## IN THE INTERFACES OF OXYGEN DEPLETION

A case study of the environmentalities of Carsten from Hjarbæk Fjord and the Danish Society for Nature Conservation in The Green Tripartite

By: Asta Ambro European Ethnology

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ABSTRACT: This article explores biosocial frictions unfolding in the interfaces of oxygen depletion. The Green Tripartite ( Den Grønne Trepart ),  a  national Danish agreement aiming to reduce nitrogen, create more 'nature' and lower CO2 , through agricultural restructuring, signals new forms of collaboration and combat. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and recent environmental scholarship, I analyze how Carsten, a  daily  visitor  of  Hjarbæk  Fjord,  and  the  Danish  Society  for  Nature  Conservation  ( Danmarks Naturfredningsforening ) engage with oxygen depletion through divergent environmentalities. A central point is that these divergent ways of knowing, responding to, and being shaped by oxygen depletion reveal embodied political disagreements between urban, scientific bureaucrats and rural, anti-elitist populations, and their more-than-human relations.

KEY WORDS: Den Grønne Trepart , multiplicity, environmentality, governance, the Green Tripartite.

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' Carsten is a pseudonym. I used internet groups to get in touch with him again. I asked permission to quote him and read

aloud his quotes from the summer of 2024, which he elaborated on, and, once again, he asked important questions: "But

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## Murky waters and the Green Tripartite

Eelgrass, eel rushes, eel fishing. No eels. Data production, discussions and daily evening visits with four dogs. A tar pot used for eel traps, once upon a time. A new political deal, a tripartite. On a July afternoon in the summer of 2024, Adrian and I met Carsten 1 and his four dogs by the sea kayak club by Hjarbæk Fjord. As the sun moved closer to the horizon of corn fields and common reeds, Adrian, Carsten, and I talked. We had many good ideas for how to create life in the fjords again, and with his daily visits to Hjarbæk Fjord,  Carsten  had  a  lot  to  share.  He  told  us  about  the  efforts  he  engages  and  believes in.  About  how politicians have been unable to live up to their responsibilities. About the histories of Hjarbæk Fjord. When Carsten was a 'knejt' (a term for big boys or young men particularly used by working class men from Jutland) there were many eels. Since the middle ages, Hjarbæk Fjord's abundance of eels and herring has attracted and fed the people, among others, living there, Carsten told us. In the sixties, a dam was built to improve car infrastructure. This transformed the fjord from saltwater to freshwater, cutting Hjarbæk Fjord off from Limfjorden and creating excellent conditions for algae growth. Eels and fish disappeared, and fishermen had no fish to fish. In the nineties, the dam was removed, and saltwater entered Hjarbæk Fjord. But the conditions in the fjord did not improve.

After meeting Carsten, a lot of things happened. 2024 marked the year with the highest levels of oxygen depletion recorded in 22 years in Denmark 2 . Meanwhile, a national deal to 'benefit both the climate, water environment,  nature  and  biodiversity' 3 was  agreed  upon,  with  a  strategy  of  'a  historically  large restructuring of agriculture' 4 (DN 2024; Aftale om et Grønt Danmark 2024: 2, 8). Oxygen depletion and the practices creating it were to be stopped. Out of the seven official stakeholders in the deal, one of them specializes in topics about nature, biodiversity, climate and environments. This is the Danish Society for

1 Carsten is a pseudonym. I used internet groups to get in touch with him again. I asked permission to quote him and read aloud his quotes from the summer of 2024, which he elaborated on, and, once again, he asked important questions: ' But what will it become? ' (with it referring to the exam paper I wanted to write about him) ' What concerns me most is pollution of the fjord.  In Danish: Men hvad skal det blive til? Det, der optager mig allermest, er forurening af fjorden. ' e.g.  Meesenburg 2024;

2 The high levels of oxygen depletion has been the subject of a large number of news articles (see Sølvsten 2024; Elkjær 2025).

