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Economic and social justice in a climate changed world
Why climate change raises more questions about global injustices
Humans' contribution to climate change is an important prompt for us to consider other global injustices that we may not immediately connect to this hotly-debated topic.
Global debates about human-caused climate change have largely focused on wide-ranging discussions about the impact on our social and economic futures.
These range from experiments in everyday living that promote sustainability in relation to food transport and energy to bold proposals for slow growth economies and futures without coal.
However, thinking outside the square means questioning our fundamental relationships to animals and environments, as well as considering histories of dispossession and colonialism, and deepening forms of wealth, resource and income inequality. We need to not only re-invent how we live as individuals and societies, but also change our perceptions and knowledges if we are to overcome the damaging relations we have with the non-human in the Anthropocene.
This event brings together four internationally renowned scholars to explore climate justice and economic justice within the context of a climate changed world and their broader implications for the wider world.
This event was held on Thursday 13 June 2019 at the University of Sydney.
The speakers
Maan Barua is a cultural and environmental geographer with an interest in the spaces, politics and governance of the living and material world. His research interests include urban ecology, more-than-human geographies, biodiversity conservation and the politics of lively capital.
Before joining Cambridge, Maan was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Geography and Environment at the University of Oxford, where he also read for a Doctor of Philosophy and a Master of Science. He has recently commenced a major, five-year ERC Horizon 2020 Starting Grant on urban ecologies and the governance of global cities.
Petra Tschakert is Centenary Professor in Rural Development at the University of Western Australia (UWA). She coordinates the UWA Master of International Development. Her research activities and practice focus broadly on human-environment interactions and more specifically on rural livelihoods, environmental and climate change, marginalisation, loss, social learning, and deliberate societal transformation.
Petra's academic training is in geography, applied anthropology, and arid lands resources sciences. Her main interest lies in the theoretical and empirical intersections of political ecology, environmental justice, complex systems science, and participatory research.
Makere Stewart-Harawira is a Professor of Indigenous, Environmental and Global Studies at the University of Alberta in Canada. She was appointed to the Department of Educational Policy Studies in the Faculty of Education in 2004. She is the Director of the Traditional Medicine and Indigenous Health Council of the Integrative Health Institute at the University of Alberta. From 2015–18 she convened the Intersections of Sustainability transdisciplinary research network on climate change, water governance, and community futures funded by a KULE Institute Research Cluster Grant.
Krithika's research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of political ecology, post-development politics, and animal studies. Over the years, her work has spanned conservation and animal welfare politics, disasters and vulnerability, the politics of knowledge, Foucauldian biopolitics, and urban sanitation. Her research revolves around intersectional approaches to social, ecological and animal justice in the context of contemporary development.
David Schlosberg is Professor of Environmental Politics in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, and Co-Director of the Sydney Environment Institute. His work focuses on contemporary environmental and environmental justice movements, environment and everyday life, and climate adaptation planning and policy. He is the author of Defining Environmental Justice; co-author of Climate-Challenged Society; and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society and The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory.