The right to atmosphere

Abstract

The growing recognition of atmospheric inequalities is leading to calls for the right to atmosphere. However, as a consequence of the diverse conceptions of what the atmosphere is and the diversity of atmosphere-related environmental and social advocacy, the right to atmosphere has been conceived in fundamentally contradictory ways, and the path to its achievement remains unclear. In this article, I propose an agonistic approach to the right to atmosphere that acknowledges both the power imbalances in atmospheric production and the plural, more-than-physical dimension of atmosphere. From this perspective, the embeddedness of difference and conflict in atmospherics should be understood as a creative force, as it activates atmospheric awareness and fosters political action, which is fundamental to overcoming the existing atmospheric inequalities based on the disenfranchisement of the people's atmospheric power. I argue that geographical research can play a fundamental role in this endeavor by promoting awareness of the multiple atmospheric dynamics – both physical and affective – that play a role in our lives, and by placing emphasis on ongoing atmospheric struggles and activism.

Introduction

Recent geographic work has understood the atmosphere not only as a composition of gases that sustain life, but also as the composition of light, sounds, and scents that involves us and through which we relate to the world, cognitively and emotionally (Anderson, 2009; Griffero, 2014; Sumartojo and Pink, 2018). As such, atmospheres are plural phenomena, differently experienced by human and nonhuman bodies (Bille and Simonsen, 2019; Pavoni and Tulumello, 2023). This all-encompassing perspective on atmosphere, as simultaneously the physical medium which sustains the life of our bodies and the emotional space which gives meaning to it (Adey, 2015; Engelmann, 2021; McCormack, 2015; Verlie, 2019, 2024), emerges in a moment in which the atmosphere itself is changing. I am referring not only to the fact that climate change and air pollution have become the main threat for human existence and a central topic for global politics (Mostafanezhad, 2021; United Nations, 2023), but also to the growing acknowledgement of the diversity of atmospheric threats that communities and ecosystems across the world face, including not only environmental change, but also changes in the sensory and emotional landscape. These threats are manifold, often involving and intertwining issues of noise, light pollution, poor air quality, or atmospheric sentiments of violence and displacement (Paiva and Sánchez-Fuarros, 2021; Pavoni and Tulumello, 2023; Shilon and Marom, 2023).

Within this context, significantly diverse political movements, working at different places and scales, have sought to tackle the degradation of living environments (Dowling, 2010; Tsavdaroglou, 2016; Warlenius, 2018). Such movements are not always explicitly focused on the protection of atmosphere or atmospheric justice, as they often focus on a specific atmospheric threat, such as pollution or noise, but they have unveiled the existing inequalities not only in terms of fair access to healthy and safe atmospheres, but also in the people's capacity to participate in the production of atmospheres. Indeed, it has been noted that creating and managing atmospheres is a matter accessible to very few (Brighenti and Pavoni, 2019; Paiva, 2023; Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2015, 2016). While most human beings can engage in the alteration of their living atmospheres, by introducing light, sound, or olfactory elements in the air, the production of atmospheres at larger scales is generally restricted to powerful entities such as corporations and governments who have the technology and jurisdiction to impose significant change (Adey, 2014; Miller and Laketa, 2019; Tzanelli, 2017). Often, this is imposed as an exclusionary strategy, as atmospheres that are engineered or regulated to become clean, healthy, and safe environments are territorialized, either by leaving out those who cannot afford to access those spaces, or by externalizing negative collateral atmospheres.

The acknowledgment of atmospheric inequalities has led many to call for a right to atmosphere, and academia has responded with significant reflection on what the right to atmosphere is and how it can be fulfilled (Jankovic, 2021; Lewis, 2018; Paiva, 2023; Sealy, 2024; Tsavdaroglou, 2016; Vanderheiden, 2008). However, as a consequence of the diverse conceptions of the atmosphere and the diversity of atmosphere-related environmental and social advocacy, two central contradictions persist in contemporary discussions of atmospheric rights, namely between understanding the atmosphere both as a property and as a commons, and between framing the right to atmosphere as both a right to access a ‘good’ atmosphere or participate in the creation of a ‘good’ atmosphere. As the right to atmosphere is conceived in significantly contradictory ways, the path to its achievement remains unclear.

With this in mind, in this article, I attempt to overcome these contradictions by arguing in favor of an agonistic approach to the right to atmosphere that acknowledges both the plural more-than-physical dimension of atmosphere and the power imbalances in atmospheric production. Central to this argument is the acknowledgement that the atmosphere is not only a complex phenomenon that is plurally experienced, but also a product of intersecting power relations. Therefore, conflict is intrinsic to atmospheric politics, but it is also marked by profound power imbalances in both atmospheric knowledge and the capacity to intervene in the atmosphere. For this reason, I contend that rather than understanding the atmosphere either as a property or a commons, the atmosphere must be understood as a field of conflict in which different understandings of what an atmosphere is and what it should be are competing through multiple and intersecting power relations. Conversely, rather than reducing the right to atmosphere as a right to access a ‘good’ atmosphere or participate in the creation of a ‘good’ atmosphere, thinking about the right to atmosphere should entail addressing the power relations that shape the creation of atmospheres. In this sense, achieving the right to atmosphere can only be fulfilled by activating people's atmospheric knowledge of atmospheres and ensuring that these different knowledges are participating equally in the creation and management of our living environments. In my view, human geography is well-positioned to lead this endeavor, but this requires a shift toward more engaged and action-oriented forms of research on atmosphere that develop an ethics of care and antioppression. Taking this into account, I sketch possible paths for human geography to contribute toward the fulfillment of the right to atmospheres by engaging in the activation of atmospheric knowledge and the empowerment of citizens in atmospheric struggles.

What is an atmosphere?

