1 00:00:07,610 --> 00:00:13,210 Well, good evening, everyone, and welcome to make a start. My name is Michael. 2 00:00:13,210 --> 00:00:21,640 I have the pleasure of being the director of the Middle East Centre here at St. Anthony's College at the University of Oxford this year. 3 00:00:21,640 --> 00:00:30,400 And I'm delighted to welcome you to not what is not just the first event in the Friday seminar series, 4 00:00:30,400 --> 00:00:38,650 the Michaelmas term, but also the first in the Friday seminar series for this academic year. 5 00:00:38,650 --> 00:00:45,080 For those of you joining us for the first time, the Friday seminar series is the focus of the Middle East Centre, 6 00:00:45,080 --> 00:00:55,360 the Macy's weekly programme in Michaelmas and Hidary terms of the autumn and winter to spring terms here in Oxford. 7 00:00:55,360 --> 00:01:00,070 It is a series which we have held for years and decades. 8 00:01:00,070 --> 00:01:04,760 And this really gives us an opportunity to host the most some of the most exposed, 9 00:01:04,760 --> 00:01:10,690 engaging speakers to discuss the Middle Eastern and North African region. 10 00:01:10,690 --> 00:01:14,410 We have traditionally held a series of the Middle East centre itself. 11 00:01:14,410 --> 00:01:26,740 But over last year, we've been obliged for obvious reasons, connected with covid to hold the series remotely via Zoom or certainly all of last year. 12 00:01:26,740 --> 00:01:37,750 We will be holding this term seminar again on Zoome, but we plan to return to doing the series in person from the start of A to return in January. 13 00:01:37,750 --> 00:01:46,450 Now those of you in or near Oxford, that will hopefully come as welcome news since you will be able to attend the seminar in person. 14 00:01:46,450 --> 00:01:50,230 But I also wanted to say to those of you who are based further away, 15 00:01:50,230 --> 00:01:59,140 we are making preparations to live stream the Friday seminar series, which means that you will be able to attend the lecture virtually. 16 00:01:59,140 --> 00:02:09,040 And indeed, I wanted to thank all of you who have loyally and regularly attended the Friday seminar series on Zoome over the last year. 17 00:02:09,040 --> 00:02:13,630 And I hope that by live streaming you can continue to join us. 18 00:02:13,630 --> 00:02:23,280 But we will be basically running the event both virtually and in person, which we like to think gives us the best of both worlds. 19 00:02:23,280 --> 00:02:31,800 We usually have a theme for the Friday seminar series, and this term will be focussed on the topic of the environment and the Middle East. 20 00:02:31,800 --> 00:02:35,770 We have a roster of of great speakers to address this issue this term. 21 00:02:35,770 --> 00:02:43,020 And I just quickly run through the speakers we will be having later in the series next week, a week today, 22 00:02:43,020 --> 00:02:52,160 October 22nd, we have Saddam Hussein, who will be talking the politics of water scarcity in the case of Jordan. 23 00:02:52,160 --> 00:02:55,250 And we week in third week on October the twenty ninth, 24 00:02:55,250 --> 00:03:02,000 we have Jamie Thanis and he's speaking to the blue clad Finnick authoritarian environmentalism in Tunisia. 25 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:06,290 And it's after lights on November the 5th. 26 00:03:06,290 --> 00:03:16,670 We have one of our own community, Manala's Shehabi, speaking about environment, discounted energy and economic diversification plans in the Gulf. 27 00:03:16,670 --> 00:03:25,490 On November 12th, Martin Biglari will talk about air pollution, toxicity and environmental politics in the history of Iranian oil. 28 00:03:25,490 --> 00:03:35,160 National nationalisation. Week after that, on November the 19th, Michael Mason will be coming here to speak about failing flows, 29 00:03:35,160 --> 00:03:42,520 the politics of water management in southern Iraq on November 26. 30 00:03:42,520 --> 00:03:51,400 We would have lecture on climate and colonialism in modern Palestine, historical ethical perspectives that will be given by Neta Cohen. 31 00:03:51,400 --> 00:03:56,980 And we finished the series on December 3rd with a lecture by Christian Henderson. 