 Hello and welcome back to SoA's Global Challenges Forum. This event will focus on how COVID-19 has impacted climate change. Our speaker is Esther Stanford-Cosey. Esther will talk for about 20 minutes. We'll follow that with a Q&A, and please do submit your questions in the chat box. And then we will put some of those questions to Esther, to see how many we can cover in the time we've got. We are recording the event and sharing it. Please do use the SoA's and SoA's alumni hashtags to discuss or follow the event. That's hashtag SoA's and hashtag SoA's alumni. Our speaker, Esther, is a reparations legal expert. She's an interdisciplinary scholar activist. Her disciplines are both legal and historical. She's a public speaker, author, a PhD candidate researcher at the University of Chichester. And she is co-founder of Extinction Rebellion's International Solidarity Network. I'm Dr. Harold Hubarm. I'm a senior lecturer in global energy and climate policy, and I convene SoA's master's degree in this space. I'm also the deputy director and co-founder of our Centre for Sustainable Finance. So without further ado, I'm going to hand the floor to Esther, who will speak for the next 20 or so minutes on how COVID-19 has impacted climate change and the climate change debate. Esther, over to you. Thank you. Greetings, everyone. Yes, so it's good to be here, although I can't see anybody, but hopefully you can see me and hear me good. So, okay. So in terms of trying to answer this question, how has COVID-19 impacted climate change? I would say that my response might not be the typical response because I could answer this in a very conventional way, in a very political way, which is what you would probably find if you were to do any basic research yourselves. But what I want to also focus on actually more so are the politics of COVID-19 and its impact on climate change. So we know that for us in Extinction Rebellion International Solidarity Network, which is what I'm representing here today, and this was founded as a partnership between co-founders of Extinction Rebellion and also African heritage community campaigns, such as the Stockholm and Gamese Recharge Genocide Ecoside campaign. It's important for me to say a little bit about who we are as XRISN so that you understand the perspective that we share. So we have a mandate, as do many XR groups, and our mandate as XRISN, as we refer to ourselves by acronym, is to foster mutually cooperative and beneficial connections with people from existing communities of resistance on the front lines of the climate and ecological crises in both the global south and the global north, who are working on environmental justice so that these perspectives of such communities of resistance get represented throughout XRUK, Extinction Rebellion UK, and also that there is two-way learning between XRUK and people from such communities of resistance. So the perspectives that I'm going to be sharing are really from such communities of resistance who are disproportionately impacted, not only by the incidents of COVID-19 and especially when we're talking about Indigenous peoples, but also climate change. So we're going to focus a bit on the politics of that. And what I would say is important for looking at the answer or in attempting to answer how has COVID-19 impacted on climate change. It's important to recognise that there has been what we in XRUK then refer to as, you know, it's important to look at this question within the eco-fascist politics of COVID-19. And so then it doesn't just become a clinical issue of health, including the health of humans and so our planetary health, but it also looks at the power relations that structure those incidences of, you know, not only disposition but also who gets affected by COVID-19 and what the responses, global responses in terms of governments and corporations are. So for us, we're seeing, and this is what we are reported, this is what has been reported to us by our communities of resistance in the global south. And just to state, we have three partner networks as XRUK has said. One is in Abiyala, so-called South America, and that is called XRUK. We have a global South partner network in Africa based in Ghana, and that is called XRUK, the XR All-African Affinity Network. And we have a partner network in Asia based in India, and that is known as XRUK, the XRUK Affinity Network of Asia. And for those communities that we are working with on the ground who are feeding back to us, what they're saying is that we are experiencing an intensification of not only genocide, the ecocide for such communities who continue to be dispossessed, but also in terms of state responses to tackling COVID-19. We're seeing responses that are disproportionate, increasingly militaristic, and what they have argued is empo-sacist. And so really what I wanted to touch on is the root causes of what we're seeing as the weaponisation of pandemic, such as COVID-19, but also others in terms of the deployment and perpetration of crimes of genocide and ecocide against peoples of the global South. And the root causes of such are colonialism and the increasing coloniality of power, which continues to dispossess indigenous peoples, African heritage peoples, Asian heritage peoples, of not only their land and their resources, but also their power. And this is important because when you have populations that are dispossessed, it means that they do not necessarily have the internal mechanisms to resist what we're seeing in terms of the increasing pandemic, which are of zoonotic origin. So that is really my starting point. And what we know is in terms of COVID-19 and other zoonotic diseases, these are diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites that spread from animals to humans. And we know that they can be transmitted through direct physical contact by air or water, or through an intermediate host like insects. So often these zoonotic pathogens do not just affect the animals in which they reside, but they can also represent an enormous risk to humans who have not developed a natural immunity to them. We know that 96 out of every 10 known infectious diseases are transmitted by animals and the staggering 75% of new and emerging diseases detected in the last 30 years originated in animals. And these zoonotic diseases have been a significant contributory factor for all recent outbreaks and pandemics that have proven not only our global human health, but planetary health. So COVID-19 is just one example of the rising trend of such diseases that have jumped from animals to human populations. And we know that other examples are Ebola, bird flu, what's known as Middle East respiratory syndrome, Rift Valley fever, severe acute respiratory syndrome, which is SARS, West Nile virus, Dengue fever, HIV, and even Lyme disease. However, the emergence of the coronavirus is not unrelated to the climate and biodiversity crisis that we are also experiencing. Now the loss of species habitats also increases the likelihood of novel zoonotic diseases as they are called. So climate change, so there's an impact in that climate change is a primary driver of many of the emerging zoonotic illnesses which originate in animals. However, as I've already emphasised in my introduction, the zoonotic transfer has been established in between animals and human beings is not just a thing that is happening now, it's actually been established centuries ago. So this transfer from animals to humans is far from new. It's a repetition of the old violences which have become new violences and dispositions of extractivism or extractivist plunder, as some of us would prefer to say, colonial expansion and also animal commodification. And this is very much connected to the rise of empire. Okay, so these violences continue to be and remain the spacious quo for which there has not been effective remedy or repair or even decolonisation. And why is this important? Because we see that those most impacted, as I said in terms of those that we work with on the front lines of the climate and ecological crisis are also the ones that have been impacted by these colonial dispositions that have, you know, affected their group of advocacy and ability to resist such zoonotic diseases. And what we have also seen is in terms of the continuum today, and in fact, within XRISN, we have a strong African heritage community contingent around the world, and there's a term that gets used as the Angame, it's a piece of the term, which means the African helicost. And what we have seen in terms of not only land disposition and land grabs, we know that forests, which are being disrupted, which are being impacted, are also being a part of, if you like, this extractivist plunder. But these same forests continue to play an invaluable role in combating climate change, maintaining healthy ecosystems, and also contributing to the prosperity and the wellbeing of not only contemporary generations, but future generations. So long as these resources are sustainably managed. But the politics of this is that powerful nations of the global north in particular have been able to implement their will through the misuse of law. And in this regard, it's important to recognise the dominant global legal order, which has legalised extractivist plunder and destruction of the environment as part of normal business approaches to so-called development, which of course has been contested by many indigenous peoples and peoples of communities of resistance in the global south. Now in terms of the drivers of climate change, it's easy, and we often hear, this is why I mentioned echo fascist responses, that while there's too many people and it's people in the global south who are having too many children and the whole population. But we know that that narrative is not only racist, but imperialist and colonialist. And it actually disregards the fact that the perpetrators, those who are responsible, are actually very few, especially when we know that it's just the hundred companies that have been the source of more than 70% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. So this is why it's important to talk about the politics, because if we don't talk about the politics, then we won't be able to get to the effective responses. And there's so many other studies that have been done. So a key part in terms of this, what is so-called development, which is really maldevelopment and the destruction of forests and natural habitats, we are then seeing this increase of zoonotic diseases. Now, this is significant in terms of the impact because about 1.6 billion people, including over 2,000 indigenous peoples, rely on forest for their livelihoods. They are also one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems that we have on land. And these forests are home to over 80% of land-based species of animals, insects and plants. Now, why I mentioned the colonial dimensions of this are that a century ago, only 15% of the Earth's surface was used by humans to grow crops and raise livestock. Today, more than 77% of land, excluding Antarctica, and 87% of the oceans have been modified by the direct effect of human activities. Now, according to a UN science panel, the policy platform by Diversity and Ecosystem Services between 1980 and 2001, 100 million hectares of forested land was converted into agricultural land in