3 In Danish: ' vil gavne både klima, vandmiljø, natur og biodiversitet ' .

4 In Danish: ' en historisk stor omlægning af landbruget ' .

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Sølvsten 2024; Elkjær 2025).

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6. - 25. sep. 2024

S I write "nature" with quotation marks to signal the situatedness and boundaries of the specific nature that concerns DN.

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Kraftigt iltsvind (0-2 mg/l)

Moderat iltsvind (2-4 mg/l

Lavt iltindhold (4-6 mg/l)

Øvrige iltforhold (≥ 6 mg/l)

EEZ

· Målestation

Nature Conservation (DN). Through scientific knowledge about 'nature' 5 and the management thereof, DN provided both guidance and requirements for the national agreement.

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Map over recorded amounts of oxygen depletion in coastal waters in Denmark. The total area with oxygen depletion has increased significantly since 2010. The total amount of oxygen depleted waters was 80% larger in 2024 than in 2023 (Nationalt Center for Miljø og Energi 2024).

As I learned more about the agency and causes of oxygen depletion, something else struck me. In the interfaces of oxygen depletion, agreement and disagreement is interwoven, on different governance scales and  with  different  embodied  practices.  Journalists,  scientists,  environmental  activists,  national  and municipal politicians from both left- and right-wing parties, officials from the Danish Society for Nature Conservation, Adrian, Carsten and I, among others, agreed: Oxygen depletion must be stopped. But when it came to explanations of causes and proposed solutions, disagreements announced their arrivals, saturated with situated practices of knowledge, governance and power, along with the shaping of new subjectivities. And this is what I wish to explore in this article: How do the two divergent environmentalities of Carsten and the Danish Society for Nature Conservation shape and take shape in the interfaces of oxygen depletion?

Exploring this question is important, since the divergent relations with oxygen depletion tell stories of two almost mythological narratives. First, the narrative of a powerful state enforcing certain ways of living on

5 I write ' nature ' with quotation marks to signal the situatedness and boundaries of the specific nature that concerns DN.

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local more-than-human populations, despite the humans in those entities vocalize strong opposition to the ways  of  living  imposed  by  the  state  (de  la  Cadena  2015).  Second,  the  narrative  of  the  battle  between effective agriculture and nature conservation (Pedersen 2010), sometimes formulated as techno-optimist visions against eco-pessimist visions (Cusworth et. al 2021). Besides that, the question is important since 70% of nitrogen in the Danish coastal waters, which is a major player in creating oxygen depletion (more on this later),  is  considered  to  derive  from  fertilizer-use  in  agriculture  (Aarhus  Universitet  2021).  Moreover, production  of  animals  and  animal  feed  constitutes  about  68,2%  of  Denmark's  landmass,  plus  an  area corresponding to 14% of Denmark's t otal  landmass from imported animal feed (Odgaard et. al 2021). Oxygen depletion is thus deeply entangled in the reproduction of landscapes that are friendly towards effective  production  of  animals  and  animal  feed,  while  being  hostile  towards  an  array  of  different worldmaking  practices  and  species,  including  but  not  limited  to,  species  that  thrive  in  nutrient  poor environments. In the intersections of Green Tripartite, this relationship is being challenged. Through an ethnographic approach, I wish to bring forward some of the more-than-human frictions that are currently unfolding in the interfaces of oxygen depletion -between national governance, local belongingness, and the Green Tripartite's goals of transforming agricultural lands into both nature and eve n more productive agricultural lands. My main claim is that the divergent ways of knowing, relating to, shaping and being shaped by oxygen depletion can be a key to understanding some of the broader political disagreements between often urban bureaucratic-believers and anti-elitist often rural populations. And this is a morethan-human matter. I thus wish to draw attention to the separated spheres of political action, or political alliances (de la Cadena 2015), as well as the strikingly different tools for communication and democratic involvement which are of great importance to the making and understanding of governance practices, oxygen depletion and environmentalities, whether human or non-human.

