Thread by @PLAASuwc

The Climate Change and Agrarian Justice Conference starts now! Welcome everyone! We will be live tweeting throughout the conference (which ends on Thursday!)
This is an international online conference and interpretations will be available in English, Spanish, French and Burmese.

The conference is convened by @Peasant_Journal, @TNInstitute, the Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists of the Global South (CASAS) and PLAAS.
Thanks to @RosaLux_SA for its support! Follow #AfricanClimateChange to keep up with the conversation.

@Peasant_Journal @TNInstitute @RosaLux_SA The theme for Day 1 is Critical Agrarian Studies and the
Politics of Climate Change Responses.
Chairing the opening plenary is Jacobo Grajales. The speakers are Ruth Nyambura, @IanScoones, @myintzaw, Antolin Huascar Flores. #AfricanClimateChange

"Issues of climate change and capitalism and socialism are deeply entwined but how does it is play out in rural areas and relate to agrarian struggle?" - @IanScoones

Ruth Nyambura, African Ecofeminist Collective in Kenya, says in the Kenyan context, 2 weeks ago a new government came into power - a right-wing conservative, neoliberal, theocratic, fascist government. Last 30 or 40 years of neoliberal politics has meant inability of African (1)

(2) governments to make social progress through building commons and the public.
"The solutions to everyday problems are being addressed from a market perspective."

Antolin Huascar Flores, President of Confederación Nacional Agraria del Perú & La Via Campesina representative said social movements in Peru want governments to follow through on agreements. "There are many targets for the Amazon and its resources. That's what capitalism does."

When discussing large infrastructure projects in SE Asia harming human rights and the green transition, journalist and activist @myintzaw says China needs spotlighting. "They are pushing massive infrastructure in the region. Many of these are problematic." #AfricanClimateJustice

"If you think about where we are right now, different ecofeminist movements, you think of long histories of colonialism, disenfranchisement of African men but of African women in very specific ways. Patriarchy and sexism are all encompassing in every space." - Ruth Nyambura

“In the context of land grabs for big infrastructure projects, the Myanmar government tries to grab the narrative. There is control grabbing, but also narrative grabbing. They use social media to try and manipulate public opinion on the relevance of these projects." -@myintzaw

@myintzaw "So they are trying very hard to grab the narrative. For us in the social movements, it is therefore very important to fight back, to build our own narrative to counter their narrative in any way we can.” - @myintzaw #AfricanClimateJustice

"When we disagree about climate change, it's because we often disagree about capitalism. Don't let the ‘left pontification' divide the desire for managing adverse impacts of climate change but rather seek a collaborative approach." - @IanScoones

In Latin America we need to raise awareness among authorities. We need to stop using agrotoxic chemicals, they're not good for the climate. We don’t want everything to be based on big companies in Europe, America or Japan." Antolin Huascar Flores #AfricanClimateJustice

"I wish there was more deliberate work around cross-movement and cross-national movements. The feminists need to speak to the unionists. Everyone needs to talk to everyone." - Ruth Nyambura

That marks the end of the opening plenary session. We will now move to the 4 parallel sessions. Session 1 is on The Politics of Resilience and Adaptation. Session 2 is Climate, Energy Transitions, and Agrarian Change.

Session 3 is Interrogating Mitigation and Carbon Accounting and session 4 is about the Allure and Consequences of False Solutions. #AfricanClimateJustice

Zehra Yusin from the University of Ankara, Turkey speaks on the Environmentalization of the Agrarian Question and the Agrarianization of the Climate
Justice Movement. Her presentation makes 2 central arguments:

1 - The world-historical generalization of the capital-nature relation in the context of the global extractivist turn has reconfigured the 21st Century agrarian question as the agrarian question of nature as a critical component of the broader socio-ecological question.

2 - The historical context of the agrarian question of nature, in turn, gave birth to not only environmental-agrarian movements but also agrarianisation of the politics and movements of environmental/climate justice.

Other speakers in session 1 are: @NoemiGonda, @FloresSelmira, Jennifer Casolo, Andre J. Nightingale, @MillsNovoa, Rutgerd Boelens, Jaime Hoogesteger and @JMC_Vos. #AfricanClimateJustice

Speaking in session 2 are: @SergioSauerUnB, Andrew Mathews, Jun He, Jiping Wang and Caroline Upton. @Peasant_Journal @TNInstitute #AfricanClimateJustice

In session 2 @SergioSauerUnB said concrete change is needed to address the climate crisis. "There is still a strong denial that there is a problem." He said there is a direct influence in agrarian, land and climate issues. Meat, dairy cause more pollution than all the cars.

@SergioSauerUnB "In our case and moving to developing countries, one issue is deforestation and excessive use of water for irrigation. To achieve COP goals deforestation needs to be slowed down." - @SergioSauerUnB

@SergioSauerUnB Jun He, from the National Centre for Borderland Ethnic Studies in Southwest China, said certification is very important, through certification local people have been excluded. "In China, we see that access to the certification is difficult for the local people." (1)

"The local people do not benefit much they make $1 yet those certified make a million. Who created the social injustice? Through the certification, the local people have lost control of their land. The second point is to look at the ecological and social outcomes." (2)

"It is not as we expected, there is a lot of mono-cropping. The income for the people is very little. This is all because of certification to exclude the local people. The property rights framework needs to be relooked at from an exclusion viewpoint." - June He

The session 3 speakers are: @PamMcElwee, @GalvinSeshia, Diego Silva Garzon, Ritodhi
Chakraborty, Mark H. Cooper, and Alistair Fraser (@crmnlgy)

"We’re failing so we’re gonna miss the 1.5-2 degrees emission." - @PamMcElwee #AfricanClimateJustice

@PamMcElwee "Negative Emission Technology (NET) literature mostly talks about what we can deploy in marginal lands. We know it is deployed to evict people. In agrarian studies elite capture, colonial history, can we model this? The answer is generally no." @PamMcElwee

Shaila Seshia Galvin and Diego Silva Garzon spoke on the political life of mitigation initiatives in agrarian relations: from carbon accounting to climate accountability.

They said accounting is replete with tools and instruments to intervene in the rural world. "We concur with JPS authors. The ways of understanding and perceiving equally need to be historicized." #AfricanClimateJustice

We've come to the end of the Climate Change and Agrarian Justice Conference. Join us again tomorrow for Day 2 where we will discuss the diverse impacts and responses to climate change in the rural world.
Thank you for your participation and attention today. See you all tomorrow!

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