the tropics. And some 10 million hectares of forest about the size of Iceland across the world were estimated to have been lost each year between 2015 and 2020. Furthermore, according to a 2020 briefing, two pandemics at once COVID-19 and illegal forest activities by Dr. Fodja Lesionowska, who's actually based at SOAS, illegal forest activities from logging to mining metals across the world have increased since the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, especially in forest-rich communities and countries in the global south. Incites the results of satellite images and drones deployed by civil society organisations, which show a significant increase in illegal logging and other resource extraction activities, including poaching, endangered species and mining valuable and critical metals, especially gold and coal gold. For example, a total of 1,202 square kilometres of forest, an area more than 20 times the size of Manhattan, for example, was whitetail in the Brazilian Amazon from January to April of 2020. And from January to June of 2020, illegal mining destroyed 5,510 acres of forest inside conservation units and 2,510 acres inside indigenous territories. So, in my wrapping up, what I think is important to recognise is that the incidences and the intensification of more and more zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19 are being spread because of this demand for land and resource extraction. And it will only increase if we do not fundamentally change the way that those who are the most powerful actually relate to nature, but that also impacts on all of us. So, if we really want to tackle and look at the root causes of COVID-19 in terms of climate change and its impact on climate change, we have to be brave and courageous enough to tackle root causes. And the root causes look at not just the manifestations of the symptoms, but what has caused these symptoms and what we need to do to be part of repairing and redressing these historical injustices that impact on us today. And by way of the final comments that I think it's important to make, these communities of resistance that I've mentioned, and in particular that we in XRISN are working with, for them the solution is about repair, reparations, reparative justice, but holistic repair. Okay. Now, when the term reparations is used, it's often just reduced to financial compensation, but essentially repairing is about first stopping that harm, that harm that is continuing and that harm which many end up being complicit in. And it's interesting that I'm giving this talk today for so as because one of the things that I would say we've seen is that even in terms of the intellectual defense and justification for the continuation of this neoliberal extractivism, it often happens in so-called academic institutions. So there is a huge responsibility that knowledge producers have to be part of the solutions. And when I talk about holistic reparations, I'm referring to the process of repairing and remaking not only of the people that have been oppressed and experienced historical contemporary justice, but doing so because there is a recognition that those same people are in the process and practice of repairing, renewing and remaking the world. And it is that bold solution that we require, a remaking of ourselves, a remaking of the world, but also a remaking and a redressing and a repairing of how we relate to the natural environment. And we refer to Planet Repairs in Extension Rebellion International Solidarity Network as this global interconnected movement of movements to not only reclaim our humanity, okay, but also to restore rightful relations with our Earth Mother. And a key solution that Indigenous peoples themselves have been working towards that we must find ways of supporting is proper decolonization. And I don't mean the way that decolonization has been popularized in a lot of universities around the world that is disconnected from actually the struggle to not only revitalize, but restore Indigenous peoples' sovereignty as on American scholars actually argue. And true decolonization means an end to the settler domination of life, of lands, of peoples in all territories of the world where there have been colonized and dispossessed peoples. And it also recognizes that we owe a huge debt to Indigenous peoples' first nations of the world who for centuries have not only been resisting various forms of extractivism and extinctions, forms of extinctions, but have also shown the way in terms of how we can live more harmoniously with our Mother Earth and also all our living relations in a way that doesn't upset the natural balance that ends up impacting not only on our personal health, but our planetary health. Thank you. Thank you very much Esther for a very impassioned presentation. I will start off with a question and I would invite all of our attendees to write your questions into the chat please, I'm sure there's quite a few things that you would have picked up on the presentation or indeed other questions that you might have that Esther can speak to in this very broad and yet also very focused debate around not just COVID-19 and climate change but the much bigger discourse that Esther illustrated in her presentation here today. So I'm going to follow up on what you were discussing towards the end Esther in terms of the solutions and thinking through how to empower those who are powerless at the moment or who are most susceptible to COVID-19 to other diseases but not just in terms of health diseases but also the pressures of the world as it is and you pointed to a few examples of Indigenous peoples showing the way and then showing how things can