 Hello everyone, we were just waiting for a couple of minutes to allow more people to join, but I think they are joining as we speak. So I would like to kick off now, but that's okay. So welcome everybody to this really exciting talk. Our camp on fire, which is a really exciting title for today's discussion area, which is around the climate crisis, and its effect on refugees and the people who suffer most really. I would like to start with some introductions. Firstly introduce myself. I am a Palestinian writer and director. He grew up in the Gaza Strip in Palestine and currently living in London. I've moved here back in 2002 and I've been living here since then. I like very often because all my family are in Gaza. I've got today with me an exciting list of panelists who will speak to you about their experience and about their knowledge and research on the effect of climate crisis on refugees. These are Zayna, who is a Palestinian Iraqi poet and he has done a lot of work and research has got a massive bio by the way. A really exciting work that she's done before, including being a honor of Shabbat and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, amongst many others. I've also got with me here today, Hamza Hamouchi, who is a Nigerian researcher based in London. He's currently in North Africa and he's speaking to us from there and he's done numerous work on research on Africa and established the African, what is it Hamza with the African food program. He's the coordinator for the North Africa Food Sovereignty Network, which he will talk to us a little bit more about it. And last but not least, we have another presenter who is not with us today, but we will play his presentation as a video in a bit. His name is Mohammed Suleyman Labbat, who is an artist based in Samara refugee camp in Algeria. And unfortunately, he can't be with us in person because of power outage. He currently doesn't have any electricity at the moment, but we've recorded his talk and we'll play it to you later on. So what I'd like to do is just to start with a bit of an introduction kick off the conversation. This is a really relaxed kind of session in here and discussion point. And I would like to thank the Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival for putting it on in collaboration with creative discussions as well. Again, I'm sharing this event because it's really kind of close to my heart. When I was approached and asked to do it, I thought, wow, what a wonderful subject because I've been thinking about this subject for a long time. And I've had many conversations with people about the effect of the crisis on our community, on our society, and what is happening to our world right now. However, most of those discussions and conversations have always been kind of focused and concentrated on the kind of Western discourse of this crisis. Very often the climate crisis discourse is Western dominated somehow it's about what's happening in the UK or France or Europe or the US, etc. There is very little talk about what is happening to people in parts of the world where they're really suffering as a result of the climate crisis. And on top of that they're going through very difficult circumstances because of conflict because of political unrest because of difficult economies, etc. So it's really exciting to be able to engage with this conversation right now. One of the things that sort of struck me maybe a couple of years when the kind of debate on climate change and the climate crisis was kind of happening was a meme that was kind of circulated on social media of Greta Thunberg on a train somewhere in Africa. Somebody obviously Photoshopped it and edited it and as you look through the window while she's sitting on the train there are a couple of kids from Africa running trying to catch up with that train with kind of two vessels of water they're trying to fill the water in there. And it touched my heart to be honest with you because I thought, actually we should be talking about them more than Greta, for example, I'm not undermining all of her work I think it's been incredible and amazing. I've had this debate a lot with people about that that we don't talk enough about those communities that are affected enough. I am from Gaza, as I said, and from Palestine and the situation there is really pretty bad from a climate change perspective. And on top of that we have the occupation, the Israeli occupation where a lot of the time olive trees are being cut and uprooted across the West Bank, which is really disastrous for the environment in general. Cutting trees generally is seen as a kind of direct cause of climate change. We do this around the world because of economies because of industry because of capitalism whatever you want to call it, but to do it because of occupation and colonialism it's just something really disheartening to be honest with you and no one talks about that. Very often in the Gaza Strip as well the Israelis just open sewage water and flood the farmland and many natural habitats just die as a result of this act of just opening sewage water in there. The sea itself in Gaza is really ruined with sewage water as well that kind of opens up from the Israeli side, but also from the Palestinian side because there's nowhere else for that sewage water to go. So that's just an example of really the dire situation that many communities suffer under this important issue that we need to talk about. But I think this is enough from me around my introduction. I would like to start by handing over to our presenters. And I'd like Zayna first to just introduce herself and talk to you a little bit for about five minutes about her work, particularly in reference to the subject. Over to you Zayna. Well thank you Ahmed and thanks everyone for being here. I should open just by saying that I'm slightly worried I have internet issues so if for whatever reason I do please just flag it and I'll do some lateral thinking about how to resolve