For a long time, the atmosphere was mainly of interest for physical geography, where the atmosphere was conceived as a purely physical object, referring to the layer of gases that encase the surface of the Earth (Barry and Chorley, 2009; Marsh and Kaufman, 2013). Since the turn of the century, human geographers have started applying the term loosely to refer to the sensory and emotional nuances of place, especially following Anderson's (2009, 2014) proposal of the concept of affective atmosphere (for previous engagements with atmosphere and ambiance, see Kazig and Masson, 2015).

However, recent interest in elemental geographies has blurred the line between these different conceptions of atmosphere. Elemental geographies underline the atmospheric envelopment of the human body, and the continuous flows of the elements, which traverse both atmosphere and bodies (Engelmann and McCormack, 2021; McCormack, 2015; 2018). It has been argued that accounting for the elemental implies more than a focus on the materiality of the elements themselves (Jackson and Fannin, 2011; Merriman, 2016). It requires a focus on the human experience of such elements, and the generative consequences that emerge from the encounter between bodies and the elements (Adey, 2015; Engelmann, 2020). The interest in the elemental aspect of atmospheres has commonly sprouted from the acknowledgment that the subjective experience of the world invariably involves encounters with the weather, and that such encounters are more than physical, as they elicit emotional and often inspire political responses (Adams-Hutcheson, 2019; Simpson, 2019).

Elemental geographies have offered an affective-emotional perspective on the atmosphere as a physical phenomenon, leading to a rethinking of the concept of affective atmosphere in which there is a rupture with the idea of metaphor. Verlie (2019) openly criticizes the understanding of affective atmosphere as a metaphor, arguing that while affect has an atmospheric dimension, the physical dimension of atmosphere also elicits its own affects. She underlines the entanglement between atmosphere and affect in the topic of climate change, pointing out that research has found that weather conditions influence moods and mental states, but people's feelings toward the environment also influence their behaviors regarding climate action. Following Verlie, Engelmann (2021) explores the role that emotions play as traces of the affective intensities stemming from the experience of air and atmosphere.

Verlie (2019) proposes the term ‘climatic-affective atmosphere’ and Engelmann (2021) proposes the term ‘affective-meteorological atmosphere’ to underline this entanglement between affect and the physical atmosphere. However, we can question whether such adjectives are necessary, considering that not only is there growing acknowledgment among human geographers that atmospheres always have a physical dimension, but also that physical geography is increasingly concerned with the experiential dimension of atmospheres, as the burgeoning literature on thermal comfort shows, for instance (Beray-Armond, 2022; Motie et al., 2023).

In addition to acknowledging the physical-elemental and the affective-emotional dimension of atmosphere, it is important to also acknowledge that atmospheres are not just there. Not only are atmospheres dynamic, recent research has underlined that atmospheres are also often produced. Human geography has been quite prolific in showing how specific agents have experimented with the production of atmosphere in many ways for diverse purposes, with various degrees of capabilities and success. Actors such as public authorities and mega-corporations can engage in significant spatial transformation and employ technological devices to construct or design highly personalized and perfected atmospheres, while other actors are limited to staging or performing smaller atmospheric transformations through the introduction of specific sensory elements in their living environments (Paiva and Sánchez-Fuarros, 2021; Pavoni and Tulumello, 2023). It should be underlined that every individual has some capability to intervene in the atmosphere of their living environment, even if this intervention is limited to the management of light, sound, or scent (Bille, 2019; Pink and Leder Mackley, 2016). While atmospheres can be produced, people might respond quite differently to the same atmosphere, and therefore one cannot fully predict its outcomes. For this reason, it is often stated that atmospheric intervention can only design the material conditions and performative circumstances for the emergence of atmospheres, and not the experience of atmospheres themselves (Edensor and Bille, 2019).

An encompassing understanding of the atmosphere is crucial for understanding the threats to the atmosphere today, as the ongoing atmospheric changes intertwine physical-elemental aspects and emotional-affective facets. Such an understanding also requires acknowledging that atmospheric change is driven by human activity, and that the power to intervene in the atmosphere – albeit limited – is unequally distributed. Indeed, atmospheric production is everywhere in the contemporary world, most often entangled in the ongoing process of planetary urbanization and spatial commodification that always involves some form of social and spatial exclusion. I explore how this unfolds in the next section.

Atmospheric injustice

Atmospheric production is a fundamental element of the ongoing planetary urbanization and spatial commodification, as engineering atmospheres has become a central technique in the creation of neoliberal urban space, often at the expense of negative atmospheric externalities. In this process, atmospheres produced by hegemonic actors such as states and mega-corporations tend to overlap and often destroy vernacular atmospheres produced by local communities, especially the most marginalized.

Producing engineered atmospheres often implies drawing upon the physical-elemental atmosphere, or even conducting physical-elemental interventions, to produce affective-emotional effects. This is well-documented, for instance, in the literature on the production of consumption- and tourism-oriented atmospheres. The cocreation of consumption experiences, especially in the context of tourism, involves drawing upon the climatic and meteorological qualities of local atmospheres to elicit a sense of well-being, comfort, or fun (Volgger, 2020; Volgger and Pfister, 2020). This is most evident in the branding of global mega-events in which the atmosphere of the destination becomes the background for the cultural dimension of the events and the representations of the experience of the event (Pavoni, 2015; Tzanelli, 2017). But the use of physical-elemental geographies can also be found in other forms of consumption and tourism. For instance, sun and sand tourism largely depends upon the warm and dry meteorological conditions of the destination, and for this reason it is most developed in places with temperate climates and long summers. In such places, as Arboleda (2023) shows, the atmospheric changes of the transition to winter conditions also imply a change in the affectivity of the atmosphere, as tourism-oriented facilities become temporarily abandoned. Other consumption experiences draw specifically on certain atmospheric periods. The nighttime economy, for instance, draws upon dark environments to elicit a sense of otherness, alterity, and mystery (Dunn and Edensor 2021; Shaw, 2014).

