[act-ma] TONIGHT (4/18): Climate Change: The Right Focus to Tackle our Civilization Crisis: MIT 4, 237

[Kavita Sukerkar]

*** Climate Change: Right Focus to Tackle Our Civilizational Crisis ***
with Nityanand Jayaraman, presented by Association For India's
Development (MIT, Boston and Metrowest chapters)

When: April 18th (Thu), 6.30pm
Where: MIT Building Room 4-237
FB Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/319376312059143

About the Speaker:
Nityanand Jayaraman is a writer and researcher based in Chennai,
India. He investigates and reports on corporate abuses of environment
and human rights, and is part of an anti-corporate collective called
Vettiver Koottamaippu (Collective). He recently won the Franco-German
Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law in 2018.

Across the country, people are rising up to protest against certain
kinds of ‘development’ — for example,farmers are mobilizing against
the bullet train, and indigenous people are fighting against the
opening up of forests for mines and dams. Although these fights may
have positive consequences for the climate, they have never been
explicitly about reducing the kinds of greenhouse gas emissions
associated with ‘development’. Rather, they are about how we relate to
the lands that sustain us and who gets to define ‘development’. Even
today, agrarian and indigenous cultures acknowledge the importance of
open, unbuilt spaces.

Far from advocating for pristine nature or a hands-off approach, open
earth economies emphasize management, transformation and value
extraction through activities that do not kill the proverbial goose
that lays golden eggs. The opposing and dominant world view of the
‘developmentalists’ is predicated on the value of built
infrastructure, and requires the constant colonization of open land.

What is desperately needed at this moment is a manifesto for the
protection of the commons and open lands, and for the re-creation of
economies that derive value out of healing wounded landscapes and
covering open lands with diverse vegetation, water and life. For this,
we need to defer to the Constitution and ensure that those who are
challenging ‘development’ projects like the bullet train can speak
without fear.

Source: http://www.conservationindia.org/author/nity