“System Change not Climate Change” – But how?!

Why the climate crisis is an intersectional challenge

Digital & public lecture series, summer semester 2021, Tuesdays, 6 to 7:30 PM (Central European Time), online

Here we go again: We organized a second lecture series at the University of Hildesheim! Due to the pandemic, it will again be taking place in a solely digital format. Our goal is to make the event accessible to all interested people, not only to university students. Therefore the access links to the lectures will be published on this website and there will be no limit of participants. Detailed information on the topic of the event can be found further below on this page.

For the period of Tuesday, April 13th to Tuesday, July 13th 2021, there will be live lectures every Tuesday evening from 6 to 7:30 PM (CET) via the video conference tool Zoom. If the speakers give their consent, we will also livestream the lectures on our YouTube channel.

Credits for the amazing design go to Pia Chwalczyk

Receiving credits (Information for students from University of Hildesheim)

Students from University of Hildesheim can again receive credits for the lecture series in many courses of study (2, 3 or 4 CP; depending on the module). Students from those courses that enable crediting can register for the lecture series through the LSF (course no.: 1571).

Further details regarding credit points (performance records, responsible lecturers etc.) will be presented by us in the introductory event on April 13th. For any questions you can contact us via email: info@studentsforfuture-hildesheim.de.

Nevertheless, students from courses of study that are not eligible for receiving credits are welcome to participate in the lectures as well! The access links will be publicly available through this website and due to the online format, there is no limit of participants. At the end of the semester the lecture series can be registered as an additional service on the transcript of records.

Furthermore, for people who can’t attend all the live lectures, we will try to record all the lectures and make them publicly available on our YouTube channel. Should that not be possible in some cases, a recording will at least be available for students from University of Hildesheim through the Learnweb of the course.

Information on the topic of the lecture series

The global for future movement is often using the slogan “System Change not Climate Change” for their protests. We as Students for Future Hildesheim are part of this climate justice movement as well and also put the slogan on our banner.

During this lecture series, we want to take a close look at what this slogan actually means. Why are climate justice movements not only advocating ecology and climate protection, but a system change? What does climate justice even mean and why is it a social matter? And what kind of solutions do already exist in order for such a system change to happen?

We are talking about climate justice and not only climate protection because we want to emphasize the social component of the crisis. That is becuase the climate crisis doesn’t affect everyone similarly, but has different impacts on different people along the various structural forms of oppressions such as race, class and gender – which leads to marginalized groups suffering a lot more from this crisis. Due to reasons of visualization of such multiple discriminations, the term intersectionality was coined.

In the introductory event of the series we want to examine this unwieldy term and pull it into the context of climate justice. For us, intersectional climate justice represents the intersections of ecology with all forms of structural oppression such as race, class and gender.
Why is the climate crisis an intersectional challenge and what exactly is intersectional climate justice? And why can we only reach climate justice if all aspects of the overlap mentioned above are taken into account?

Further on in the series, we will have various experts talk about the exact connections between the climate crisis and forms of structural oppression. Why can’t we have climate justice in growth-oriented economies? Why are women, inter, non-binary, trans and agender people more affected by the climate crisis than men? What is environmental racism? Inhowfar is the fight for climate justice also a class struggle? And what other forms of oppression and discrimination are connected to the climate crisis?

Those and many more questions are to be discussed during the lecture series. Since we don’t want to leave it at mere problem analyses, we also aim to involve many international climate activists from countries of the so-called global south in the series, wanting to give them the opportunity to present existing solutions and best practice propositions, for example regarding anti-racist climate acitivism. Talking about intersectional climate justice must also include the assessment that the climate crisis is not a problem of the future, especially in countries of the southern hemisphere, so there already are a lot of innovative solutions.

In this way, we want to point out certain perspectives on how an intersectional and international system change as demanded by the for future movement could be possible. We’d be very glad if YOU decide to actively participate in our project!