Even when consumption-oriented atmospheric production is not drawing upon natural atmospheres, the production of affective-emotional atmospheres involves interventions at the physical-elemental level. The history of contemporary consumption is ripe with experimentation with the engineering of atmospheres in enclosed spaces, such as shopping malls, hotels, or airports. For instance, it has been thoroughly described how shopping malls attempt to create simulated worlds within their premises that seem outside of time and space, as the atmospheric conditions are artificially maintained (Allmark, 2023; Kärrholm, 2012). Here, spaces are always at the same temperature and humidity, and at the same level of light, without any influence by daily, monthly, or yearly cycles. This atmospheric homogeneity is understood as the basis to create sensory worlds rigorously meant to elicit specific emotions, enact time regimes, and suggest certain practices or behaviors (Miller and Laketa, 2019). Research has shown that this atmospheric production is a fundamental aspect of the consumption experience, as it is directly linked to customer engagement, satisfaction, and sense of authenticity (Brighenti and Kärrholm, 2018; Cachinho and Paiva, 2021).

While engineered atmospheres elicit positive affects among the affluent segments of society, they also produce atmospheric externalities, such as air pollution, light pollution, or noise, that can be perceived as damaging, invasive or nauseous (Abram, 2023; Di Croce, 2023; Di Croce et al., 2024; Séraphin et al., 2025). It has been argued that such collateral atmospheres have significant physical and psychological effects on humans, and can affect mental health, personal well-being, and social cohesion (Bourlessas et al., 2021; Gravari-Barbas and Jacquot, 2019; Paiva, 2023). These collateral atmospheres extend well beyond the local scale, and often also escape human perception. Authors such as Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (2016) and Brighenti and Pavoni (2019) have highlighted the relation between the partition of the atmosphere for human comfort and the increasing pollution and degradation of the physical atmosphere. They draw attention to how controlled atmospheres in air-conditioned offices, enclosed shopping malls, or airports and airplanes require large amounts of energy to power technologies such as heating, air conditioning, lighting, automatic sensors, or sound systems. Given that the production of energy for these spaces generally involves the emission of CO² and other gases that contribute to climate change (Colelli et al., 2023; Smith and Gasser, 2022), it is evident that there is a tradeoff between the production of comfortable atmospheres for some and the degradation of atmospheres for others. Indeed, the degradation of the atmosphere at the global level, and its local and regional imbalances, is well-documented. It has been consensual for many decades that climate change evolves differently across the world's regions, and that much of the negative consequences of global warming will unfold in the countries that have contributed less toward problematic emissions (Ackerly et al., 2010; Mitchell and Hulme, 1999; Weckroth and Ala-Mantila, 2022). With this in mind, scholars have been increasingly concerned with environmental justice, a concern which has led to unveiling the entanglements between atmospheric change and the global and local structures of extractivism and colonialism (Sultana, 2022; Warlenius, 2018).

Furthermore, the engineering of atmospheres for consumption is more often than not an act of exclusion. On the one hand, it has been shown that the creation of atmospheres for consumption can be understood as an act of securitization (Adey, 2014). Here, securitization involves an attempt to predetermine or at least influence the way in which people move and what they do in these spaces. There is a material physical dimension to this, in the sense that space is organized to constrain movements and practices, for instance, by forming corridors that predetermine the trajectories that people can perform. But there is also a work of atmospheric sensory stimulation that is at play here, as light, sound and scent are organized to draw attention to specific features of these facilities in a way that suggests or influences people to engage in certain practices. When successful, this allows spatial designers to define what people will do at a given space, making the space more predictable and therefore manageable (Adey et al., 2013; Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2016). This is more pronounced in spaces in which security is understood as crucial, such as airports, but similar dynamics can be found across different spaces, including the city. Not conforming to the spatial norms that are suggested by atmospheres in these spaces implies exclusion. On the other hand, taking into account that atmospheric production in these spaces links securitization with consumption, it also excludes those who cannot or are not willing to engage in the economic activities that are being performed. Indeed, quite often these atmospheres become valued precisely because they provide a safe space from the animosity, violence, and stress of urban living (Brighenti and Pavoni, 2019). In other words, the social exclusion that securitized atmospheres produce ends up reinforcing the perceived need for such exclusion (Pavoni and Tulumello, 2023).

It is noteworthy that these atmospheric injustices are not always unintended. This has been thoroughly shown in the field of political geography, in which the use of the atmosphere in war and terrorism has been extensively described. Work in this field has been profoundly influenced by Sloterdijk's (2009) argument that throughout the 20th century, the technological advancement of warfare involved a shift from the human body to the atmosphere as the main target for violence. The atmosphere, as the living space for humans, became a more effective target for disrupting social organization and exerting power (Crutzen and Birks, 2016; Thrift, 2009). Again, there is both a physical and a psychological dimension to this, as the destruction of living environments also influences the morale, emotions, and mental health of humans (Anderson, 2010). Works on atmospheric violence in political geography therefore often highlight purely affective interventions that either attempt to engineer fear and oppression (Stepnisky, 2023), stimulate nationalism (Sumartojo, 2016), or promote deescalation and diplomacy (Fregonese, 2017).

The growing awareness of atmospheric injustices, alongside the growing recognition of the imbalance in the capacity to intervene in the atmosphere, as atmospheric interventions are generally in the hands of powerful entities such as governments and large corporations, is leading to a growing politicization of the atmosphere and greater attention to the right to atmosphere. I explore this in the next section.

The growing politicization of the atmosphere

The growing acknowledgement of atmospheric injustice is leading to an increasing politicization of the atmosphere. Contemporary atmospheric struggles are multiple and intersecting. On the one hand, the topic of climate change has reached the political mainstream, and although it is now a main feature in the flagship policies of international institutions (European Commission, 2019; United Nations, 2023; World Bank, 2010), there is a widespread notion that contemporary climate policies are insufficient to prevent or mitigate the most negative effects of climate change in the present century, and such notion has further fueled the multiplication of global and local climate movements (Knight and Greenberg, 2011; McAdam, 2017; North, 2011).

