Global Warming and Climate Justice in Bengal

Youth NABC - Social Issues

Saturday July 4th - 10am - 11am

Global Warming and Climate Justice in Bengal: Why Indians & Bangladeshis living abroad should engage with the efforts to reduce global

Speaker #1: Professor Isha Ray to speak on Global Warming – Threats and Solutions

Focus: Ms. Ray will focus on the main threats that global warming poses to lives and livelihoods in Bangladesh and West Bengal, home to over 200 million people. Solutions and barriers to solutions will also be presented.

Key presentation points:

  • Overview of actual and expected impacts of climate change in Bengal, and the relevance of those impacts.
  • Impact on food supply & water, the disruption of these systems and their implications on hunger, livelihoods and bi-national relations.

 

Biography: Isha Ray is Assistant Professor at the Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley. She has a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University, and a PhD in Applied Economics from Stanford University. Professor Ray’s research interests are water and development, technology and development, and common property resource management. Her research has covered problems of drinking water and irrigation management in India, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Mexico. Her research in California examines public perceptions of large-scale climate mitigation technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration. Professor Ray serves on the advisory committees of several non-profit groups that work on water, technology and sustainable development, and also serves on the editorial committee of Annual Review of Environment and Resources.

 

Speaker #2: Campaign Coordinator on climate action to speak on Climate Justice & A Brave, New Diaspora

 

Focus: Ananda will focus on examining the political and social context of climate change, the industry's responsible, the global negotiations, and the roles of governments, industry lobby groups and social movements - issues that would more relevant once the story of impacts is told.

Key presentation points:

  • Why is climate change, the single largest man-made threat to human survival ever, of particularly relevance to the Bengali Diaspora?
  • These people, already living in poverty, may have less of a carbon footprint than the NABC gathering – innocent victims of modern, industrial markets driven by an addiction to fossil fuels and over production
  • The destruction of the largest mangrove forest in the world – the largest intact, natural habitat of the Royal Bengal Tiger
  • Ours is not a collective Diaspora in any traditional sense, however we share a collective privilege that includes insight into the identity of the universal man – an identity that transcends ethnicity and association to land, and allows us to worship nature as a universal commons
  • Alongside this awareness, we are equipped with the knowledge, the skills, the innovative minds and the resources to tackle the root causes of climate change.

 

Biography: Ananda Lee Tan is the US & Canada Campaign Coordinator for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives – an international network of community-based organizations organizing to replace incinerators and landfills with zero waste programs such as recycling. Ananda is an ex-student of Santiniketan - where both his parents and grandparents went to school and taught. Ananda currently resides in Berkeley, California with his wife Kathryn and eight year old son Ananda Tao. Over the last twenty years Ananda has worked on anti-war, sustainable forestry, sustainable agriculture, climate change, energy, trade and labor justice campaigns around the world. Ananda has worked with both grassroots groups and international organizations such Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Network One of his main interests in social change has been the building of public-interest alliances (such as the Forest Stewardship Council and the Labor Environmental Alliance Society) between labor, environmental and human rights organizations in search of sustainable solutions. In the last five years Ananda has worked with networks such as Rising Tide, Mobilization for Climate Justice and Climate Justice Network on building a popular international movement for Climate Justice & Equity.

Your moderator: This panel will be moderated by Fahmida Ahmed. Fahmida leads the campus sustainability programs at Stanford University.

She chairs the Sustainability Working Group, connects the Sustainability Working Teams, coordinates implementation of sustainability projects, supports Stanford’s long term climate and infrastructure planning, and manages the office’s communications and community relations programs. Before joining Stanford, Fahmida served as the campus Sustainability Specialist at UC Berkeley, where she delivered UC Berkeley’s climate target. Fahmida earned a B.A. in Economics from Smith College and Master’s in public policy from the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management in UC Santa Barbara. Her academic apprenticeships include positions in the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Prior to her career in sustainability, Fahmida has worked in financial services and high-tech in the Bay Area. Fahmida was born and brought up in Dhaka, Bangladesh and lives with her family in Palo Alto, California.