Description
Climate breakdown is finally on the mainstream policy agenda. Protecting the planet is the second of the twelve key proposals in the UN Secretary General’s 'Our Common Agenda' statement, which BISA has chosen as organising principles for the 2023 conference.
Civil society actors articulating critiques and solutions that highlight the linkages between colonial legacies, gendered inequalities, racism, peace and security, and climate justice are finally gaining high visibility. Key global organisations such as the UN and the EU also appear to be responding to climate breakdown, for example promising implement a ‘Green Deal’ or recognising links between conflict over natural resources and women’s security (UNSCR 2242).
Many critics have noted, however, that these kinds of initiatives do not go far enough in tackling the underlying causes of climate breakdown, the historically entrenched asymmetries in consumption that cause them, and gendered, racialized and Eurocentric assumptions that help to sustain them. Indeed, these kinds of critiques have not historically enjoyed a central place in policy making institutions or international studies.
This RT brings together scholars working to investigate these intersectional dynamics in climate breakdown and proposed solutions to it. Ecofeminist and decolonial critiques have pointed out how exploitation, extraction, dumping, and irresponsibility is actively promoted and incentivised in the current globalised economy, accruing profits to the Global North, driving ‘growth’ and creating debt and conflict. The Round Table aims to foster dialogue between scholars working on these issues to explore questions such as: How do current multilateral systems tackle climate breakdown, for example in WPS agendas, Green Deals or global negotiations such COP events? How have these processes perpetuated or displaced neo-colonial dynamics? How are the relationships between ‘social reproduction’, ‘production’, and nature understood in global governance and how are these relationships altering or continuing in the current era? Which actors and whose knowledge enjoy attention in global governance institutions? How can we apply Ecofeminist principles and practices within often highly abstracted academic research? What tools and concepts do we need to fully understand the politics of climate breakdown and decarbonisation - how to these challenge prior analytical approaches?
Each RT speaker will address these questions as they relate to their own research and experience for 5 (or 10) minutes, after which the discussion will be open to all participants. A chair will facilitate the session to maximise interaction, sharing, listening and debate. We intend for this session to depart from traditional conference sessions which give the majority of the time to a small number of speakers. In this way it is consistent with ecofeminist praxis.
