 Global Just Recovery Gathering. So hello and welcome to the first Global Just Recovery Gathering panel. It's absolutely titled Just Recovery for All to kick off this momentous event. My name is Agnes Hall. I'm the Global Campaigns Director at 350 and it's a real honour to speak with such incredible global thinkers today. Thank you so much for joining me. Before we get down to it, I want to introduce our highly prestigious panel. We have Hakima Abbas in Kenya. She is the co-executive director of AWID, which is the Association for Women's Rights and Development, if you didn't know. She's a global feminist movement, that's a global feminist movement support and membership organisation. She is also in the leadership of the Global Black Feminist Fund. We also have Amitav Ghosh joining from New York. He is an award-winning writer who holds two lifetime achievement awards and four honorary doctorates, which is pretty impressive to say the least. In 2019, Foreign Policy magazine named him as one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade. We also have Naomi Klein joining from Canada. I feel she needs little introduction, but just to say she is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author. We also have Dominique Palmer joining us from the UK. Dominique is an organiser within Friday to Future International and is the launch coordinator for Climate Life. She is featured on the Forbes 100's leading UK environmentalist list for her work. So thank you so much again for being here today. Honestly, when the 350 team asked me to moderate this panel, I was overjoyed. Thank you for taking this opportunity. So let's get down to 350. So to preface that, this last year has been a truly difficult year for people around the world. It has been very difficult for people around the world to be able to organise in the way that we used to in movements. And many of us, kids and children, are loving it. So today we are going to be taking into account not just what the country looks like, not only taking into account the COVID crisis, but also thinking how can we use the health, economic and economic crisis. So Naomi, I wanted to turn to you and say, I've just read your book, How to Change Everything, which is a really thoughtful book about how young people can take action on climate change. How do you think that the moment of the global climate has changed? And how do you think it changes? How do you think it would have pleasure to be on this amazing panel and I can't wait to hear from these brilliant thinkers and viewers? How do you think these brilliant people around the world? But I think, I guess, where my mind goes, I think my thoughts come from Stanley Robinson wrote early on in the pandemic, which was that we're so off script right now that one has been writing a novel together. And I think it's really, it's also really about that. In the sense that we are, like a change of change. And not just about climate change, but we, the planet has this bodily experience of rapid transformation. And so, you know, I think as we all know, a lot of what we're up against when we, when we call for change on the scale that are interlocking and intersecting crisis demand. We call for changes on a scale of capacity, of maintaining an ideal. Most people will say that it's not possible, that it's too big, that it's too fast, that it holds up. How can we do things faster? How can we change things? I don't say a change in everything in general, but how can we change things over time? And now in an economic area, in a, in a big, rapid scale. So what should that be like? Can I think COVID has affected the economy? It has kind of died everything. A diagnostic tool that we have to change. It has to have, it has a diagnostic, but COVID, it just came and destroyed everything. It has to have a way of taking care of it. What was the message that COVID sent to us? A change has to exist at this exact moment. It has to have a continuity, a change so that it can happen. Dominique will participate in this conversation today. What kind of changes that can, that can happen in this kind of health, so that there are differences. So how do you see that happening in the world and what do you think needs to be done to support young people? What do you think, Dominique, that can happen so that, so that there is a change and we can also give support to young people? Yes, thank you very much. I am very interested in helping young people to change. It is a crisis that is taking place in a place. I live and I grew up in a very difficult area in London and where there is a lot of difference with people of color. And the next, by this crisis, evolution is just one factor that significantly affects health and is so interconnected to this crisis. This crisis threatens our lives, water, livelihoods, which are already being disproportionately impacted by this. And those marginalized people, for example, we know how the crisis also causes harm in the form of disaster. It is making a disaster, it is a threat to the world, to people. This is happening. All these problems are exacerbating and there is a crisis in the world. It is also a psychological crisis and it is having a very big impact on young people. These marginalized communities could be left behind and left in the most vulnerable positions. And so we need to have a just transition that protects people and the planet. And as young people, we are calling for concrete action plans that include an account for climate and environmental justice. Poor communities are having very serious problems, how to develop and do to continue to grow. And this is a crisis that has to be cured now, that has to be resolved. And that implies that all people deserve the right to a healthy environment and that we need to have equity in our solutions because without it we have no solution. And so policy must be based on climate justice that addresses the interconnected aspects of the climate. And so we need to organize the climate in order to protect marginalized communities and the text workers. And that places the well-being of people, the destruction of the profit. Young people need to be engaged in the climate, we need climate reparations for those who are most vulnerable. The importance of the climate, the people who are vulnerable to this. Indigenous communities and Native peoples must have their rights protected and their practice is respected because this is key to protecting our biodiversity. It is the key, it is where we are going to solve the problems. Taking care of our climate, we need to be educated, take care and teach what is happening with the reality of the climate in the world. Thank you very much Dominique. The need for inclusion and the things that we need to help solve in the world. The people who are on the front line of the community. Amitabh, I wanted to turn to you and say, I think one of