it. So, yes, as Ahmed said, I'm a writer and policy analyst and poet. And I've looked at the issue of climate change and discriminatory climate practices and limitations to adaptive capabilities in the Palestine context. So I've been always very interested in the way in which, you know, climate change or climate breakdown needs to displacement needs to immigration and then leads to the societal issues which, you know, drive so much of contemporary discourse and contemporary politics. So what I would actually might be nice or helpful, I don't know, is to read a poem out, and then perhaps answering the questions, more perhaps practical questions around climate change, which I've spent more of my academic side looking at. In the chat, you know, after these short presentations, but I'm going to open with a poem called Borderland, which I wrote the first time I went through. I went to Bengaluru on airport as a Palestinian. And, yeah, name, father's name, grandfather's name. You have curly hair. If I had a sister, I think she could look something like you. Where are you from. Tiberias. Oh, you're from here. No, sister, if I were from here, I would not be interrogated by you. If I were from here, I would not be a security threat. If I am from here, why were we moved from here. If I am from here, why can't I live here and if I am from here, why has it taken me 23 years to get back. Your colleague, my cousin asks me where I was going. The territories. I look through my phone, reads my emails, checks my contacts. She takes my cousin's name and his number. He is a rocky, and so is his area code, but he is a refugee in fortress Europe now he wrestled the purple seat and sit silent. She's also pretty long hair, a blue jumper behind her baby sits proud, half smiling at my homecoming and the flag clumsily large and my celebratory cell hangs limp and flaccid. I'm not interrogated in any protests. Do you know anyone here, their name, numbers. Have you been to Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan. When did you delete your Facebook, what are you studying what courses are you taking do you speak Arabic, why do you have an Arabic keyboard, because my mother wanted me to learn the language of my ancestors, and that we taught me that land is inherited like language, and my sister says I'm from here so please excuse my literacy. Can you keep any blogs. Can you show it to me. No, it's gone. She has pretty eyes to dark like mine I mirror her in my head. Why did you want to interrogate travelers. What was the army like. Have you ever been in love. Where's your grandfather from, is he from here. Have you ever been to Tiberias. Is it nice, although I am from here I cannot answer. Show me your blog. It's gone. You've been sincere with me right now. I had cocked sideways and I paused. What a weird word sincerity implies authenticity honesty and respectability. No, and neither are you. This is a game and we are well matched you can send me back home to my gray sky and imperial island but my sister said I'm from here and your questions degrade my home coming so please be reasonable. Be sincere. Winning is not entry and losing is not denial. Winning is staying free staying beloved. You cannot intimidate me scare me. You can detain me search me question me but my skull is made of stronger stuff. And if you'd ask my grandmother. I'd have told you Chesna. It means my skull is her treasury have had a knee edge. You cannot win against us. Or it said I poor slightly. I'm just going to pick up again. Hopefully that'll be fine. So I suppose I am your security threat. Sorry for that. Oh God, my mom needs to get off either the worst network. Yes, I have a very vulnerable identity negate your falsity and my family blasts to a rewritten history. I exist. And as long as I breathe your air this soil will not you. My sister said, I'll leave it there and I'd love to talk more about the technicalities of climate change in Palestine in the Q&A, but I just thought I'd open with that. Thank you. Thank you so much. Sorry about the connections. I think yet something technical is happening over there. But it's a beautiful poem. Thank you so much for sharing this with us. It really kind of goes to the heart of what we're talking about around the issue of displacement, which I will ask you about in a minute but before I do that, I want to hand over to Hamza. And I want to apologize to him because I mispronounced his name earlier. I said Hamushi, but it's Hamushin. I'm so sorry Hamza for this mistake. But yeah, over to you please tell us more about your research and your work in this area please. Thank you. Thank you for the introductions. I'm happy to be here to be sharing the panel with you and with Zayna. It's a shame that our Saharawee brother couldn't make it today, but hopefully we'll we'll watch his video later on. So my name is Hamza Hamushin. Actually not Hamushin. That's fine. I'm Algerian. Actually I'm talking to you from London right now. I'm a researcher and activist. I founded an organization called Environmental Justice North Africa. And I was a co-founder as well for the North African Network for Food Sovereignty. Currently I work as the North Africa program coordinator for the Transnational Institute that is based in Amsterdam. My areas of work vary, but I'll try to focus on the question of climate climate change or climate justice overall and try to share some reflections around this. My reflections would be less creative than those of Zayna. Thanks Zayna for sharing this strong forum with us and hopefully we can go to the nitty gritty of displacement and refugees later on. But the thing that I want to share with all of you is I started thinking about those questions when I was working with a London based NGO called Platform. I worked with them around specifically the oil and gas industry. Especially around my home country, Algeria. So we were looking at Britain's attempts to grab more gas from Algeria. And this particular piece of