Bridging Epistemic and Climate Justice: Insights from the Field

Public lecture with Manisha Desai, Executive Director of the Center for Changing Systems of Power and the Empowerment Trust Endowed Professor of Global Citizenship at Stony Brook University

As various global entities, including the recently concluded COP29, emphasize we are in the midst of an ecological crisis that is exacerbated by the crisis of social inequalities and political polarization. Yet, the solutions offered to “the damage is done” are variation on the same ideas that got us in the crises in the first place, i.e., growth now sustainable and inclusive.  There is no explicit critique of growth-based and market-oriented development nor a rethinking of “nature” that contributed to the intersecting crises of inequalities, climate change, loss of biodiversity, and species extinction, among others. Therefore, drawing upon feminist, indigenous, and abolitionist thinkers, I suggest that what we need is a fundamental transformation in how and what we produce, consume, redistribute and relate to each other and to all living and non-living entities on this earth. Towards that end, I offer sustainable societies defined along epistemic, economic, and political dimensions as a way forward.

Manisha Desai is the Executive Director of the Center for Changing Systems of Power and the Empowerment Trust Endowed Professor of Global Citizenship at Stony Brook University. Her areas of research and teaching include gender and globalization/development, transnational feminisms, global justice, particularly climate justice movements and human rights. Manisha’s current research includes women’s rights, land rights, and climate justice in India and NE United States. As a senior research associate of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Manisha is part of the Global Network for Research and Action for a new eco-social contract. She is on the Steering Committee of the Federation of Feminist Journal Editors that is seeking to establish a feminist, knowledge commons outside commercial publishing to ensure the free circulation of feminist knowledge across borders and language barriers.
Manisha was awarded the Sociologist for Women in Society’s 2015 Distinguished Feminist Award and received the 2016 Faculty Mentor Award from the Compact for Faculty Diversity in the U.S. She has served in many leadership capacities including as President of Sociologist for Women in Society.

Language: English

Registration: Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams

Event website: Bridging Epistemic and Climate Justice: Insights from the Field