the things that we actually struggle with or we can struggle with is to try to change. When we think about seeing a big painting about this, it is difficult to understand what is happening. It is difficult to analyze what is happening in the world. And that is why people don't understand what is happening with this. You could think in a way, in a way where people could visualize what is happening. Well, let me say first of all what a pleasure it is to be on this panel with all of you. I mean it is just so interesting to listen, just listening to what you are saying. It is very interesting to hear what is happening and what Dominique said. I think imagining an alternative is very difficult in many ways. Imagining an alternative is very difficult. I mean we seem to be sort of trapped within this kind of situation. It seems that we are tied to the situation that is happening. One of the lessons of this time is if you think about if Bolsonaro has done and is doing everything possible really to turn the Amazon into a kind of new Midwest. Bolsonaro is doing everything to turn the Amazon into a Midwest, but he hasn't been able to do that. The biggest part is because Brazil is taking account of it, because there is Greenpeace, there are other things where they are preventing him from doing it. He has taken many regulations, but he hasn't been able to do everything. We have to prevent companies from continuing investing so that this kind of thing happens. It is so incumbent upon all of us to try and imagine alternative ways of living. It is very important that we imagine an alternative way of living. In the last 8 or 10 years, I have had a lot of inspiration with what people have done. I visited many occupations, places that are occupied. And people are having other ways of living. They are creating resources for work. I have only read about the Node APL movement. I know that Naomi has been there. I think that they were trying to do was to demonstrate a different way of living. So it wasn't just a protest in the normal sense. They were performing something. They were performing a different way of life. There has been a different way of living, and many of the movements that I have seen are creating and preparing a different way of living. People are trying to make the world better. Activism is very inspiring. We need action on all kinds of different issues. We need action on all kinds of issues. We need action on all kinds of issues. We need action to try to usher in new kinds of justice. That requires imagination and thinking in that creative vision. People have to have a better imagination. And other ways of living for women to do justice. Women have to have the right to do justice. about the recovery. And is there anything you think we can do to recover the recovery? And I'd like to start by looking at research here on labor and the many other women who died defending land and territory and the earth. And I really start to think about the world. This problem is not abstract, it exists. I know that the recovery happens when we breathe, when things happen. Recovery for me today is only a way where people unite in the East of Africa and work together and work as a society. During this pandemic we all saw the fragility of society and chaos. And we saw how it happened, how it is happening, the increase in violence over women. The transformation is necessary politically and economically. We have to define the wealth as a relic that we have and that has to be distributed. I am from Africa and I have a systematic system that develops everything in Africa. We need to do the part of canceling this, with which this stops happening. I love what you said about the centrality of chaos and about production. We have talked about this and I hope to think that now we are going through a moment of... that we are going through a moment of... that we have to learn and that we have to... to the climate crisis is not going to just be better than a future of apocalyptic breakdown that you saw in a sci-fi movie. It's better than Tuesday. It's tangibly improving daily life with things like free public transit and green, beautiful community-based public housing or affordable housing on a commons model. And so giving people the experiences to say, you don't have to be afraid of this because we have been up against these talking points from the fossil fuel industry for so long that I told people if we act on climate you will lose your job. Your life will be terrible. So we need to give people those experiences and we have this opening, this opportunity. If we fail, then the planet hackers and all of the techno solutions in the Bill Gates model enters into the people's fear and panic and says, you have the magic bullet, right? But I actually don't believe that hacking the sun is a more appealing solution than... I don't believe that... I don't believe that we are talking about a beautiful future where those things are in a better way. I believe that we are receiving energy from other people, from our friends. What Kima said is important that we say that it's very important that we recognize now that we don't need to work with green areas. We need to create where we need to take resources of energy. If anybody can hear me, I have no sound, absolutely no sound. I cannot hear anything. Kima also pointed out about the psychological crisis, the mental crisis. And it's very important that we work with this. Things that we take care of and we let go of during this period. Now we have to return to taking care of what is normal. People are always gathering, they are always missing the future we are talking about. The future we are talking about is what gives people an idea. It's that they have the experience of doing something. Before something that is not normal comes and goes and ruins us and makes this all happen again. We have to learn about this. I hear what you are saying about these half fates, compromises and solutions. I hear what you said about the compromises we have to have and the solutions. The West has come to rely on what you call the first discourse from scientists and that the West of the world has to recognize what is going on. The countries that are more advanced have to understand what is going on. What challenges do you think the whole solution is particularly posed to us and the climate issues at this time? I really think it's been a problem for the climate discourse that it comes out of such a narrow sphere. Almost everything that's written out about climate comes out of western academies, think tanks. Everything that comes from the West of the world comes in a very small way. People talk very little about this. There's not much dialogue about this. It's usually a disaster. There are people who have to walk 10, 5, 10 miles to get water. I don't understand why this keeps happening. The fact that things happen in such a small way that people don't want to talk about it. Many agencies know that in Africa, in other countries, the climate is changing. It's changing for a long time and not for them. One of the reasons why these speeches are very easy is because they don't mobilize a large number of people. There's a great example about this. Constantly people are washing away the clean conscience. There's this mentality. The mentality of keeping things and having a sense of building away from the ocean area. Activists of the climate. Please, please, I was just going to invite you and Dominique to please feel free to build. I really wanted to build on what you just said about the round. I would like to add more on what you are talking about. The majority of the solutions have been to do part of the clean mentality of keeping things in order. In Africa, you remember China, where there's no alternative to capitalism. 