work led me to connect with other environmental and climate struggles all over the world. Especially around the environmental and human rights abuses of the oil and gas industry in the global south. So a few years later I co-edited a book around climate justice that was presented in Tunis at the World Social Forum. And that piece of work helped me to connect the dots between various issues. So I started doing conducting field research in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco around environmental struggles. And that led me to realize something very important, that we cannot just talk about climate justice or climate change without connecting it to social justice, without connecting it to economic justice, without connecting it to questions of sovereignty, over economic systems, over natural resources, and that would touch on questions of colonialism, as Ahmed mentioned at the start. So for me, I started reformulating or kind of reframing the questions of climate change or climate justice, at least in the North African context, in terms of just development, moving away from reliance or dependency on extractive sectors that have been imposed on those countries since colonial times. So it's very important the way we talk about climate change and how do we address it, like the narratives around the words, the concepts we use, because climate justice in Arabic, sometimes it's confusing, people do not get it when you say climate justice, what do you mean. But the principles, the ideas of climate justice are very important, because we are talking about how do we repair the systems that generated those inequalities, that generated the climate catastrophes that people are living through right now. We are talking about the historical responsibility of the industrialized West in generating this crisis. We are talking about the differential vulnerabilities of dealing with climate change. So it happens that most of the impacts right now are taking place in the global south, where vulnerable communities are facing those impacts. So climate justice is a way to say we need to deal with these impacts in a just way. So the industrialized West must pay the climate debt for these communities, for these countries. Climate change is already a reality. It's not in the future. It is happening right now. The catastrophe is happening right now. And it is taking place in regions like North Africa or the Arab world in general. So just recently in July, Algeria, my home country suffered from catastrophic wildfires that caused economic damage and fatalities. Around 100 people died from those wildfires. And these are a consequence of climate change. But how do we deal with this kind of stuff? This is the questions that we need to put at the heart of climate justice. And in here we need to decolonize the systems we live through. We need to democratize the system we live through. And we need to listen to the communities. In relation to the questions of displacement and refugees, a lot of discussions have been made around the question of climate refugees. I don't like that term specifically because it's really hard to say that refugees are just migrating or moving because of climate change. It is much more complex than that. I think it's multiple factors. It's economic factors, political factors, and also environmental and climate factors. But how do we deal with that climate crisis? People will be on the moon. There was a report lately by the World Bank talking about climate displacement, and they said that most displaced people from climate change impacts would happen within countries or within regions. Rather than people flooding Europe as some climate fascists, because there is this discourse right now in the North saying, okay, climate change is happening. So now they recognize that climate change is happening after decades of denialism, and now they are using that narrative to say, okay, we need to militarize our borders. So our response needs to be, like they are saying, we need to securitize. We need to not let those people come to fortress Europe, and we need to challenge that discourse. Climate justice means not militarization. It means not securitization. It means letting people to move. This should be a right, letting people to move to stay and to go back. So these are the final words of my introduction. So I'm looking forward to more discussion. Thank you, Hamza. I mean, there are lots of important points in here that I would love to pick up on. I think it will take us a couple of hours really to discuss all of those rather than just this hour. But really, I think the point around militarizing borders, I think we're seeing it happening right now is so much so that it's becoming very hard for people to move across. Again, as you said, not just because of the climate change, but for so many other reasons. But climate change for me, the way I see it, is at the heart of it all the time. But we will come back to that, and thank you so much for this talk. I'm going to move on now to play a video by Mohammed LeMandebat, who, as I said earlier, couldn't be with us because of the power outage in the Samara refugee camp where he is right now. I'm just going to give a little bit of an introduction about Mohammed and his work so you know him a little bit better before we put on the video. So Mohammed is a Sahrawi artist, a Sahrawi, the Arabic word for somebody from the desert based in the Samara refugee camp in southwest Algeria. And he runs an art studio, which is a very creative, small studio called Motif Art Studio, which is a space for creation and experimentation. And the interesting bit is that he built that out of discarded materials collected from the Samara camp. So really exciting space, and I'm looking forward to learning more about it. He's been doing a lot of collaborative work across the world. Mohammed LeMandebat, and more recently he's been doing a research, artistic research project in Helensky in Finland called