32 00:03:56,980 --> 00:04:01,210 As you will see from a list, we will be covering a large range of themes, 33 00:04:01,210 --> 00:04:08,020 countries and regions and even slightly historical periods, which give us a flavour hopefully of the topic. 34 00:04:08,020 --> 00:04:15,760 And I think this reflects the breadth of issues both covid and impacted by the environment in its broadest sense. 35 00:04:15,760 --> 00:04:23,380 And we've tried to treat treat the environment in its broadest sense, because I think there is a tendency, I think, 36 00:04:23,380 --> 00:04:30,700 to parcel off environmental issues all on their own as a discrete subject and field to be dealt with separately. 37 00:04:30,700 --> 00:04:31,990 And I think, moreover, 38 00:04:31,990 --> 00:04:39,730 the Middle East and North Africa is perhaps the region of the world where environmental issues have traditionally had the least prominence, 39 00:04:39,730 --> 00:04:45,580 largely because of a greater attention paid, of course, to other issues. 40 00:04:45,580 --> 00:04:52,930 So with that in mind, we therefore thought it might be a nice idea to kick off this seminar series by asking some of the academics based here, 41 00:04:52,930 --> 00:04:59,860 the Middle East centre itself to talk about how issues related to the environment relate to their own research. 42 00:04:59,860 --> 00:05:06,760 I know that in the past, a number of people have said that whilst they very much enjoy bringing external expertise into the centre, 43 00:05:06,760 --> 00:05:15,190 they would from time to time like to hear more about the work and research of academics based at the Middle East centre itself. 44 00:05:15,190 --> 00:05:24,820 So here we have an opportunity to talk about that and talk a little bit about some of the research actually being done in the central moment. 45 00:05:24,820 --> 00:05:33,700 So therefore, I'm very I'm delighted to welcome three of my colleagues here at the centre, Walter Armbrust, a social anthropologist. 46 00:05:33,700 --> 00:05:40,660 Laura Minyon, a fellow in Turkish sommat Lasama lecturing contemporary Islamic studies, 47 00:05:40,660 --> 00:05:44,800 all of whom will say about how the environment is fitted in and relates to their own research. 48 00:05:44,800 --> 00:05:51,360 I will also say something at the end about how it relates to my own field of research. 49 00:05:51,360 --> 00:06:03,870 So. With all that said, I'd like to turn first to my colleague, Walter Armbrust, to talk about the environment in his own research Walter. 50 00:06:03,870 --> 00:06:08,620 Thank you, Michael. I'm going to begin by sharing my screen, OK? 51 00:06:08,620 --> 00:06:16,080 Our goal is to relate environmental issues to our own research. So let me begin by reading the last paragraph of my book, 52 00:06:16,080 --> 00:06:23,520 Martyrs' and Trickster's and Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution, published in 2013 just before the pandemic began. 53 00:06:23,520 --> 00:06:29,130 It was written in an uncharacteristically apocalyptic tone. 54 00:06:29,130 --> 00:06:34,290 The defining feature of a liminal crisis is pure contingency, to put it differently. 55 00:06:34,290 --> 00:06:42,420 We can never be entirely sure what will emerge from the void. Sometimes it is monsters rather than the angels we hope for. 56 00:06:42,420 --> 00:06:46,560 I remain convinced that good things emerged along with the naked violence. 57 00:06:46,560 --> 00:06:55,580 It will take time for the good things to rise to the top, but rise they will, even if it turns out to be too late to save the world. 58 00:06:55,580 --> 00:07:03,830 When I wrote that last line, I was thinking of global warming or more precisely of the inevitable result of unfettered capitalism, 59 00:07:03,830 --> 00:07:08,480 a capitalist economy is only thought to be healthy if it's expanded. 60 00:07:08,480 --> 00:07:16,430 For centuries, economic expansion took place through forcibly assimilating new parts of the world into the capitalist system. 