Climate Change Diaspora: Our World, Our Problem
The role that climate change will play in the future of human migration is underestimated and not yet a part of public discourse. As droughts, floods, and rising sea levels continue to increase, affected populations the world over will be forced to relocate, adding millions of people to a climate-induced diaspora. Climate Change Diaspora: Our World, Our Problem was a discussion on how mitigating climate-related displacement and migration will become one of humanity’s greatest challenges.
In support of the course on Abrupt Climate Change, On April 22nd 2021, Andrew Harper, Special Advisor on Climate Action to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), NYU Provost K. E. Fleming, Dr. David Holland, Denise Holland, Vice Provost Yanoula Athanassakis, and Peter Terezakis discussed aspects of the coming climate diaspora.
Andrew Harper is the Special Advisor on Climate Action to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva. He is responsible for providing strategic guidance, oversight, and expertise to shape UNHCR’s response to the climate emergency. Prior to his current tasks, he was the Director of the Division of Programme Support & Management (DPSM), where he oversaw programme policy, planning, and management, as well as technical support to field operations. Andrew has led the Innovation Service in UNHCR and was responsible for leading and coordinating the international response to the Syrian Crisis in Jordan. Some of the main achievements included responding to, at the time, the largest refugee crisis in the world, the establishment of the Zaatari and Azraq refugee camps, introducing biometric registration, and linking that to the world’s largest biometric-based refugee cash assistance programme. Andrew also served as the Head of Desk for UNHCR, covering the Iraq Situation, as well as the Emergency Focal Point for the Middle East and North Africa region for the Libyan Crisis. He has previously worked notably for the Australian Embassy in Turkey and UNOCHA, and in various field locations with UNHCR, including Central and Southeast Asia, the Western Balkans, Islamic Republic of Iran, and Ukraine. Visit UNHCR’s newly launched: DISPLACED ON THE FRONTLINES OF THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY
Katherine E. Fleming is Provost of New York University, where she is also the Alexander S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization in the Department of History and in the Program in Hellenic Studies. From 2007-2012, Fleming was Associate Professor at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and from 2012–2016 served as President of the Board of Directors of the University of Piraeus, Greece. She currently serves on the Administrative Board of the Universities of Paris system. As Provost of New York University (NYU), Fleming is the chief academic officer of the largest private university in the United States, with over 60,000 enrolled students and full degree-granting campuses in Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, and New York. As NYU’s chief academic officer, she is Responsible for setting the University’s academic strategy and priorities. The Provost supervises the Deans and Directors of schools and institutes and all academic support units and works with them to cultivate areas of excellence and enhance collaboration within and between schools. She allocates financial resources according to academic priorities, cooperating with university financial officers.
A specialist on the religious history of Greece and the broader Mediterranean, she holds honorary doctorates from two Greek Universities – the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki (PAMAK) and Ionian University in Corfu. The author of three books and numerous articles, her work has won the Runciman Prize and the National Jewish Book Award, among other honors. In 2019 she was nominated chevalier in the French Legion of Honor. In 2015, the Hellenic Republic made her an honorary Greek citizen in recognition of her contributions to preserving Greek history. Educated at Barnard College of Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California at Berkeley, Fleming is currently co-director of a major large-scale oral history project in Greece, supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
Yanoula Athanassakis is Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Special Projects (for NYU’s Provost, Katherine E. Fleming). She is also co-founder and Director of NYU’s Environmental Humanities Series, Instructor in English and Environmental Studies departments, and Chair of the Provost’s Sustainability Working Group. In addition to supporting our faculty’s research, teaching, and international – and interdisciplinary – work, Dr. Athanassakis works closely with a number of University committees and initiatives. Before coming to NYU, Dr. Athanassakis served as Co-director for UC Summer Sessions to Greece for nine years and in various editorial positions for both popular and academic publications, including the Journal of Transnational American Studies. Dr. Athanassakis has extensive experience with matters related to academic affairs and research, international education programming, and curricular development. A former American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow at Rutgers, and Literature Fellow at UC Santa Barbara’s College of Creative Studies, her research and teaching interests include the environmental humanities, American literature, animal studies, food studies, race and ethnic studies, gender studies, globalization, and environmental justice.
