ClimateCovid P2.1: Climate Refugee Stories: Building an Archive of Resistance
CONFRONTING THE CLIMATE CRISIS WITH SYSTEMIC ALTERNATIVES IN THE AGE OF CORONAVIRUS
A NEARLY CARBON-NEUTRAL CONFERENCE | #EHIClimateCOVID
Panel 2.1: Climate Refugee Stories: Building an Archive of Resistance
“Climate Refugee Stories: Bangladesh and India”
Tanaya Dutta Gupta (UC Davis)
“Climate Refugee Stories: Ghana”
Christine Wheatley (NED Africa)
“Climate Refugee Stories: Puerto Rico”
Emma Crow-Willard (Roots of Unity Media)
“Climate Refugee Stories: The Bahamas”
Sienna Leis (Harvard Kennedy School of Government)
Q & A
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The Communities of Resistance/Resilience section was such a powerful and eye opener theme. Thank you all for sharing your knowledge, opinions, and the refugee stories. I enjoyed this panel a lot!!! Powerful and inspiring women doing awesome things to make this a better place for ALL.
Tina your introduction and explanation left me feeling enthusiastic about learning more on the multimedia humanities project Climate Refugee stories. Also I think the high school program is a GREAT opportunity to explore and build more awareness on the intersections between climate and social justice, so opening the debate on climate induced migration at education institutions.
Tanaya I couldn’t agree more with the cascading impacts of climate change in COVID 19 that you mentioned. Especially on the focus of your research in Bangladesh, where many impoverished communities face a precarious existence in crowded environments, making them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. It was truly sad to hear how the lock down of the pandemic disproportionately affected internal migrant workers in India, on mobility and livelihood, and many without enough food. My eyes opened when you mentioned the 100 million people (it is not just a number, are lives) moving from rural areas to cities becoming part of the informal urban economy. But also with the immobility that this crisis created, the expected and enforced lockdown for people making it an even worse crisis for rural areas. I didn’t really think about the immobility part of the crisis before, so thank you for opening my eyes.
Last but not least I would like to answer your questions about how borders become into focus. One of the first measures that the different countries of the world took in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic was to close the borders to prevent the cases of infection from continuing to increase, but this acts in the same way with any other current or future consequence of climate change, environmental catastrophe, humanitarian crisis, etc. Usually the most wealthy countries are those taking the least humanitarian decisions in times of crisis. Closing the borders and protecting the citizens of just their country is no longer an option for the world we are in and the one that awaits us with the climate crisis getting worse. Personally, I believe that migration policies must be rebuilt to collaborate and care for everyone the same. Lastly, regions like Sunnahs, show the capacity that these societies have to confront adversity and to get out stronger and better than before. All qualities needed to fight this crisis.
Thank you Christine for sharing your work in Ghana. It is devastating how quickly the reality of families there can change. The tide rises and they lose everything. Move quickly or “it can catch you”. Since the soil cannot be used as a farm due to flooding, there are also problems of food shortages. The projects that need africa is working on are very inspiring, first the creation of a women’s cooperative to process and sell coconut oil for export, as well as biogas for fuel and electricity. Second the innovative project to turn all of Ghana waste into green energy, moving toward a carbon negative, zero waste nation. Biogas production and the sustainable system you presented not only creates green jobs, revenue, but also a great solution that generates clean energy and gives value to the waste.
Emma, your video was like a bucket of cold water (in a good way). It is realistic, “There is nowhere to run” neither from Puerto Rico nor from this earth. I loved that you showed how the hurricane is not the biggest problem, but the political and economic problem, where Puerto Rico produces only a very small part of its food so it is dependent on the ships with food that come from Florida and cannot trade with other countries. All the neglect of the government only makes people even more vulnerable in climate emergencies, like with the hurricane, with thousands of people migrating, food shortages, isolation by physical borders, and all the outside chaos as well as emotional. I agree with you that a change in the political, economic, and social system is necessary to be prepared for the consequences of climate change that will only get worse.
Sienna, after watching your passion and compromise with making a change I just want to find out more about pre and post disaster management. I am very interested in learning strategies to prepare people, how to increase their resilience and adaptation for an imminent climate disaster, like Dorian. But even more on the after crisis, either climate, pandemic, economic, or many other crises to come. You truly inspired me to focus on how the social reconstruction process is, how to take care of the mental and emotional health of those affected, how to rebuild hope and stand up with the climate refugees. It is time to take action, fight, and help the vulnerables on the way out of their current situation to find equality.
Thank you again for sharing your awesome inspiring work!
Hope you all the best! Stay healthy, safe, and powerful! We are in this together!
Candela Sofia Goni
[I apologize if my english skills are not the best, my first language is spanish]
Just saw this reply button! But my reply is below Candela!
