H4: Imagining Just Climate Futures Beyond the Nation-State

The nation-state is unequal to the challenges of a climate-changed world, from the need for planned retreat and increased freedom of movement to the fair and reparative distribution of resources. This roundtable will converge around the question: “How can we imagine and realize just climate futures beyond the nation-state?” Panelists will think through quandaries of scale and temporality: How media and movements from the hyperlocal to the transnational levels can push beyond the nation-state’s limitations and exclusions, and how possible futures can be forged through addressing past injustices and current inequities. Grappling with these questions of scale and temporality are crucial for producing media and organizing movements that contest authoritarian regimes of power and reject the doomsday prophecies of climate apocalypse. Indeed, apocalyptic imagery stifles the discussion of better worlds. Imagining and visually representing alternatives to the end-times and alternatives to authoritarianism are increasingly at the center of many contemporary movements for climate justice, such as the Buen Vivir movements in Latin America that build on Indigenous knowledge to imagine new forms of coexistence and the Right to the City movement’s emphasis on uniting communities around the world in the face of hostile development and legislation. The ultimate goal of this roundtable will be to learn and draw inspiration from the work of activists, artists, and media-makers who are organizing movements within and across borders and co-creating radical visions for what just climate futures look like.