Dr. Athanassakis holds an M.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara in literature and global studies. Dr. Athanassakis is the author of Environmental Justice in Contemporary U.S. Narratives (Routledge, Environmental Humanities series, 2017), in addition to articles and book reviews on subjects ranging from post-1900 ecocriticism to environmental policies in Greece. Dr. Athanassakis has co-organized several panels and symposia on topics ranging from literary studies to online editing in academic journals. She is co-directing a series of environmental and sustainability events at New York University through the Center for the Humanities and the generous support of the Mellon Foundation. At NYU, she teaches courses on U.S. environmental justice literature, veganism, and animal studies.
David Holland is a physical climate scientist who studies phenomena relating to the polar regions and their impacts on global climate. His current research focuses on the computer modeling of the interaction of the Earth’s ice sheets with ocean waters and the acquisition and implementation of observational data for model improvement. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles on polar environmental science. He is a Professor of Mathematics and Atmosphere-Ocean Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University and Director of the Center for Sea Level Change (CSLC) of the Abu Dhabi Research Institute.
Denise Holland is the Field Logistics, Outreach, and Media Officer for David Holland’s research team in New York and Abu Dhabi. She has been organizing and participating in Greenland expeditions for seven years at east and west coast locations. Holland has also organized a summer field school for New York University (NYU) undergraduate and graduate students for the last several years. At NYU New York, she plays a principal role in developing an Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (EFDL). Holding both a Business degree from Memorial University of Newfoundland and a French degree from McGill University, she is also currently completing an undergraduate degree in Art History from New York University.
Peter Terezakis is an Associate Arts Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. In 1974, he began creating jewelry-sized electronic works of art. His ideas grew to gallery-sized works, then to an interactive building, and eventually to monumental-scale temporary installations of Heart Beats Light, a kinetic light sculpture set in deserts, forests, and national parks. In 2007, he developed Sacred Sky Sacred Earth, a theatrical event combining art, dance, education, and music to focus on precious and vanishing open spaces. Since 2014, Peter has taught classes on environmental issues, often bringing students for overnight weekends to Black Rock Forest, an ecological research station near West Point, New York.
After accompanying David and Denise Holland to Greenland’s Helheim Glacier in 2019, Terezakis developed a course to help students understand and prepare for the impact that Abrupt Climate Change will have on humanity and their lives.
This Earth Day event was produced with an eye toward addressing a missing and critical chapter in my Abrupt Climate Change course. Some of the least discussed aspects of an abruptly changing climate are the human costs associated with the displacement of large populations. Traditional homelands will be subjected to dramatically changing weather conditions, the impacts of accelerating sea-level rise, scarcity of drinking water, drought, rising temperatures, and the increased destabilization of social and state structures.
Thank you to today’s panelists, and to Dean Green, Beverly Hyman, Jessica Mantell, Adrienne Henry, Dana Whitco, and Steven Drukman, for making this event possible. Special thanks to my inspiring students and the work that they create! — Peter Terezakis, NYC 2021
|
 |
|
| “Working on scientific projects like this that have real-world implications is such a privilege and I’m excited to continue to work on more visualizations for and with scientists in the future.” — Aleka Agre | Writer and producer Owen O’Leary is taking statistics about climate change and turning them into music for a series on TikTok. Or search for @browenbroleary all things social. | “We do not have a way to deal with nuclear waste for the next 1 million years The pyramids are 5k years old. 400 functioning nuclear power plants in 30 countries, what are we doing? “ — Travis Smillie |
Thursday, April 22 – 5:30-6:30 pm
What are artists doing?
Learn about creative projects with a Zoom Conversation and Game Public Play Test ITP Weather Band: Making Music with Weather Data Future Imagination Fellow Yeseul Song, and Atchareeya Jattuporn Extraction and AI: A Public Play Test Future Imagination Fellow Mona Sloane, and Alina Constantin Click here for the webinar 
ITP Weather Band: Making Music with Weather Data Yeseul Song, Name Atchareeya Jattuporn Come learn about the ITP Weather Band! We’re an experimental band creating music, interactive objects, and visuals with weather data collected from a DIY weather station. We built a DIY weather station system and created experimental instruments that turn the environmental data into music and visuals. This community art project explores new ways of delivering information and stories about our immediate environment through the auditory and visual sense. The band consists of faculty, graduate students, and alums at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (NYU ITP). Extraction and AI: A Public Play Test — Mona Sloane, Alina Constantin This event will give a brief introduction to the intersection of AI and the climate emergency and then turn into a play test of the “Extraction” game: a card game that fundamentally points to how AI – both “good AI” and “bad AI” – is grounded in the logic of extraction. 