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Böll Talks EP7 · Böll Talks

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to a new episode of Bull Talks, Dialogues & Insights from Southeast Asia.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Curated by the Highest Bull Stifton I'm Fransy your host And in this video series we bring together voices and perspective across the Southeast Asian region Those who are working towards A more sustainable just an inclusive future.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: We explore ideas that connect people and the region From climate resilience To green innovation from ecological wisdom and sustainability to gender equity, democracy and human rights.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Its conversation is an invitation to reflect on where we are what's changing?
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: And how can move forward together.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: In this episode I'm talking Dr.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Dewi Chandranigram a mother, scholar writer artist activist and researcher whose lifelong work focuses on decoloniality, ecofeminism, gender justice, environmental movements and community knowledge in Southeast Asia.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Today we will explore the intersection of decolonality, gender, environment and climate justice And we'll discuss how this perspective can help us imagine more just and sustainable future for the Southeast Asian region.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us Dr.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Dewi, I will call you Dewi Dewi.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: could you introduce a bit about yourself your academic and activist journey?
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: And share what first inspire you?
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: What was the main reason throughout your career?
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: You chose work on ecovamidism decoloniality engender in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.
• 2:02
  Speaker 0: Yeah, thank you frenzy.
• 2:04
  Speaker 0: it is always a pleasure to join this conversation, especially with Henry Bol Siftung.
• 2:12
  Speaker 0: I am David Chan Running Room.
• 2:14
  Speaker 0: my academic journey has always been closely connected to communities.
• 2:21
  Speaker 0: rather than remaining only in the university i have spent more then twenty years working with women in rural Indonesia particularly and community effect by mining, deforestation river pollution such in Bangawan Solo River the longest river in Java and then as well as industrial development.
• 2:50
  Speaker 0: What inspired my interest in declinality was realizing that many environmental conflicts are not simply about natural resources but there are also struggles of whose knowledge count, who's histories are recognized and whose futures are valued.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I would like to come to the question of concept, decoloniality right?
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: So in Southeast Asia we have a colonial history, colonial background.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: most of countries in the region was colonized by Western power, and there is some colonial legacy.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Be it physical like you see colonial buildings You see even if they use of language we still seen some loan work In our languages But also this legacy mindset I mean people from Southeast Asia.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Somehow we have this colonial mentality right like afraid of the authority and also somehow it Also, somehow translated into corruption practices in a bureaucracy.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Like this is just the Observation that were we made in the region.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: my question to you.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Is that?
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: how do you define?
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: The concept of the Coloniality?
• 4:25
  Speaker 0: For me, the colonial is not simply about the end of the colonial rule.
• 4:31
  Speaker 0: About that certain states or countries and regions are occupying other regions but it's also about recognising that colonial ways organizing knowledge, power and nature that often continue long after political independence.
• 4:53
  Speaker 0: That sort of system still sits there.
• 4:58
  Speaker 0: so for example in Southeast Asia Indonesia, colonial administration mapped our forests.
• 5:06
  Speaker 0: So Dutch colonial legacy is still printed there how the Dutch manage our forest and we'll continue that for example in Indonesia.
• 5:18
  Speaker 0: And nature often continues long after that.
• 5:23
  Speaker 0: agricultural land primary as soon as just economic resources.
• 5:30
  Speaker 0: So today many development policies either in Thailand as well still reflect that same logic.
• 5:38
  Speaker 0: Forests become timber reserve instead of living being, instead the lungs on our planet and then mountains becomes mining concession instead of source-of life.
• 5:53
  Speaker 0: rivers became infrastructure corridors especially in Indonesia, especially on a Java island just for sufferer where industrial pollution was being discharged into the river.
• 6:08
  Speaker 0: So here we still see...we still witness that nature is treated as an object and it has to be managed rather than have relationship with nature.
• 6:23
  Speaker 0: And in the colonial perspective, ask a different question.
• 6:29
  Speaker 0: Instead of asking only how to maximize economic growth we asked How communities have care for landscapes over generations?
• 6:40
  Speaker 0: How indigenous and local knowledge contributes to ecological resilience ?
• 6:46
  Speaker 0: And how development can respect culture and spiritual relationship with the environment.
