Learn more at https://fhi.duke.edu/programs/entangl...
About the Talk: Nature does not cause disasters. A natural hazard can rapidly turn into a disaster when it encounters a community made vulnerable by unjust economic systems, environmental degradation and centuries of systemic racism. This talk explores the nature of natural disasters by providing a framework in which we can understand the intersections of hazard and vulnerability in order to create more sustainable and just solutions. We explore case studies in Nepal, Haiti and Madagascar.

About the Speaker: Brian G. McAdoo is a disaster researcher and head of the PlanetLab in the Earth and Climate Science Division at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. The PlanetLab is interested in how humans are damaging the Earth's physical systems that support life on the planet and how the resulting disasters disproportionately impact marginalized communities. Current research projects apply a Planetary Health framework to understand how natural hazards interact with couple human-environment systems to improve health and well-being in Nepal (climate change, earthquakes, landslides and road development and health outcomes), Madagascar (deforestation, ecosystem services, disease exchange and community health) and the SE United States (extreme climate events impact on emergency services).

On the Entanglement Project at Duke-FHI: Climate catastrophe cannot be thought outside of the context of empire and the forms of racialization central to global capitalism, including the degradation of peoples, ecosystems and lands facilitated by states in the global North. Threats to the very existence of the planet and all its inhabitants result from this genocidal global development project, yet the effects are being borne more grotesquely by those who live in the global South. Environmental justice efforts that overlook the longue durée trajectory of the historical operations of capitalism, and the raciality that affixes a disproportionate burden onto ex-colonized areas of the planet and its inhabitants, fall short of pointing us in a direction of systemic and just change.

The Climate Change, Decolonization and Global Blackness Lab seeks to explore the linkages among three pivotal and simultaneously occurring catastrophes—criminality, displacement, pandemics—toward developing a set of principles regarding decolonization as an ethical approach to climate change.
#environmentaljustice #environmentalracism #blackecology #globalblackness #decolonization @dukeuniversity @FranklinHumanities @dukeenvironment @dukeuniversitysdepartmento2485