Event Description
The Environmental Policy program and the Institute for Energy and the Environment present the first Annual Lecture on People, Policy and the Environment: Disruption, Community and Resilient Governance: Environmental Justice In The Anthropocene by Dr. David Scholsberg, Professor of Environmental Politics, Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney.
To date, the social science and humanities literature on the Anthropocene has been fairly devoid of considerations of justice. From wilderness advocates to ecomodernists, both critics and cheerleaders for the concept have failed to address the main issues facing the most vulnerable. The Anthropocene will bring two kinds of disruptions, both with justice implications. On the one hand, the slow violence of environmental deterioration, as Rob Nixon has called it, will continue to inequitably undermine the cultures, food, land, and health of vulnerable communities. Simultaneously, these injustices will also come quickly, in singular events like Katrina, wildfires, and heatwaves. The Anthropocene will encompass ongoing examples of both slow and evolutionary devastation, and punctuated disequilibrium and disturbance. The central argument here is that these disruptive impacts will primarily impact a key need and demand of environmental justice – attachments to community. In response to the current trajectory, however, there are reflexive, resilient, and reconstructive ideas coming out of the environmental and climate justice communities. Reflexive, resilient and regenerative practices, and hope for a ‘sustainocene’, are apparent in community discourse and practice.
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