## Material and analytical approach

For this case study I wish to juxtapose ethnographic material from an encounter with Carsten at Hjarbæk Fjord in July, 2024, with material from an internal meeting at The Danish Society for Nature Conservation (DN)  which  I  attended  on  November  4th,  2024.  Carsten  is  born  and  raised  in  Knudby,  a  village neighboring Hjarbæk Fjord. During the daytime, Carsten works at a factory that produces tegl , clay-based

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bricks and roof tiles, some 40 kilometers away from his home. Every night, on weekends, and vacations, Carsten visits the fjord with his four dogs. He enjoys the visits, and he sees the fjord's seasonal changes - and other changes, too (I will elaborate on this later). Carsten is a person who truly cares about Hjarbæk Fjord, and  is  deeply  saddened  by  the  bad  conditions  that  the  fjord  is  in.  The  Danish  Society  for  Nature Conservation truly cares about the bad condition of Hjarbæk Fjord, too. But this organiz ation, Denmark's biggest green NGO, also cares about the bad conditions of other waters and many other issues of 'nature', 'environment' and 'access to nature' (DN 2024). The association was founded in 1911, and since then DN has played a crucial role in hearings when laws are being drafted. DN has a special legal right that allows them to appeal against decisions made by public authorities, pursuant to eg. the Nature Protection Act and the Environmental Protection Act. DN is considered the fifth most influential civil society organization (Løppenthin 2017). DN thus has an influential position in governance where they work on local, national and international scales in distinct ways. Importantly, DN is currently an official stakeholder in the Green Tripartit e (GT), the national deal striving for a 'historical restructuring and conversion of Denmark's land areas and production of food and agriculture in Denmark' 6 (Aftale om et Grønt Danmark 2024: 2).

To analyze these issues, I wish to draw on the concepts of uncommonalities (de la Cadena 2015), scales of governance (Kimura and Kinchey 2019) and environmentality (Green 2014). The different world-making practices unfolding along with oxygen depletion hint at heterogeneous ways of engaging with the troubles of our time; troubles of ecological destruction that are entangled with divergent ways of knowing and engaging with power institutions in a more-than-human world. These troubles are by many referred to as the Anthropocene. As many critical scholars have pointed out, the challenges of the Anthropocene are not solely technical issues to be dealt with or fixed by the natural sciences (Yates-Doerr 2014; Green 2014). Rather, our time's environmental problems are issues that require collaboration of different kinds; bringing ontological disagreement into the alliances (de la Cadena 2015), on different scales of governance (Kimura & Kinchey 2019), and with attention to the relations of power and care emerging between state governance, scientific knowledge and local ways of nurturing and living in a shared world (Green 2014).

6 Original Danish text : 'en historisk omlægning og omstilling af Danmarks arealer og af fødevare - og landbrugsproduktionen i Danmark'.

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Marisol de la Cadena works with the interactions and struggles that occur between divergent practices as they  connect  across  constitutive  differences  (de  la  Cadena  2015).  Drawing  on  events  of  indigenous resistance against the expansion of markets for minerals, oil, and energy in Bolivia, Peru and Argentina, de la Cadena addresses the violence against local worlds enacted from nation-state governance in the name of progress.  With  the  term uncommonalities she  calls  for  a  practice  of  politics  that  brings  ontological disagreement  into  alliances  and  inaugurates  multiple  worldings.  De  la  Cadena  criticizes  the  idea  of  a universal nature: 'what is enacted as humans and nature is not only enacted as such' (ibid.), and she thereby advocates for ontological multiplicity. This perspective has inspired me to scrutinize how oxygen depletion is not only the  same  thing,  as  Carsten,  DN and oxygen depletion take part in a relational alliance with ontological differences.

