Event Tonight – Climate Café: Climate Refugees
Join us for an evening of conversation, learning and debate as we explore the relationship between climate change, refugees, and migration in our community and elsewhere.
- Nadia Abu-Zahra (International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa)
- Jay Drydyk (Philosophy, Carleton University)
- Sergio Guerra (Spoken Word Artist and Community Organizer)
- Franny Nudelman (English, Carleton University)
- Daniel McNeil (History & Migration and Diaspora Studies, Carleton University)
- Jay Ramasubramanyam (Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University)
- Chris Russill (Journalism and Communication, Carleton University)
- Moderated by: Justin Paulson (Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University)
All are welcome!
- Wednesday March 1st, 2017, 7-9pm
- Heart & Crown Preston Street, 353B Preston St. Ottawa
Organized by the Carleton Climate Commons. For more information please contact: ErinBaird@cmail.carleton.ca
Some questions that may be discussed this evening:
- Why do we need climate activists and refugee advocates talking to each other?
- In what ways are climate refugees similar to or different from other refugees?
- How does climate change intersect with other, more immediate causes of forced migration? (droughts, famines, and fires, but also interstate or civil wars, religious and ethnic violence, etc.?)
- The UNHCR notes that “Many of those who are displaced across borders as a result of climate change may not meet the refugee definition.” So what changes do we need to see in international law to make sense of climate-induced displacement?
- Do Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen have anything in common with regard to climate change? Is the refugee ban also a question of climate (in)justice?
- A common theme of discourses around the ‘refugee problem’ is that migration is a band-aid but not a solution: we need to fix the root causes requiring people to move. (Hence the establishment of refugee camps rather than permanent resettlement.) How does the figure of the climate refugee change how we must think about this? Do we need a permanent right of settlement?
- And when extended rights across borders, what of questions of indigenous sovereignty?
- How does climate displacement affect the availability of cheap/exploitable migrant labour? And how should organized labour respond?
- Many resources are being devoted to finding ways to adapt to climate change, whether through GMO crops or seawalls around certain low-lying parts of the world (like Manhattan). Who benefits from these, and who is being left out?
- Who gets to move in the first place? Who won’t have to?