It demonstrates that
while the causes of climate change are global and diffuses, the consequences
are intensely local and specific, disproportionately affecting vulnerable
communities who have contributed the least to the problem. Colfer and Donkin’s
utilization of the dual narrative structure, facilitated by the immediacy of
the graphic novel format, serves to collapse the perceived distance between
First and Third World experiences of climate change. This technique effectively
transforms the crisis from a scientific problem into a human moral imperative,
thereby promoting global empathy and recognizing the transnational nature of
ecoprecarity among young readers.
Yuki’s
experience in the, in a deserted Inuit town “in the middle of nowhere” (Colfer
and Donkin 11) serves as a visceral illustration of the destabilization of a
once eternally frozen Arctic Circle, reeling under the irreversible
consequences of global heating. The primary symbol of the climate crisis in
Yuki’s narrative is the melting ice, “Warmer winters means less sea ice…when
the ice goes life goes with it” (13). The ground upon which her culture and
life are built is literally dissolving. “My town. What’s left of it. There are
more houses empty than full now…more people leave every year” (12).The melting
ice is not merely an aesthetic change, it is an economic, cultural, and
physical threat. The rapid thinning of the leads to the emergence of other,
less visible dangers, such as the release of ancient, trapped greenhouse gases.
Yuki notices the presence of methane gas released from thawing permafrost
lakes, explaining to Locky, "A huge frozen lake. It’s beautiful. And it
stinks. I know it smells funny, boy. That's methane. Dead plants rot at the
bottom of the lake, releasing methane" (94). This scientific fact gives a
chilling reminder that the climate crisis is a self-accelerating cycle, where
warming causes more warming, further entrenching the condition of precarity for
all life. “If that ice warms and melts then all the methane held there over
years and years will be released at once. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas
trapping thirty four times as much heat as carbon-dioxide. There are lakes like
this on the verge of melting over the Arctic. Global warming strikes again” (95).The
ecological consequence of the melting ice is personified by the appearance of
the grolar bears, a hybrid of the polar bear and the grizzly bear.
The novel
foregrounds the blurring of the boundary between human and the non-human world,
positioning climate change as a destabilizing force that reconfigures ecologies
and species behaviour. The most explicit manifestation of this blurring is the
grolar bear, a climate-driven hybrid of the polar bear and the grizzly bear.
This creature, which stalks Yuki in the Arctic is a literal, biological merging
of species of the polar bear and the grizzly bear whose territories have been
forced to overlap due to melting ice. As a result, Yuki’s town had regular
visitations from “hungry” grolar bears who could nether neither catch fish like
the polar bears nor hunt like the skilled grizzly bears. The town authorities
issue a “policy to shoot any bears that came too close”. Young Yuki is fully
aware that “it’s not the bear’s fault but “we’ve melted their hunting ice”.
Yuki shoulders the moral responsibility embarks on a bold and dangerous mission
to protect the grolar bears from “the town’s policy” (14). The grolar bear is a
living consequence of anthropogenic change, forcing Yuki to confront a
non-human entity whose existence is directly tied to human activity. “We
destroyed their habitat. We created them. And now we’re going to kill them. Unless
I can do something about it” (9).
Yuki's quest to
photograph the grolar bear is her personal attempt to reclaim agency and
protect vulnerable specie, recognizing that these new creatures are in a
"troublesome situation for no fault of theirs" (14). The bear is
driven into human areas, seeking food because its natural hunting grounds are
gone: "Polar bears have less food to hunt and are wandering into town
looking for something to eat" (13). This forces a violent conflict between
the Inuit community and the starving wildlife, as locals, in their own struggle
for survival, are forced to shoot the animals. Yuki’s mission is an act of deep
empathy, highlighting how climate change pits species against one another,
turning the natural world into a source of direct danger and making the
wilderness itself an unsafe, precarious space.