Many of today's environmental problems are unfolding not only at local scales, but on national and global scales, too. When dealing with the realities of ecological destruction, Kimura and Kinchey draw attention to the importance of scales of governance when participants want to solve environmental problems (2014). They  argue  that  environmental  problems  unfolding  at  regional,  national  and/or  global  scales  may necessitate state- or nationwide struggles, in order to stop the problems. While national scales of governance may be useful to create efficient shifts in governance practices, the standardized methods often used here may limit locals' knowledge and participants' attachments to a certain issue. Conversely, local scales of governance  may  facilitate  local  community  empowerment,  but  without  collaboration  with  larger governance scales, the local actions may not be effective. Attention to scale thus enables consideration of the qualitative, affective and infrastructural conditions of different strategies, where certain networks, skills and access to powerful stakeholders can be important components for struggles to be effective.

Lesley Green uses the term environmentality to discuss how environmental management practices, whether state or home based, navigate and transform power-embedded landscapes (2014). Environmentality, as explained by Green, emphasizes that intellectual heritages and biosocial technologies are crucial for how environmental publics engage with environmental politics. Green draws attention to the violence at the core of compliancebased environmental management 'in which science and governance operate to control a relation with a nature that is defined by its capital value' (Green 2014: 4).  Echoing Bruno Latour, Green

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draws attention to the values of efficiency, profitability and objectivity as essential principles in establishing governance practices that are true to the modernist imaginary of separating subjects and objects (Green 2014).  This  is  important  in  relation  to  the  categories  of  experts  and  non-experts  which  are  generated through objectification where scientific knowledge about 'nature', as DN has and uses, creates subjects with capacities to decide and influence national governance practices. Entities that do not live up to the knowledge  economy's  values,  eg.  Carsten,  do  not  have  agency  to  take  part  in  the  national  politics  of environmental management, and are thus rendered as objects in that particular governance setting. Green's text is, however, not only that of critique. Inspired by Rachel Carson, Green, too, calls for a revolutionary environmentality; an environmentality that begins with the ecologies of households, called oikos, where nurturing and attending cycles that support fertility and responsiveness are central. This is thus a call for an affective and relational approach to generating non-elitist environmental management and publics. In relation  to  Denmark's  current  governance  plans  to  reduce  nitrogen  nationally,  I  have  found  Green's perspectives fruitful, since these decisions, too, are examples of environmental politics, guided by natural scientists who place faith in centralized political institutions. In this article, the term environmentality has been useful to explore how the entities of Carsten and DN shape and take shape through institutional arrangements,  knowledge  practices,  and  decision-making  in  relation  to  environmental  governance  of different scales -and contributed with attention for how oikos and ecologies can be nurtured.

## What is oxygen depletion?

Soft winds, warmth, summer, rain. Nutrient rich water rushes from fertilized fields through straightened streams. From the South, Fiskbæk Å runs through wetlands and what today are farm fields, but were once wetlands (and once upon a time, in the stone age, were covered by the Littorina sea). From the Southwest, the narrower Jordbro Å runs through a lake made in 2016 to decrease the amounts of nitrogen reaching Hjarbæk  Fjord.  From  the  East,  Skals  Å  runs  containing  EU-protected  Natura  2000  nature.  From  the Northeast, Simested Å, known as one of the cleanest rivers in Denmark, flows with sea trout populations. These four streams' large catchment area lead nitrogen - and phosphorus-rich drain- and river water to the shallow Hjarbæk Fjord. Here, the brackish water meets saltwater, creating two layers, with cold saltwater at the bottom and warmer brackish water at the top -a relationship that creates good conditions for algae

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growth. With these excessive cycles of algae eating, living and dying light is prevented from penetrating the water, and the water plants are thus deterred from living and releasing oxygen to the water (Hansen 2025; SEGES 2020). This reinforces the release of hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and phosphate from the fjord bottom,  caused  by  the  good  conditions  for  algae  growth,  which  reinforces  the  process  even  more. Furthermore, in order to decompose the great amounts of dead algae, bacteria uses oxygen, which thus can lead  to  oxygen  depletion.  This  process,  caused  by  nutrient  enrichment  in  water  bodies,  is  called eutrophication (Hunding 2024).

