FRIDAY, March 4, 2022, 10:00AM – 4:30PM PST. ZOOM WEBINAR FORMAT
RSVP AT https://bit.ly/theenvironmentalfix
Concerned about the effects of intense drought, wildfire, and other extreme weather events on their ever more precarious ability to survive, the Middle East’s increasingly tumultuous natural environments have become a fixation for a great many people of the region. This awareness comes after decades of industrialized exploitation that saw the natural world as a source for valuable commodities (oil and natural gas), and where only the most serious effects were addressed. Recent years have seen the rise in innovative mega-projects that aim to solve environmental problems by utilizing technoscientific expertise in areas such as clean energy and water management. Many environmental activists have been dissatisfied with techno-fixes. They see the insufficiency such narrow goals in the face wide-ranging and interconnected environmental catastrophes. For them, market rationales like those declaring the golf courses of gated communities to be the “lungs of the nation” have become so entrenched that meaningful change may only arise through fundamental social, political, and cultural reorganizations.
Focusing on the interplay between academic research and public discourse, this conference invites participants to reflect on the extent to which the idea of “fixing the environment” has become a mere product of power relations within and between societies. What role can academics and activists have as activists as well as in addressing the growing social and economic inequalities of globalized capitalism? Do we have to accept the words of those who think that human life is only possible on this planet? Or could it be that the Middle Eastern societies, with their long histories and environmental exploitation and autocratic governance make them fertile ground from which real change might occur?
WELCOME| 10:00AM – 10:15AM
10:15AM – 10:30AM| 10:15AM – 10:30AM
Domenic Boyer, Berggruen Institute Fellow, 2021-2022
PANEL I | 10:30AM – 12:30PM
Discussant: Ciruce Movahedi-Lankarani, University of Southern California
Owain Lawson, Oberlin College, “Renewable Energy, Financialized Development, and Environmental Justice: Lessons from the Big Dam Era in the Global South”
Amir AhgaKouchak, University of California, Irvine, “Anthropogenic Drought and Water-Bankruptcy in Iran”
Ece Ceylan Baba, Yeditepe University, “Re-visiting the possibility of dystopic bio-diversity outcomes of the Canal Istanbul Project”
12:30PM – 2:00PM| 12:30PM – 2:00PM
PANEL II | 2:00PM – 4:00PM
Discussant: Onursal Erol, University of Southern California
Karen Rignall, University of Kentucky, “Utility-scale solar energy as lived experience: Land, procedure, and the local dynamics of renewable energy production”
Danya Al-Saleh, University of California, Los Angeles, “Petro-education: Fossil-Fueled Capitalism between Qatar and Texas”
Hamza Hamouchene, Transnational Institute, “Reflections on Just Transition(s) in North Africa”
4:00PM – 4:15PM| 4:00PM – 4:15PM
Domenic Boyer, Berggruen Institute Fellow, 2021-2022
WRAP UP | 4:15PM – 4:30PM