On the other hand, awareness about atmospheric injustice has prompted more localized struggles that tackle other forms of atmospheric degradation such as air, sound, or light pollution, and which highlight the affective-emotional dimension of atmospheric inequalities (Gössling and Scott, 2025; Mostafanezhad, 2021; Stern, 2003; Trott, 2025). Urban space has been a particularly contentious site for contestation of atmospheric inequalities in this affective-emotional sense. This contestation generally stems from awareness with unequal spatial distribution of atmospheric threats such as heat islands or extreme weather events (Sharp et al., 2024), the negative sensory externalities of ongoing process of tourism and consumption-oriented neoliberal urban change (Novy, 2019; Novy and Colomb, 2019; Peterson, 2017), or conflict and war (Feigenbaum and Kanngieser, 2015). Such protests often not only address the degradation of the urban atmosphere and its social consequences, but at times also implement performative demonstrations that enact alternative or contestatory affective atmospheres (Bruttomesso, 2018; Pettas et al., 2021).

The politicization of the atmosphere following the growing acknowledgment of atmospheric injustices has led to some reflection on the right to atmosphere in different fields, including the Earth sciences, economics, political theory, law, and also geography (Anthony, 2014; Jankovic, 2021; Paiva, 2023; Thornes and Randalls, 2007; Vanderheiden, 2008). In these diverse fields, the right to atmosphere has been referred to in different manners, including the right to atmosphere, the right to clean air, air rights, or the right to ambiance. This diverse terminology is not merely semantic. These terms not only stem from very different conceptions of atmospheres, but they have also been conceived as significantly different forms of rights. Here, I will focus on discussions of the rights of humans to atmosphere, thus consciously bracketing possible discussions of rights of the atmosphere that could consider the atmosphere itself as an agent with legal personhood, for instance, within emerging frameworks of rights of nature (Kinkaid, 2019; Schmidt, 2022a). Rather than exhaustively reviewing all the conceptions of the rights of humans to atmosphere that have been put forth, I will instead focus on the two central contradictions found in contemporary discussions of atmospheric rights, namely between understanding the atmosphere both as a property and as a commons, and between framing the right to atmosphere as both a right to access and a right to create. In the next subsections, I will first tackle these two contradictions, before I suggest how an agonistic approach to the right to atmosphere can tackle both the power imbalances in atmospheric production and the plural more-than-physical dimension of atmosphere.

Between property and commons

One formulation of the right to atmosphere, and perhaps the most mainstream, is the understanding of the atmosphere as a physical object which can be commodified, owned, or exchanged. In this understanding of the right to atmosphere, the atmosphere is understood as a space that can be partitioned and exchanged (Thornes and Randalls, 2007). This is evident, most notably, in the trading schemes of CO₂ emissions in which the global atmosphere is partitioned between countries. In these schemes, distributing emission quotas equates to distributing rights to the atmosphere, in the sense that quotas refer to quantified access to using atmosphere as a repository of gases, which then becomes commoditized as quota rights are exchanged between countries (Blomfield, 2019; Burtraw and Sekar, 2014). But this understanding of the right to atmosphere as a proprietary and commodified right is also present at more fine-grained scales. For instance, urban air rights, which refer ‘to the right to build, own, use and decide upon the appropriation of the vertical space above a designated tract of land’ (Chen, 2020: 199), imply that those who own portions of land are entitled to a certain portion of the air directly above that portion of land. For Chen (2018, 2023), urban air rights transform segments of the atmosphere into market goods, and function as a form of financialization of both land and air, given that it allocates ownership of the atmosphere to the owners of land. The right to atmosphere in the world of commodities, then, is a right of ownership of the atmosphere, functioning as an extension of the liberal right to property.

Contrary to the idea that atmosphere can be partitioned, owned and commodified, there has been growing acknowledgment of the atmosphere as a form of commons. Interestingly, while the notion of atmospheric commons has been frequently mentioned in discussion of climate change and mitigation, it is rarely described in depth. This is most likely because it is implicit that authors are drawing upon the wider debates on the commons, which were already concerned with related matters of climate change and the governance of air pollution (De Angelis and Harvie, 2014; Dietz et al., 2003; Ostrom et al., 1999). Debates on the commons have been frequently concerned with the management of resources at the global level, and this is also true about debates on the atmospheric commons (Anthony, 2014; Brent et al., 2015; Sharife, 2011). In this sense, these debates balance concerns about the use of the atmosphere as a proprietary object and the right of humans and other beings to access the common benefits that the atmosphere provides. Such balance involves acknowledging that the individual actors (typically nation-states) that have the proprietary right to manage a portion of the planet's atmosphere must however work together to avoid an atmospheric tragedy of the commons (Brent et al., 2015; Raymond, 2016). Here, the concern has been mostly directed at the asymmetry between the Global North and the Global South, namely the fact that the Global North contributes more to atmospheric pollution and climate change, while the most devastating impacts tend to occur in the Global South (Sharife, 2011; Vanderheiden, 2008).

While some believe that it is possible to achieve a balance between both understandings of the right to atmosphere (Brent et al., 2015; Jankovic, 2021; Raymond, 2016), conceiving the right to atmosphere as both a proprietary and a common right is evidently contradictory, especially when taking into account the power imbalances in atmospheric production. That is, atmospheric injustice mostly stems from the very system of atmospheric property, given that it entitles hegemonic actors who have a much greater capacity to act on the atmosphere to engage in forms of atmospheric partitioning, securitization and engineering that externalize negative consequences to people without proprietary atmospheric rights. Protecting the atmospheric commons, therefore, implies dismantling the very notion of atmospheric property. Before I approach how this can be achieved, I explore a second contradiction in the next section.

A human right or a political right?

