Keynotes

We are looking forward to discussing with our five keynote speakers on pressing questions of justice and food security.

Networked climate sovereignties: Linking agroecology, food sovereignty, and climate justice

Agroecology, organic agriculture, and food sovereignty are often regarded as well-intentioned but unrealistic niches that are ultimately unable to transform food systems. As a result, they are discounted as unfeasible options for meeting global food demand for a growing population in the face of climate change. Yet wide-scale support for agroecology and supporting structures for food and seed sovereignty have rarely, if ever, been implemented.

Guntra Aistara is Associate Professor at the Central European University, Vienna, Austria. 

Guntra Aistara

The most-affected principle: Representation and justice in the food sovereignty movement

It has been argued that the involvement of scholars in a politics of constructive collective action is key to meeting grand challenges and other complex problems facing agriculture and food systems in the 21st century. Yet, how scholars organize and manage collective action can have implications for the existing movements working towards food systems transformations. 

Jessica Duncan is Associate Professor in Rural Sociology at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. 

Jessica Duncan

The Climate Emergency: Elements of a Repair of the Future

In recent years, the climate crisis has developed dramatically. Some cities have already called the crisis an "emergency case". This contribution explains the meaning of a climate emergency. It argues that the climate scenario differs in many respects from more usual "emergency case".  According to a well-reasoned argument of Walzer in the context of war ethics, emergency claims for an ethical reassessment of a situation. The first half of the talk tries to apply this insight to the climate crisis. The second part focuses on some tools for a "repair of the future". I shall try to outline some insights that focus on the food sector.

Angela Kallhoff is University Professor of Ethics with special emphasis on Applied Ethics at the University of Vienna, Austria.

Angela Kallhoff

Geoengineering, food security, and justice

Geoengineering refers to intentional, large-scale interventions to counteract the harmful impacts of climate change by managing solar radiation impacts or the atmosphere composition of the earth. The insufficiency of global climate action has increased interest in geoengineering as a tool alongside climate mitigation and adaptation attempts, or as the last resort, to tackle the climate crisis and especially its most adverse impacts.

Teea Kortetmäki is post-doctoral fellow at Unviersity of Jyväskylä.

Teea Kortetmäki

Adapting agriculture to a changing climate: a social justice perspective

We are already past a point where climate change mitigation alone does not suffice and major efforts need to be undertaken to adapt agriculture to climate change. As this situation was both foreseeable and avoidable, it is urgent to see that particularly people who have historically contributed the least to climate change do not end up assuming most of the costs. Climate change will have the worst effects on agriculture in the tropical region in the form of droughts, extreme heat waves and massive storms.

Cristian Timmermann is Research Associate at the Institute of the History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine, Ulm University.

Cristian Timmermann