While the countries of the Global North are responsible for the majority of historical CO2 emissions, the impacts of climate change and the capacities to deal with it are very unevenly distributed. Particularly affected by climate change are countries in the Global South - many of them former colonies still struggling with the socioeconomic consequences of colonial exploitation.
This twofold injustice is at the core of demands on rich countries to own up to their historic emissions responsibilities, aid poorer and vulnerable countries in adapting to climate change and to financially compensate those affected by climate-related loss and damage. Despite the historic decision at the recent COP27 to establish a fund to cover loss and damage, the debates over responsibility and concrete financial commitment remain difficult. These demands overlap with processes of dealing with colonial history as well as with debates on how people and societies worldwide will have to change their lives in the coming years to cope with climate change.
To tackle these issues interdisciplinary approaches are needed, as well as greater societal engagement. Artists and cultural relations actors already play an important role in fostering cross-cultural understanding and empathy in other domains. Cultural relations between states and societies could thus be an important component of international climate policy and transnational climate action.
This panel therefore discusses the following questions:
Panelists:
To participate, please register here: Climate justice, decolonialisation and the role of cultural relations | Ecologic Institute Forms
Ann Pettifor is the director of Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME) and is known for predicting the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-9 with her book: The Coming First World Debt Crisis (Palgrave, 2006). In 2017 she published The Production of Money and in 2019 The Case for The Green New Deal.
In January 2022 the Scottish government appointed her to its Just Transition Commission. In 2020 she became chair of the board of directors of A-Deus, an innovative, community- based clean energy company, led by Nigerian engineers, whose aim is to displace diesel generators, and deliver clean energy in Africa and elsewhere.
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Tonny Nowshin is a Degrowth and Climate Justice activist. She encountered the IPCC reports in-depth for the first time while writing her master’s thesis in International and development economics in 2017. Reading the reports, the urgency of climate change mitigation hit her, and she decided to become active in the climate movement.
Professionally at the moment, Tonny is working with the Sunrise Project focusing on fossil fuel finance to tackle the climate crisis. In her activist work, she focuses on centering the concept of climate justice at the core of the climate movement by putting forward antiracist and decolonial perspectives.
Tonny grew up in Dhaka Bangladesh and was an activist for social causes from her middle-school years. She mobilized with her student organization protesting privatization efforts of the World Bank’s structural adjustment program in Bangladesh. In undergrad, Tonny studied economics in her lifelong search to understand societies better and be able to have a positive impact on them. She started her career in the international development sector with the world’s largest non-profit BRAC. She has later worked with other leading NGOs like ActionAid and 350.org.
In a perfect world, we would find Tonny reading books with three cats, all day.
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Nnimmo Bassey is the director of the ecological think-tank, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and member steering committee of Oilwatch International.
He was chair of Friends of the Earth International (2008-2012) and was named Time magazine’s Hero of the Environment in 2009. He is a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award also known as the “Alternative Noble Prize.” In 2012, he received the Rafto Human Rights Award and in 2014, Nigeria’s national honour as Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) in recognition of his environmental activism. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of York, United Kingdom in July 2019.
Bassey is a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Architects and has authored books on the environment, architecture and poetry. His books include We Thought it Was Oil, But It was Blood –Poetry (Kraft Books, 2002); I will Not Dance to Your Beat – Poetry (Kraft Books, 2011); To Cook a Continent – Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa (Pambazuka Press, 2012) and Oil Politics – Echoes of Ecological War (Daraja Press, 2016). He is fondly called The Living Ancestor by young activists.
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In Stuttgart, the discussion series Totally Glocally addresses current questions about the interaction between global and local structures. International experts talk about the interaction between the global and the local. Full recordings of this and other Totally Glocally panel sessions are available on ifa’s YouTube Channel. Find out more on the programme on the ifa website.
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