Welcome to this afternoon of panel talks at Litteraturhuset as part of Masahat festival for Arab Arts and Culture during 20-25 September. The panel talks will discuss the fight for climate justice in the Arab world and its intersection with anti-colonialism and anti-autocracy struggles. The opening remarks will be given by Professor of Sociology and Human Geography Andrea Nightingale (Norway) followed by presentations by architect and researcher Areej Ashhab (Palestine) and journalist Aïda Delpuech (Tunisia). Concluding remarks will be given online by professor of anthropology Ghassan Hage (Australia).

Program 19.00-20.30:

• Opening remarks by Andrea Nightingale.
• Panel talks: Invading Nature: Trees as colonial agents in Palestine by Areej Ashhab; Economies of Extraction: Critical reflections on energy transition in North Africa by Aïda Delpuech.
• Discussion and Q&A
• Concluding remarks: Anti-colonialism and Anti-autocracy in the age of the Anthropocene by Ghassan Hage.
• Discussion Q&A

To read more about the panels and speakers, please visit: https://masahat.no/event/climate-justice-in-the-arab-world/

Photo credit Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Yngve Vogt/UiO

More about the panel talks:

• Invading Nature: Trees as colonial agents in Palestine
  This talk unravels the politics of land in Palestine through stories of pine trees. the Jewish National Fund planted large tract of pine forests to colonise Palestinian land, cover the remains of the destroyed Palestinian villages in the 1948 Nakba and materialise biblical imaginaries of the “Holy Land” as populated with Europeanised forests. These trees are very susceptible to wildfires and their seeds spread and disturb the natural and cultural landscapes in Palestine. This presentation examines how nature has been weaponized to fulfill the goals of the settler-colonial project in Palestine throughout the years.

 

• Economies of Extraction: Critical reflections on energy transition in North Africa
  This talk will address the concept of «just transition» while critically exploring the local realities of renewable energy projects in North Africa. By bringing concrete examples from recent projects implemented by the EU as well as Norwegian businesses in North Africa, this talk will ask who is benefiting from these projects? and what are their true environmental, sustainable and social costs and values?

 

• Anti-colonialism and Anti-autocracy in the age of the Anthropocene by Ghassan Hage
  It is sometimes assumed that colonialism and autocracy in the Arab world are primarily responsible for the extreme ecological degradation of the area, and as such, that the struggle against them is in itself an ecological struggle. In this presentation I want to suggest that, just as we cannot take for granted that resistance to colonialism and autocracy are free from sexism or racism, we cannot take for granted that such a resistance is ecologically friendly. Instead, oppositional politics needs to be subjected to a continual work of critical reflexivity that concerns the way the ecological crisis calls for a reconsideration of the way resistance is conceived and waged?