Sami's
narrative, set in a fishing village on the Bay of Bengal, provides the parallel
portrait of ecoprecarity in the Global South. While Yuki faces the crisis of
permafrost thaw in the Arctic, Sami faces the crisis of floods and cyclones
caused by the rise in the sea level and warming seas. His struggle represents
the immediate, daily struggle for existence. Sami had lost his home, his
parents, and a cherished family heirloom lucky knife to a past cyclone (18).
His village itself is in a constant battle against the encroachment of the sea.
The very land on which his fishing village stood was sliding into the rising
sea waters, making it necessary to relocate the homes farther inland regularly.
This perpetual instability means that each day was a struggle for survival. The
precarity is fundamentally economic. Sami and his grandfather, who depend on
fishing for survival, find the practice increasingly fruitless due to complex
climate-driven factors. "The ocean is rising and each day they bring back
fewer and fewer fish".”Every season the fish are fewer…Perhaps Lord Brahma
is angry. Or maybe foreign factory boats steal all the fish. Grandpa says that
the big cities poison the ocean” (7-8).This is exacerbated by changing water
temperatures affecting fish stocks and the presence of industrial overfishing
which itself is a larger systemic and often-colonial economic factor. The
ecological and economic systems are collapsing in tandem.
Unlike the
isolation of Yuki's community, Sami's village also faces intense social
ecoprecarity, driven by resource scarcity. The village sees an influx of
environmental refugees from "failed farming villages" or even
migrants from other nations. This concentration of people competing for
dwindling marine resources leads to "conflict over what little resources
remain" (34). The pressure is compounded by the systematic destruction of
natural defenses: "They keep clearing the mangrove trees to make room for
more shacks. Mangrove roots hold the earth in place" (39). This act of desperation
highlights the tragic irony of ecoprecarity in the desperate search for
immediate shelter, vulnerable populations are forced to destroy the very
ecosystems that could provide long-term protection against the storms and
rising seas. Sami’s impulsive, dangerous decision to dive back to his submerged
former home to retrieve the lucky knife is a desperate, symbolic act. It
represents his refusal to accept the permanence of impermanence imposed by
climate change, a yearning for stability and a return to a non-precarious past,
even in the face of an oncoming cyclone.
The genius of Global
lies in the way it alternates between these two distinct environments. This
dual narrative structure is not merely a literary device; it is a pedagogical
and rhetorical tool designed to demonstrate the blurring of the Global South
and North divide brought about by the unity of the climate crisis.By switching
back and forth, the narrative emphasizes that the melting Arctic ice and the
rising Bay of Bengal sea are not two separate natural disasters, but two
manifestations of the same singular, global phenomenon: the human-caused
increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. The authors deliberately choose two
stories in two opposite settings which are but tied by the resilience, hope and
optimism of two teenagers who are willing to fight to make the world a better
place.
The graphic novel format enhances
this connection. The use of subtly different colour palettes for each world, the
blues and whites of the Arctic versus the richer greens and browns of the Bay
of Bengal visually differentiates the settings, but the consistent paneling and
dynamic art style of Giovanni Rigano binds them together. The parallel moments
of extreme jeopardy—Yuki stalked by the grolar bear, Sami battling the
cyclone—create narrative tension while intellectually linking the causes of
their shared ecoprecarity. The dual narrative structure powerfully deconstructs
the geographical and conceptual divide between the Global North and Global
South, arguing for a unified understanding of climate injustice. The stories of
Yuki (Global North) and Sami (Global South/Indian Ocean) are physically
separated but thematically and causally connected. Both children are subjected
to existential, life-threatening crises stemming from the same global
phenomenon of rising temperatures. Yuki faces the loss of her cultural home and
the threat of a violent, novel species due to melting ice. Sami faces the loss
of his physical home and ancestral history to coastal flooding and cyclones. By
placing the two protagonists in equally perilous and high-stakes situations,
the novel resists the notion that climate change is solely a
"Southern" issue of development or that the "North" is
immune. It establishes an equality of ecological risk, even if the specific
manifestations of that risk differ.