be done because you have two debates where you've got the global discussion of power shifts and addressing these things and then you have the more localised discussion from the bottom up which also needs to happen. Perhaps you can illustrate some of these, some more examples of how you think this shift can be made real as we go forward into the 21st century. Okay. It's a very big question actually. Yes it is, yes it is. You know that's a really great question actually and I'm thinking about we need to recognise the big picture in terms of that framework and the structural dimensions of what we're talking about but also recognise what I would say are the local solutions that people are working on. So people are organising locally but they are doing so with a global perspective and recognising that the root causes of the issues that they are seeking to tackle and the particular struggles that they may be waging have global impacts and dimensions and you know many people have been hearing about the so-called Green New Deal and different variations of that and actually there was an alternative that was posed by indigenous American communities of resistance in North Abia and North America and they came up with something called the Red Deal and I'm pointing to this as an example because it has some principles that I think are very relevant here. So what they were kind of forming main pillars. The first one is to analyse, to assess, to be very clear on what creates a crisis cannot solve it. Okay. So that is in terms of the paradigms that we're working with. Okay. What creates a crisis cannot solve it. Secondly, it's about recognising that change must come from below and move it saying to the left you know whatever those changes are because in when we're talking about global challenges there's often the level of discourse is often above people's heads. They don't necessarily see how they can connect to it in terms of their own agency and what role they can play because the focus is on what government should or should not be doing and are not doing or what corporations are doing and so forth. So I recognise the power and the agency of communities who are communities of resistance but they are developing resiliency. They are finding alternative ways and modes of operation that kind of conflict with contravene and resist the dominant kind of hegemonic orders so that's important. Third, the principle around politicians can't do what mass movements do. So these global communities, which might be isolated detach from each other, but working in similar ways doing what they can. Okay. But also these communities link in terms of wider movements, whether we say global justice movement, environmental justice movement, social justice movement, reparative justice movement. And the fourth principle is about moving this conversation around the impact say of COVID-19 on climate from theory to action. So there's a lot of analysis around what the problem is and what the problem has been. There's not enough focus on what people can do and are doing and sometimes those are not big picture things. So that might not necessarily answer your question but I think for me it's a good starting point. And a key point, I mean this red new deal is, it's not to conflict with the green new deal but what it's saying is that the green new deal frameworks don't go far enough. We have to go beyond just a gradual sort of gradual reformist attempts to really looking at tackling and disrupting, undermining structures of power and domination, structural power and domination, the impact on communities and prevent them from exercising their agency. And also, you know, stopping extractivism. Yeah, we all the science, the science is out there, the indigenous, indigenous knowledges are out there, which, you know, and we know the harm that is being caused but yet business as usual. And I think for those of us who are citizens in these kind of countries, so called liberal democracies, we have to do more to hold our government supposedly and corporations to account. So, I mean I just take the specific example of say Africa the continent of Africa. And despite the fact that the British government is paying lip service to tackling the climate and ecological crisis what we're seeing is that a lot of trade deals are being signed right now that are actually having extractivism in not only Africa, but other parts of the global south so you know there was a report that UK taxpayers are funding African fossil fuel projects worth over 750 million pounds. In the UK Africa summit energy, most of the energy deals were in fossil fuels so this is the problem. As taxpayers as citizens as global citizens. We also have power that power is best exercised collectively, but there are things that we can each one of us do, whether we're lobbying whether we're joining campaigns whether we're joining movements, whether we're supporting activist groupings, and even NGOs and I think whilst many NGOs may do a good job. We can't just stop at the level of NGOs it's important to recognize that there are, you know, indigenous formations diaspora community formations organizations that are trying to build the alternative and I think our role is to help amplify the voices of those who are struggling on the ground who are giving us this counter narrative and look at how we can best support that for students those who are in, you know, producing knowledge. There's a huge role to play because as I said in my talk. There's a lot of intellectual justification and complicity of the ideas that get promoted around the world of what so called development is and so forth and I think everybody therefore has a role