Social and Environmental Justice is at the Heart of Sustainability

At the 2021 Sustainability Research and Innovation Congress (SRIC), an annual event bringing together more than 1400 global leaders, experts, and industry, Ritodhi delivered a plenary talk as one of the five early-career research champions, selected from hundreds of applications across the world.

The topic of his talk was titled ‘Sustainability for Whom?” and it highlighted the need to address the ongoing processes of injustice and inequality which are at the heart of our institutions and communities.

As part of a way ahead, he suggested that we should:

• Support diverse community-led initiatives that are not merely top-down projects, since currently, “the framing of sustainability, investment in innovation and academic analysis has been dominated by processes that give relatively little regard to these communities, even when they care about them. We need to incorporate this diversity if we are to achieve a just, sustainable future”

  
  

• Amplify mobilizations focused on climate justice, which go beyond a focus on climate change. Because “colonisation still provides the fundamental building blocks of our institutions and knowledge systems. This needs to be dismantled and conversations on how to do so are a necessity."

  
  

• There needs to be a transfer of power, allowing currently marginalized entities to present their aspirations and have it guide our future goals. Since “Indigenous and local communities are more than mere caricatures. The stories of their complicated intersectional lives need to replace their static representations by extractive frameworks of science and governance. Scientists and policymakers have to facilitate a transfer of power and be ready to listen and unlearn things as an act of allyship and democracy."

  
  

• Policies should be driven by plural knowledges, co-produced with a variety of stakeholders. “We need to move to an acceptance of communal and individual plurality. If, as many have claimed, we are running out of time as a species, our first act should be that of real partnership as espoused in SDG 17. The partnership not just with other humans, but also with the plants, animals, spirits, and energies with whom we share our one home”

At Tohu, we are actively working on supporting initiatives which support such environmental and social just pathways towards sustainability, while highlighting the voices of indigenous and local communities at the forefront of such challenges from across the world.