Atmospheres of Violence panel discussion at ONCA Gallery.

We live in a time when people are transforming the earth’s climate, changing the skin of the planet through deforestation, dredging the seas and delving for metals and fuel. Resistance to this systematic change is powerful and sometimes successful – and is violently repressed.

Across the world over the last 15 years, more than 1500 people have been killed because they took action to defend their lands, forests, rivers and environment. Thousands more face criminalisation, threats, vilification and ‘slow violence’ – loss of the lands and conditions that they need to exist. Their stories are diverse. Some defenders choose to take on a life of activism, while others are forced into a desperate situation where they are fighting for their survival. Some are professionals, such as lawyers and journalists. Some are farmers, peasants, fishermen and women, or forest peoples.

On 6 November, join us at ONCA to learn more about the kinds of contexts in which this exhibition of work from Cambodia, Brazil and Bangladesh has been produced. Why do people fight in the face of such risk? What is being lost? And what can we do to support them?

Panel discussion chaired by Mads Ryle, Democracy Center

Panelists:

• Dr Mary Menton (Atmospheres of Violence lead researcher)
• Rumana Hashem (Warwick University, Phulbari Solidarity Group)
• Fran Lambrick (Not 1 More)
• Sebastian Ordoñez Muñoz (War on Want, Jaguar Despierta)
• Video interventions from environmental defenders San Mala (Cambodia) and Claudelice Silva Dos Santos (Brazil)

This project is a collaboration between ONCA, Not 1 More, University of Sussex & the Atmospheres of Violence research partnership, and the Democracy Center. The exhibition and talk event are funded by ESRC as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences.

Photo credit Edgar Kanaykõ Xakriabá, 2017