FOS FETI with Finnish artist Pek Niskerman. So a lot of exciting stuff that he's been doing, but also really looking at the refugees and their work and really trying to introduce sustainability within a very, very harsh environment, which is kind of really what we're looking at in this subject. So I think without further ado, I'm just going to play the video now, just so for him to talk to you directly. My name is Mohammed Sleiman. I'm an artist from the Sahrawi refugee camps. I was born here in these camps. These camps have been established over 40 years ago in Algeria following a war that broke out in western Sahara between the Sahrawi and Morocco in the 70s. And I was born in these refugee camps when my parents met here. And life in the refugee camps is a day-to-day challenge, a series of challenges of living here, finding food and learning and connecting, but there's a strong social community here. And as an artist, I would like to explore ways and means to respond to the situation here in my camps and raise awareness about the story of my people. And I think for us as people of the desert, the Sahrawi are people of the desert, literally. I think the desert is largely misrepresented. The international narrative is that the desert is largely an empty space. There's nothing happening there. There's no life. There's no value. And that's a huge misunderstanding to begin with, because the desert plays such an important role in the world ecosystem. And recent data from NASA showed that scans of dusts arriving from the desert and traveling across the Atlantic Ocean into the Amazon carry in phosphorus particles. And it's fertilizing the Amazon rainforest. So the rainforest actually depends on the desert for its survival. And I think not many people understand the crucial position and role the desert plays in our lives. So it's not just empty place. And also, there is life and there is culture, and there is a huge community spread across the desert. And the Sahrawi are just one of those communities. But the Sahrawi have been displaced from their homeland in Western Sahara and into refugee camps in Algeria because of their political conflict there, because Morocco took over Western Sahara. And the Sahrawi are now living in this area and disconnected from their land and disconnected from their nomadic lifestyle and practices. And as an artist, I think it's very important that I address these issues, but also try to research and revive some of the practices and understanding that come from these indigenous practices and indigenous understanding of the Sahrawi, of the nomadic lifestyle. And what we can learn from that, the people who live here, we are the Sahrawi, we are people of the desert, and we think it's getting extremely hot for us here. So if the people of the desert are saying it's extremely hot, the rest of the world should be alerted. Everybody should be prepared, because we think we know a little bit about the heat. We know a little bit how the desert can be hot, but it's becoming even too hot for us. Climate change is reaching far places here in the desert with negative impacts. There is less water, less rains every year. The past four, five years we didn't have any rain at all in the desert, but coupled with some unexpected weather changes. And 60 years ago we had huge floods and heard of in the middle of the desert. And I think these issues are becoming really, really important in our lives. And some of the practices and some of the solutions that we're trying to develop to combat such challenges and respond to them is this amazing community of small scale family gardens starting in refugee camps to grow food in a small scale. And the solutions and the knowledge that develop with these practices in order to create food in this inhospitable area. It's very hot, there is no water, and there's absolutely no soil because it's just sand. But there's a team of amazing engineers, gardeners, farmers, artists, creative people who are thinking and these small movements put in together these views in some sort of interdisciplinary approach in order to come up with creative solutions. There's a mix of scientific understanding, there's a mix of creative approach to it, recycling materials to provide solutions for these gardens. And these gardens are growing slowly but trying to raise food here in the middle of the desert. And I think this is an amazing example that as an artist that should look at, I'm a visual artist and a photographer and a sculptor, but I think I'm less interested nowadays in creating object arts and more interested in joining this movement of responding to pressing issues, raising, creating food for our communities, responding to the challenges, the climate challenges around us, responding to, you know, pandemic problems and challenges. This is what artists should be looking at. I think it's past time that visual and traditional aesthetics have been done for a long time, but now we need to step up, we need to push our minds and our souls and our hearts in order to think and feel and prepare ourselves for something bigger. The world from now on is more challenging and we need to prepare ourselves for it. And so I think it's very important that for us as artists that we communicate with the child that we respond to the challenges around us and then build up on those experiences and share them with the world. That's how we build these kind of solutions from the ground up through these movements of engineers and scientists and artists. We need all the voices, we need multi voices participating in creating solutions that respond to challenges to our communities. That's how we see our role as artists responding to these. And myself, I created my artist studio from discarded materials. Well, in the beginning, I didn't have any funding to do it, but then I was looking for opportunities and potential, even in the discarded materials around it from scraps of wood. There's scraps of wood and metal and carpets