Dear Reader,

We would like to extend a warm welcome to the 20th anniversary edition of Tvergastein! We have built this issue around the concept of ‘overshoot’ - first in its original meaning, as human consumption overshoots the Earth’s capacity to sustain life, and further as a way to name the overarching feeling of our time, where political, economic, and social boundaries are constantly overshot in tandem with the planetary boundaries.

Our cover depicts Icarus mid-fall, as his hubris led him to fly too close to the sun. This compulsion to keep crossing boundaries until you fall, we recognise as the assumption that the next tech-fix will save us from ever having to change how we live, that we can innovate our way out of the consequences of our own excess. We are still flying towards the sun, calling it progress, with the blinding light of our own hubris drowning out every warning. 2024 was the first year where global temperatures exceeded the 1.5°C threshold. Previously flagged as the point of no return, it significantly limits our ability to adapt to climate change, particularly in the more vulnerable regions of the world. As we know, those least responsible for climate change often bear the heaviest burdens. This is particularly visible in many communities across the Global 4 5 South, where the consequences of overshoot are not an ominous future threat, but a lived reality as communities are displaced and ecosystems eroded.

We live in a time where the word “unprecedented” has been rendered meaningless - as world events illustrate that the old rule books have been thrown out and that we increasingly can not know what to expect from tomorrow. As we watch genocides and wars continue and new ones emerge, carried out or paid for by the world’s most dominant powers, or ignored when deemed to lack potential material or geopolitical gain to get involved, we ask ourselves and our readers where we can seek resistance. War, after all, is the antithesis of peace and of any ‘safe operating space’ for humanity and nature alike, arguably driven by the same mechanisms driving overshoot - the notion that nothing is ever ‘enough’, and the naturalisation of endless growth and capital accumulation taking priority over everything else, even if this means loss of life and destruction of nature. This logic destroys our humanity by constructing a false divide between ourselves and other peoples through artificially drawn borders, and between ourselves and nature.

This issue is our attempt to make sense of ‘overshoot’ as a concept that encapsulates the most pressing issues of our time. As an interdisciplinary journal of the environment, development, and culture, the board proudly presents a diverse collection of submissions that engage with overshoot across different registers, which further reflects Tvergastein’s heritage as both an academic and a literary journal.