The work ultimately collapses the
geographical distance by implying a global feedback loop—the carbon emissions
primarily associated with the industrialized North lead to the melting that
affects Yuki, and the sea level rise and extreme weather that devastate Sami.
The final act of potential connection between the two children serves as a
metaphor for the required global cooperation to address a problem without
borders. The blending of these binaries—human/non-human and
North/South—transforms climate change from an abstract policy issue into a
deeply personal, planetary crisis of entangled survival.
Climate change
is often presented in policy documents and media as charts, graphs, and
statistics, which can feel abstract and fail to inspire action. Global deliberately
eschews this approach. As the authors themselves stated, the goal was to create
an adventure story“ a work of fiction, but every element in it, to do with
climate change is real. Global is not a story about what might happen in
future; al the climate change issues in this book are real and they are
happening right now" (130).The authors tell the human side of
environmental issues focusing on the quotidian consequences of climate change.
For Yuki, it's the daily fear of a starving bear or the risk of the ice
breaking. For Sami, it's the constant stress of not catching enough fish and
the threat of the next storm. The authors have consciously created their
protagonists as teenagers (Yuki aged fourteen and Sami twelve) to highlight how
children are at “ extremely high risk” of suffering the impacts of the climate
crisis…Today’s children are least responsible for the causes of climate change,
but sadly they are often the first to suffer it’s impacts” (130).This focus
makes the problem relatable and emotionally engaging, fulfilling the graphic
novel’s primary function of putting an unforgettable human face to the issue.
Global is a story of
adventure and survival, but its enduring message lies in the characters’
resilience and the ultimate potential for transnational connection. Both Yuki
and Sami exhibit fierce determination and courage in the face of overwhelming
environmental odds, deciding to take matters into their own hands rather than
feel powerless. This proactive stance is essential for combating the
psychological paralysis that often accompanies the realization of ecoprecarity.
While the ending introduces a slightly forced optimism through a chance
encounter that puts the children in contact but this final narrative move
serves a vital purpose. It symbolically closes the global loop opened by the
dual narrative, suggesting that the interconnected nature of the crisis demands
an equally interconnected, global solution. The final pages of the graphic
novel provides a detailed definition of global warming and what can and must be
done by individuals and communities By showing that two children, separated by
half a world and facing diametrically opposed climatic threats, are united by a
common human experience of ecoprecarity, Colfer and Donkin deliver a profound
and urgent call to action. The graphic novel format, with its direct visual
impact, makes this message immediately accessible, ensuring that readers
understand that the struggle for environmental stability is a shared,
immediate, and ultimately human one. The message is clear: the world may be
big, but "our world is growing smaller every day" (8), and our
collective future depends on recognizing and addressing the ecoprecarity faced
by all its vulnerable inhabitants.
Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin's
graphic novel, Global, serves as a critical text for analysing the
dissolution of traditional binaries specifically the human/non-human and Global
North/Global South dividein the face of the anthropogenic climate crisis. Yuki’s
journey across the melting ice in the Arctic Circle illustrates how the
non-human environment itself becomes hostile and unpredictable, transforming
the traditional human reliance on a stable landscape into a precarious struggle
for survival. Sami's struggle in the Bay of Bengal highlights the economic
dimension, as the rising ocean level and dwindling fish stocks demonstrate the
material interdependence between human subsistence and the health of the marine
ecosystem. When the non-human environment collapses, the human world follows. Global
as a cli-fi creates climate consciousness by reinforcing planetary
interdependence and ethical responsibility.
Works Cited
Colfer,
Eoin, and Andrew Donkin. Global. Illustrated by Giovanni Rigano,
Hachette UK, 2023.
McAfee,
Kathleen. “Politics of Nature in Anthropocene.” Whose Anthropocene?
no.2, 2016, pp. 65-72.
Nayar,
Pramod K. Ecoprecarity: Vulnerable Lives in Literature and Culture.Routledge,2019.
Vermuelen,Peter.
Literature and the Anthropocene. Routledge, 2020.