We are at a critical juncture. Our current political and economic systems, built primarily around extraction, are driving compounding crises of inequity, climate change, and biodiversity loss. For decades, world leaders and policymakers have known these crises are escalating, but have done little to prevent it. Why is this?
New research from the Centre for Climate Justice, the Climate and Community Project, and Third World Network tries to answer this question, finding that governments are “exporting extinction” under pressure from an unequal international financial system. That is, while many governments continue to support extractive sector expansion with domestic policies, their policy autonomy to implement a just and ecological transition is highly constrained by conditions of financial and political subordination.
These constraints must be overcome for the world’s governments to meet environmental commitments. With upcoming major UN conferences on biodiversity and climate hosted by Colombia and Brazil, respectively, bold action for climate and ecosystems, as well as international solidarity and redistributive agendas, will be on the table. Colombia’s Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Susana Muhamad, was quoted in The Guardian: “Although the climate is affecting biodiversity, nature is an answer to the climate crisis. It is not the only answer but it is a very important pillar and we want to position it very strongly to build towards Cop30 in Brazil.”
With these two major, fast-approaching opportunities to redirect international policy and agreements toward solving compounding ecological crises, we know there is more work to do to ensure the right solutions are adopted, and a necessary break with the status quo of extractivism is achieved.
Join the Centre for Climate Justice, the Climate and Community Project, and Third World Network for a Zoom webinar at 09:00 PDT/112:00 EDT/16:00 UTC on Tuesday 7 May 2024 to learn more about new, leading research on these issues and what you can do to seize the opportunities for change ahead.
Meet the Panel:
Moderator:
Thea Riofrancos is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow (2020-2022), and a member of the Climate + Community Project. Her research focuses on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, green technology, social movements, and the left in Latin America. These themes are explored in her book, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020), as well as in peer-reviewed articles in Perspectives on Politics, Cultural Studies, World Politics, and Global Environmental Politics (forthcoming), essays that have appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, n+1, Dissent, Jacobin and NACLA, and in her coauthored book, A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019). She is currently writing a book titled Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, with W.W. Norton.
Presenter & Commentator:
Jessica Dempsey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Associate Head of Undergraduate Programs at the University of British Columbia. Her research and teaching focus on environmental politics. In geography this often goes under the label of political ecology, which refers to much more than the government or the state. It includes consideration of how environmental politics is shaped by and shapes economics, science, culture, history, gender, racism, colonialism, social movements and more. Her current major research projects focus on 1) developing a political economic explanation of extinction, centered on an investigation of Canadian wildlife, and 2) examining dominant, increasingly economic and financial approaches to conservation. Her research is in dialogue with diverse methodologies and literatures, including political ecology, feminist political economy, economic geography, science studies, and green finance.
Speakers:
Chee Yoke Ling is a lawyer with degrees from the University of Malaya and the University of Cambridge. She is Executive Director of Third World Network, an international non-profit policy research and advocacy organization with its secretariat in Malaysia. She works on sustainable development issues, with a focus on social justice and equity issues and the effects of globalization on developing countries. She has engaged actively with civil society groups and developing country government policy makers in the evolution of sustainable development principles and actions since the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Among her current research and advocacy work are issues related to trade and investment, public health especially access to affordable treatment, ecological agriculture and farmers’ rights. She is also on the Board of International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia-Pacific (IWRAW-Asia Pacific), and the Executive Committee of Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth, Malaysia).
Ana Di Pangracio is a lawyer (University of Buenos Aires 2005), specialized in Environmental Law (Argentine Catholic University 2010). She has a postgraduate course in Gender and Law (University of Buenos Aires´s Law School 2020). She was granted a semester exchange scholarship by the Linnaeus-Palme Program (MSc. Environmental Management and Policy at IIIEE-Lund University 2010) and she is alumni of the International Visitor Leadership Program of the US State Department (2016). She has fifteen years´ experience working on socioenvironmental matters. Since 2010 she is Biodiversity Coordinator at Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN), based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Since 2013 she is also its Deputy Director. She is a member of the CBD Women’s Caucus and takes part in the CBD Alliance (an NGO participation mechanism and network within the CBD process). She also follows regional processes such as the Escazú Agreement on access to information, public participation and justice in environmental matters in Latin America and the Caribbean. She is currently an elected IUCN Councillor for South America and Mesoamerica 2021-2025. She is a member of IUCN´s WCEL, CEESP and WCPA. She was President of the IUCN South American Committee 2017-2019 and Coordinator of the Argentine IUCN Committee 2015-2021. She was Vice-President of the Forum for the Conservation of the Patagonian Sea 2016-2019. She has been a permanent and invited lecturer at the Law School and Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires, University of Palermo (Argentina), University of Salvador, the Argentine Catholic University and the Buenos Aires Technological Institute. Previously, Ana has worked for other NGOs and as an environmental consultant. She is an avid birdwatcher and naturalist.
Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, an expert group member with the International Taxation Task Force (created at COP28 and co-chaired by France, Kenya, and Barbados), and serves as senior advisor with Power Shift Africa. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Kaboub is an expert on designing public policies to enhance monetary and economic sovereignty in the Global South, build resilience, and promote equitable and sustainable prosperity. His recent work focuses on Just Transition, Climate Finance, and transforming the global trade, finance, and investment architecture. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023, published by the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development). He has held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute (NY), the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift Africa (Nairobi), and the Center for Strategic Studies on the Maghreb (Tunis). He is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya and is working on climate finance and development policies in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter @FadhelKaboub and you can read his Global South Perspectives on substack where he blogs regularly.