The Coming of the COP: International Climate Negotiations come to Qatar

It will render millions of homes, jobs and dreams obsolete, exacerbate existing political sores and bring us many more. Asia and Africa will be royally screwed.  Towns and cities will migrate, consultants will make money, communities will be pauperised, NGOs will make money.

For 12 days from this coming Monday, the United Nation's annual Climate Change Conference, the Conference of the Parties (or COP) will unfold in Qatar.  Science will be bandied around. Awards will be brandied around. And we the sons, daughters and khalifas of this brown soil might harp on about the actual intellectual and ecological values of our sacred tradition.

The countries of the world will congregate for the 18th time, polluting  and endangered, scientifically creative and consumptive, politically and public relations invested. They will be joined by corporate NGOs, businesses and the other usual suspects.

Qatar is an interesting place for a COP for a few reasons. On Al Jazeera's doorstep coverage of it is potentially different in kind from other such meetings, which are dominated by the industrialised polluting nations and their post-industrial guilt laden, but more or less eurocentric environmental NGOs. Though post-Wadah Khanfar Al Jazeera very much follows a pro secular editorial policy overseen by the Qatari royal family, their coverage is likely ( I hope) to deepen and wider participation in the climate conversation.

This small fossil fuel rich state in the Middle East is increasingly investing in science, foreign policy adventures and losing its status as the highest per capita carbon emitter. Pretty much every major western university has representation there. Post-Syria crisis they appear to be buying out Iran's political stake in Gaza, and the Qatar Investment Authority seems to be allocating finance towards renewables manufacture and appliance.

From a Londonistani point of view, there are a lot of Pakistani technocrats working working in Qatar, happy to live with the racial/class ordering and deculturation, so long as the money's good, life is safe and the Islamic frostings are there. Football fans, a community to which I do not belong, might also see this international event through their 2022 World Cup goggles.

Substance-wise, I do not think it likely that neoliberal imperialist, invader, polluter nations will chose to lose their competitive edge and pledge the binding deep cuts needed to mitigate hideous climate weirdness. The UK government have demonstrated that they cant even be bothered to maintain Labours Climate charade, Obomber's solution probably involves selling futures options on drones that will kill climate refugees (thereby mitigating any impacts of climate change on the good american people).

There maybe quite a few co-options of vulnerable countries through Adaptation Hush Money, that is funds from a polluter to an endangered government in exchange for other services rendered and the right to pollute further. Who knows? the devils really are in all the details.

The summit is easy to follow online if your are so inclined.

For fellow decolonial futurists and friends of the politics of life (not death) I recommend keeping an eye on the Bolivian and Equadorian delegations who stress the Nature Rights approach and Pablo Solon the ex Bolivian negotiator now at Focus on the Global South. Also be mindful of the sheer skull duggery of climate commodification and the G77 group of developing countries.

Khutbas from our Kitchens, again

Urban, immigrant life estranges us from the rest of creation.  We are becoming part of the problem. So let us alter the relations between the built, lived environment and the (mal)functionings of the urban ummah which we see being stripped away from soulfulness and plunged into consumerism.

Khutbas from the Kitchen is an idea, potentially an institution,that intervenes practically in our lives to help embody Islamic principles in our relations with creation, not least the food system, family and social relations. It is as simple as recording short educative videos from eachother’s kitchens about the ethics and values behind what we eat, warts, proverbial kitchen sink and all.

Competing with slow, unjust people over reclaiming the mimbar in the mosque is probably a useful expenditure of some people's energy. It need not distract us from the potential of networking and reimagining our existing networked ummahstuctures to overcome the cultural degradation arising from some of the activities of Islam Channel, PeaceTV, ISB, the Quilliam Foundation, Saudi Arabia/America.

Khutbas from our Kitchens rehonours the domestic, creative, hospitable space. For certain, it is not some kind of come dine with me/ready steady cook/diary of a bad man goes for chicken and chips venture. The objects around this vital room tell stories that are mostly hidden and unmarked. The packet of plain flour tells us of the history and politics of American grain surpluses. The dish rack, which bears a lot of the burden, tells us of steel, geometry and evaporation. Not to be funny or anything, but the kitchen plan itself speaks about the design and food values at the time of the building’s construction.

Kitchen media is interesting, televisions entered a lot of them in the late 80s, but now the direction of travel has reversed and one–to-many communications can be exchanged for more realistic many-to–many relationships. And perhaps the people in them have changed, less learned in some ways (humanity), more so in others (web search).

The kinds of impacts I would anticipate from this collective endeavour include a practical, shared space for learning, ensouling, deciding and creating more Creator-conscious and justice-based patterns of life and consumption.

Onnineleveneencommemorationthatmakesmewanttopuke

Please stop this autumnal necrophilia
Sucky oppressed releases of developmentia
So some buildings fell down
George W did frown
And the bastards turned several countries upside down
The ummahs got boring
Bought out and appalling
Some bros they went Banking
I shall not be thanking
This veneration of date
From the empire of hate
Screw you fat commenter
Brown hostaged lamenter.
Say nothing at all
Just let the buggers fall.
Find a dignified job.
Or sell corn-on-the-cob
Good men and good womin
Lets quit with the blaming
And mobilise our minions
To smash through these dominions
Now down on your knees
Remember the Garden
Join hands with the trees
and beg His great pardon

Mother Earth Rights in the Plurinational State of Bolivia

Alhamdullillah its now official. The cooliest environmental law of our times.
A different way of looking and being. Tool up lawyers.

2nd day of the World Social Forum

The disorganisation committee had been working hard today!

Despite its best efforts we managed to stumble upon Naomi Klein, Susan George and Pablo Solon [Bolivian Ambassador to the UN] discussing the upcoming G20 mayhem, with Climate Change, Financial Crises and the Arab Revolutions on the mind. Bolivia famously resisted the crappy climate consensus of capitulation at Cancun last year, and had developed a non market based Rights of Mother Earth to issues of nature and human survival which I will explore in coming posts.

There was a decent session on Food sovereignty and global trade politics and several on corporate land grabbing and resistance. Couldnt help but feel for the people and possibilities that have been wasted and unrealised by organisational difficulties and obstacles. We shouldnt have to put up with this.

Tonight we went to visit a friend at a hotel next to the fortresslike USAID HQ, enough said really.