to play in terms of assessing how much are we part of the problem and how much are we part of the solution. I'll start with a question that ties ties into this that has come up in the chat about the steps that policymakers decision makers and the global south should take or can take to stop or help stop the spread of zoonotic diseases but also to push back against the things that you so rightly challenged and identified because often they might find themselves in again this is the question of powerlessness and power somewhat position. What can the policymakers do in those affected countries. So that's another interesting question and I think for me I have to look at it in two levels so they could there might be a tendency to just see. Okay, the whole of the global south is oppressed and you know just almost victims okay not to recognize the resistances, but it's also important in my view to to look at the complexities of the societies in the global south and to know that many of the people from below which is why those principles from the red new deal really resonate with me are trying to resist you know the extractivist policies of the so called national governments. But and so we can't absolve them that's the point that I'm trying to make in terms of responsibilities. Now if we look at these governments though outside of a context of recognizing neocolonialism and think well oh you have sovereign states or or what happened then we're going to miss the plot as well. Because what we see is that many of these governments are actually still locked into neocolonial relationships that dictate how they govern their societies. So what policy makers in my view in these global south governments need to do is they need to you know be on the right side of history or our story, they need to stop repressing and depressing populations, because as I said there is a direct connection between the way that power gets extracted, you know gets exploited and gets transported and utilized in terms of the neocolonial relationships and it becomes profitable to suppress those communities that are resisting land grabs that are resisting the private military contractors of corporations and actually are experiencing huge, you know violations of their rights and their people's rights as a result of doing so. So I think we have to compliment the complicate the discourse and the analysis and recognize that, just like I'm talking about complicity, you know, of academics or those, you know, within political agencia and also it's also important to recognize modern day complicity of some governments, policymakers, government officials in the global south, and that must also be resisted, because what we're seeing is, as I said, especially with COVID-19, they are imposing militaristic, militaristic responses to addressing a pandemic of COVID-19 that is trampling on the rights of their peoples, and the only answer that is being offered is take a vaccine. And when people are resisting lockdowns and so forth, that kind of power of the neocolonial nation state gets deployed against them in a very terroristic way that doesn't always or necessarily happen in the global north. So we have to recognize this nexus of power or the coloniality of power that is genocidal and ecocidal, and that some within our societies also profit from that. That's part of the analysis that I think needs to be introduced. There's a question around coming up in the chat around soft power and in soft power and climate negotiations that some countries in the global south have used quite successfully in EOSIS and at least developed countries or at least to an extent successful, of course, we're not where we need to be when it comes to climate change that much is obvious. But but you using this in the absence, perhaps, of having our power, if we define it in in those more traditional terms. I was wondering what what your thoughts are on this is using the soft power vehicle perhaps to get to a better place and then build on from there. Definitely, I think all of these approaches work. No one of them, not one of them in isolation will be sufficient. And within extinction rebellion, extinction rebellion has been advocating global citizens assemblies as well as forms of, you know, participate in democracy democracy from below from the ground up that are for me manifestations of also utilizing soft power that is not just state based, because ultimately the states and some of them still have you know relative powerlessness in terms of the global mechanisms of so called governance. And unless we can find ways to conscientize people's. Okay, because the states themselves cannot do it by themselves it's people's that have to be catalyzed in terms of ensuring that whatever resistance is they are engaged engaged in brings about the transformations in the societies that people want to see, but also tackles all of the incidences where this will be happening. And in certain of our, you know, home continents, but they're so expansive in terms of territories, as I said states themselves cannot do it by themselves I agree soft power is useful. But ultimately, what I'm trying to get across here is that it has to be what I'm advocating is a radical solution. And by radical what I mean is tackling things at the root, which is the root of the term radical, not cosmetic fixes, because people are dying right now, whilst in in the UK and other places that where they're declaring climate emergencies, they're talking about something that could happen 10 15 years ahead. What we're seeing right now is this intensification of global and genocide impact in all communities of resistance in the global south so where we