Eighth Global South Summit Emphasizes Connections and Solutions
On Friday, September 27, 40 climate advocates, activists, researchers and scholars gathered for the eighth annual Global South Summit, which was organized by the South Carolina-based New Alpha Community Development Corporation and hosted at Union Theological Seminary by the Center for Earth Ethics.
In welcoming the guests, CEE Executive Director Karenna Gore praised the organizers for “playing a leadership role in convening a conversation, during Climate Week, when the UN General Assembly is meeting, to focus on Global South issues, and to do so from the perspective of the American South.”
According to Reverend Leo Woodberry, pastor of Kingdom Living Temple and executive director at New Alpha, “we started the Summit because we noted so many similarities…between what’s happening with pollution and climate change in the Global South” and the U.S. south. The goal is not just to learn “but to find synergies and other ways we can work together.”
We’re not vulnerable people. We’re people put in vulnerable situations.
The first panel addressed the Global South. Samira Siddique, CEE’s director of strategic initiatives as well as a researcher and advocate, noted the dangers faced by Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. It was a “scary situation,” she said, with camps in constant danger from mudslides and other consequences of climate change. She noted that the international community needed to expand their outlook and “think of loss and damage from cultural and spiritual perspectives” as well as economic ones.
Dr. Aliou Niang, associate professor of New Testament at UTS, noted how his Diola people of Senegal—and West Africa as a whole—had been reshaped by imperialism and colonialism. Condemning the “imperial, extractive perspective” and the colonial drive to extract “rice for empire” from Africa, he urged a change in mindset, which sees “land as subject, not as object” and a “return back to agrarian life.”
Earth advocate Oluwatosin Kolawole, a regional organizing coordinator for GreenFaith in New Jersey, helps GreenFaith organize in his native Africa. Noting the growing dangers from climate change, he emphasized the “call for justice” among Indigenous communities there.
Albarka Wakili, formerly media and communications officer at Pilgrim Wesleyan Church in Zambia, is now pursuing a master of divinity in social justice advocacy at Drew University. He reminded the audience that “the base cause [of ecological damage in Africa] is climate change and desertification.” He emphasized the need to “get proper education to the people.”
Noting that his Taíno people were the first to suffer from colonization, Kasike Roberto Múkaro Borrero, a strategic advisor at CEE, emphasized the dangers facing Indigenous peoples. “We’re not vulnerable people,” he said. “We’re people put in vulnerable situations.”
It doesn’t take a lot. It takes a seed; it takes a spark.
The second panel addressed impacts of climate change on the U.S. south. Professor Florence Anoruo, who leads the Emerging Crops and Industrial Hemp Research Project and is a faculty member in the Department of Biology at South Carolina State University, regretted that “people affected [by climate change] are not represented in policy-making decisions.” “Community-based solutions are a really big answer,” she said, and community-based organizations “need to be part of planning.”
Loretta Slater, executive director of the Whitney M. Slater Foundation, agreed. “We need to send money to communities and let them solve the problems in their communities.” Danna Smith, executive director of the Dogwood Alliance, emphasized that “in the U.S. there is colonization in wealth and power.” Wealthy Americans “are in the lines of a destructive economic system.” She supported “solutions from the ground up,” because people “need the resources to be able to engage.”
Alex Easdale, executive director of the Southeast Climate & Energy Network, emphasized the “role for civil society—that’s us.” Noting that SCEN recently supported two locally produced films highlighting community groups and climate change, he urged action.
“It doesn’t take a lot,” he said. “It takes a seed; it takes a spark.”
