Friday, 15 November: Terry Cannon-What’s wrong with the international politics (and economics) of climate change?

About the talk:

The climate crisis is at the intersection of two sets of injustice. The first is the obvious one,
concerning how “the West” has caused the majority of carbon emissions. These affect the majority
of people in the world who have played little or no part in causing it yet experience the worst of its
impacts – the first injustice.
The second injustice is strangely less obvious and hardly discussed. Most of those same people who
are badly affected by climate change are already poor and vulnerable. Climate change has not
caused that poverty but is then seen as an intensifier or magnifier of existing poverty, vulnerability
and inequality. But this avoids the need to analyse the causes of their longstanding poverty and
vulnerability, which are related to power that allocates resources and income unfairly. If climate
change is thought of simply as a magnifier of existing poverty and vulnerability, the causes tend to
be disguised and effectively forgotten.
This is very convenient for those who have power and who want to avoid accepting that they are
part of the problem. Governments of the ‘global South’ willingly emphasise the first injustice to
avoid taking responsibility for the second. “Donors” (including the World Bank, Asian Development
Bank) from the ‘global North’ join in this game. They do not want to comment on the causes of
poverty and vulnerability in countries that suffer, because of their alliances with the governments.
And yet it should be clear that dealing with climate change injustice without reducing or even
eradicating existing causes of poverty and vulnerability is completely meaningless.
So long as the international politics of climate change is regarded as about relations between
countries rather than a consequence of class and elite behaviour then it will be impossible to resolve
it, especially as we move from the goal of Net Zero to the next hundred years of Adaptation and Loss
& Damage.

About the speaker:

Terry Cannon is Emeritus Research Fellow of IDS, and honorary Professor at the Department of Risk
and Disaster Reduction at UCL. His research focus is rural adaptation to climate change in the ‘global
South’. He is co-author of one of the most widely cited books on vulnerability and disasters (At Risk:
Natural hazards, people’s vulnerability and disasters) and was lead author and editor of the
International Red Cross World Disasters Report: focus on culture and risk (Geneva 2014).More information will be added in due course

The venue:
The Elephant And Castle
White Hill
Lewes
BN7 2DJ

Tickets:
They are £5 and you can purchase them on the door or about a week before at the venue. Please note that the capacity of the venue is limited, we recommend buying the ticket in advance to avoid disappointment.