see the destruction of our environment and the habitats. We also see the destruction of the peoples and the cultures that have sustained equitable harmonious relations as well. So where you get genocide, you also get ecocide. And I think we have to learn to be able to see the two together. I have a question in the chat around this transition to a low carbon future renewables. And I build out of, you know, not just wind and solar but also say electric vehicles and the batteries and the metals and minerals and this transition consumes an awful lot of resources and many of those resources which you I think refer to in your presentation as well our mind and extracted in the global south. Isn't it this strange situation we may find ourselves in that we want to address climate change through renewables and you know other technologies and yet we might exacerbate some of the things by doing so exacerbate some of the things that are so challenging and problematic that you flagged up in your presentation. How can we address this? Absolutely. So that is the point about extractivism and where if we think about that, you know, okay, let me start again. What we in XRISN advocate is a localization strategy. Yeah, so we don't just look at renewables in terms of us living in the global north. We also look at what are the impacts of the policy and so called solutions in terms of renewables. What are going to be the impacts of the communities where those minerals, resources that we're going to be relying on, you know, come from. Okay. And so a lot of and that's why I mentioned about the genocide and ecocide because in terms of, you know, dispossessing indigenous peoples of land that's still continuing. But these are what's called greenwash. You know, these are greenwash solutions, and we have to be able to to to recognize the distinction. And ultimately, there hasn't been true if there's not true decolonization, it means that resources are being pillaged, you know, plundered from the most disempowered and still oppressed peoples to to give us a sense of, oh, we're solving climate change. When really we're not we're exacerbating it for those communities, those peoples, those nations, those groupings, and not only those of us who are living today but you know for generations to come. And so it might seem as though it's, you know, pipe dream or pie in the sky, but decolonization, decolonization that is linked to abolishing forms of settler colonialism. Because who's whose resources are being utilized to create, you know, in terms of all the batteries for electric cars. Where is it coming from. Do we recognize the human and people's rights abuses that are going on in terms of indigenous communities who have traditionally live in particular areas where this mining is happening, where these forests exist, where deforestation is happening. That is what we have to grapple with that the very order I think of the global relations and how we've come to live on what has come to be considered acceptable is something that must be fundamentally transformed because it's broken. Yeah, so we can't have this piecemeal sort of, you know, fixes and think we're changing anything. So it has to be in tandem, and we have to be able to learn from have the humility to learn from and listen to what people are saying on the ground. Because a lot of this fossil fuel, you know, intensification that we're seeing is not being pushed for by governments in the global south or peoples in the global south I should say to be more precise. But it is something that is still very much a need for those in the global north who have a greater responsibility to stop this harm at source and to support those movements of resistance and repair and restoration and decolonization of communities in the global south. Yes, I suppose you referred to this earlier and quite a few times actually universities do play a role in setting this scene for this important debate to happen and the stage as well for the debate to happen not just universities of course it needs to go much Yeah, in terms of producers. Yeah, all levels. There's a key question here in the chat around and quite big question but as knowledge producers, how should universities best engage with proper decolonization. Okay, so I think it's important for universities to engage with original research with indigenous communities to learn not only about their resistance but also to support their own attempts to be part of repairing the harm. Okay, to learn because a lot of what we learn in these institutions. I mean that's why you have decolonize movements and I know so as I was one, but a lot of what we learn is still very filtered knowledge. It's not necessarily coming from the indigenous peoples and there are, you know, notions of knowledge democracy, recognizing the indigenous kind of pedagogical institutions of indigenous African Asian heritage communities in particular. And there has to be a recognition of a plurality a plurality of knowledges and I think even going beyond the model of what is a university to look at a multiversity these are some of the solutions that have been offered from the global south so the fundamental way that we come to engage with create and co produced knowledge has to change. And that can only come from a place of having academic humility to recognize that, you know, wherever we stand is a particular type of knowledge, but it must kind of come from a cognitive justice perspective and actually it's already been recognized that you cannot have global justice of any type without global cognitive justice, because the colonial project was also about dispossessing people of their rights and actually