In a gentle way, you can shake the world

On Saturday, I attended a talk by Roger Hallam. He is one of the co-founders of the Extinction Rebellion movement that uses civil disobedience to protest against climate change. While Hallam might have come across as an alarmist, his depressing discussion points were on point.

We should all be worried about climate change and the slow rate at which governments are taking effective action in the small window of time we have to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to the climate change abomination awaiting us all. 

To calm down my existential anxiety, I took a deep dive into the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Supported by more than 100 scientists from 52 countries, the report assesses the latest scientific knowledge about climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems. Three striking insights I came across in Chapter 7 involve Indigenous and local knowledge, citizen science, and women.

Indigenous and local knowledge

“Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) can play a key role in understanding climate processes and impacts, adaptation to climate change, sustainable land management across different ecosystems, and enhancement of food security. ILK is context-specific, collective, informally transmitted and multi-functional, and can encompass factual information about the environment and guidance on the management of resources and related rights and social behaviour. ILK can be used in decision-making at various scales and levels, and exchange of experiences with adaptation and mitigation that include ILK as both a requirement and an entry strategy for participatory climate communication and action.”

Inclusive governance that integrates ILK with scientific knowledge could increase opportunities for adaptation and mitigation. An inclusive policy with a diversity of governance participants could enable more proactive responses to complex climate challenges. 

Citizen science

“Improvements to sustainable land management are achieved by (1) engaging people in citizen science by mediating and facilitating landscape conservation planning, policy choice, and early warning systems; (2) involving people in identifying problems (including species decline, habitat loss, land-use change in agriculture, food production and forestry), selection of indicators, collection of climate data, land modelling, and agricultural innovation opportunities.”

Not only citizens but institutions such as schools should also get involved in these activities. Social learning, combined with collective action, can promote meaningful participation that challenges land-use practices by promoting and provoking sustainable alternatives. 

Women

“Empowering women can bolster synergies among household food security and sustainable land management. This can be achieved with policy instruments that account for gender differences. The overwhelming presence of women in many land-based activities, including agriculture, provides opportunities to mainstream gender policies, overcome gender barriers, enhance gender equality, and increase sustainable land management and food security. Policies that address barriers include gender qualifying criteria and gender-appropriate delivery, including access to financing, information, technology, government transfers, training, and extension may be built into existing women’s programs, structures (civil society groups) including collective micro-enterprise.”

Hallam, too, brought up the importance of women in his talk, stating that women over 50 are the future. A gender-inclusive approach that empowers women to participate in the decision-making process is another mechanism involving greater participation in the adoption of sustainable practices of land management. 

So, where does that leave us? 

It leaves us knowing that Indigenous and local knowledge, citizen science, and women matter a great deal in the climate change debacle. And the complex problems that stem from climate change affect much more than our shrinking glaciers, loss of sea ice, accelerated sea-level rise, and intense heat waves.

What got me thinking during Hallam’s talk was accountability. Why are we not suing oil companies, the biggest polluters of all? Well, on the bright side, activists in the Netherlands already are. Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands) submitted a court summons to Shell on the 5th of April, 2019. Milieudefensie and other organisations (ActionAid NL, Both ENDS, Fossielvrij NL, Greenpeace NL, Young Friends of the Earth NL, Waddenvereniging) argue that Shell’s business model poses a threat to the climate goals of the Paris Agreement by violating its legal duty of care, endangering human rights and lives. 

According to the summarised summons, internal and external documents show that Shell has known about climate change since the 1950s and has been aware of its large-scale environmental consequences since 1986. The same publications also show that Shell was well aware of the measures needed to prevent dangerous climate change. Although Shell knew, it has still not taken any serious steps to minimise its share in climate change. Shell even invested in PR campaigns that misled the public about its real intentions and lobbied against climate policies and climate action. 

If I have learnt anything from living in the Netherlands, it’s that if you want to hit someone where it really hurts, hit them in their wallet. What I gleaned from Hallam’s talk is that we can all do this and promote positive change, such as King’s College London removing £14 million worth of investments from fossil fuel companies and pledging to become carbon neutral by 2025 through nonviolent public disruption. 

For Hallam and for all of us, the cost of freedom is civic duty. Nonviolent rabble-rousing might get us arrested, but if it helps spread awareness of climate change that directly affects every single one of us and promotes the adoption of sustainable alternatives sooner rather than later to the people in power, then now is the time to get rowdy. Or at least the right time to go and plant some fucking trees and reduce our meat intake.