• 6:53
  Speaker 0: So, declineality involved first of all is unlearning all those systems within our current system.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: I would like to come up on one.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Recently when we talk about climate justice, sustainable development, environmental challenges Decoloniality has gained increasing attention.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: I would like to know how the Coloniality and Climate Justice has a very strong link, maybe from your experience in Indonesia.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Because when we talk about climate justice this climate crisis has impacted many people especially in an archipelagic country like Indonesia right?
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: How the Colonials have linked.
• 7:49
  Speaker 0: I think climate justice also requires decolonial perspective.
• 7:53
  Speaker 0: Why?
• 7:54
  Speaker 0: Because a climate change, or climate crisis impact is not experienced equally in the global north and the global south.
• 8:06
  Speaker 0: communities that have contributed least to environmental degradation and damage are often due facing greater impacts.
• 8:17
  Speaker 0: So Bigelonality reminds us that justice is not only about reducing carbon emission but it's also about transforming an equal system of power, unequal systems of knowledge, unequalsystems of decision making and unequal system distribution of the economic growth.
• 8:40
  Speaker 0: One important legacy is the assumption that expertise comes primarily from centralized institution while local communities are viewed as a beneficiary.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I want to touch on the issue of natural resource management, specifically.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: we talk about very hard topic this day due to the war and raising our prices technological development mining.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: so Let me give you one example like about nickel.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: We are the modern people we use nickel in daily life.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: In our phone, in our electronic appliances where using battery Also to electrically hiker as well.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: As recently I learned that this a nickel is also an important commodity or important part To make the drones.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: And during the period that we live now, this drone also used in conflict and war as well.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: So my question to you when we talk about this mining of critical minerals rare earth how the colonial legacy still continue influence?
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: The way we go for natural resources
• 10:07
  Speaker 0: I think How now we govern the natural resources is still using this similar method, these similar patterns that were being used by colonial previously.
• 10:24
  Speaker 0: Like, colonial administration teach us to separate human from nature within our governance system.
• 10:32
  Speaker 0: but at the end we are now witnessing climate crisis like for example it is never before.
• 10:39
  Speaker 0: in Arctic we experience fifteen degrees Celsius and that's quite alarming And It was never before.
• 10:48
  Speaker 0: above Amsterdam they experienced five hundred thousand blitz within a day in the last two days.
• 10:58
  Speaker 0: So this is already apocalyptic climate fact that were being caused by these sort of exploitation, so the indicators that our government but this indicators is again forgetting ecological relationship, forgetting cultural values and also forgetting unpaid care work that sustain community.
• 11:33
  Speaker 0: And now we are harvesting all of We are, even yesterday the Swiss government is enacting new glacier loss day.
• 11:43
  Speaker 0: So we never create that Glacier loss.
• 11:46
  Speaker 0: they already lost the glacier.
• 11:49
  Speaker 0: so it is uh The moment that we pay for the disaster.
• 11:56
  Speaker 0: It's actually the moment that you have to remember That we should start.
• 12:03
  Speaker 0: I know it is too late to respect the nature and to relate our staff, to relate humanity... ...to the nature as a living being.
• 12:13
  Speaker 0: That's what Declaniality would like us to propose.
• 12:16
  Speaker 0: how we do mining?
• 12:19
  Speaker 0: Yeah!
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: I'd like you follow up on that particularly when you mentioned about how government still see natural resources through colonial mindset, colonial perspective.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Are you all implying that the decolonial perspective of natural resource management more like giving attention to non-human actors?
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: More participation... Like what would you offer us like the colonial perspective of Natural Resource Management?
• 12:56
  Speaker 0: Yeah I think within to borrow the colonial framework and perspective is that we have to undefine, uh...the way we see nature.
• 13:10
  Speaker 0: We have to redefine how we see the planet within a colonial perspective of the planet or critical mineral as an object.
• 13:23
  Speaker 0: So within the decolonial framework we have to redefine To unlearn that kind of definition.
• 13:31
  Speaker 0: This planet is living being, this planet it's now very ill and experiencing its own survival because of human acts.
• 13:44
  Speaker 0: I don't want to blame all humanity but i would like you a pinpoint to the CEO of the corporation, for example.