61 00:07:16,430 --> 00:07:21,680 But now the entire world has become part of the capitalist system. It's been that way for some time. 62 00:07:21,680 --> 00:07:26,300 There are no new unassimilated territories to bring in. 63 00:07:26,300 --> 00:07:27,950 The world is a closed system, 64 00:07:27,950 --> 00:07:36,620 and therefore further expansion can only come through more intensive extraction of resources leading to more global warming. 65 00:07:36,620 --> 00:07:43,430 That, in a nutshell, is why there is simply no solution to global warming. That includes the continuation of capitalism. 66 00:07:43,430 --> 00:07:49,160 The notion of market based remedies to the climate crisis is nonsense. 67 00:07:49,160 --> 00:07:57,920 I want to relate this political economic dynamic to Egypt and my book was about the unintended outcomes and revolution understood as a limited crisis. 68 00:07:57,920 --> 00:08:05,480 And it was about the often bad things that emerge when politics become fluid rather than fixed into the normative pattern. 69 00:08:05,480 --> 00:08:09,290 But this doesn't mean that one can simply dismiss structural factors. 70 00:08:09,290 --> 00:08:15,200 The contingent situations I wrote about can't occur unless people feel a need to rise up. 71 00:08:15,200 --> 00:08:23,900 So one way that I have on occasion described the cause of the January 25th revolution as opposed to its unintended outcomes, 72 00:08:23,900 --> 00:08:28,760 is to say that it was a revolution against luxury housing. 73 00:08:28,760 --> 00:08:33,780 More precisely, the deep dissatisfaction that caused Egyptians to rise up against the government. 74 00:08:33,780 --> 00:08:42,510 2011 was connected to the way both the state and the private sector allocated resources in the decades prior to the revolution. 75 00:08:42,510 --> 00:08:45,870 This was particularly acute in Cairo and other major cities. 76 00:08:45,870 --> 00:08:55,260 So a good way to understand the cause of the revolution is to appreciate the dynamics of how urban growth is managed, as you can see on this table. 77 00:08:55,260 --> 00:08:58,890 Cairo has a population of roughly fifteen point six million. 78 00:08:58,890 --> 00:09:03,840 It could be more or less because defining the boundaries of the megacity is never a simple endeavour. 79 00:09:03,840 --> 00:09:08,970 This population is distributed over four thousand four hundred seventy nine square kilometres. 80 00:09:08,970 --> 00:09:14,550 But the important thing is to appreciate the quantity, to appreciate as the trajectory of the city's growth. 81 00:09:14,550 --> 00:09:19,890 You can discern this by looking at subcategories, I'm sure the older parts of Cairo, 82 00:09:19,890 --> 00:09:26,460 Cairo and give the governor governorates and parts of California governor governorate and this includes both the 83 00:09:26,460 --> 00:09:33,420 formal and informal housing is where 15 million of Cairo's fifteen point six million inhabitants live there. 84 00:09:33,420 --> 00:09:38,940 Ninety six percent of the population. And they occupy 31 percent of the space. 85 00:09:38,940 --> 00:09:46,740 The newer parts of Cairo, much more suburban and designed for affluence and automobile owning population than older parts, 86 00:09:46,740 --> 00:09:56,520 has a population of around six hundred thousand. That's four percent of the population of greater Cairo, occupying 31 percent of the space. 87 00:09:56,520 --> 00:10:03,930 I think I said 30 percent should have been 69 percent. So, yes, it's 15 million people and sixty nine percent. 88 00:10:03,930 --> 00:10:06,480 Four percent and thirty one percent. 89 00:10:06,480 --> 00:10:14,400 The point of the comparison isn't exactly just that the relation of space to population expresses a growing gap between rich and poor. 90 00:10:14,400 --> 00:10:21,960 It does to some extent, but it doesn't in the sense that most well-off people, in fact, still live in the older parts of the city. 91 00:10:21,960 --> 00:10:27,360 Rather, the point is that the trajectory of Cairo's growth has been towards moving up into the desert. 92 00:10:27,360 --> 00:10:35,190 And this has been the case for decades, going all the way back to the Nasser. But building cities in the desert has had a number of consequences. 93 00:10:35,190 --> 00:10:44,070 One is that it has been a massive failure in terms of getting the population of greater Cairo to actually disperse itself into these new urban areas. 