that I found around in the camp, collected them, put them together and created a space for me and for other artists to use. And I think there's a potential and a lot of possibilities around us. We just need to slow down, provide ourselves, give ourselves the time, that space in order to think and re-envision, re-look at things in a different angle and talk and discuss and create solutions. Create connections with other artists as well. That's a very important aspect of my art practice as well. Thank you, Mohamed. It's a shame that he's not with us right now to kind of talk to him more about it and ask him more about his amazing work. It sounds incredible. There was so much in that video that I found incredibly fascinating. I didn't know about the effect of the Sahara Desert on the Amazon forest. I mean, that's definitely new to me. So it's a lot to kind of learn around in there. But I think one of the things that I can pick up from there and from all the talks from the panelists here is we talked a little bit about the idea of displacement. And we use the word displacement quite a lot. I just want to ask kind of the panel, particularly Zayna and Hamza, around what does that word actually mean to you in general? And how could we actually differentiate this displacement that is resulted from climate change from a normal kind of economic displacement or political displacement? So I don't know if Zayna you want to sort of kick off with answering that because you talked a little bit about your poem, the beautiful poem you read with Bart, you know, borders, checkpoints, you know, ID cards, etc. So what does displacement mean to you to start with? I think displacement, I actually, when I hear it, I think I respond to it in very emotional terms. I think about my own family, I think about, you know, the communities I grew up in, in diaspora, in exile. As I mentioned, you know, my mother is Iraqi, my father is Palestinian and both experienced very acute displacements in exile on account of colonialism and war and a lot of corporate interest, most of which also ends up in the oil and gas industry to Hamza's point. And yet, you know, I think what we're seeing, what we will see in the future, again, what Hamza was alluding to is that, you know, there's this discourse of like, these are refugees and these are climate refugees and these are whatever. But actually, I think if you look at the history of displacement writ large, why people flee their homes, it's an area of reasons. And I think, you know, we're getting to a point now where, where does climate change begin and where do water wars end, where does, you know, where does not be feeling safe in your home, how much of that has to do with climate change as a sort of environmental phenomenon and how much of it has to do with the political instability that it creates. So I think, you know, that we're living in this gray area and it's going to only going to be more gray as time moves on with regards to what constitutes a climate change emergency and what constitutes the regular invertecom is emergency that might create someone or motivate somebody to leave their home if they're dispossessed. So I think these are some of the questions which there isn't an established discourse around on all sides of the political spectrum I feel like there's quite a healthy amount of hypocrisy around these discussions and I also think you know I spent a lot of time thinking a few years ago, particularly when that sort of the really xenophobic discourse around the migrant crisis again in inverted commas was rife was this idea that sort of, unless refugees or displaced people can in some way contribute to their adoptive country they are a drain and they are undesired, you know that they're not desired. And that cheapening of human life in that way I mean for me has just been and hearing that discourse from people who are sensibly on the left has actually been the most shocking and file aspect of the last decade so I think, you know, you know, displacement, a myriad of legal definitions that come into play but actually fundamentally for me it just signifies someone who is no longer able to live in their home country or their home place and exhibit incredible bravery and being able to root and try and replant elsewhere and all of the experiences that that brings. So it's not just being forced militarily speaking it's sort of lots of reasons that it's almost like that their life is made impossible to kind of continue and they have to seek alternative options which in a way makes them forced to leave us. Hamza, is there any, sorry did you want to come back and say no. No, no. Sorry. And is there any sort of academic way of looking at displacement to try to differentiate it and identify that this is because of climate change directly so if you think about a fire somewhere. You know people leave their homes and go somewhere you know is there any kind of scientific way that we can look into that. So, so you're giving me the tough question. But that's a tough question. No, but to answer the question the question your question generally for me displacement. Like it has some negative connotations right. It invokes a human suffering people forced to flee their homes, because of various reasons wars political oppression and even environmental environmental factors like big droughts. And, and I think in the main or the mainstream or the mainstream imaginary is that we see displacement as like some refugees or some people migrating from south to north, which is not, which is not true. Most people are displaced regionally to neighboring countries, internally displaced internally from rural to urban areas, because of various various elements. But when it comes to differentiating between I don't know that's why I don't like when they use our economic migrants or something like that. What, what, what do you mean people, you know, migrate or leave their homelands for various reasons and it's really hard to