Thread by @DrNatOsborne

And the evening panel is now kicking off! Our incredible panelists, who are chewing on the questions a marvelous group of HDR students worked up this morning, are @SamidSuliman, @FemInt, Rowena Maguire @rosyrosewater, and Lara Kelly
#GriffithClimateAction @ClimateGriffith

https://twitter.com/DrNatOsborne/status/1455693929110642694

@SamidSuliman @FemInt @rosyrosewater @ClimateGriffith @SamidSuliman draws attention to the politics and uneven availability of movement, and of dwelling. Mobility justice can orient us toward climate justice - this session uses ghost towns as a heuristic to think about movement, place, & people #GriffithClimateAction

@SamidSuliman @FemInt @rosyrosewater @ClimateGriffith So great 2 have brilliant catchment expert Lara Kelly here to help us think about watery mobilities, the role water plays in shaping mobilities & the viability of places for certain lifeways. Too much/too little water lies behind much climate displacement #GriffithClimateAction

Check out @FemInt's moving piece, Leaving Coonabarabran, in @GriffithReview - it provides some context for her answer to this question: will australia have ghost towns? (her answer is *yes* - but where will people go?) griffithreview.com/articles/leavi… #GriffithClimateAction #COP26

Lara Kelly: the thresholds of *when* the depletion of water resources, along with other climate risks and the sense of a lost future will push people to relocate are pretty immeasurable but they are impending

#GriffithClimateAction

Rowena Maguire @rosyrosewater : there's a creepiness in degraded, dilapidated landscapes, with fewer people than the infrastructure/built environment would suggest. We see this already in areas where mines, or industry, have closed down

#GriffithClimateAction

@SamidSuliman raises how the changes to mobility seen in #Covid19 times (reduced travel, lockdowns, the increased precarity of some kinds of mobility - travelling to work becoming more hazardous, doing work that requires movement becoming more hazardous) #GriffithClimateAction

@FemInt - Limiting people's movement, and actively moving people from place to place, is something we can expect to see more of due to #climatechange - it's already observable in the run up to and aftermath of extreme weather events #GriffithClimateAction

Lara Kelly - the availability and accessibility of technology facilitates both movement and staying in place, another trend that has become more visible in #covid19 times #GriffithClimateAction

Question from Murray (joining us online, hi Murray!) - is the key discussion here more in the terms of migration, rather than the question of "if" we will have ghost towns? #GriffithClimateAction

@FemInt tells us about the law centres in the US that are helping communities develop planned retreat, but we're not really having that convo here
@rosyrosewater - we're having that convo only in relation to very wealthy property owners (beachfront types) #GriffithClimateAction

so-called australia is highly urbanised & clings to the coast, where there is more freshwater availability.
As coasts become more dangerous, where will we go? What (terra nullius) beliefs are built into the idea that there are places to retreat to? #GriffithClimateAction

@SamidSuliman reminds us that industries and private companies have often driven the retreat from/depop'n of certain towns and settlements (rather than community or democratic decision making) #GriffithClimateAction

@SamidSuliman @rosyrosewater "the fear of job losses is real; the fear of 2 degrees warming is not real for most of us" - yet, yet, yet
@FemInt - "and not all job losses are seen as equal", e.g. coal jobs prioritised over reef tourism jobs
#GriffithClimateAction

@FemInt - we haven't done enough to help people visualise what the impacts will be for them, their homes, their lives. This stymies decision making (&, presumably, the democratic processes that inform them) #GriffithClimateAction

I'm worried about how climate risk visualisation tools (e.g. bushfire, flood maps) may justify the neglect of & disinvestment in certain areas by gov, ahead of any proactive measures to support ppl in moving (if that is necessary), entrenching disadvantage? #GriffithClimateAction

Wendy Flannery (online) asks: won't a lot of the mvmt in aus be both to, and from a lot of densely populated areas? (as in - early movement might be from smaller places, less supported, to cities, but then coastal cities might also become more hazardous?) #GriffithClimateAction

This was something we talked a bit about in the workshop this morn; often when people are displaced due to extreme weather events, they move into *worse*, more exposed places/housing. So displacement is thus ongoing #GriffithClimateAction

@SamidSuliman talks about mainstream/whitestream australia's bias against/suspicion of nomadic people & practices - I think this is intimately attached to settler colonial anxieties and what Aileen Moreton-Robinson
@QAmity calls the white possessive #GriffithClimateAction

@SamidSuliman - australia has a dark history of displacement & forced mvmt, current violent practices of dispossession, & poor treatment of migrants who come here to work, & suspicion with which we treat refugees, shows some important tensions re:mobility #GriffithClimateAction

@SamidSuliman @FemInt talks about the inequities around even paying people to move & supported migration (where they exist)- that doesn't help people whose lifeways are embedded in place. And those who have contributed least to climate change bear the greatest burden #GriffithClimateAction

@FemInt and @rosyrosewater are reflecting on the limitations of the law, when the outcome of litigation is often not great. The efficacy of certain gov levers are not evenly distributed either - some approaches will be okay for some, catastrophic for others #GriffithClimateAction

Lol @SamidSuliman notes that he is on his first ever reverse manel - he's the (very qualified) token male facilitator on a panel of brilliant feminist women, and we love him for it <3 #GriffithClimateAction

@SamidSuliman Lara Kelly tells us that there are also decision makers, powerful people who are not accountable, who we do not necessarily know - they wield power behind the scenes and there's little transparency in who they are or how they affect climate decision making #GriffithClimateAction

@rosyrosewater reminds us that subjugated knowledges & the people who hold them are largely excluded from climate policy, decision making, & investment, but we spend ooodles on bonkers, false-promise engineering solutions for reef clouds & carbon capture #GriffithClimateAction

@SamidSuliman asks how we might prepare for leaving, prepare for grieving, the economic and social consequences of the abandonment of place. And what are we abandoning when we abandon place? #GriffithClimateAction

This idea of planned retreat from places, abandoning places, reminds me of #shadowplaces - perhaps planned retreat is creating a (new?) set of shadow places, sacrifice zones, where we give up the possibility of restoration, care, return? #GriffithClimateAction @shadowplacesne1

@SamidSuliman @FemInt talks about the practices of refugees in memorialising the places they are forced to leave, @rosyrosewater talks about the need for time, information, support, & Lara Kelly on how place-making frameworks often lack empathy & understanding #GriffithClimateAction

@FemInt - the very least we can do is bear witness for people, help them capture and preserve and record what they have now, keep culture alive (and defend the conditions of cultural continuation) #GriffithClimateAction

@DrEdMorgan asks - what scale of collectivity do we need to move people together, to minimise trauma and disruption and keep culture and community alive? Families? Neighbourhoods? Postcodes? Towns? Cities? #GriffithClimateAction