But the release of nitrate through rain water is not the only significant way that nitrogen compounds morph the life that they meet. When farm fields are added more nutrients than the amount of nutrients that the crops can absorb, the excess amount of nitrogen is discharged, either as nitrate through watercourses, or as ammonia or nitrous oxide to the atmosphere (Miljø- og Ligestillingsministeriet 2025). And as these specific nitrogen compounds move through air and water in large amounts, they change the livability of ecologies for certain species (ibid).

## The environmentality of the Danish Society for Nature Conservation

The descriptions of nitrogen, nitrate, ammonium and phosphorus as essential partakers in the enabling of oxygen depletion are also presented by the Danish Society for Nature Conservation (DN). In their article 'Oxygen Depletion in the Sea' 7 and at their internal meeting held to discuss the Green Tripartite (the GT), DN reference a national study from Aarhus University, explaining that approximately 70% of nitrogen emissions from land to sea comes from agriculture (Aarhus Universitet 2021). The study uses data from 210 water flow measuring stations, which have a catchment area amounting to 59% of Denmark's total landmass (NOVANA 2022). The study highlights the connections between agricultural practices' use of nitrogen fertilizers and the fert ilizers' agencies in soils, seas and groundwater. This national (and in some ways also local and global) conjuncture between policy, nitrogen, agriculture, and water environment, among  others,  serves  as  an  argument  for  creating  an  'effective'  policy.  The  p olicy  thus  strives  for effectiveness in both nitrogen reductions, implementation processes and agriculture production (Aftale CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 02

7 Original Danish title: 'Iltsvind i havet' (DN, https://www.dn.dk/vi -arbejder -for/vand/hav/iltsvind -i-havet/ ).

& Original Danish quote, from the internal meting of The Danish Society for Nature Conservation on November 4th

', 2024:

"Kvælstof var det eneste, regeringen havde skrevet ind i sit kommissorie, at vi IKKE måtte tale om. Der stod en decideret

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 0 2 December 2025

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om  et  Grønt  Danmark  2024),  on  a  national  scale  through  top-down  institutional  technologies  using scientific data.

Initially,  as  one  might  perhaps  guess,  the  political  agreement  was  not  established  from  the  outset.  It developed  through  negotiations -a  commons  emerging  through  the  interplay  of  heterogeneous worldmaking practices unfolding qualitatively as some practices became lively while others (were made to) disappear. The government, in this case, was not in favor of nitrogen reductions at the beginning of the negotiations. However, this did not last forever. This was something that Maria Gjerding, the president of DN, addressed at an internal meeting:

Nitrogen was the only thing the government had written into its terms of reference that we were NOT allowed to talk about. There was a specific sentence that said ' nitrogen is not part of these negotiations ' -and what is a bit paradoxical, when you look at the agreement now, is that nitrogen has become the main focus of the GT. 8

The GT shifted from not being allowed to deal with nitrogen to a deal focusing on nitrogen, hence creating space for a new question: How much should nitrogen be reduced? According to Gjerding nitrogen was such  an  integral  part  of  the  deterioration  of  climate,  biodiversity,  and  the  aquatic  environment  that  a political agreement not r egulating agriculture's release of nitrogen 'would not be something DN could vouch for,' as she said at the internal meeting. Calling for nitrogen reductions, DN required that th e SVMgovernment 9 stepped away from protecting 'effective agriculture production,' (a phrase used by both Gjerding  at  the  internal  meeting;  DN  2024;  Aftale  om  et  Grønt  Danmark  2024).  These  political negotiations can be understood as the desire of reducing nitrogen meeting another desire of not reducing nitrogen; a political alliance where practices connect across constitutive differences. If DN, as the only

8 Original Danish quote, from the internal meeting of The Danish Society for Nature Conservation on November 4 th , 2024:

' Kvælstof var det eneste, regeringen havde skrevet ind i sit kommissorie, at vi IKKE måtte tale om. Der stod en decideret sætning, hvor der stod ' kvælstof er ikke en del af de her forhandlinger ' . Og det, der jo er lidt paradoksalt, når man nu står og kigger på aftalen, er, at det er kvælstof, der er blevet hovedomdrejningspunktet for den grønne trepartsaftale. '

9 The Danish SVM government, formed in December 2022, is a coalition government consisting of the Social Democrats (S), the Liberal Party (Venstre, V), and the Moderates (M). This is a rare coalition that includes both right -wing and left wing parties, mark ing the first time in over 40 years that traditional rivals govern together in Denmark. Over time, this coalition has become increasingly unpopular. A recent survey shows that voters believe that this coalition is the worst at implementing favorable politi cs (Epinion 2024).

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stakeholder  with  specialized  knowledge  of  'nature',  stepped  away  from  the  agreement,  the  agreement would both lose its expertise about aquatic environments, and perhaps its democratic support, as 89% of Danes are worried about the state of the seas (WWF 2022) and 57% believe that political decisions are made without a proper scientific/professional basis (Mandag Morgen 2024). Divergent ontologies are met in the GT, signaling  a  shift  in  (environ)mentality,  but,  of  course,  kept  at  bay  with  scientific  data,  visions  of compromise and effective agricultural world-making practices.

The GT marks a shift away from the previous agricultural policy of voluntary schemes as these, by DN among others, were deemed ineffective at reducing agriculture's use of nitrogen (DN 2024). While targets for nitrogen reductions existed before the GT, the data that guided national policies for nitrogen reductions were based on farmers' own reports. In 2022, authorities on average supervised 3,7% of Danish farms, and 35% of those farms 'had an overuse of nitrogen' (Statsrevisorerne 2024) which was not detec table through the data created by the farms themselves. The wishes to make ends with the ineffective voluntary schemes thus makes an environmentality underpinned by efficiency, compliance and centralized control. While efficiency,  along  with  profit  and  objectivity,  function  as  essentials  in  compliance-based  capitalist governance, efficiency can also be linked to desires and dedication to reducing environmental problems unfolding on larger scales than the local. The environmentality in the GT also creates subjectivities that come into being through coercion, even though the Danish government and official stakeholders in the GT uphold compromise as the ideal. This ideal of compromise, somewhat akin to de la Cadena's concept, emphasizes the specific embodied practices and technologies at play in environmental politics, thereby revealing the relationality between  environmental  organizations,  current policy  frameworks,  and perceptions of agriculture.

In the Green Tripartite, entities that do not reduce nitrogen or 'benefit nature' are rendered as obstacles, as something that compliance-based politics can and should change through financial incentives. On their website, DN write:

11

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1° Original Danish quote: "Hvor det hidtil ikke har haft konsekvenser at de frivillige ordninger ikke virkede, vil det med

treparten blive omkostningsfuldt ikke at omlægge sin jord. Det vil CO2-afgiften på husdyr, en afgift på lavbundsjord og en

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øget regulering på kvælstof sørge for (DN 2024)".

So far, there have been no consequences for the voluntary schemes not working. With the GT it will become costly not to convert your land. The CO 2 tax on livestock, a tax on low-lying soil and increased regulation on nitrogen will ensure this. 10

Farmers producing livestock are here understood as obstructive objects emerging in tandem with economic overrides, rendering fertilizers, the environment and (friends of) agriculture, among others, as entities to be controlled and managed through financial regulation. This establishes an environmentality where matters of  nature,  fertilizers,  and  caring  for  the  environment  are  rendered  as  something  outside  the  oikos (management  of  households),  in  the  realms  of  the  polis  (state  governance),  thus  creating  a  sphere  of responsibility grounded in state control with clear ambitions in improving the conditions for nature and environment.  At  the  core  of  this  new  policy  runs  an  environmentality  which  does  not  care  for  the dependencies that have been created between farmers and fertilizers, for farmers to continue their jobs. Furthermore, it has little practice in bringing actual farmers and concerned citizens into the policy-creation rooms due to the alliance's top -down, scientific approach.