Vis-à-vis the understanding of the atmosphere as a commons, the right to atmosphere has also been conceived as every human's right to live in a healthy and harm-free atmosphere. This conception of the right therefore follows an equalitarian perspective, positing that every human being has the same equal right to atmosphere (Jankovic, 2021; Kalen, 2016; Lewis, 2018). The right to atmosphere as a human right, by placing emphasis on the protection of the atmosphere for human liveability, underlines the importance of attributing responsibility to those who degrade the quality of the atmosphere. For instance, there has been advocacy for a concept of atmospheric debt (also framed as natural or ecological debt), which can be defined as the idea that given that some nations or corporations pollute the atmosphere or contribute toward global warming more than others, they hold more responsibility in protecting the atmosphere and should compensate those who are most affected (Paredis et al., 2009; Smith, 1996). Another example is the advocacy toward the recognition of the right to live without physical or psychological threats from above, which places emphasis on the responsibility of the aggressor (Sealy, 2024). This proposed new human right stems mainly from the acknowledgement of the shift from the human body to the atmosphere as the main target for warfare and violence (Sloterdijk, 2009; Thrift, 2009), especially in the context of drone warfare, but also encompasses concerns about pollution and satellite surveillance.

There has been debate on the scope of the right to atmosphere as a human right, namely whether it should be conceived as an individual or a collective right. If the right to atmosphere is conceived as an individual right, then the responsibility to ensure the quality of the atmosphere falls into the proper legal authorities and individuals are mere receivers of such right. Contrariwise, if the right to atmosphere is conceived as a collective right, then the responsibility to ensure the quality of the atmosphere is shared, which entails collective action and cooperation. For Jankovic (2021), the notion of atmospheric commons is leading to a widespread understanding that the atmosphere, as a global resource needed by all humans, should be shared and managed collectively. This is a fundamental issue in the right to atmosphere, taking into account that atmosphere is simultaneously a physical and an experiential phenomenon and it is therefore a plural matter. If the atmosphere is understood merely as an individual right to be granted by authorities, the plural experiences of atmospheres cannot be taken into account. Understanding the right to atmosphere as a collective right, on the other hand, opens space to think about different atmospheric perceptions and experiences to have a say in the production of atmospheres. Despite this, this understanding also raises questions about the authority to enforce this right (Jankovic, 2021; Paiva, 2023). If the right to atmosphere is conceived as a collective political right, then who owns and defines the right and its contours, and who can ensure that it remains collective? This is a difficult question to tackle when it comes to thinking about the atmosphere – a phenomenon which is so vast that encompasses the entire planet, and so complex that requires several sciences to unfold its veiled dynamics, both in the elemental-physical and the affective-emotional sense. In the next section, I offer some ways forward to thinking about this issue.

Toward an agonistic approach to the right to atmosphere

Thus far, I have argued that the right to atmosphere must be founded upon the notion of atmospheric commons and the rejection of atmospheric property, as proprietary atmospheric rights feed the existing power imbalances in atmospheric production, given that they entitle hegemonic actors to engage in forms of atmospheric partitioning, securitization, engineering and commodification that externalize negative consequences to less powerful and often more vulnerable human and nonhuman populations – the basis of atmospheric injustice (Brighenti and Pavoni, 2019; Pavoni and Tulumello, 2023; Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2016; Tzanelli, 2017). I have also argued that this notion of atmospheric commons implies that the right to atmosphere should be conceived as a collective political right (Paiva, 2023; Tsavdaroglou, 2016), rather than the mere human right to access a ‘good’ atmosphere, because we risk erasing the plural experiences of atmospheres if we understand this right as an individual right to be granted by some form of authority. In this section, I want to outline how the right to atmosphere can be conceived through an agonistic approach that considers both the plural and more-than-physical dimension of atmospheres and the power imbalances in atmospheric production, before I approach how human geography can contribute to the fulfillment of the right to atmosphere. My contention here is that if we take the plural and more-than-physical dimension of atmospheres and the power imbalances in atmospheric production seriously, then it is not enough to acknowledge that atmospheres are common shared spaces and that such spaces are experienced individually and through our social positionalities.

On the one hand, it must be recognized that the plural and more-than physical dimension of atmospheres means that there is no one-size-fits-all kind of ‘good’ atmosphere that should be sought by or protected by the right to atmosphere (Edensor and Bille, 2019; Gandy, 2017; Sumartojo and Pink, 2018; Verlie, 2019). The notion of atmospherics commons has the value of thinking about the atmosphere from a planetary perspective, as an object which surpasses territorial divisions and is vital for the whole of life on Earth. Despite this accomplishment, a clear shortcoming in the literature on the atmospheric commons is that the issue has been almost exclusively analyzed at the global scale, thus neglecting the local expressions of the planetary inequalities in the use of common atmospheric resources, and how atmospheric experiences are differentiated and are entangled in class, ethnic, gender, and other more local forms of inequality (Adua, 2022; Anthony, 2014; Verlie, 2024). Current debates on the atmospheric commons also understand the management of the atmosphere exclusively from the elemental-physical point of view (Brent et al., 2015; Raymond, 2016; Sharife, 2011), ignoring how local populations cope with changing atmospheres and how site-specific socionatural assemblages deal with atmospheric production. In contrast, geographic literature on atmospheric experiences always highlights the plural and conflictual dimension of atmosphere. Atmospheres are sensed differently by people, as it has been thoroughly shown how atmospheric production is socially differentiated in how it is felt and understood (Abram, 2023; Edensor and Bille, 2019; Gandy, 2017; Miller and Laketa, 2019). Sensing atmospheres is a personal and intimate event, marked by the particular subjectivities and bodily dispositions of an individual, which is further complicated by the fact that it involves conscious perception but also atmospheric impacts on the body which may not be consciously perceived (Adey, 2014; Anderson, 2009; Griffero, 2014; Kazig and Masson, 2015). While personal and intimate, the social dimension of atmospheres also means that its perception is mediated by the intersecting positionalities of the sensing bodies (Leff, 2021; Verlie, 2019; Wesener, 2024). As atmospheric sensing is mediated by social positionalities, it might also reproduce the power relations and related conflicts embedded in those positionalities (Wang et al., 2024). As this shared dimension of atmosphere is inescapable, these differences invariably lead to social and political conflicts about what an atmosphere should be and who should control it (Brighenti and Pavoni, 2019; Di Croce, 2023; Paiva and Sánchez-Fuarros, 2021; Pavoni and Tulumello, 2023). Adding to this, atmospheres are continually produced, ever-changing, and thus performative, making it impossible to determine what specific atmospheric form should be protected by the right to atmosphere (Engelmann, 2021; Peterson, 2017; Shaw, 2014). For these reasons, rather than seeking definitions of what a ‘good’ atmosphere is or attempting to crystallize existing forms of atmosphere, the notion of the right to atmosphere should lead us to create dialogs in which multiple voices can be heard and the conflictual dimension of atmosphere can be further explored.

