Tag: Climate Change

Reimagining Humanitarianism in an Age of Global Solidarity

Interrogating Power Structures in Aid and Multilateral Institutions 

Thursday, 8 July 2021 

12.00-17.30 (Irish Time) 

Online, via Zoom 

What does it mean to embody a lived approach to global solidarity and equal partnership in humanitarian action and advocacy? This workshop, organised by Dóchas and the School of History & Philosophy at NUI Galway, brings together leading voices from the worlds of professional humanitarianism, diplomacy, activism and academia in conversation on three key areas: human rights, multilateralism and the climate crisis. The workshop is funded by the Irish Research Council (New Foundations grant).

Confirmed speakers include: 

  • Hugo Slim (University of Oxford) 
  • Sonja Hyland (Political Director, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) 
  • Bulelani Mfaco (MASI – Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland) 
  • Tara Rao (Our Ground Works) 
  • Nishanie Jayamaha (Programme Co-ordinator, Climate and Environment Change and Civil Society Space, International Council of Voluntary Agencies) 
  • Su-Ming Khoo (NUI Galway) 
  • Christopher O’Connell (Dublin City University) 
  • Margot Tudor (University of Exeter) 

Register here:
https://nuigalway-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUkceitpzsvHdFGTGeAUlcx77zUfVi4Iwmb 

Further information: 
Maria Cullen – School of History & Philosophy, NUI Galway – m.cullen10@nuigalway.ie Vikki Walshe – Project Manager, Dóchas – vikki@dochas.ie

Sharing Perspectives on Climate Migration: From Narratives, to Language, to Conceptualization

by Jay Ramasubramanyam

“Rains have become so fickle, the days measurably hotter, the droughts more frequent and more fierce, making it impossible to grow enough food on their land” read an article in the New York Times that appeared in late February which elucidated the grounds for mass-migratory patterns across Sub-Saharan Africa (Heat, Hunger and War Force Africans Onto a ‘Road on Fire’). In light of such patterns increasing more than ever in the global south, the role of Carleton University’s Climate Commons, a working group that brings together faculty members and undergraduate and graduate students to discuss climate change issues, becomes all the more prominent within the context of such narratives. An evening of discussion and dialogue on climate change migration on the 1st of March brought together professors, a slam poet and a graduate student to discuss ‘climate refugees’.

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The Future (for) Climate Refugees: NGOs, Security, and the Politics of Containment

by David Meinen

 

First, a quick caveat for the uninitiated – there is no such thing, officially, as a ‘climate refugee.’ While a relatively new phrase, especially in the wake of recent ecological disasters, the idea that climate change would induce a new kind of conflict and migration in the global South has been gaining momentum since the mid-1980s (see El-Hinnawi, 1985). This narrative became firmly integrated into the collective conscience of UNEP and the UNSC in 2007 (Penny, 2007; Hartmann, 2010), followed quickly by Canadian policy-makers and development practitioners (see DND, 2010; Becklumb, 2013). Since then, the relationship between environmental changes, refugees, humanitarianism, and security has materialized in the notion of ‘climate security.’ This notion perpetuates a crisis narrative of politically unstable Third World peoples – colloquially referred to as climate refugees/migrants – fleeing their uninhabitable homelands and (inconspicuously) posing a threat to international security. The speculative nature of this notion brings the climate refugee into being only through “future conditional knowledge practices” (Gemenne & Baldwin, 2013, p. 267); thus, while there is a notable lack of empirical evidence on the phenomenon of climate security (Kothari, 2014), as the debate becomes further enmired in expressions of insecurity, the more the supposed climate refugee is cast as “something to fear and/or control” (Farbotko, 2010, p. 53).

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