Panel 1 (Red Salon/ Volksbühne)
Climate Knowledge bottom up
With Mike Hulme (GB)(prerecorded), Aqqaluk Lynge (GL), Lill Rastad Bjørst (DK).
British cultural geographer Mike Hulme's talk generates new momentum for a multi-voiced climate debate culture. Mike Hulme believes that climate science and global climate institutions are pursuing a distanced top-down knowledge policy. Bottom-up knowledge cultures are needed, he says.
This is the underlying theme of this festival, and in this respect the Arctic is exemplary: for centuries, science has been addressing the climate and also the Inuit people of the Arctic. The cultures of the Arctic People have been targets of colonial economic interests, objects of anthropology, and treasure troves for Western museum collections.
And what is happening now, when Arctic Peoples have a say and speak for themselves, but at the same time face dramatic changes in their environment? They see danger on a global scale, while at the same time opportunities for their development are opening up through participation in the extractive raw materials market.
Danish scientist Lill Rastad Bjørst discusses this with Greenlandic politician, writer, and activist Aqqaluk Lynge, a strong voice in Arctic debates for decades.
But first, Aqqaluk Lynge will provide a powerful lyrical stimulus by reading his poems in German.
Aqqaluk Lynge, Prof h.c., is an internationally known politician, activist, and writer who has advocated for Greenland's independence from Denmark since the 1970s. He was President of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) from 1997 to 2002, for which he served until 2018. In his writings, he provides profound insights into both Inuit thought and postcolonial issues in the context of climate change. Aqqaluk Lynge lives in Nuuk.
Titles:
• An Inuit Voice. A Collection of Quotations from Speeches on Behalf of the Inuit Circumpolar Council 2002-2014, 2014
• The Veins of the Heart to Pinnacle of the Mind, 2009
• Isuma/Synspunkt. Digte og Essays (Isuma/Point of View. Poets and Essays), 1997
Mike Hulme is a geologist and professor at the University of Cambridge. He has worked in the field of climate and culture for 40 years and is one of the most important thinkers on cultural geography climate research, institutions, and debates on climate action.
Titles:
• Climate Change, 2021
• Weathered. Cultures of Climate, 2017
• Why we Disagree about Climate Change, 209
Lill Rastad Bjørst, PhD and Associate Professor at Aalborg University at the Institute for Culture and Learning. As a scholar of humanities and social sciences with a focus on climate change, she sets new accents in Arctic research.
Titles:
•The right to 'sustainable development' and Greenland’s lack of a climate
policy. In: Politics of Sustainability in the Arctic: Reconfiguring Identity,
Space, and Time, Ulrik Pram Gad, Jeppe Strandsbjerg (ed.), 2018
•En anden verden (Another World), 2010