pushing a form of knowledge that legitimize conquest colonial plunder and extractivism. So find out what the real formations are within communities, learn from them, do this original research and establish community university partnerships that promote co production, and also models of research such as action learning, much more of that within the university setting as well those are some of the things that are already happening, but I think can be replicated and strengthened. So the question in the chat that follows on from this very nicely. It's about colonial histories impacting environmental sciences and shaping its future and the question here is what sort of questions should we be asking. Who should we be asking these questions for if you take environmental science but you of course you can also go beyond that and you can go into the social sciences. So once we know that we need to do things a certain way and approach them differently. What are the sort of in our research what sort of questions we should be asking if it's possible to. Yeah, so fundamental question is, you know, for me, it's recognizing it's also about the, what kind of research that we're doing because a lot of the research that happens in these type of institutions is very activist. Okay, so people go out they seek information, you know, from communities, and it's extracted, and then it's analyzed, and it's represented in a way that can get people whatever qualifications to get and you know, publish, you know, publications and so forth. So the questions for me are about recognizing what knowledge is and whose knowledge counts and recognizing the different types of knowledges that we might not even see as being knowledge that must come into play. So who is being impacted. Who is most impacted by the decisions, including the knowledge decisions that we make in terms of how we structure our research, and also how do such communities who are impacted. How can there be more equitable sharing and reciprocity as opposed to extractivist research. What are communities going to get as a result of, you know, even my advocacy of original research, what are communities going to be left with. What are the knowledge systems of such communities going to be embraced within institutions like so as. Yeah. But those are some of the fundamental questions that I think need to be asked. And, and there's a methodology that's called, I can't remember the advocate of it, but it's a sort of feminist methodology methodology that's called what's the problem represented to be. And what it does is it asks us to just keep going back. So, okay, if we're talking about COVID, what are the core, you know, what is the impact of COVID-19 on climate change. We can give a very clinical technological answer, but then we keep going back and asking why, how, who, but digging deeper and deeper in terms of what we think is the problem, who we think is responsible for the problem. How we think they're responsible for the problem on what we feel that whoever needs to do about it. I think a more general point that speaks to this I think is that in research we should aim to ask how and why questions more rather than only the what the what questions being able to describe what's going on but actually trying to figure out why these things are happening. That's not always easy research because it requires very, you know, in depth, working at the source to establish that causal chain, but it's, it's very valuable, valuable research going back to going back to the point on extraction of resources. There was a question in the chat, which I think speaks to both the global south and the global north actually, and it's about whether you think sustainable extraction is possible. Is sustainable extraction possible and really is any kind of extraction ever a sustainable in many ways. What can we do about that. What would that look like in your view. Sustainable extraction. Is that possible. I do not feel I personally don't believe that's possible. It does seem like an absolute absolute is for you. And it has been advocated that there needs to be much more consideration of notions such as fair and informed consent that is already there in terms of a right of indigenous peoples but not peoples who are not classified as indigenous peoples, communities themselves need to be able to be more in the forefront of decision making about how extraction happens if it needs to happen at all. You know, as opposed to this corporatization approach where a lot of resources get extracted and externalized. Okay, to another place where there's, you know, manufacturing or what have you done. So as a middle as a stop gap, it would have to be measures that can try and make the current system happening in a much more fair way. But ultimately, it has to be about stopping extractivism, because the harm you see that if we're just looking at ourselves as human beings that's one thing but then when we recognize and this is the thing about learning from and bringing back to our own selves, especially even those of us who come from communities in the global south and we're diasporas in the global north, we also have to rediscover our own ways and our people's ways and knowledges, because this type of extractivism did not happen. And even in the past I can speak especially as an African woman, when we wanted to take from anything in nature, there had to be particular rituals and prayers and supplications done, because there was a recognition that you would be upsetting the natural equilibrium. And this is where I think we're seeing in terms of the rise of indigenous nations and governance governments in South Abiyala, where they are going