Global Perspectives on Health and Environmental Justice
A joint seminar of the research centre the Normative Orders (Goethe University in Frankfurt), the Independent Resource Group for Global Health Justice (IRG-GHJ) & University of Lorraine (Nancy, France).
Normative Orders Global Health Justice Postdoctoral Programme
We are delighted to invite you to the launching event of the new seminar series “Global Perspectives on Health and Environmental Justice”, co organised by the Independent Resource Group for Global Health Justice (IRG-GHJ) and the Normative Orders, Goethe University, Frankfurt. We aspire to take the lead in generating debate, questions and hopefully some answers on issues pertaining to global health and environmental justice. Six seminar sessions are planned for this academic year. We will keep you updated via email about upcoming meetings and about the programme as it unfolds. We are truly excited to start this new collaborative venture. Please join us on November 9, 2023, at 15:00 CET (UTC +1).
Session 1:
After the Pandemic: Emerging Questions on Global Health and Environmental Justice
November 9, 2023, 15:00-16:30 CET (UTC +1)
Online & in person
Where? In Frankfurt, Germany:
Campus Westend, Gebäude "Normative Ordnungen" | Max-Horkheimer-Straße 2, 60323 Frankfurt am Main
Speakers
- Darrel Moellendorf (Goethe University, Frankfurt / Normative Orders)
- Sridhar Venkatapuram (King’s College London / IRG-GHJ)
Hosted by Ndidi Nwaneri (Goethe University, Frankfurt / Normative Orders) & Anna C. Zielinska (University of Lorraine, Nancy, France / IRG-GHJ)
For updates and the connection information, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/ZVjFZH9D6FVfzjWE6
Background and rationale
Contemporary theories of justice are based on an outdated worldview that either leans towards, or accommodates, charity-driven conception of global resource allocation or reallocation. Today, such theories are no longer intellectually acceptable. Attempting to address a global crisis from a charity based world view reinforces, or at the very least reveals, inequalities among persons, regions and countries in the global community.
Many of the initiatives set up in response to the Covid19 pandemic were based on, or at least relied on, such paradigms. The insufficiency of these paradigms was illustrated by the failure of such initiatives to equitably allocate health resources, and in the fact that in their reliance on already existing global systems and structure, systematically, if not deliberately excluded the voices of poorer members of the global community in various aspects of managing the pandemic.
Such failures call for improvement in the prevailing structure of global interactions. The demands of justice require more equitable patterns of allocation of global resources as well as systems of communication that are truly global. Structures of global resource allocation must be grounded on fairness and adequacy while global communication structures must have room for all voices, including and especially voices from the Global South.
For instance, even before the COVID pandemic, non-dominant voices including those from the global south maintained that communicable diseases are not the most pressing threat to the health of the Anthropocene. They presented Issues like declining access to quality nutrition, clean air and water due to environmental degradation as a result of climate change as constituting a more urgent threat to the survival of a large and increasing proportion of the global population. Global discourse as a result of the COVID pandemic has opened up avenues to discuss the question of such threats.
Although the current project will certainly not enable us to answer all the questions derive from the foregoing, it will engage with issues like the following: within the context of critical, slow-time burden problems like environmental degradation and climate change as well as preventable non communicable health issues, what should be the role of global institutions like WHO, UN, UNICEF in addressing questions of global justice. In our morally diverse world, what kind of intellectual positions, paradigms or theories should be promoted to foster global justice conversations?