Start: Saturday, November 30, 2024 •10:00 AM
End: Saturday, November 30, 2024 • 5:30 PM
Location: Bernie Grant Arts Centre • Town Hall Approach Rd, Tottenham Green, London, N15 4RX GB
Host contact: justtransition@londonminingnetwork.org
Join London Mining Network’s event on Just Transition on Saturday November 30th! Learn and contribute to urgent discussions about why the much-needed shift to renewable energy is fuelling green imperialism. Hear from communities and campaigners on the frontlines of resistance to mining companies and the powerful state and military interests that support them. Meet and join leading movements to discuss how to bring a socially just transition into reality.
The world needs to decarbonise rapidly if we are to avert catastrophic climate breakdown. But what are the costs of an energy transition that simply substitutes mega solar power and wind turbine projects for fossil fuels? The “green” transition that states and corporate interests are pushing would mean huge increases in mineral mining, with devastating consequent harms to land, water, biodiversity and the millions of people who depend on these for their livelihood and homes.
Mining companies positioning themselves as saviours of the planet are often the same companies continuing to extract fossil fuels. They do not offer climate solutions but are instead complicit in intensified exploitation, displacement and dispossession of Indigenous communities and environmental destruction.
A globally just transition must break from a capitalist system predicated on eternal growth and accumulation, and account for the ecological and colonial debt between the Global North and South. Who should guide such a transition? Who decides how much mining is necessary and where it takes place? How do we build solidarity between communities on the frontlines of resistance to green imperialism and workers and anti-imperialist movements in the UK organising for justice?
Through workshops and creative activities, an interactive exhibition, and stalls with dozens of grassroots campaigns, we will explore these urgent questions.
Download full programme here!
Event programme:
10.00–10.30: Registrations
10.30–11.45am: Opening plenary
Unjust transitions and false prophets: voices from affected communities
Adam Hanieh (University of Exeter), Benny Wenda (Free West Papua Campaign), Ivonne Yanez (Acción Ecológica), Béni Libondje (Stand for Congo)
Moderator: Dorothy Guerrero (Interim co-ordinator, London Mining Network)
12.15–1.30pm: Midday Sessions (parallel)
Just Transition means dismantling the military-industrial complex
Speakers: Kirsten Bayes (Campaign Against Arms Trade), Energy Embargo for Palestine, Mohammed Elnaiem (Decolonial Centre)
Facilitator: Daniel Selwyn (LMN)
Description:
The climate and ecological crises are intimately entangled with militarism and war, not least in the vast quantities of natural resources required to assemble everything from nuclear weapons and fighter jets to armoured tanks and surveillance drones. Travelling from mines to smelters and factories, this session highlights how materials like aluminium, copper, platinum, cobalt and rare earth elements are transformed into technologies of violence and destruction. In turn, these technologies return to the communities where those minerals are torn from the earth in militarised mining operations. What does a just transition mean for the military-industrial complex? And how can the climate justice and peace movements join struggles to achieve this?
A disaster waiting to happen? The energy transition, mine waste and community resistance in Latin America
Speakers: Diana Salazar & Paul Robson (London Mining Network)
Description:
Mining of metals for the energy transition will generate vast amounts of waste in the form of tailings dams and waste piles. An energy transition that takes into account the environmental and social consequences of energy production needs to bear in mind the consequences and legacies of mining these metals. In this workshop we’ll look at the ecological and social impacts of the extraction of transition for communities and ecosystems in Latin America through the experiences of communities in Brazil, Chile and Peru, using copper as an example. We’ll also look at the transition away from fossil fuels through the legacies of coal mining in Colombia.
You’ll participate in analysing the amount of copper we all use and we’ll discuss how we can ensure the energy transition is a just one for communities affected by mineral extraction.
2.30–3.45pm: Afternoon sessions ( parallel)
2055: A World Without Mining
Facilitator: Joám Evans Pim
Description:
In 2054 the last metalliferous mine closed down. Social movements, local communities and indigenous peoples spearheaded a transition away from the paradigm of growth and extractivism that radically changed the way we cohabit planet Earth. This workshop will help us envision positive images of a post-extractivist future and to remember our shared history of how we got there over the course of the “past” three decades, starting out in 2024.
Images of preferred futures are powerful tools to guide our collective action in the present and disrupt prevailing dystopian and techno-utopian narratives. The workshop is an abridged and playful version of the longer “Imagining a World Without Mining” workshop based on the “Breaking free from mining” 2050 blueprint.
You can’t eat batteries: land justice, food sovereignty and frontline struggles against mining
Speakers: Sara Callaway (Global Women’s Strike), Sofija Stefanović (Zbor), Soil SiStar Sandra (GoGrowWithLove), Community Action for Land Liberation
Moderator: Nandita Lal (LMN)
Description:
Food sovereignty in the Global South will continue to be threatened if the demand for minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel keeps increasing. Speakers will also highlight the rise of urban farming movements, which seek to replicate decolonial practices in food production, aiming to reclaim food sovereignty in the face of global extractivism.
4.00–5.30pm: Closing plenary
Organising for a globally just transition: Energy, Education, Public Transport, Trade Union Organising, Trade, Holding extractive industries to account.
Closing speech:
Andy Higginbottom (London Mining Network, Colombia Solidarity Campaign)
Groups and organisations with exhibiting stalls (through the day):
Campaign Against Arms Trade, Community Action for Land Liberation, Decolonial Centre, Energy Embargo for Palestine, Fare Free London, Fossil Free London, Fuel Poverty Action, Global Justice Now, Global Women’s Strike, India Labour Solidarity/InSAF, Labour for a Green New Deal, People & Planet, People’s Land Policy, Stand for Congo, UK Youth Climate Coalition, War on Want, Workers for West Papua, XR Haringey
Reserve your place via button below!