• 13:56
  Speaker 0: And then those sitting leaders in our government that exercise the policy is allowing such an enormous exploitation that if the planet is ill then humanity's going to be ill as well.
• 14:18
  Speaker 0: So, If our river is being polluted so the river is ill than all of us will be ill.
• 14:26
  Speaker 0: also.
• 14:26
  Speaker 0: in this way we should
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: undefine
• 14:30
  Speaker 0: what is nature and also
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Uncategorize
• 14:36
  Speaker 0: our relationship, previously to the nature is that we are on top of it.
• 14:43
  Speaker 0: We manage this and exploit them even now but within these perspectives Actually, we are related.
• 14:58
  Speaker 0: We aren't ecosystem.
• 14:59
  Speaker 0: if one of the species for example is becoming extinct Then in the future those who are extinct as we as a human being.
• 15:09
  Speaker 0: So it is like playing playing a card If you stand or lose card in a row?
• 15:15
  Speaker 0: If one cut is falling then the other cut will be collapsing.
• 15:20
  Speaker 0: so It is actually an ecosystem collapse if we still continue exploiting and looking for profit in exponential growth.
• 15:31
  Speaker 0: We only have one planet, If it's still a continued consuming In this way, we need more than one planet or approximately.
• 15:41
  Speaker 0: the scientists said that we need three to four planets And actually That is dangerous.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Next question would be when we talk about colonial legacies in Southeast Asia, it seems very patriarchal.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Very dominating.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: so there's a strong element of domination against submission and also there is an element of exploitation basically gathering all the available resources for benefit from the colonial power.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: There's a very strong patriarchy element there.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: My question to you, how do we see colonial legacies in Southeast Asia perceived from gender perspective?
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: This is also something that was close for us as researchers.
• 16:36
  Speaker 0: I think the greatest challenge on... Is that environmental race accumulate alongside with existing inequalities, including gender.
• 16:48
  Speaker 0: So women living in rural areas indigenous communities coastal population informal workers and persons with disabilities often face multiple forms of exclusion simultaneously at the same time.
• 17:06
  Speaker 0: So climate impacts intensify these existing vulnerabilities rather than creating new ones, so another challenge is that environmental defenders increasingly face legal intimidation criminalization violence, while protecting their lands and communities.
• 17:30
  Speaker 0: And against women of gender minorities these are those facing a layer of discrimination and transformative action therefore requires more than technical adaptation.
• 17:47
  Speaker 0: so we need social transformation.
• 17:50
  Speaker 0: this includes strengthening women leaderships securing community land right for the indigenous communities and then giving rights, access to our college gender minorities.
• 18:06
  Speaker 0: And recognizing that their knowledge in protecting environment is also one of the important and playing before an investment building climate resilience.
• 18:23
  Speaker 0: so Climate justice should be understood both ecologically and democratically.
• 18:32
  Speaker 0: And societies become more resilient when participation becomes more inclusive
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: than it's clear for us, It is very essential to apply a gender lens When we discuss about environmental justice climate action.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Uh, Dewi your work, your research work, academic work.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Your activities and art often highlight the experiences of knowledge from women in communities at grassroots level.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: My question to you this is also a very decolonial perspective right?
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Instead of talking on national levels You take a look at the grassroots level as an unit of analysis.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Why do we see that participation at the lower level is very important to ensure participation.
• 19:26
  Speaker 0: Why it plays a pivotal role?
• 19:28
  Speaker 0: Because they themselves who experience those burdens, and themself becoming victims for example of pollution, victims of the flood, victims losing their mountains or experiencing the scarcity of water during a dry period.
• 19:49
  Speaker 0: And I think they are communities, people who know best how to tackle that.
• 20:01
  Speaker 0: so we need take into account proposing initiative to be resilient because My experience, your experience in Bangkok is far away from their experiences.
• 20:22
  Speaker 0: And we need to appreciate the way they adapt and become resilient.
• 20:30
  Speaker 0: In the end there are no longer victims but survivors.
• 20:35
  Speaker 0: They're agents of climate resilience activists.
• 20:41
  Speaker 0: But we should not forget as well that the structure, this economic system that relies on exponential profit and growth is truly too expensive.