@candela goni – I’m so glad you found our panel interesting! We are excited about expanding the Climate Refugee Archive and continuing to build our episodes, website, and educational materials – all of which we will likely launch in April of 2021. If you’re interested in being added to our contact list to be notified when it comes out, shoot us an email at climaterefugeestories@gmail.com.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments! I appreciate your perspective about rebuilding migration policies. I hadn’t really thought of the fact that we live in a globalized world, in which we are dependent upon other nations for food/energy/labor, and therefore it is not an option to simply shut non-citizen’s out. It really does have to be a global solution. Which leads to the necessary political, economic, and social changes, not just in Puerto Rico, but globally in how we interact with each other as nations.
I now want to bring a few questions to you, and all panelists and anyone else watching this session – how have YOU been directly impacted by climate change? What do you think is the role of media to help solve this crisis?
Hi Candela and Emma,
Thank you so much, Candela, for your thoughtful comments and engagement with the project! As Emma mentioned above, we are planning to launch with more stories, resources, and educational content in the spring of 2021. I am currently in Charlotte, NC, and will be working with local K-12 teachers in the coming year to receive feedback on the project and develop curriculum co-creatively. I am eager to learn more, especially from impacted communities and teachers, about what their needs and priorities are and how the project may be of support to them.
To Emma’s question–I have been teaching history and environmental humanities courses on climate change in the US (at the college level) for the last five years and have seen quite a shift in student responses to that question–does climate change affect you, and how?–over this short time. Almost all students have always responded affirmatively in an emotional sense (experiencing feelings of worry, concern, and eco-grief), and in a political sense, but more recently, also a material sense. The COVID-19 pandemic makes the stakes all the more clear.
The role of media is huge in the way stories (including understanding history) are told, and this role extends to the classroom. I believe centering impacted communities, including student voices and needs, in the conversation is crucial. Asking students and teachers the question of what kinds of stories are effective is helpful; but asking the reverse is also helpful–what kinds of stories may actually do harm? While much media reporting and scholarly work on climate migration is illuminating and adds to our understanding of the phenomenon, it may also (often inadvertently) raise alarm. Yes, we should be alarmed and moved to act, but this may also stoke a sense of unsolvable or overwhelming “crisis” which may reinforce current responses that are harmful or inadequate such as strengthening bordering and security apparatus, and, in turn, the narratives that maintain current power structures by prioritizing the voices of those more powerful or perceived as “experts” while “othering,” minimizing, silencing, or ignoring the deep and direct knowledge and resilience of youth and directly impacted communities.
Hi Candela, Emma, and Tina,
Thank you for your engaging comments and questions! To continue the conversation…
The convergence of climate crisis with other global forces in this time of COVID has not only led to a hardening of international borders, but also to solidifying of internal borders within countries like India. Such borders regulate and reinforce unequal access to rights and resources, thereby demarcating parameters around who can and cannot be considered full citizens. Emma’s work for instance, and the experiences of participants from Puerto Rico offer particular insights on this.
Therefore, as we bring together perspectives from around the world, it also becomes necessary to examine parallels between multiple contexts to understand shared vulnerabilities, and entanglement of broader structures that (re)produce and compound such vulnerabilities. Communities confronting climate injustice in a particular context are not homogenous units. Questions around who moves and who stays, who bears the most risk, who are the worst affected, who gets to be seen and heard, and so on, even within a climate vulnerable community, cannot be adequately addressed without considering deep rooted inequalities and power relations connected with histories of colonialism, patriarchy and global capitalism. How can we best reconcile our understanding of similarities across regions, based on shared vulnerabilities exacerbated by the present crises, with peculiarities of existing inequalities and power differences shaped by local historical contexts of such regions? And how can we mobilize this understanding towards imagining and integrating possible climate futures in policies and practices that do not end up being “one size fits all” prescriptions and interventions?
To offer a partial response to Emma’s question—in some way or other, we are all impacted by climate change, regardless of where we are located geographically. But not all of us are impacted in the same ways, because of how we are socially located (at the intersection of race, gender, class, caste, age, legal status, religion, colonial histories and so on). Our experiences of climate change as part of communities on the ground could be very different from the scientific understanding of climate change. Some of these experiences may range from how we perceive the local weather, to how our health is affected by pollution, to how we may survive extreme events like cyclones and fires. What is crucial to recognize here is that impacts of climate change do not operate alone, nor do they operate on a blank slate. These impacts are mediated through economic, social, cultural, and political factors to influence decision-making around lives and livelihoods that have historically been shaped by global forces of colonialism and capitalism. So, as a possible extension to this question, can we parse our experience of climate change from other associated impacts? Or is it an entangled experience where the role of a changing climate may not always be directly perceived?
As to the role of media, and adding to the concerns Tina has raised, critical understanding of politics of representation, the lens through which stories are told and voices that get to tell the stories matter, so that they are not used to justify and perpetuate ongoing climate related injustice and violence. I find insights from panel 3.3 on applying a decolonial lens relevant for this discussion.