90% of women are based on the so-called low economy. The minimum percentage receives the largest amount of money. When we talk about people involved in other markets, can we say that there is an alternative? We live this alternative every day. And once again, I lost the sound. Gone. I think there are ways that mutual aid, solidarity, co-operation, show up. So I think there is solidarity, and maybe we can do something together. The situation of our culture now is this big problem that is happening. I want to do a better way where people can work properly. My job is to maintain the centrality and make the revolution irresistible. I would like to talk now about the movement. I understand that a lot of the time, it almost like a gate keeps people from coming into the movement and makes them feel as if they have nothing to offer. When in reality, for a just recovery, it is so essential that we have the perspectives from all of these people. And yet that's being stopped because those in power who want to keep the system want it to stay like that. They don't want these kind of new perspectives to come in. They don't want that radical thought process to happen and they don't want change to happen. So building up this grassroots movement is so crucial that we have those different perspectives when it comes to solutions and when it comes to a just recovery. And I often find that these kind of false solutions are always staying within the narrow western boxes as has been mentioned. And it's so ridiculous to even consider that we can solve this crisis the same way that we got into it. For a just recovery, we have to completely reshape this and greenwashing to me is just it's straight up lying. It's just complete deceiving. And we that is one of our biggest challenges that we really have to get over because one of the ways that we're going to even push for a just recovery is by having mobilization is by having more people and is by having those perspectives. The way that we're going to be able to do this is by putting more people working on this. We have to stop people so that they can understand and so that they can do that. People in general don't understand how to communicate. They don't understand how to connect with that part of creating a clean area. The movement. We have to have a movement and mobilization so that it can be just we're not going to solve this crisis and this recovery. On the contrary, we have to put that barrier. It's not going to happen. This is never going to stop. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for all this conversation and these excellent solutions. But we do have to wrap up shortly. We have to stop now. You can just go ahead and jump in. But my final question is in many ways, of course, the pandemic has been incredibly hard on people around the world. My question is, in many ways, this pandemic has hit the world. What message would you send to the world now? My message is that the benefit of such an incredibly hard time now with people watching this, even people going through this difficult time, and people are exposed to the fabrication and the foundation of society, I would like us, the Unites, to remember the world better, for a better future. From the moment we come together, from the moment we act in the past, things will be different. History is not just something that has to happen. We have to be able to make a change. As people, in general, we have a great power when we unite as people. Now is the time. One thing I would like to say now is that even we are against enormous forces, we have a time to put our actions together. We have to have control. It's necessary, it's important to remember that there has to be a change. When I wrote these changes and everything, this changes everything. In 2014, there was a transformation about capitalism, about white supremacy, and a response to a better world, that this world was already happening in different countries in South America. It was treated as if what I was saying didn't exist, without a nexus. I couldn't imagine a future like this. I couldn't imagine, and even a campaign by Bennett Sanders. You have to remember, we are changing too. We are changing. It's never too fast, it's never at a speed that we can do the necessary actions and that the generations can be so... We are clear about not wanting the compensation, the police, the border and that kind of thing. But insisting that we should reach the roots of the problems and react to the crisis in the way we should. Hollywood made a mistake when they had this vision of the future and things started to disappear. I see the future where people can leave the streets and all the zombies. And during the pandemic, people left the house. And instead of that, I saw people leaving the house to participate in the Black Lives Matter, the Black Lives Manifestation. If I can add something about that, during the pandemic, there were some hopes for the world. The way of thinking about people, the relationship between progress and the world. The pandemic showed that there were good actions and good things that happened. A lot of things happened, including the area of the people who fought for the protection of the grassroots. We have to continue pressuring people at this moment. To change the way the world changes, to take care of women more. In all the countries of Africa, regardless of all the atrocities that have happened with the green areas, we have to continue taking care of the world. Thank you very much for participating. That's fantastic. And I think things up in their own way. I hope that everyone will continue fighting and continue with high energy so that all of this continues to happen. And we continue fighting. I really enjoyed this conversation today. I hope that you and your family will continue to be here for so many people. It has been a very difficult year for many people. And I hope that people will have inspiration to continue fighting and continue doing things.