International Affairs – Climate Change Forum

I attended the Climate Change Justice and Responsibility forum featuring professor Brooke Ackerly from Vanderbilt University on September 13th at the Mershon Center. This event fulfills a community requirement. The topics discussed at the forum focused on the issues of climate change in Bangladesh and how it is affecting coastal communities. While climate change can affect groups in many ways, for the coastal communities, they face issues of sea level rise, saline inundation and general changes in livelihood. Before attending this forum, I had heard about sea level rise becoming a more prevalent issue for coastal communities but seeing the pictures and listening to a person who spent time in these places helped to give me a better perspective on the issues of climate change.

One focus of the presentation was the idea that we as a people need to focus more on legislation and electing people who will help combat the issues of climate change that we are faced with. Professor Brooke Ackerly suggests that our approach to solving the issues of climate change should be in a grounded normative theory. This means that we need to look at climate change in a political context and use empirical data within the problem-solving process. This theory is rooted in struggles for feminism, racial justice, queer equality, and human rights. Going into the presentation, I assumed that like many other speakers, Brooke Ackerly would simply explain the issues that were happening around the world. It was refreshing to see someone present ideas that focused on real problem-solving methodologies. Her presentation outlined a clear process that everyone in society should follow.

The Climate Change Forum Justice and Responsibility forum relates to international fairs in many ways. The most obvious way is that climate change is an issue that affects everyone on a global level. When a nation produces large quantities of carbon dioxide emissions, the effects are not limited to the country in which the problem originated. Professor Ackerly stated herself that greenhouse gases cause harm to people that often don’t contribute to the issue. Agriculturally based communities with few greenhouse emissions still face the issues that are caused by highly developed nations. Because of this dynamic, we as a nation must be willing to reach out to other nations and implement solutions for climate change in our own foreign policy. We must turn to experts such as academics and political scientists to come up with a solution for the growing threat that is climate change.

Many of the issues related to international affairs are inter-sectional and multidisciplinary. Thus, not only should we focus on ways to mitigate and prevent climate change within our own country, but we must also rely on the people outside of our nations to make steps toward combating the effects of climate change. This does not only mean focusing on fewer carbon emissions, but also on infrastructure, social justice, and the prevention of over-harvesting and juvenile by-catch. This will be a change of economic policy and a big shift in the livelihood of many communities, but it is a goal that we should all strive for if we hope to secure a better future.

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