This leads us to the need to take the power imbalances in atmospheric production seriously. Doing so means that one cannot simply call for public dialog on atmospheric matters or improved participation in decision-making processes if these dialogs and processes are themselves based upon hegemonic or top-down forms of social negotiation. In this sense, the right to atmosphere should first of all be understood as a political right akin to the right to the city (Paiva, 2023; Tsavdaroglou, 2016). The right to the city, as conceptualized by Lefebvre (1968) and later developed by spatial thinkers such as Mitchell (2003), Harvey (2012), or Marcuse (2009), can be described as the urban population's collective capacity to participate in the imagination, creation, and management of the city. Therefore, the right to the city is not exactly about accessing urban resources, but rather about the possibilities of humans in any organized space to collaborate horizontally to produce space in a way that is just for all (Attoh, 2011; Merrifield, 2011). Literature on the right to the city has increasingly emphasized the need to move beyond traditional participatory frameworks, which often reproduce existing power dynamics, and instead calls for reimagining how cities are built and governed (Purcell, 2014; Willis, 2019). Rather than merely extending participation within established structures, this body of work advocates for more radical, inclusive approaches that center the voices, knowledges, and experiences of marginalized communities. These perspectives are seen as crucial to envisioning and enacting alternative urban futures – ones that challenge dominant logics of development and enable the city to be built otherwise (Apostolopoulou and Kotsila, 2021; Attoh, 2011; Harvey, 2012). Likewise, the right to atmosphere should be understood not as a right to be granted by an authority through predefined frameworks, but as a creative and performative right (Duff, 2017). Conceiving the right to atmosphere in such a manner implies thinking about people not only as the receivers of the guarantee of the quality of atmosphere, but as empowered participants in the ongoing production of the atmosphere, both in the elemental-physical and the affective-emotional sense (Paiva, 2023; Tsavdaroglou, 2016). The right to atmosphere, thus, should be conceived as the right to atmospherics, that is, the right to participate in the creation and modification of existing atmospheres, which implies attention to the capability of people and communities to imagine and engage in atmospheric practices.

However, if addressing the right to atmosphere requires exploring its conflictual dimension and imagining new forms to think about the creation of atmospheres, then the intrinsic agonistic dimension of the right to atmosphere must be considered. Here, I am drawing on Mouffe's (1999, 2005, 2013) understanding of agonistic pluralism, which views political conflict as an inherent and necessary part of pluralistic societies, to argue that the recognition of difference and power imbalances in atmospherics allows the exploration of conflict, not as a process to be avoided or minimized, but as a fundamental step toward empowering people and building a horizontal collaboration in atmospheric matters (Amin, 2013; Glover, 2012; Mouffe, 2013). Rather than aiming to eliminate disagreement through consensus, agonistic pluralism recognizes that deep-seated differences – rooted in values, identities, and worldviews – will always exist. Facing this, agonistic pluralism proposes that democracy should provide spaces for these conflicts to unfold in a constructive, nonviolent manner, transforming antagonism between enemies into agonism between respectful adversaries (McAuliffe and Rogers, 2018, 2019). As current atmospheric inequalities often stem from an imbalance of power in the capacity to engage in the production of atmospheres, conflict can be understood as a creative and productive process (Mouffe, 2013; Paxton, 2019; Wenman, 2013), given that it activates the political capacity of people that otherwise would not consciously engage in atmospheric politics. Focusing on conflict can therefore allow us to map the diversity of atmospheric experiences and forms of production that can emerge in shared spaces, especially minor forms of atmospheric production that remain hidden or oppressed. Doing so is the first step to understand how to build horizontal collaboration in atmospheric matters, by empowering these minor forms of atmospheric production and allowing them to participate in the creation and modification of existing atmospheres. Human geography can play a fundamental role both in unveiling atmospheric conflicts and empowering minor forms of atmospheric production. I explore how in the next section.

What can human geography do for the right to atmosphere?

Thus far, I have argued that the atmosphere must be understood as a field of conflict in which different understandings of what an atmosphere is and what it should be are competing through multiple and intersecting power relations. While conflict is intrinsic to atmospheric politics, it is also marked by profound power imbalances in both atmospheric knowledge and the capacity to intervene in the atmosphere. Here, I want to explore how human geographers can help to turn atmospheric conflicts into generative events by contributing toward the remaking of power relations in such conflicts. I argue that this can be achieved by activating people's atmospheric knowledge and ensuring that these different knowledges are participating equally in the creation and management of our living environments, which however requires a shift toward more engaged and ethical research on atmospheres.