## Carsten's environmentality

Carsten does not connect agriculture's use of fertilizers with oxygen depletion. In fact, he is not interested in oxygen depletion at all. Or at least the phrasing of it. Rather, he is interested in the spatial conditions and changes that he experiences in Hjarbæk Fjord. As we speak, Carsten sheds attention to several things that worsen the conditions in the fjord. He calculates how many kilograms of fish seals eat per day and how many seals live in the Limfjord. He counts the amount of fish that cormorants eat -a  bird  species  he despises about as much as the law protecting it. Although Carsten's observations of Hjarbæk Fjord are not conducted according to scientific standards, his observations reveal a truth that the scientific observations

10 Original Danish quote: ' Hvor det hidtil ikke har haft konsekvenser at de frivillige ordninger ikke virkede, vil det med treparten blive omkostningsfuldt ikke at omlægge sin jord. Det vil CO2 -afgiften på husdyr, en afgift på lavbundsjord og en øget regulering på kvælstof sørge for (DN 2024) ' .

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"Original Danish quote: "Landbruget er altså ikke så slemt som dem ovre i byerne gerne vil have. Det er EU, den er gal

" Original Danish quote: "Det' ik' det bedste, men du kan godt svømme i det. Bare ik' drik' vandet."

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det' ulovligt."

## 2 December 2025

do not. Seals and cormorants live and take shape in the oxygen depleted waters in Hjarbæk Fjord while being  protected  by  bureaucratic  international  and  national  laws.  And  unlike  particles  of  nitrogen  and phosphorus, they are rather visible to Carsten. These two species are well-known competitors of fishermen due to their high fish consumption, and the history of fishery in Hjarbæk Fjord is very dear to Carsten. The nitrogen-rich fertilizers, on the other hand, that scientists point to as central factors in  creating oxygen depletion and 'bad ecological conditions'  in coastal waters are determined through scientific measuring methods, such as measuring stations and chemical analyses (NOVANA 2023). So, what happens when someone who is highly critical of city elites and feels a cultural bond to agriculture is met with perspectives fueled by scientific knowledge which emphasize that agriculture plays a big role in creating bad ecological conditions in the fjord?

Standing in the evening sun, looking at the fjord,  I ask Carsten if I can swim there. Along the shore, the seabed looks mushy. I see green algae on the top of stagnant water. Carsten replies: 'it's not the best, but you can swim there. Just don't swallow the water'. 11 Carsten explains that the bad conditions in the fjord are  caused  by  sewage,  seals,  cormorants,  and  the  municipality.  Adrian  says  that  agriculture  plays  a significant role too. Carsten replies:

Agriculture isn't as bad as those over in the cities want it to be. It's the EU that's the problem. They're the ones who decide that the French can still fish for eels when they're small. That's before they come up here, where it's illegal. 12

As this quote indicates, Carsten is not fond of both the way that the EU manages eels and the connections that are made between agriculture and bad conditions in the fjord.  As mentioned in the start, eel fishing, and the fishing  of  herring  and  other  animals,  has  been  of  great  importance  for  the  people  living  with Limfjorden. In 2022, the amount of eels measured was only 0,6% of the number measured back in 1980 (WWF 2023). While the drastic reduction of eels has given rise to regional conservation and ecological displacements, it has also given rise to frustration for people who feel connected to various species of eels

11 Original Danish quote: 'Det' ik' det bedste, men du kan godt svømme i det. Bare ik' drik' vandet. '

12 Original Danish quote: ' Landbruget er altså ikke så slemt som dem ovre i byerne gerne vil have. Det er EU, den er gal med. Det er dem, der gør sådan, at franskmændene stadig kan fiske ålene mens de er små, inden de kommer herop, hvor det' ulovligt. '

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 0

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kan se det her."