back to their indigenous nations and recognizing that Mother Earth, that, you know, sustains all our lives across our different nations has rights to. It's not just us as human beings. And our Mother Earth has a right not to be pillaged and plundered and you know, it's not just the bowels, you know, her bowels extracted, you know, and now in terms of mineral, you know, deep sea mining and so forth. It's just going to another level, and the mindset, you know, that indigenous people's mindset, African heritage communities, some of them referred to as a Yoruba mindset, that mindset we're seeing, you know, being externalized now to other planets that is talking about colonizing even Mars to get other resources after so much destruction has been done on Earth. And we must, we must, and this is why the struggle for repair is also about a struggle for re humanization. Yeah, re humanization where we actually can take stock of what we're doing and how we're living and at what expense. And, you know, we can't separate ourselves as humans from our environment because we recognize that all of nature is sacred. And that is how traditional indigenous peoples Aboriginal communities, African heritage communities, some Asian heritage communities have lived for millennia. But these are the ways that were, you know, deemed to be uncivilized. And, you know, people were miseducated to think that they were backward. And now, all of the global institutions and the UN, etc. And the government departments have come to acknowledge that we owe a huge debt to indigenous peoples and indigenous knowledge systems who have been leading the way for centuries. So, you know, the writings on the wall we have a choice about what our future will be. We have to make the right decisions, not just for ourselves, but for future generations because we are, you know, we are borrowing from the freedom accounts of those future generations. And just the last couple of minutes, a final follow on to what you've just said in a question in the chat asked whether there is time to reverse the damage or a way to reverse the damage and how. Now, of course, we know that much of the damage has been done cannot necessarily be reversed, but we have to find a new way, a new settlement, as it were. So perhaps trying to respond to that question. Do we have time to reverse someone when it comes to climate change when it comes to extraction and the impact on indigenous peoples and communities. And how do we go about that is not for two minutes. That's a very big question. Do we have time. We have to another two minutes. We don't we don't have time. We don't have time. But if I if I step into a mindset of African person as an indigenous person. So time is both past present and future at the same time. And that is why I can say we don't have time, because whatever we're doing now is actually confining or consigning some of us to to, you know, future, you know, interactions and, you know, impacts to our not only personal but planetary health that are going to be destructive for human beings as we know and human civilization, as we have come to know it. I don't want to leave people with that doom and gloom which is often comes because the way that indigenous peoples relate to this question is that we recognize that because our time structures are interconnected across generations that we know that we carry within the wisdom of the ancestors. And we in, you know, the African tradition we talk about San Cosa so we take the best from our past to now guide us in the kind of decisions we need to make now, and indigenous peoples of the generation's principle. So whatever we do now, we have to know that it will impact, or what impact question what will be the impact seven generations from now. And if we were to all embrace that kind of indigenous thinking. I think that we would recognize that there's a lot more that we can do and have to do in the here and now. It's a very powerful take on time as we are now out of time for for this session. I want to give you the final word sentence or two for the attendees that you want to leave everyone with in addition to what you've already already said and shared with us today. I think it's really important for those of you who are participating listening do more to engage with communities of resistance and we can do that even here. There's so many diaspora communities. That are connected to home, wherever home may be in the global south. And you know, don't be afraid to take that journey. Don't be afraid to have that academic humility to recognize that you can also be taught in a different way, and you can learn in a different way. And ultimately, think about the kind of impact and legacy that you want to live and how you want to be remembered in in history or in our story. That's my final comment. So internationally solidarity, which is what we advocate in the external international solidarity network of exchange and rebellion is key and solidarity is not about helping people it's about recognizing that we have a common struggle but people wage it on different fronts and in different ways. And collectively we can do our bit. Thank you very much, Esther. Thank you, Esther Stanford, and thank you also to all the attendees. Remember that you can follow the series using hashtags so as and hashtags so as alumni. This recording will be posted on so as YouTube channel and on social media pages so do feel free to watch it or to tell your friends about the event if they have an interest in this topic and really it is such a broad and important topic. We should all be thinking about about these issues. So thank you very much for the session, and this is it.