Three Degrees to Give Humboldt State Sustainability Series Lecture
Three Degrees is presenting a talk at Humboldt State University’s Spring 2013 Sustainable Futures Speaker Series. Jen Marlow will speak on Thursday, May 2, from 5:30 to 7:00 pm in the Behavioral and Social Sciences Building room 166 (BSS 166) on the HSU campus. The title of her talk is “Climate Change and Human Rights: Justice Beyond Law.”
Jen will also be collaborating with Dr. Laurie Richmond during her visit to teach a scenario planning workshop and will be participating in a colloquium with students from the Environment & Community Graduate Program.
The series is co-organized by the Schatz Energy Research Center and the Environment & Community Graduate Program. For more information, see here.
Jen Marlow Awarded Helton Fellowship
The American Society of International Law awarded Jen Marlow a Helton Fellowship in international law and human rights. The Fellowship honors Arthur Helton—an advocate for refugees and the internally displaced who was killed in the August 2003 bombing of the UN mission in Baghdad.
Helton Fellowships provide financial assistance in the form of “micro-grants” for law students and young professionals to pursue field work and research on significant issues involving international law, human rights, humanitarian affairs, and related areas.
Jen will use her fellowship to research community-led relocation in the South Pacific.
Three Degrees Partners with Facing Climate Change on Recent Film Series
Three Degrees is excited to announce a partnership with Facing Climate Change, a project of multimedia artists Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele.
Facing Climate Change just released a series of four, five-minute films that tell the story of global climate change through local people living in the Northwest. The films feature oyster growers, potato farmers, and Northwest tribes, revealing changing landscapes and plans for adapting to future change. Facing Climate Change paired the films with short summaries by Jen Marlow.
Watch the films here.
Arctic Info
Sign Up for UW Spring Quarter Arctic Studies Courses Taught by Visiting Scholars
Visiting scholars in Arctic Studies, Law, Indigenous Rights, and Resource Development will teach two exciting courses in spring quarter:
1) Business in the Arctic—Working with Law and Policy in Resource Development (3 credits), Thursdays, 1:30–4:20 PM
Dr. Sari Graben, UW 2012–13, Canada–US Fulbright Chair
The course will provide an overview of the most recent legal and political developments in the Arctic, this course will emphasize challenges posed by environmental and global changes and developments in various areas of Arctic governance and will be organized around particular resource development activities. This will allow students to be exposed to the complex issues facing the Arctic from both an international and domestic perspective and to address legal/policy frameworks for dealing with them. (Photo: Jen Marlow.)
2) Indigenous Land Claim Treaties in North America and the Arctic (5 credits), Fridays, 9:30–12:30 PM
Tony Penikett, JSIS 2012–13 Visiting Scholar; Senior Advisor Arctic Security Program, Munk Centre of Global Affairs and the Duncan Gordon Foundation; former premier of the Yukon
The course will address the precedents or foundations of 20th century land claims agreements in North America including the Mexican conquest, the Cherokee cases at the Marshall Court, and the 400-plus Canadian and U.S. treaties that followed. Treaty negotiations and settlements in Alaska and northern Canada will be compared to those in Greenland and Norway.
More information on the scholars:
Sari Graben, LL.B. LL.M. Ph.D., currently serves as an Arctic Policy Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Queen’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy, Queen’s University, Toronto. Graben’s primary research interests are in the field of administrative law, contract law, and comparative law with a special focus on issues raised by environmental contracting, privatization, and collaborative governance in the Arctic.
Tony Penikett, a Vancouver-based mediator, served in politics for 25 years including two years in Ottawa as Chief of Staff to federal New Democratic Party Leader Ed Broadbent MP; five terms in the Yukon Legislative Assembly; and two terms as Premier of Canada’s Yukon Territory (1985-92). His government negotiated final agreement for First Nation land claims in the territory and passed pioneering education, health, language legislation, as well as leading a much-admired bottom-up economic planning process.
Links to Additional Resources about the Arctic
Re-Locate Project: Three Degrees is supporting Re-Locate, a group of artists, architects, anthropologists, and others from around the world working to identify issues underlying planned and forced relocation, expose obstacles to human mobility, and instigate situational, culturally specific responses in the built environment.
Brookings Institute: The Brookings Institute recently hosted an event in Washington, D.C., ”Arctic Indigenous Peoples, Displacement, & Climate Change: Tracing the Connections.” See here for audio file, presentations, and case studies presented by experts.
“In the Beautiful, Threatened North:” Ian Frazier’s review of Subhankar Banerjee’s book, Arctic Voices.
Wild & Scenic
Just returned from the Wild & Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City, California, in the foothills of the Sierra. The Film Festival is the annual fundraiser for South Yuba River Citizen’s League. Over 800 volunteers worked to pull off the festival smoothly for over 4,000 attendees. The festival featured long and short films inspiring environmental and social justice activism. (Photo: Wild & Scenic.)
I spoke on Friday evening in conjunction with Land of Rivers, a film by the Environmental Justice Foundation. On Sunday I participated on a panel about ”Climate Justice, Human Rights, and Video Advocacy” with two other women climate justice lawyers: Julia Olson, Executive Director of Our Children’s Trust, an organization that empowers youth to protect the Earth’s climate for Future Generations; and Kelly Matheson, Program Manager at WITNESS, an international human rights NGO that uses video to change human rights law. We had a great time.
Here’s the description of our panel presentation:
With the rise of popular movements such as Occupy and Arab Spring, citizens around the world have—once again—reoccupied the public realm with powerful arguments for human rights and justice. It is no different in the context of climate change. Here in the U.S., youth from over 12 states are reoccupying the atmosphere. As part of the TRUST Campaign, these youth are suing the U.S. and state governments to protect the atmosphere for present and future generations. This workshop will walk participants through the impacts of climate change on human rights both here and abroad, setting the global context for why the TRUST Campaign is so important. We will introduce the young and courageous plaintiffs behind the case, provide up-to-date status on current TRUST litigation, and claim the power of film to support climate change litigation.