CCI Conservation Seminar - Ashish Kothari, Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group, Puna, India.

Title: Radical Conservation and Well-being: Towards Justice and Sustainability

MONDAY 20th February 2023, 4 to 5 pm, Main Seminar Room, DAB

The world is going through unprecedented crises, including ecological collapse, climate change, growing inequality, war and conflict. There is an urgent search for ways to resolve these crises in ways that challenge the structures of unsustainability and injustice, including capitalism, statism and patriarchy, as also superficial or false solutions emanating from such structures. Both ‘development’ and ‘conservation’ have for long been dominated by top-down, centralized, western models that are often counterproductive in the global South. Are there radical alternatives to these, especially emerging from the global South? How do ecological and socio-economic issues like inequality and conflicts, relate to each other? What kind of political systems can help resolve these crises? Are there already ‘alternative’ pathways available to meet human needs and aspirations while protecting the earth’s essential ecological functions? Can human rights and the rights of nature be reconciled? This presentation will go into such issues, presenting real-life initiatives on the ground from India and other parts of the world, and frameworks of radical transformation emerging from these.

Online participants can join using the Zoom link below:

https://zoom.us/j/99292018362?pwd=MmJDNE4xdWVMeDZOQnRLQjlQcE56UT09

Drinks will follow in the DAB Common Room.

CCI Conservation Seminar - Ashish Kothari, 20th Feb 2023