with Camila Moreno & Helena Norberg-Hodge
Following on Local Futures’ action paper, ‘Climate Change or System Change?‘, climate researcher and activist, Camila Moreno, and Local Futures’ Director, Helena Norberg-Hodge, had a frank talk about climate change. Read the action paper here.
The Climate Agreement, signed in 2016 in Paris, has been hailed as “historic,” yet the root causes of climate change were neither discussed as part of the negotiations, nor addressed in the agreement. This is an opportunity to get debriefed about what really took place in Paris and to explore where we go from here. We discussed common myths in the climate debate, expose pseudo-solutions and pinpoint key strategies to achieve lasting change.
Issues that were discussed included:
• Blaming individuals while ignoring industrial polluters
• “Free trade” treaties as the driving force behind climate change
• Commercial truths behind the climate negotiations
• Carbon trading and zero-net emissions myths
• Global to local steps to climate and planetary health
and more…
Presenters
Camila Moreno (Brazil) is a researcher at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro and a working member of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) and the Network for a GMO Free Latin America (RALLT). Camila has worked extensively with social movements in Brazil and Latin America on the social and environmental dimensions of biotechnology and agribusiness expansion in the region. In recent years, her main areas of study, writing and activism have focused on the territorial impacts of development policies and emerging schemes, such as carbon trading, associated with the green economy. Camila has followed the international climate negotiations closely since 2008 and took part in the COP 21 in Paris in December. Her forthcoming book, “Carbon Metrics and the New Colonial Equations,” will be launched in Brazil in mid 2016.
Helena Norberg-Hodge (Australia) is the founder and director of Local Futures/ISEC. A pioneer of the ‘new economy’ movement, she has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than thirty years. She is the producer and co-director of the award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness, and the author of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, described as “an inspirational classic” and Local is Our Future. She has given public lectures in seven languages, and has appeared in broadcast, print, and online media worldwide. She was honored with the Right Livelihood Award (or ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’) for her groundbreaking work in Ladakh, and recently received the Goi Peace Prize for contributing to “the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.”
