6th June 2009
Treework Environmental Practice SEMINAR XIV Trees & Conflict Resolution
In collaboration with RSA* Fellowship & Coventry University
12th November 2009
The RSA, 8 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6EZ
In another groundbreaking conference on trees, Treework Environmental Practice has gathered together some of the world's most forward thinking activists to discuss how trees influence social process and how controlling trees that provide people with a living affects survival, empowerment and political participation.
Dr Vandana Shiva is a physicist, environmental activist, eco feminist and author of several books such as Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge and Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. She is based in India, where her organisation Navdanya works to protect food production against corporate takeovers. She will be giving the keynote address on Defending nature's rights and people's rights, drawing on the struggle in India to stop biopiracy: multi-national corporations taking control of native trees and native knowledge of how to use them. The most famous example of this is US pharmaceutical companies filing patents on indigenous biomedical knowledge on the Neem tree.
Dr Shiva said: "My journey started with the Chipko movement in the 1970s when women in the Himalayas protected forests by standing between trees and loggers. Navdanya strives to protect our rights to use our native trees as we have for centuries, to share and save our seeds, and have free access to our land and water; all of which are under threat from ownership by multinationals. We pledge to protect our rich biological heritage and fundamental freedom."
Trees also play an important role in the Palestine-Israel conflict. Professor Shaul Cohen of the University of Oregon, USA, looks at how planting has become a political tool in The Politics of Planting: The Palestinian-Israeli example.
He said: "Palestinians cultivate olive groves as a vital agricultural resource, while the Israeli government has made restoration of mixed-growth forests a national priority. Although both sides plant for a variety of purposes, both have used tree planting to assert their presence on—and claim to—disputed land."
And in Afghanistan, British businessman James Brett, risked his life by running into a field of opium poppies to persuade the farmer that growing pomegranates would allow him and others to recreate their legal economic self-sufficiency taken from them by war, conflict and the heroin industry.
He said: “The first step in this process was when I eventually convinced all the Tribal Elders of Nangarhar Province to support ending poppy cultivation and switching to growing pomegranates. They realized that this could create and maintain economic stability and independence for them. I was the first person that had ever come to see them who was just a normal person that wanted to see positive change.”
James, who founded Britain’s first pomegranate juice company, Pomegreat, has now founded Pom354 who, together with the growing Afghan farmers’ collective now producing pomegranates for Pomegreat, is planting 58.3 million pomegranate trees. His presentation is Recreating self-sufficiency after the devastation of war and conflict: The case of the Afghan pomegranate.
This conference also launches Orchards for Peace and Prosperity, an international initiative connecting people and communities around the world to conserve and create traditional orchards wherever they may be – in countryside, city, desert or war zone.
Seminar speakers
The full list of speakers is:
Dr Vandana Shiva, Navdanya/RFSTE, India Keynote Address: Defending nature's rights and people's rights
Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA Chair
Professor Andrew Rigby, Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, Coventry University Trees and movements for nonviolent change
Professor Shaul Cohen, Peace Studies Program, University of Oregon, USA The Politics of Planting: The Palestinian-Israeli example
Dr Mark Johnston MBE, Myerscough College Lia Shimada, University College London Trees and the Troubles
James Brett, Pom354 Recreating self-sufficiency after the devastation of war and conflict: The case of the Afghan pomegranate
Dr Carol Rank, Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, Coventry University African Peace Trees
Dr Marwan Darweish, Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, Coventry University Trees and the peace process: symbols of social and economic control in Palestine.
This seminar is the 14th in the Treework Environmental Practice Conference Series and is held on 12 November 2009 at the The RSA, 8 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6EZ.
* Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce
Bookings: http://www.treeworks-seminars.co.uk
Notes to Editors:
More information from:
Neville Fay, Treework Environmental Practice Principal Consultant
nevfay@treeworks.co.uk
Tel: 07968 489 588
And
Ellen Elena, Treework Environmental Practice Seminar/Conference Coordinator
ellen.elena@treeworks.co.uk
Tel: 07855 234 349
