ASHLEY DAWSON

ASHLEY DAWSON

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Author of Environmentalism from Below (Haymarket 2024) · Extinction: A Radical History · People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons · Professor of English at the Graduate Center / CUNY and the College of Staten Island

The message is that indigenous sovereignty is connected to the preservation of biodiversity. And right now the statistics are really shocking on so-called protected areas, which currently constitute 17% of the planet. And the goal coming out of that Montreal conference for the biodiversity crisis last autumn is to roughly double that amount of protected areas, right? So the slogan was 30 by 30. 30% of the planet in protected area status by 2030. So we're really talking about massive expansion of protected areas. But within protected areas themselves, according to recent reports, only about 1% of the land actually has indigenous sovereignty. There are other arrangements like co-management, for instance, or indigenous people who are kind of encouraged to see their claims to conservation organizations with the guarantee that it will be protected and they'll have access of some kind. But, you know, as some of the indigenous activists who appeared at this conference and who are in the Decolonize Conservation! book said, they don't like the idea of co-management because it's essentially colonialism. They want control of their land.

NAOMI ORESKES

NAOMI ORESKES

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Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science & Affiliated Professor · Earth & Planetary Sciences · Harvard University
Co-author of The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government & Love the Free Market

I think the word consortium is a good word. It's not a conspiracy, although at times it takes on conspiratorial elements, but it's a kind of network or consortium of people who are working over a very long period of time, going back to the early 20th century to build an ideology that basically says we should trust the marketplace. That markets are not merely an efficient way of developing and delivering goods and services, but that they're actually playing a crucial role in protecting political freedom, protecting political democracy, and they build that story in order to persuade people that government regulation of the marketplace, whether it's to protect workers, consumers, or the environment - even though it might seem attractive superficially - what they're saying is: yeah, but don't be fooled by that because it will actually undermine freedom and democracy. And it's a very clever move because it takes what is initially a self-interested defense of the prerogatives of the privileged, the prerogatives of the captains of industry, and turns it into a seemingly virtuous defense of democracy. And, of course, who wouldn't want to defend democracy?

BRITT WRAY

BRITT WRAY

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Author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis
Broadcaster and Researcher Working on Climate Change and Mental Health

I think the general waking up that I'm seeing around me in so many different parts of society, people from all walks understanding that this is here, it's not a future threat. It's active now. We need to get smart about addressing it. A lot of people are also asking themselves how can I be of service? What can I do at this time? How am I going to be? And you know, the more climate job boards and networking communities and sites of bringing people together to do that work of figuring out how they're going to go on their climate journey while infusing it with a sense of joy, with a sense of how can we make this fun, right? How can we reshift so this is not just focusing on the negative, but really focusing on what we want to be building and what is abundant and the better life that we're working towards? All of that has been popping up a lot and that gives me an honest sense of hope. So a lot of it is about that relationality, creating conditions of solidarity that bring a sense of stability and security. Even though there's a lot of uncertainty about what the impacts will be and how they're going to affect us, each and every one of us, in the decades ahead. There needs to, amidst all that uncertainty, be other things that can undergird a child and make them feel held, safe, secure, and like they belong to a protective community that's thinking and feeling with them through this.