13 Original Danish quote: "Nu skal jeg vise jer hvem det er, der ødelægger livet her i fjorden. Jeg har det hele på min mobil. I

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## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 0 2 December 2025 13

and the historical practices of fishing and eating them. While Carsten's statement can both be seen as a rejection of scientific knowledge, it can also be seen as an environmentality with an overall critical approach to forms of governance that are not local; expressing resistance to the ways in which regional and national governance  practices  create  standardized  practices  of  environmental  governance,  with  attention  to protecting endangered species, but without involvement with local connections, eg. practices of eel fishing.

Carsten's  environmentality  focuses  on  the  local  place,  fish,  and  historical  narratives  of  the  people  of Salling's connections to Limfjorden. Carsten tells us that it is our task to take care of nature, but as he sees it, the politicians are not taking on their responsibility. As we speak, anger becomes prominent in his voice. He takes out his phone, presses start on a video, and says:

Now I'm gonna show you who's destroying the life here in the fjord. I have it all on my phone. You can see it here. 13

Carsten shows us a video of a yellow dump truck loading off huge amounts of grass into a small river:

It was the municipality that dumped all this grass into Skals Å, which flows directly out here. 14

While  Carsten's  experience  reveals  something  about  the  infrastructures  through  which  he  cares  for Hjarbæk Fjord, it simultaneously reveals something about an environmentality present in the municipality's practice, and hence the mutual shapings of and by oxygen depletion.

For Carsten, bureaucratic practices, on both EU and municipal scales of governance, are leading practices that don't fully take responsibility for creating abundant nature. After the incident with the grass dumping, Carsten  called  the  municipality,  asking  them  to  clean  up  the  mess.  They  did  not  accommodate  his suggestions. With the dumping of grass into Skals Å, for whatever the many reasons, and not responding to  Carsten's  call  for  help,  Carsten,  once  again,  fraught  with  disappointment,  experienced  that  a state initiative contributed to bad conditions in the fjord. Hjarbæk Fjord, a place Carsten shares time with and tries to nurture, emerges from the conjunctures of multiple actors: Grass, seals, cormorants, mushy waters,

13 Original Danish quote: ' Nu skal jeg vise jer hvem det er, der ødelægger livet her i fjorden. Jeg har det hele på min mobil. I kan se det her. '

14 Original Danish quote: ' Det var kommunen, der læssede alt det græs ud i Skals Å. Den løber herud. '

14

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## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 0 2 December 2025

a  truck  driver  from  the  municipality,  and  national  governance  practices.  These  all  shape  the  Fjord  in situated ways, showing the various relationalities emerging in the interfaces of oxygen depletion.

## Conclusion

This article explores how divergent shapings emerge in the interfaces of oxygen depletion. Drawing on the concept of environmentality, I explore how the Danish Society for Nature Conservation and Carsten, a local dweller at Hjarbæk Fjord, engage with oxygen depletion. They do so on different scales of governance, through  diverse  embodiments  and  ways  of  relating  to  and  shaping  oxygen  depletion.  These  diverse interactions with oxygen depletion or 'bad conditions in the fjord', as Carsten puts it, tell stories of how constitutive  divergence  (de  la  Cadena  2025)  emerges  along  with  oxygen  depletion  in  (un)formulated political alliances. And this is a story about the multiplicity of nitrogen. Effectiveness, scientific methods, and a mixture of visions of  compromise  and  compliance  in national politics characterize the environmentality  of the Danish  Society  for  Nature  Conservation.  Carsten's  environmentality  is characterized by a feeling of local belongingness, fostered through everyday walks by the fjord, and histories about the abundant of fish and fishing in Limfjorden, along with experiences of politicians, on EU and municipal scales, failing to protect the life in the fjord. By exploring these different environmentalities and their positionalities, this article pushes for a deeper examination of how political disagreements and the knowledge practices engaged with environmental management take shape in a more-than-human world.

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