Climate Peace

Principal delegates: John Palmesino, Maya Kóvskaya
Respondents: Dorothee Richter and students of ZHdK

As climate change brings more extreme weather, monsoon disruptions, flooding, drought, sea level rise, and rapid glacial melting, it plays an ever-greater role in shaping geopolitics. What seem to be political conflicts about contested identities and national belongings, more often than not have at their root controversies about control over resources. Kashmir, for example, holds over 90% of Pakistani water used for irrigation. Climate refugees are becoming a new designation for people displaced by climate-induced degradations and shortages. At the same time alternative models of life are under attack in the West, where the growing influence of mega-corporations and a new wave of nationalisms and economic protectionism form an unholy alliance.