anne's dispatches from sydney

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User: anneinchaosland
Name: Anne
Originally this blog was about my student exchange to Montreal and North America (and later, south and cental america). This was the 'chaos land' of the title. However, once overseas I soon realised that Australia (and especially Sydney) was the real chaos land, -I would monitor Australian news with increasing feelings of trepidation, in reaction to all the huge and worrying political changes Australia is going through, eg industrial relations laws. So this blog is dedicated to trying to understand the chaos of this world, to find its beauty, and to direct its energy to something good and life affirming.

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Saturday, 03 September 2005

yesterday I decided to climb mt royal- with a friend of a friend- Colin is a friend of Jess's (my friend from first year engineering at Sydney Uni- who I ran into in June at the end of my last exam- I talked to Jess for about five hours about South East Asia in Wentworth Cafeteria last June after my exams) - they both met in Singapore whilst on exchange there.

So we scrambled up the mountain where the mud trails show where other people have slipped. There is nice deciduous maple forest here, with the leaves light green filtering the sunlight through . It is so nice to be in the fresh air, steaming from the rain. This mountain is very important in Montreal. It and the river define the centre of the city. You can see the wild forest canopy through the gaps between the glass skyscrapers. It's an interesting juxtaposition.



Here I will post a response I wrote to a discussion on the "colours" list to whether displaced people from Katrina could be called "refugees".

Hi Tamara, and everyone

I just wanted to add to your article that "Environmental Refugee" is a
commonly used term, meaning people who are forced to flee their home
from environmentally-caused disasters. This can be internally
displaced people (eg people in China who are fleeing the rising waters
of a dam). I believe it is appropriate in the case of New Orleans.

It does little good to disconnect the situation of working class
people in the US from working class people in Majority World countries
just on the basis of a legalistic definition- the fact that they are
'US citizens' does not detract from the fact that they are 'collateral
damage'. We see the first and third worlds increasingly juxtaposed
within our own countries. This is due to the anti-humanist economic
policies of free trade (read: no universal social institutions-
everyone fend for themselves), as defined in its modern manifestation
by the WTO etc. Throughout the world, it is the same power
relationship of official neglect at play.

Friends of the Earth International (http://www.foei.org) particularly
campaigns with local communities for the rights of environmental
refugees, especially people affected by global warming (eg in Tuvalu)
- As you know, the New Orleans disaster is the most major climate
change event in recent US history. Literature on Environmental
Refugees emphasises the fact that the victims of climate change are
overwhelmingly not the culprits- that people of the Global South are
far more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than the rich
 people who produce most of the emissions. This was dramatised in
New Orleans by the fact that many people could not escape the floods
because they did not have enough money for petrol.
- Hide quoted text -

http://www.foei.org/publications/link/rights/44.html

Hence FOE International calls for Environmental Justice- where the
corporations and the people of the Global North are made responsible
for the effects of their decisions. They call for enforceable global
laws about greenhouse gases that cause dangerous climate change.

This year is very important for this goal, considering that the
November UN Climate meeting (COP-MOP) in Montreal is the most
important for climate policy since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. However,
the fossil fuel/ dirty energy lobbyists will be out in force there
too, and will try to derail or water down the talks just like they
have successfully at many Kyoto
Protocol meetings before, and led by Australia and the US.

However now the situation is so urgent that WE have to prevent derailment.

Anyway hope that cleared things up a bit

Anne

--
If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we
must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a
less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift
will find a fitting place.
~Margaret Mead~


"The Difference Between being Displaced and a Refugee as it Relates to
'African American Refugee' Debate after Katrina"

By Tamara K. Nopper
9/19/05

(view the article here)

Tamara K. Nopper is a sociology graduate student at Temple University
whose research explores immigration, race, and citizenship.  Direct
all correspondence to tnopper@yahoo.com.


posted by: anneinchaosland at 21:56 | link | comments |

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