Events

About the Event

Our lands, waters, and bodies carry the layered scars of colonisation, extraction, and broken promises. We inherit more than land — we inherit unpaid debts and silenced histories, carried not only in archives but in our bloodlines, in the songs, struggles, and silences passed down to us. From the rice paddies of displaced villages in the Philippines to the coal mines of Indonesia and the oil pipelines of Canada, from Palestine’s besieged farmlands to the industrial corridors of China, our ancestors bore the first wounds of stolen labour, poisoned soil, and stolen futures.

To be present to this inheritance is to feel the weight of unfinished work. It is to recognise that repair cannot begin without truth-telling, atonement, and the dismantling of the systems that continue to harm.

In conversation with Lisa TilleyLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (Department of Development Studies, SOAS), whose work explores key sites of colonial/capitalist expansion – the plantation, the mine, the smelter, and the city – and the intersections of race and political ecology, Mohammed UsrofLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy) whose advocacy links climate resilience to the struggle against occupation; Joy ReyesLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (Manila Observatory) who has worked at the forefront of climate litigation in the Philippines and beyond, Sahar ShahLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (Bristol Law School) whose work unsettles the law and colonial narratives of extraction in Canadian tar sands and Anil Yilmaz-VastardisLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (Essex Law School) whose work challenges the complicity of corporations in the climate and environmental crisis — we ask:

• When harm is both historic and unfolding, what does atonement require from those who benefit from it?
• How do we unmask and refuse the ‘false solutions,’ carbon trading, toxic exports, green growth narratives and cultivate alternatives that are rooted in sovereignty and reparative justice?
• What would it mean to treat repair not as charity or corporate responsibility, but as a binding, transnational, intergenerational debt to transform the systems that make this harm possible?
• What legal pathways and non-legal pathways can be used to seek these reparations and accountability?
  
  

Together, we will explore what it means to tend the circle; to commit to the restless, patient, and global work of justice, where being present is both inheritance and responsibility.

Moderators: Jodi-Ann WangLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (Oxford Department for International Development) and Celine Tan (Warwick Law School).

This event is organised with the Warwick Network for Equity and Exchange in Climate Governance and Strategy (NEXUS)Link opens in a new window.

The event will be followed by a networking meeting for climate and environmental governance researchers from 2pm - 3pm.

For further details, please see here.

Image by Ahmet Sali