differentiate and to say, for which reason what is the primary reason. I'm only speaking that the term climate refugees. I don't think it has any legal basis yet. Some people are trying, you know, to put forward the kind of a definition to say that climate change would play a role in, you know, displace in people. But it doesn't. It's really hard to differentiate. So that's, that's my brief answer to you. Thank you so much. I mean, that's a really good answer. It's an interesting debate because if there is like a legal definition it becomes a thing, maybe, you know, climate refugees, as it were, would be allowed to come into Europe because Europe is part of climate change and maybe maybe something that needs to be looked into in more details. And then I'm going to come back to you with a question around the role of artists to compact greenwashing from kind of occupying kind of colonial powers as it were. Today I read in the news that Israel by 2030 will have all their cars being electric. You know, there was this big news on the BBC around it that it's going to be the first country to have all vehicles electric. No more importing of, you know, petrol cars or fossil fuel cars, etc. Where do you see, I mean, for me, I see this as a propaganda, to be honest, because when I look at what Israel is doing as a colonial occupying power, yet at the same time they promote this as a greenwashing kind of propaganda. Where do you see the role of artists you as an artist and as a poet to combat that and to kind of present to expose these ideas and these propaganda. I mean, I don't think artists have any more responsibility than anyone else to expose a hypocrisy when it comes to this discourse. I think it's actually really dangerous. You know, greenwashing as with pink washing as with all other kinds of slight, you know, discussive sleights of hands which are used to hide and mask the reality. You know, you need to be called out and need to be challenged. You know, one of the most jarring aspects of working on the Palestine Israel issue is people constantly saying, Oh, well, you know, Israel is so green. So it has all of it's developed all of these cutting edge technologies that has all of these startups has all of the whatever. Any reference to all of the extractive policies that it has towards the Palestinian people, and how much it profits, you know, from Palestinian resource, whether that's water, land, you know, agriculture, Israel, and the occupation stands to gain. And it's hugely they're the greatest, the occupation is the greatest challenge that Palestinians face, both economically in terms of like lack of freedom of movement and goods and people politically, i.e. Palestinians not having any kind of self determination or sovereignty and destabilizing the already climate vulnerable population in a particularly climate vulnerable region. So what we need is resilience we don't need Israel, you know, pretending that, yes, okay, it might have more carbon neutral policies than Palestinians but there's a reason why that's the case is that Israel hinders Palestinians from adapting from developing adaptive capabilities to deal with climate change. Because Palestinians and Israelis inhabit the same physical terrain. You know, because of direct political decisions, Palestinian suffer disproportionately more and different Palestinians according to where they live suffer even more greatly than that, you know, as you mentioned at the beginning. And I think that the situation has, for instance, is infinitely worse than other parts of historic Palestine and so I think, you know, it's important to hold this hypocrisy. Call it, call it out and hold it to account because I think, otherwise what ends up happening is it israel managers to have this jainist faced approach where internationally it presents itself as pioneering and X Y Z technologies, but in reality the reason why it's population is able to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate changes because of theft of Palestinian land theft of Palestinian resources and control of Palestinian bodies and I think there needs to be some kind of clear articulation of what that of the dire effects that that poses to anyone who looks for justice and climate justice. Thank you. And on the same subject. Here you talked in your introduction about the kind of militarizing of border and the kind of sort of Europe becoming more kind of fascist around climate change the climate change fascism I think you called it, you know, and as sort of climate change activists what what do you think we should do to combat that but how do we sort of expose that a little bit more. That's a very good question and this discussion is, I feel is a very important one because I think it's, it's important to connect the dots and to have a kind of a system a systematic analysis, or I would say an anti system analysis. So, so in the case of Palestine climate justice would mean decolonization. And the same thing for the Sahara ways. If Israel is doing this to Palestinians by greed greenwashing colonialism. Morocco is doing the same is position in itself as one of, you know, the champions of renewable energy building all this huge solder, you know, panels and wind farms, but in the occupied land of Sahara ways. So it's some people call it green colonialism. So it's the continuation of the same colonial practices of plunder of exploitation, but just with green credentials using renewables this time rather than oil and gas. So, regarding regarding your question of how to tackle climate change, and when it comes to questions of, you know, militarizing the borders, or putting forward the kind of a security discourse around climate question. So, our global leaders like to use the security narrative, we need climate security. And, and when you enter that discussion, it means more spending on the military, more spending on the police, more spending on patrolling borders to not letting the most vulnerable people escape in