Geographic works have underlined the entanglement of atmosphere and power. Yet, so far, the emphasis has been placed on how power is exerted through the production of atmospheres, and little attention has been given to how hegemonic means of atmospheric production can be resisted, refused, or countered (Adey, 2014; Séraphin et al., 2025; Tzanelli, 2017). As a result, we know little about how the right to atmosphere has been conceived beyond the academy, and how people are fighting for it and materializing it (Paiva, 2023; Tripathy and McFarlane, 2022). I would argue that it is not only important to generate knowledge on this matter, but also that human geographers can make a significant contribution towards empowering communities to claim their right to atmosphere. This requires a shift in geographic studies of atmosphere, one that is both ethical and methodological. Geographic works on atmosphere have mostly neglected the ethical dimension of research on atmosphere, which is striking not only due to the emphasis that has been given to power dynamics in this field (Anderson, 2014; Fregonese, 2017; Stepnisky, 2023; Sumartojo, 2016), but also because other conceptual discussions of emergent geographic concepts – such as assemblage (Adey, 2012; Kinkaid, 2020) – have thoroughly engaged with the ethos of research. As geographic research has widely demonstrated that atmospheres are employed as a veiled tool for exerting hegemonic power, often involving exclusion, marginalization, oppression, or even violence over vulnerable people, we cannot escape the question of what geographers will do about this. My argument here is that geographic studies of atmosphere must engage with an ethics of care and an ethics of antioppression, which implies a significant investment in participatory approaches (which have likewise been neglected in this field) and work with local communities. But what can geographers offer to communities struggling with atmospheric injustices?

First, geographic works on atmosphere can engage in an ethics of care (Middleton and Samanani, 2021; Williams, 2020) that seeks to activate different forms of atmospheric knowledge which are fundamental to empower people to engage in atmospheric practices as a form of care and resistance. Communities and individuals engage with atmosphere in different ways and value different aspects of the atmosphere, leading to different forms of caring about and for the atmosphere. While research on atmosphere has started to underline these differing perceptions of atmosphere (Leff, 2021; Verlie, 2019), there is a lack of exploration of how they leverage care about the atmosphere as a fundamental element of the living environment of communities. Exploring this matter will also shed light on the obstacles to the practice of atmospheric as an individual or communitarian form of care, thus allowing us to understand atmospheric conflicts in greater depth. Related to this, one aspect that most researchers working in this field have certainly come across is that conflicts and struggles related to atmospheric matters are generally not conceived as such by communities and individuals; rather, more specific notions such as pollution, noise, or violence are underlined (Abram, 2023; Di Croce, 2023; Paiva and Sánchez-Fuarros, 2021; Pavoni and Tulumello, 2023; Verlie, 2024). Research on atmosphere can therefore help communities to find the commonalities between different struggles that involve atmospheric matters – which might underpin more collaborative and holistic forms of resistance. A central matter in this action-research endeavor is the fact that atmospheric matters are often more-than-representational (Anderson, 2009; Gandy, 2017; Griffero, 2014). The impact of the atmosphere on the human body is often not perceived, either because certain physical dimensions of the atmosphere are not perceived by the human sensorium, namely regarding chemical pollution, or because the sensory dimension of the atmosphere affects us in nonconscious or nonrepresentational ways. For this reason, geographers can also assist communities in building awareness about the veiled work of atmospheres, and how the multiple atmospheric dynamics – both physical and affective – play a role in our lives, as this is crucial to activating people's capacity to intervene in their living environments.

There are increasing examples of activism and research that attempt to draw attention to the bodily dimension of atmospheric threats and build upon local or alternative forms of atmospheric knowledge, which generally entails the elicitation of the affective or emotional dimension of experiencing atmospheres, to promote or leverage atmospheric activism. For instance, Landau and Toland (2022) present a series of artistic-activist works in which the human senses are elicited to draw attention to the embodiment of air pollution. Some geographers have also engaged in artistic collaborations in this context. Engelmann (2020) has been exploring the work of the studio of artist Tomás Sarraceno, how their community-driven practices engage participants in new experiences of aerial, atmospheric and meteorological phenomena by playing with floating and levitating devices, and how this can be applied in geographical education (Engelmann, 2024). Di Croce (2020) developed a participatory sound art project in Palermo, in which he raised awareness about the quality of the sonic dimension of the atmosphere in vulnerable areas of the city by inviting people to engage in soundwalks and field recordings.

Taking inspiration from these works, geographers working on atmospheres can turn to participatory methodologies to build upon local or alternative forms of atmospheric knowledge in order to promote or leverage atmospheric activism. More precisely, the extensive engagement with creative and digital methods in contemporary geography offers promising pathways for activating people's atmospheric knowledge (Hawkins, 2021; Leszczynski, 2019). Recent studies have shown that creative and digital techniques that allow lay citizens to observe atmospheric threats that are not sensed or not perceived by the human body can inspire political action. For instance, Shilon and Marom (2023) conducted a study on the Tel Aviv metropolitan region in which they show how the perception of bus emissions and illegal waste-burnings creates affective and emotional reactions among residents that induce political agency, both individually and collectively. Drawing upon a controversy in the city of Madrid that took place in 2009, in which the city of Madrid manipulated the data on air quality by moving the air quality monitoring stations without informing the public, Calvillo (2018) draws attention to the importance of attuning to the atmosphere through technological sensing practices as a fundamental underpinning of political awareness of the atmosphere. These examples suggest that geographers can significantly contribute toward empowering people to claim their right to atmosphere by employing creative and digital methods that activate atmospheric knowledge among communities. While engaging with an ethics of care to activate different forms of atmospheric knowledge will undoubtedly unveil hidden or dormant conflicts about the use and the experience of the atmosphere, it might also help us to avoid overdetermining atmospheric relations as inherently conflictive (Bregazzi and Jackson, 2018), as such engagements can also spark movements of care, attachment and concern toward the atmosphere that connect previously antagonist bodies and perspectives.

