Climate Culture: Climate justice as the foundation of a sustainable future

The panel addresses the theme of Climate Justice, one of the most critical yet perhaps less understood dimensions of the challenges we face because of the climate emergency but also when devising equitable ways of implementing solutions to it.

Communities and regions that are hardest hit by the consequences of climate change and environmental degradation are often those that are least responsible and have the least capacity to counteract them. Responsibility for causing environmental damage and responsibility for responding to it should go together. Furthermore, climate change leads to the forced disruption and displacement of communities, and this will increase significantly over the coming years. This is one of the primary forms of climate injustice. Cultural organisations need to make climate justice a central dimension of their creative work and communication content, alongside operational changes and more general narratives related to the climate emergency.

The forms of industrial and economic modernity that led to the climate crisis were funded to a large extent by colonisation. Coloniality is based on an extractive system and has very often resulted in the suppression of local forms of knowledge related to the natural world and humanity’s place in it. As cultural actors, one of our roles is to give voice to these endangered cultural systems.

Solutions and reparations can only emerge through the collaboration of cultural organizations and artists with a diverse set of actors (local communities, civil society, states, intergovernmental organizations, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations).

Speakers
Hannah Entwisle Chapuisat, Curator, Displacement Policy Specialist and PhD Candidate, University of the Arts London
Giorgos Kallis, ICREA Professor, ICTA/UAB
Farhana Yamin, Environmental Lawyer, Climate Change Policy Expert and Activist
Baroness Lola Young, Forced Labour, Campaigner and Activist

Moderator
Christos Carras, Executive Director, Onassis Stegi