ÌÇÐÄTV

Being Present to Climate Change

Inheritance, Repair and the Restless Work of Justice

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Friday, 10 October 2025, 12pm - 2pm · S2.09, Social Sciences Building,

University of ÌÇÐÄTV

About the Event

Our lands, waters, and bodies carry the layered scars of colonisation, extraction, and broken promises. We inherit more than land — we inherit unpaid debts and silenced histories, carried not only in archives but in our bloodlines, in the songs, struggles, and silences passed down to us. From the rice paddies of displaced villages in the Philippines to the coal mines of Indonesia and the oil pipelines of Canada, from Palestine’s besieged farmlands to the industrial corridors of China, our ancestors bore the first wounds of stolen labour, poisoned soil, and stolen futures.

To be present to this inheritance is to feel the weight of unfinished work. It is to recognise that repair cannot begin without truth-telling, atonement, and the dismantling of the systems that continue to harm.

In conversation with (Department of Development Studies, SOAS), whose work explores key sites of colonial/capitalist expansion – the plantation, the mine, the smelter, and the city – and the intersections of race and political ecology, (Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy) whose advocacy links climate resilience to the struggle against occupation; (Manila Observatory) who has worked at the forefront of climate litigation in the Philippines and beyond, (Bristol Law School) whose work unsettles the law and colonial narratives of extraction in Canadian tar sands and (Essex Law School) whose work challenges the complicity of corporations in the climate and environmental crisis — we ask:

• When harm is both historic and unfolding, what does atonement require from those who benefit from it?
• How do we unmask and refuse the ‘false solutions,’ carbon trading, toxic exports, green growth narratives and cultivate alternatives that are rooted in sovereignty and reparative justice?
• What would it mean to treat repair not as charity or corporate responsibility, but as a binding, transnational, intergenerational debt to transform the systems that make this harm possible?
• What legal pathways and non-legal pathways can be used to seek these reparations and accountability?
  
  

Together, we will explore what it means to tend the circle; to commit to the restless, patient, and global work of justice, where being present is both inheritance and responsibility.

Moderators: (Oxford Department for International Development) and Celine Tan (ÌÇÐÄTV Law School).

This event is organised with the Centre for Law, Regulation and Governance of the Global Economy (GLOBE), ÌÇÐÄTV Law School.

The event will be followed by a networking meeting for climate and environmental governance researchers from 2pm - 3pm.

There is no need to book for this event but please email if you would like to attend the networking session or if you have any dietary or access requirements.

About the Speakers

is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. At present, Lisa is working on the extraction and processing of nickel for the electrification of vehicle markets, with a particular focus on the sacrificial socioecologies these processes produce. She is also finishing a book on Liberation Ecology for Pluto Press.Lisa’s wider research is mainly anchored in critical approaches to political ecology and political economy with particular attention to structures of race, gender, and class.

is a Palestinian researcher, climate justice advocate, and political strategist from Khan Yunis, Gaza. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the . His work focuses on the intersection of energy justice, environmental governance, and decolonization, particularly within the context of settler colonialism, military occupation, and systemic de-development in Palestine and the broader Middle East. 

is a Filipina climate justice activist and lawyer. She is a at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and teh Environment at teh London School of Economics and a Technical Advisor with the . She has worked on on the intersections of environmental and human rights, just energy transition, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) processes, particularly on loss and damage with a feminist and decolonial lens.

is Lecturer in Law at Bristol Law School, University fo Bristol. Her research focuses on the intersections between climate change and jurisprudence, with a focus on critical legal studies and anti-colonial theory. Her doctoral research considered these in the context of recent Canadian tar sands legal cases involving Indigenous and Canadian state actors.

is Honorary Associate Professor at the GLOBE CentreLink opens in a new window, ÌÇÐÄTV Law School. She is Senior Lecturer at Essex Law School and the Co-Director of the Essex ÌÇÐÄTV and Human Rights Project. Her main research interests are in the fields of international investment law and business and human rights. Her research addresses the relationship between corporate law, international investment law, human rights law, and tort law, examining how these areas can and should interact so as to operationalise human rights standards in the modern business context.

is a DPhil candidate in International Development and a member of St Hughs College, University of Oxford. Her DPhil project investigates the rise and fixation of financialised capital as a promised solution to the global climate crisis, how this came to be, and what this means for climate justice.She is also a at the LSE Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment.

Professor Celine TanLink opens in a new window is Professor of International Economic Law at the University of ÌÇÐÄTV and a Co-Director of the GLOBE CentreLink opens in a new window, ÌÇÐÄTV Law School. She is leads a project on Climate Finance for Equitable Transitions (CLiFT), a multi-institutional and multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at exploring the climate finance supply chain within the context of the multilateral climate change regime, international financial architecture and the multi-layered landscape of international economic law. She is Co-Convener of the ÌÇÐÄTV Network for Equity and Exchange in Climate Governance and Strategy (NEXUS)Link opens in a new window with Emellyne Forman.