In Let Them Drown, the 2016 London Edward W. Said lecture, Naomi Klein calledattention, as Rob Nixon's Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor had done, to the nexus of climate change, (colonial) racism and poverty. But she shifted the spotlight onto the oft-overlooked low-lying island states. And their current day situation is dire. Island nations and sub-Saharan Africa have been hardest hit by climate change, compounded by poverty. Today's talk will present research that rests at the intersection of environmental science, cartography, visual arts and creative nonfiction to illustrate the impacts of sea level rise on low lying islands and the solutions being put forward to address them.
Dr. Christina Gerhardt is Associate Professor of German at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. During the 2017/18 academic year, she is a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley. This event is free and open to the public.