• 21:01
  Speaker 0: We don't have any more time to consider it as an apocalyptic calling have an economic, social and ecological transformation.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Let me move to the next point.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: across Southeast Asia many local communities in indigenous people they're developing their own responses especially women's group.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Many indigenous women took a pivotal role on climate action.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: My question for you is Can the policymaker academic civil society learn from this indigenous women leader when they fight for their rights, for their ecosystem?
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: For their habitat and community.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: What can a policymaker lesson that can be learned by these indigenous people?
• 22:03
  Speaker 0: Yeah I think we have again to unlearn what we had previously comprehend about The way we see the planet, uh...the way we relate to the planet and the way we behave with a planet.
• 22:19
  Speaker 0: And the way that we have relationship with the planets are for example from language perspective in relation to forests.
• 22:28
  Speaker 0: I think language is of forest knowledge.
• 22:31
  Speaker 0: Why?
• 22:31
  Speaker 0: Because decolonial perspectives understand languages not nearly as communication system.
• 22:38
  Speaker 0: But language is a living ecology that sustained multiple ways of knowing, multiple ways remembering and relating to more than human world.
• 22:50
  Speaker 0: If the forest gone if the forests disappear we have no word ,we have no sentence .
• 22:57
  Speaker 0: We have no diction too relate...to refer.. To the thing that we would like to refer.
• 23:04
  Speaker 0: so The relationship between the language and ecosystem health is indepensible.
• 23:14
  Speaker 0: And then forest as well our planet, it's also becoming multilingual space.
• 23:21
  Speaker 0: Why?
• 23:21
  Speaker 0: Because forests are not silenced landscape but it is places where indigenous language oral tradition ecological knowledge and non-human form of communication coexist.
• 23:37
  Speaker 0: And colonial language policy have often erased these linguistic ecologies, for example Indonesia has also become the bed a multi-lingual country in the world.
• 23:56
  Speaker 0: We have hundreds of languages, even thousands of dialects which live on our acupilagio.
• 24:06
  Speaker 0: and this is of course related to the communities.
• 24:10
  Speaker 0: And how do policies see it?
• 24:12
  Speaker 0: Because our policy relies only on language of the colonial, rely on the language of law.
• 24:22
  Speaker 0: And the language of law is so arid, not so fertile and it's too economical.
• 24:32
  Speaker 0: It sometimes too reductive to generate a healthy relationship.
• 24:42
  Speaker 0: Like the linguistic ecology and forest conservation, The loss of indigenous knowledge is also the loss of Indigenous language.
• 24:52
  Speaker 0: And it always correlates to the loss by biodiversity.
• 24:59
  Speaker 0: Language encodes local ecological knowledge, species classification, seasonal cycles, sustainable forest management practices.
• 25:13
  Speaker 0: So if we would like to make our forest healthy again.
• 25:19
  Speaker 0: We have to involve the grassroot people, we have to involved with indigenous community and be aware that their language is part of biocultural diversity.
• 25:33
  Speaker 0: Declanizing forests discourse means rather than describing forests as natural resources.
• 25:45
  Speaker 0: So Declanel perspective emphasized Florence as ancestral territories, as relational spaces and living communities where we have intrinsic values.
• 26:02
  Speaker 0: And then the policy should also appreciate that policy is not only about human being but it's concerning more than human being.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Climate crisis is increasingly intersecting with existing inequalities, yeah?
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Inequalities there are discrimination related to gender class ethnicity and geography.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: If I were to ask you could you mention what's number one pressing challenges facing women and gender minorities in this climate crisis?
• 26:51
  Speaker 0: Yeah, I think it is about structural inequality.
• 26:55
  Speaker 0: First of all within the system.
• 26:57
  Speaker 0: so we have a system And within the systems there's structural inequality.
• 27:04
  Speaker 0: Do the planet giving us food enough to feed everyone?
• 27:09
  Speaker 0: but problem is distribution.
• 27:12
  Speaker 0: Our core problems are inequality.
• 27:15
  Speaker 0: First, economic inequality which is manifesting in class.
• 27:21
  Speaker 0: Which you already mentioned and then geographical inequality.
