Nonkilling Responses to Climate Crisis Conference in Vasa, Finland

Åbo Akademi University in Vasa, home of the Programme in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research, will co-organize with the Center for Global Nonkilling, its Fifth international “Explorations in Peace & Conflict Research” conference on March 13, 2020 focusing on the topic “Nonkilling Responses to Climate Crisis”. The conference will take place at Åbo Akademi in Vasa, Finland, featuring speakers from La Trobe University, DEEP Network, Umeå University and Instituto Resiliencia, as well a the book lauch of a new edition of Petra Kelly’s Nonviolence Speaks to Power with an Introduction by Valentina Cavanna (University of Turin).

In the definition of nonkilling that appears in UNESCO’s Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), nonkilling, in relation to threats to the viability of the biosphere, nonkilling implies absence of direct attacks upon life-sustaining resources as well as cessation of indirect degradation associated with lethality. In January 2020, an article in BioSience endorsed by over 11,000 scientists warned that climate crisis had arrived and that an “immense increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere is needed to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis“. This conference seeks to foster new debate in the intersections between such planetary challenge and the nonkilling responses to tackle it.

While the event will be held on site in Vasa (Admission is free) lectures will be delivered by tele-conference, followed by live Q&A sessions. By doing this, the event will drastically reduce its carbon footprint and is also to make lecture available via Youtube for participants from across the world. Most presentations will be made available online pre-conference for extended interaction.

The event will start out with welcoming words by Prof. Kaj Björkqvist (Åbo Akademi) and CGNK Director Joám Evans Pim, followed by an opening lecture by Alberto Gomes, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at La Trobe University (Australia) and Global Director of DEEP (Dialogue, Empathic Engagement and Peacebuilding) Network.

Kristina Sehlin Macneil, Research fellow at Várdduo-Centre för Sámi Research and Co-Director for the Faculty of Arts Doctoral College at Umeå University, will lecture on the concept Extractive Violence and how it relates to increased pressure over resources in the context of economic greening.  Kristina will present four different types of violence affecting Indigenous peoples, cultural, structural, extractive and lateral violence – how these types of violence interact and what causes them.

Manuel Casal Lodeiro, Coordinator of Instituto Resiliencia and Member of the Governing Council of the Centro de Saberes para a Sustentabilidade, a Regional Centre for Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development officially acknowledged by the United Nations University, will tackle the geopolitical importance of the nonkilling choices in times of civilization collapse and the the problem of fractional indirect delayed carbon killers.

During the conference, CGNK will also launch a new edition of Petra Kelly’s Nonviolence Speaks to Power, a collection speeches and essays of the German Green politician and activist, published by the Center for Global Nonviolence Planning Project (CGNK’s predecessor) three months before her tragic death in October 1992. The new CGNK edition includes an Introduction by Valentina Cavanna (University of Turin), who graduated in International Relations (M.A.) at University of Genoa (Italy) with the thesis “Ecologism and feminism in Petra Kelly’s thought”.