EcoRes Forum

[J Bendik-Keymer]

In line with my call for institutions, I have been wondering as our conference developed about what kind of fora could help people identify environmental challenges at both a local and global level, using both grassroots knowledge and government support. I have been wondering about an idea modeled on sister cities.

What if cities in stable countries paired with cities in struggling countries around the specific task of identifying and reporting environmental burdens and risks: first, possible threats to justice, and, second, species and ecosystems at risk of extinction or collapse?

I think of something like this, because there's a need to pressure governments globally in a concerted effort, and also the need to know what is actually happening around the globe from people who know their own land. I do not know if U.N.E.P. already does something like this, but I haven't heard of it.

At a motivational level, too, something global yet local and focused such as thinking about one other city would help someone like me who feels easily overwhelmed and clueless given the scales and multiplicity of problems climate change poses. I would feel that there is something to be done and focused on -the well being of a partner- that at the same time exceeds narrow and -I think- inconsequential work on my own lifestyle.

A side effect of some such institution would be growing global consciousness, consciousness of environmental injustice, and a growing sense of ourselves as ecologically embedded in historical relation with non-human species and biotic conditions.

This is probably an impractical idea or one that is best seen figuratively as a symbol of a kind of thinking that other institutions might embody -side ways, global, trans-species thinking. But what I am interested in under the rubric of this forum is the creation of kinds of social "drivers", by which I mean organized and instituted efforts to push along social change by surfacing it collectively and focusing it on specific practical issues.

What I am really curious about is what kind of organizational and institutional thinking and practice is best for creating such social pressure and focusing points? What are key content areas that need to be surfaced globally? What are crucial formal dimensions of the manner of surfacing these content areas? And so on.

Speaking personally -putting a face on it- living in the U.A.E. and spending time in Dhaka gave me two quite vivid points of reference that, even in their singularity, expanded permanently (or so I feel) my awareness of environmental and social connectedness, with all the complexities these imply at a global level. I think, too, that if my students had such points of reference, they would think differently about what they do and what they're aiming for, and I feel that all of us here in Syracuse could more intelligently approach our governments at all levels with a clearer sense of what is at stake globally with climate change. In this way, to echo the conference topic, putting a face on climate change would help politically, socially, and I also suspect economically.