• 27:26
  Speaker 0: You also mention that gender inequality because we don't have unequal access to land.
• 27:33
  Speaker 0: as if we refer the statistics those who are owning the lands seventy percent is male So women owning the land is London thirty percent, but you can like everyone can check again whether that statistic Is now changing.
• 27:50
  Speaker 0: and if we don't own the land it means then.
• 27:53
  Speaker 0: We don't have agency If mean if we have no agency meaning we cannot longer deliver our emancipation Our participation we cannot exercise even our right to even to have access, not at all.
• 28:09
  Speaker 0: And then we also have a political inequality within the system as we know that in Kandung problem of semen mining is actually not national problems it's just global issues.
• 28:26
  Speaker 0: why?
• 28:26
  Speaker 0: Because many European and Chinese semen mines were being closed down And it means that they are looking for another sources, meaning that they're looking at the global solve.
• 28:41
  Speaker 0: Meaning that there's a lot of countries which is easily to be bright and have lots of limestone.
• 28:49
  Speaker 0: Indonesia has lots of Limestone!
• 28:51
  Speaker 0: It means... The decision to close down the semen mining in certain country could affect the opening of those mining at other countries, especially in this case Indonesia.
• 29:10
  Speaker 0: And what we need is innovation.
• 29:13
  Speaker 0: We have lots of innovations but why innovation doesn't work?
• 29:17
  Speaker 0: because policy does not want to implement that.
• 29:21
  Speaker 0: and so again it's written how inequality exists within system.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Listening to your explanation, it almost as if women and gender minorities cannot speak for themselves.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Cannot stand up on themself because of this structural inequality.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: they don't own agency that have let's call a capital or resources to fight their cause.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: very interesting This is one highlight from our discussion.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: We come to the last question.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: they were looking ahead.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: What would be your key recommendation for government in Southeast Asia, civil society academic institution international organization who are seeking to advance a more decolonial gender just and ecologically sustainable future in Southeast Asian?
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: I know this view is not the trendiest one you know but many actors in Southeast Asia have come to an awareness of it.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: What are your key recommendations?
• 30:45
  Speaker 0: Yeah, thank you Francie.
• 30:46
  Speaker 0: I think my first recommendation is that we have to place communities at the center of environmental governance rather than treating them as stakeholders who consulted only after decision has already been made.
• 31:04
  Speaker 0: and then universities should recognize multiple forms of knowledge.
• 31:11
  Speaker 0: Scientific research is essential, but it should be placed in dialogue with the indigenous knowledge or local ecological practices artistic expression and lived experience.
• 31:24
  Speaker 0: And government should also integrate gender justice into climate policy not as a separate component but as a core principle that shape planning, that shape budgeting and the implementation.
• 31:41
  Speaker 0: And for international partnership like HPS should also emphasize long-term collaboration instead of short term projects like building.
• 31:55
  Speaker 0: you know, building trust takes time and especially when working with communities whose knowledge has historically been marginalized.
• 32:04
  Speaker 0: So we need to be an ally within these issues And I think we all believe that to cultivate an ethic of care as well as multi-species justice do small than human into the center of our attention, inserting the planet in to the center and all of those species.
• 32:33
  Speaker 0: The water, the stone, mountains, river or oceans.
• 32:38
  Speaker 0: climate justice is then becoming a crisis of relationship.
• 32:45
  Speaker 0: So we have not only crisis of climate, but it is actually a crisis or relationship that We already build a very bad Relationship with other species and without our planet.
• 33:00
  Speaker 0: So we need to care one another.
• 33:04
  Speaker 0: And when it also took care for the future generation?
• 33:08
  Speaker 0: Again, we need too careful more than human world that sustained all of us.
• 33:14
  Speaker 0: So if we approach sustainability through care, relationality share responsibility I believe short East Asia and our planet as well will be contributing to the global conversation about more just and ecological futures in France.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Dr.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Dewi Chandraning Room for speaking with us today and sharing your valuable and interesting insights with our listeners.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Stay tuned to the next episode of Bull Talks, Dialogues & Insights from Southeast Asia where we continue exploring ideas people and stories driving chains across Southeast Asia.