you know, different forms of oppression either climate environmental or political or economic, letting them out. So, the most privileged, the people who caused caused that, you know, climate crisis in the first place are safeguarding themselves safeguarding their interests. And in here of course we need to make some differentiations because, you know, there are black bodies in Europe as well. There are poor people in Europe as well. We're talking about the elites, the ruling classes, the rich, the multinationals, they are safeguarding themselves and their interests, and letting out people and we need to resist that discourse. We need to, for me, like personally we need to push for an open border policy. And if we really care about justice, if we really care about repairing the historic injustices of colonialism and ongoing once, and neocolonialism in various countries, we need to have that policy of open borders. And here, like before I joined this panel, I was talking with fellow African scholars and activists around the question of climate debt. Because a lot of countries in the global south do not have the finances, you know, to face the climate catastrophe, to face the huge impacts of droughts, of wildfires, of, you know, water poverty. There is huge, you know, the impact are so huge on communities and working people, like in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, if you have repeated heatwaves and droughts, the impact would be on small-scale farmers, right, because they depend on rain. And they are usually impacted. These countries do not have, at least most of those countries, do not have the means to tackle these issues. And I believe, personally, that most of that money, or at least compensation, must be coming from the most countries and multinationals responsible for causing that crisis. And so this is climate justice. It has many elements, no to militarization, no to secularization. We need a policy of open borders to help the most vulnerable, and we need the payment of climate debt for the most vulnerable in the world. Brilliant. Thank you for this brilliant answer, Hamza. Really, really enlightening, actually, to hear it. I just want to check to see if we have questions from, I can't see the question and answers here, but I just want to open it up to see if we have questions from the audience as well. I just am aware that we should be finishing in 10 minutes, but the conversation, as I said, we need about two hours to cover this topic minimum. But just wondering if there is any question from the audience. I've got one here that just comes through. So you've all been involved in fighting for system change against large forces. Any tactics slash moments of success that we can learn from. I think it's a good question for the audience. Any good example to follow? Thank you, Peter, to quickly share some thoughts. You know, I think, I think everything Hamza said is bang on the money. I think when it comes to questions of, you know, repatriation for of indigenous land and life, and also reparations suddenly everyone who speaks of justice tends to But he's right, you know, this is a question of decolonization in many of these contexts, you know, it's decolonization and in Turtle Island and contemporary. The, you know, the contemporary USA and Canada decolonization in Palestine from settler colonialism decolonization in Australia and all of these country it was decolonization decolonization in Algeria and I would argue that's an ongoing process in Algeria. You know, I think these issues are very intimately connected and I think it takes an understanding of the being able to view the world with that understanding actually is what facilitates a conversation around justice because otherwise what ends up happening is you fall into these traps such as green which I think is actually a really good phrase. And others where you just perpetuate the existing cycles of inequality, but with some kind of interest to preventing global collapse or civilization collapse through climate breakdown. And that really is the only difference but it's still maintaining a system of elites and hierarchies. You know, instances where where I think there's some more success. I would actually, you know, I'm really inspired by comrades in on Turtle Island, particularly indigenous communities who work really hard to safeguard their, you know, natural ways of life. And I think, you know, what happened around standing rock a couple of years ago was really inspirational you know it was a form of global solidarity where communities are mostly of color but but all communities. And I think it was meant to to standing rock to the reservation to actually, you know, defend the land and support the indigenous community who were who were resisting and I think that's not something that should be should be snubbed or disregarded I think if you think of how many forces stand in the way of that kind of global solidarity moments where that breaks and you have this surge of support is actually really inspiring. You know, I also just think the fact that Palestinians continue to pick their olives they continue to, you know, live in their indigenous and historic ways just in terms of whether farming practices agricultural practices, or, you know, how they how Bedouins, you know, continue to grace their herd and continue with their nomadic way of life I think they're not big statements or showpieces but actually that that is a success every day that they are able to do that that is a political act of resistance and that is an example of triumph over settler colonialism, the ability to actually maintain your your indigenous way of life in the face of such staggering odds. And it's a daily form of muted but nonetheless valuable success so I think I would just like to flag those as examples. Thank you Zayna Hamza is there anything you'd like to add a ceremony example you can think of. Yeah, I think there are there are a lot of examples from all over