Ashish Kothari – Eco-swaraj: Radical pathways to Human and Planetary Rights

Decolonial and Postcolonial Ecologies: Critical Voices from India A monthly online lecture series

Coming up next: 12 August 2024

5 – 6 pm India Standard Time

1:30 – 2:30 pm Time in Paris

8:30 – 9:30 pm Time in Seoul

Please register at https://forms.gle/wJfF2xK15Z6keD8E8

Ashish Kothari (Environmental Activist)

Eco-swaraj: Radical pathways to Human and Planetary Rights

Abstract

The world faces multiple intersecting crises, including biodiversity loss and climate change, socio-economic inequities, conflicts, human rights violations, and authoritarianism. The necessity to find solutions is urgent.
But it is also clear that these do not lie within the same paradigms that have created them, including in the currently dominant model of economic development, or in the structures of patriarchy, statism, capitalism, racism, colonialism and anthropocentrism that underlie it.

Are there practices, concepts and frameworks that are pathways to a just and equitable future? If yes, what needs to be done to make the transition towards such a future?

This presentation will look at a Pluriverse of such alternatives, focusing on India but also including some from elsewhere. These include practical, grassroots initiatives as also concepts and worldviews that are based on respect for other people and the rest of nature, solidarity, collective spirit and action, rights and responsibilities, autonomy and freedom, gender/sexual justice, and other such values that are a direct contrast to the individualistic, selfish, commodified mindset of today’s dominant system.

A framework of radical transformation emerging in India called Eco-swaraj, or Radical Ecological Democracy, will be presented in detail.

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Decolonial and Postcolonial Ecologies: Critical Voices from India A monthly online lecture series

29 February: A. Raghuramaraju (Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati)

21 March: Bhagat Oinam (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

11 April: Aseem Shrivastava (Writer, Teacher, and Ecological Thinker)

2 May: Prasenjit Biswas (North-Eastern Hill University)

12 August: Ashish Kothari (Environmental Activist)

26 September: Padini Nirmal (Independent Scholar)

3 October: Puja Ghosh (University of Oregon)

15 November: Swarnalatha R (IIT Madras)

All talks take place 5 – 6 pm India Standard Time

12:30 – 1:30 pm Time in Paris / 1:30 – 2:30 pm Summer Time in Paris

8:30 – 9:30 pm Time in Seoul

Please register at https://forms.gle/wJfF2xK15Z6keD8E8

Organized by: Elise Coquereau-Saouma (JNU / FWF), Puja Ghosh (UO) and Michael Stadler (DAAD Lecturer at JNU)

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