94 00:10:44,070 --> 00:10:49,830 The second consequence of Cairo's urban trajectory has been that it sucked resources away 95 00:10:49,830 --> 00:10:55,590 from where most people actually live and put them into areas where a few few people live, 96 00:10:55,590 --> 00:10:59,280 which means more money for luxury housing, less for education, 97 00:10:59,280 --> 00:11:05,390 health care and housing that people can afford in the places where they actually live, work. 98 00:11:05,390 --> 00:11:09,020 Another consequence of current trajectory is that this allocation of resources 99 00:11:09,020 --> 00:11:13,820 creates both opportunities for political alliance making as well as tensions. 100 00:11:13,820 --> 00:11:18,590 A political economic dynamic of the decade prior to the revolution was that the 101 00:11:18,590 --> 00:11:23,120 private sector was better situated to benefit from urban growth than the military, 102 00:11:23,120 --> 00:11:26,630 a particularly acute issue in the context of the transition. 103 00:11:26,630 --> 00:11:37,010 Everyone was expecting from the military connected to Hosni Mubarak to his son Gamal, his proclivities lay entirely with the private sector. 104 00:11:37,010 --> 00:11:42,050 That dynamic has been decisively altered in the years after the January 25th revolution. 105 00:11:42,050 --> 00:11:50,510 As you can see from my table after the row giving data on the new desert cities, there's another road for the new administrative state, 106 00:11:50,510 --> 00:11:55,190 which is sometimes described as a new capital city because the plan is to move many 107 00:11:55,190 --> 00:12:00,860 of the government's vital ministries out of Cairo and into a new megaproject. 108 00:12:00,860 --> 00:12:04,220 This idea has been on various drawing boards for decades. 109 00:12:04,220 --> 00:12:11,570 But it was during the Sisi era that it was fast tracked and repackaged as something bold and dramatic and also, 110 00:12:11,570 --> 00:12:15,260 not coincidentally, more substantial involving the military. 111 00:12:15,260 --> 00:12:25,340 The new administrative city is a giant block radiating out from Cairo to the east, towards the Red Sea cities of Suez and so on its own. 112 00:12:25,340 --> 00:12:29,150 It's intended to occupy a space of around 700 square kilometres. 113 00:12:29,150 --> 00:12:34,700 In contrast to the 14 hundred square kilometres occupied by the existing desert 114 00:12:34,700 --> 00:12:41,170 cities and the 3000 square kilometres where 96 percent of greater Cairo lives. 115 00:12:41,170 --> 00:12:49,090 With the exception of the 6th of October city, all of the existing desert cities are far below their planned population. 116 00:12:49,090 --> 00:12:57,640 Capacity's a sobering fact. If you've ever been caught in a traffic jam to or from one of these otherwise opulent areas, 117 00:12:57,640 --> 00:13:07,300 it's a safe bet that the new administrative city will also never approach its planned capacity of six point five million inhabitants. 118 00:13:07,300 --> 00:13:14,120 But this doesn't mean that it won't consume vast resources. And this is where the environment comes back into the picture. 119 00:13:14,120 --> 00:13:24,190 Promotions for this new administrative city, imagine it as bigger, taller, flashier and just plain better than anything Egypt has seen before. 120 00:13:24,190 --> 00:13:26,980 There's a lot of talk about monorails that that's pretty nice. 121 00:13:26,980 --> 00:13:34,780 Neighbourhoods are energy, but also golf courses, beautiful vegetation and water features in the desert. 122 00:13:34,780 --> 00:13:41,170 Whatever reality emerges, the primary truth is that the new administrative capital will be another destination, 123 00:13:41,170 --> 00:13:45,250 accessible primarily by motorised transport on concrete roads. 124 00:13:45,250 --> 00:13:50,110 Just like all the other desert cities that have been built over the past five decades. 125 00:13:50,110 --> 00:13:55,570 The giant towers visible in the advertising literature, if they're ever built on the scale envisioned, 126 00:13:55,570 --> 00:14:00,580 will require constant air conditioning, obviously increasing demand for electricity. 