In tandem with this research line, geographies of atmosphere must engage in an ethics of antioppression (Schmidt, 2022b, 2023) that addresses the conflicts which are intrinsic to atmospheric politics, and the profound power imbalances in both atmospheric knowledge and the capacity to intervene in the atmosphere. This means that atmospheric struggles and activism must be brought to the forefront. While there has been significant work that highlights the political dimension of atmosphere and the implicit inequalities in the creation of atmospheres (Anderson, 2014; Fregonese, 2017; Pavoni and Tulumello, 2023), less attention has been paid to how social and political movements and grassroots organizations are already tacking atmospheric inequalities and claiming the right to atmosphere. On the one hand, it is important to understand how citizens and activists are framing their struggles from the point of view of their emplaced experiences of atmospheric injustice, and how physical and affective dimensions of atmosphere are entangled in such accounts. Thereafter, attention should be given to how different understandings of the right to atmosphere are confronted, namely how proprietary and communal understandings of such right coexist, taking into account their mutually exclusive nature. In these situations, rather than looking for consensus or balancing contradictory forms of the right to atmosphere, research should explore the agonistic nature of the right to atmosphere (Glover, 2012; Mouffe, 2013; Paxton, 2019; Wenman, 2013), namely how the plurality of atmospheric experiences generates competing political views and how power (im)balances shape the possibilities for atmospheric justice.

Undertaking an agonistic approach to atmospheric struggles and the right to atmosphere cannot however be limited to assessing how this right is conceived, advocated, and materialized by social and political movements. As atmospheric injustice mostly stems from a significant imbalance between social actors in the capacity to intervene in the atmosphere, research on the right to atmosphere should focus on the interactions between social actors, especially between hegemonic actors such as states and corporations and disenfranchized social groups. On the one hand, it is fundamental to understand how atmospheric struggles unfold through the formal frameworks for political dialog. However, given that such frameworks often reproduce existing power dynamics, geographic research must also work with communities to reimagine how atmospheres can be co-constructed and governed through alternative inclusive approaches that empower the voices, knowledges, and experiences of marginalized communities. In doing so, geographic research can also further explore how conflicts can become opportunities to imagine and construct ways to build atmospheres in inclusive and nonviolent manners. Here, a participatory action research approach can not only unveil how the power dynamics of places generate atmospheric conflicts, but also how conflict might activate the political capacity of people that otherwise would not consciously engage in atmospheric politics (Kindon et al., 2024; Mason, 2015). Through such an endeavor, geographers can also cultivate an ethics of antioppression. By this I mean that an agonistic approach to atmospheric injustice and the right to atmosphere should not lead us to merely acknowledge that there are differing and conflicting views on atmosphere. Rather, it calls for a deliberate engagement with these conflicts as productive forces that can unsettle power relations and open space for the governance of atmospheres. This involves recognizing how atmospheres are not only physical or environmental, but also deeply political. An agonistic approach, then, requires geographers to position themselves within these conflicts to work in solidarity with marginalized communities to challenge dominant modes of atmospheric governance and to cocreate new imaginaries of justice and care. In this way, rather than reducing the right to atmosphere as a right to access a ‘good’ atmosphere or participate in the creation of a ‘good’ atmosphere, the claiming the right to atmosphere becomes an act of deconstructing the power relations that shape the creation of atmospheres and building new forms of atmosphere-making attuned to the plural and more-than-human dimension of atmospheres. This also entails questioning how responsibility for the right to the atmosphere is distributed in different frameworks for political dialogs (Jankovic, 2021; Paredis et al., 2009; Sealy, 2024), being particularly important to examine how emergent forms of atmosphere-making are experimenting with more horizontal forms of distributing power and responsibility over the atmosphere and parting with the notion that atmospheric responsibility should be placed exclusively on formal bodies.

Conclusion

In this article, I have followed authors such as Adey (2015), McCormack (2015), Verlie (2019) and Engelmann (2021) in arguing that atmosphere should be understood as a plural more-than-physical phenomenon, in the sense that it is not only composed by the physical gaseous mass that covers the planet's surface, but also contains the flows of light, sound and scent that make up our perceptual world and through which we live our affective and cognitive relations with others. This holistic and integrated view of atmosphere is fundamental to understanding how different atmospheric inequalities are entangled and related. Regarding this, I have also argued that atmospheric inequalities are expressed not only in the uneven distribution of atmospheric threats, but even more so in the distribution of the individual and collective capacity to engage in the creation and management of atmospheres. As scholarly and activist efforts increasingly recognize these inequalities, the notion of the right to atmosphere grows ever more significant. Despite this, the right to atmosphere remains a polysemic and contradictory right. On the one hand, it is often framed as a right to partition the atmosphere and own pieces of it, and on the other, the atmosphere is framed as a commons. Furthermore, at times, the right to atmosphere refers to the right to access a ‘good’ atmosphere, often understood as a clean or safe atmosphere. But, rarely yet importantly, the right to atmosphere has also been understood by some as the right to participate in the ongoing interventions in the atmosphere.

Here, I have argued in favor of an agonistic approach to the right to atmosphere that acknowledges both the power imbalances in atmospheric production and the plural more-than-physical dimension of atmosphere. In my view, the embeddedness of difference and conflict in atmospherics can be understood as a creative force, as it activates the political capacity of people that otherwise would not consciously engage in atmospheric politics. This means that fulfilling the right to atmosphere involves empowering citizens to know atmospheres and further engage in the creation and management of their living environments. In my view, this understanding of the right to atmosphere as the political right to act on the atmosphere is fundamental to overcoming the existing atmospheric inequalities which are based on the disenfranchisement of the people's atmospheric power. With this in mind, I have outlined two paths for human geographers to develop an ethics of care and antioppression in the struggle for the fulfillment of the right to atmosphere. Namely, I proposed a greater engagement with creative and digital participatory methods to activate people's atmospheric knowledge of atmospheres and ensuring that these different knowledges are participating equally in the creation and management of our living environments, and I proposed a deeper involvement with participatory action research, with a focus on the interactions and conflicts between social actors involved in atmospheric matters, based on the deliberate engagement with these conflicts as productive forces that can unsettle dominant narratives and open space for transformative change. In conclusion, by embracing an agonistic approach to the right to atmosphere, geographers can transform atmospheric politics into a dynamic arena where power imbalances are challenged, paving the way for more equitable and participatory environmental futures.