the world. Zayna mentioned some struggles from the indigenous. But what I want to emphasize that frontline frontline communities that are facing various kinds of injustices, including the impacts of climate change are putting forward some alternatives are putting forward some inspiring demands. You know, I engaged in struggles that we should learn from. Like from from North Africa, I could give some examples that are you know ongoing uprisings right we've seen since the first wave of the Arab spring the so called Arab spring from Tunisia and Egypt. We've seen a second another second wave including in Nigeria Sudan Lebanon and Iraq. Um, it is challenging. It is really difficult because you are pitted against very strong revolutionary forces, counter revolutionary forces I meant to say. But that hope is still alive. Tunisia right now with all the economic difficulties that it faces showed some, you know, inspiring struggles like Gemna, for example, and the oasis of Gemna at the time of the start of the uprising in 2011 that was 10 years ago. The people of the oasis took over the control of the production of dates themselves so they did a kind of a self management experience from below. They took the control of the oasis, they distributed the revenues among the people. They built a school. Of course, these are small, and they need, you know, to be scaled up at the national and the regional level. But I think they give some kind of hope that people are still resisting people are still putting forward some kind of alternatives that we need you know to heed and and to learn to exercise, because in the current, you know, doom and gloom scenarios that we see all over the media despair can be can be the solution but no people are still are still are still resisting and there is hope. I think also, I think it's a really good question from the audience there and I think also in a way it's not just our responsibility to kind of have success examples I think there are success examples in Europe and other places as well. I think we just what we're saying here we need to be part of that as well we don't need to kind of divide the discourse of climate activism as it was whether this is European. And then you change some rules and policies around green energy alternative energy and that's it. We move on. No, actually, you need to engage more with the people who are affected. We need to have more success examples like that that hopefully later on, it will overcome some of those challenges we're talking about like closed borders, and, you know, militarizing off borders as well. Then I want to ask you a little bit about that actually about immigration. Do you feel that there's enough new poetry specifically really embraces immigration talks about immigration and celebrate it. Do you feel there's enough in Europe and elsewhere that enough poetry that celebrates that and do you think that might help a little bit in terms of the climate crisis and its effect on refugees, other space people. I mean, I think why I don't know I mean my ideas on around the subject of constantly changing. God, sorry, I live next to train tracks and I think that cargo trainers literally it's just chef's kiss tonight. Yeah, I mean I think, you know, the discourse around immigration is always immigration immigrants immigrants and immigration as object and as the object of the sentence and you know the people who feel a particular way about immigration either people who aren't immigrants are the ones who set the tone around it, which I think is a completely false way to look at it. I think you know, I think artists for the most part are quite embracing of people's challenges and different ways of living including those who have migrated. I don't think artists are the ones that create the hostile environment, you know, I think this is a kind of as Hamza was saying like this anti systems position like that we live in systems which stigmatize and criminalize and, you know, objectify people who migrate for whatever reasons no matter where they come from or how long they've been there or how well their languages or what other identities might be be a gender class sexuality whatever. You know, we've have a very kind of, we talk about it like a blunt instrument so I think you know, I think, I mean I said it was an easy answer to your question but I suspect if there was a more tolerant or understanding approach to the way that people live including those who migrate we'd have a more tolerant understanding of how to deal with the planet and have the courage to be able to do what is necessary to safeguard our future. Brilliant. Thank you so much. I think we have come to the end of this talk this really exciting talk so thank you so much to our speakers here live with us. I'm Zayna Agha and Hamza Hamshain. I hope I've pronounced it right this time. I feel embarrassed because I'm an Arab I speak Arabic so I apologize. And also for Mohammed Suleiman al-Bard and apologies that we couldn't have him here with us live as well. And there is a video of his work and what he does which I think we will circulate later because of because of time. So I'd like to thank everybody today who joined us today for this amazing discussion our speakers. And again a big thanks goes to the Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival and creative instructions for arranging this. And yeah, please, you know, follow the artists work and the researchers and everybody and support them and keep talking about the subject because it's very, very important and whenever you're invited to talk about climate change or anything just just think of this. And think of the people that matter, like our poet Mahmoud Darwish once said, think of others, think of others when they're there suffering as a result of the stuff that we're discussing over here. Thank you all very much. I hope you have a lovely evening and I hope to see you again and other exciting talks as well. Take care. Goodbye everybody.