127 00:14:00,580 --> 00:14:04,900 Egypt has great potential to produce renewable energy from hydropower, 128 00:14:04,900 --> 00:14:12,370 solar and wind and at least officially ambitious targets for generating power from clean, renewable sources. 129 00:14:12,370 --> 00:14:21,130 But most of Egypt's electricity is generated from fossil fuels, and Egypt's demand for electricity has been rising six point five percent a year. 130 00:14:21,130 --> 00:14:29,410 Egypt could meet its renewable energy targets and still end up producing more electricity through fossil fuels than it does now. 131 00:14:29,410 --> 00:14:34,570 And industrial scale renewable energy generation isn't necessarily carbon neutral. 132 00:14:34,570 --> 00:14:41,590 It requires producing steel for giant windmills, in other words, mining and generating electricity somewhere else. 133 00:14:41,590 --> 00:14:45,860 It involves transporting power generation materials across the globe. 134 00:14:45,860 --> 00:14:51,380 By some estimates, shipping causes 17 percent of global CO2 emissions. 135 00:14:51,380 --> 00:14:56,530 It requires mining lithium for batteries to store solar generated power. 136 00:14:56,530 --> 00:15:01,690 The promotional images of lush gardens in the administrative capital may or may not be fantasy, 137 00:15:01,690 --> 00:15:05,890 but the fact is that there is no water for anything in that area. 138 00:15:05,890 --> 00:15:12,880 It has to be pumped uphill from the Nile or pumped up from non rechargeable underground aquifers. 139 00:15:12,880 --> 00:15:21,070 All of Egypt's new cities, including the new administrative city, are environmentally dubious or even environmentally disastrous. 140 00:15:21,070 --> 00:15:26,500 I started off by saying that the link to my own research to environmental issues was through politics, 141 00:15:26,500 --> 00:15:33,190 specifically the way that resource allocation enhance the power at the expense of others in Egypt. 142 00:15:33,190 --> 00:15:41,980 That can be seen as a structural factor that led to the uprising of 2011, which quickly was named a revolution by those who participated in it, 143 00:15:41,980 --> 00:15:49,330 and which led to the assumption of power by a far worse regime than the one that was in power when the revolution began. 144 00:15:49,330 --> 00:15:58,010 And the Sisi regime has essentially doubled down on the environmentally dubious megaproject strategy that the Mubarak regime had been following. 145 00:15:58,010 --> 00:16:00,890 But I don't want to suggest that Egypt is an exception. 146 00:16:00,890 --> 00:16:10,340 You probably noticed in my table displaying data on Cairo's population, I included a comparison with Metropolitan Omaha, Council Bluffs. 147 00:16:10,340 --> 00:16:17,960 That's where I grew up. The point of the comparison is not to dramatise Egypt's damaging carbon footprint. 148 00:16:17,960 --> 00:16:22,430 It's just the opposite in terms of its per capita carbon footprint. 149 00:16:22,430 --> 00:16:28,910 Omaha is far, far worse than Cairo in per capita terms, maybe even in absolute terms. 150 00:16:28,910 --> 00:16:36,860 It has more miles of carbon generating concrete roads in Cairo and roughly one personal automobile per driving thought, 151 00:16:36,860 --> 00:16:41,930 whereas in Cairo, only about 10 percent of the population used cars. 152 00:16:41,930 --> 00:16:51,710 So the problem is that the Cairo is an environmental centre. It's that the trajectory of Cairo is urban political economy is to be more like Omaha. 153 00:16:51,710 --> 00:16:59,000 And of course, the aspirational models that come to mind more readily are Dubai or we are but Omaha sort of just as well. 154 00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:04,070 When I left Omaha in 1978, the population was around half a million. 155 00:17:04,070 --> 00:17:11,930 It's doubled since then. More roads, more cars, more energy generated for larger and larger houses. 156 00:17:11,930 --> 00:17:16,880 Nebraska is an ecological disaster, and though it's never had a revolution, 157 00:17:16,880 --> 00:17:22,850 the urban political economy of Omaha was destructive enough that maybe it should have had to make 158 00:17:22,850 --> 00:17:29,270 Omaha what it is today required building interstate highways right through the fabric of the city, 159 00:17:29,270 --> 00:17:33,500 as in the rest of the U.S. that required displacing residents and carving up neighbourhoods, 160 00:17:33,500 --> 00:17:42,260 particularly those African-Americans and other minorities. The highways were a necessary condition for what we often refer to as white flight, 161 00:17:42,260 --> 00:17:47,240 one of the most damaging and violent trends in contemporary American history. 162 00:17:47,240 --> 00:17:54,290 And so my final thought is that the solution to the disastrous environmental trajectory of both Omaha and Cairo 163 00:17:54,290 --> 00:18:02,480 and indeed the entire world is political as long as a healthy economy is seen as synonymous with expansion. 164 00:18:02,480 --> 00:18:12,350 All cities will continue to feed warming except for a small downturn in greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 caused by the Korona pandemic. 165 00:18:12,350 --> 00:18:21,560 Global output of greenhouse gases continues to rise. That will only end when it is widely recognised that reversing global warming 166 00:18:21,560 --> 00:18:28,110 and capitalism are incompatible and that recognition is nowhere on the horizon. 167 00:18:28,110 --> 00:18:36,200 So thank you very much. Well, that was fascinating, if rather a rather sobering. 168 00:18:36,200 --> 00:18:42,560 But we will look out if there is a revolution in Omaha. You heard it here first, but thank you. 169 00:18:42,560 --> 00:18:51,340 Thank you very much. Well, I move on to a colleague, a Turkish fellow, Lauren Minium, Turkish studies fellow, Lauren. 170 00:18:51,340 --> 00:18:53,980 Yes, hello, thank you, Michael. 171 00:18:53,980 --> 00:19:06,610 Well, being a literary scholar, I cannot really claim that I have any expertise regarding environmental questions or the current climate crisis. 172 00:19:06,610 --> 00:19:10,240 However, I like the idea of today's exercise, 173 00:19:10,240 --> 00:19:18,850 inviting me to reflect on where or and how my own research and teaching that are mostly but not exclusively 174 00:19:18,850 --> 00:19:28,210 focussed on the late Ottoman and Early Republic and Turkish literary world intersect with environmental concerns. 175 00:19:28,210 --> 00:19:35,650 I need to stress here that I am not at all aiming to to give a comprehensive overview of the representation 176 00:19:35,650 --> 00:19:42,790 of nature and the exploration of environmental issues in modern Turkish language literature. 177 00:19:42,790 --> 00:19:49,420 Rather, what I will do today is more like reading excerpts from a long book recording interesting 178 00:19:49,420 --> 00:19:58,060 instances of texts expressing what we might want to call the form of environmental language. 179 00:19:58,060 --> 00:20:07,300 As we have only a limited amount of time for our discussion today, my focus will be on the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 180 00:20:07,300 --> 00:20:13,370 Obviously, the works of contemporary novelists such as the late Yashar Kamahl or indeed Latifiya, 181 00:20:13,370 --> 00:20:20,920 ticking off a vast opportunities for anyone who wishes to pursue an equally critical approach of literature. 182 00:20:20,920 --> 00:20:26,290 Both have been widely translated into European languages, even into English, 183 00:20:26,290 --> 00:20:34,500 and are relatively well known beyond the flexible boundaries of what we might call toco phonier. 184 00:20:34,500 --> 00:20:39,240 Much of what I will refer to today goes back to an earlier book of mine 185 00:20:39,240 --> 00:20:47,220 published in Istanbul in 2009 with the title I'm not touching on this one here. 186 00:20:47,220 --> 00:20:56,280 So that means footnotes moving to the main text. And this book was partly based on articles that I had written at the time for the literary 187 00:20:56,280 --> 00:21:04,110 supplement of the daily newspaper and the literary magazine called Evidence that has actually been 188 00:21:04,110 --> 00:21:10,890 banned in two thousand in one of the chapters of the book was entitled And It's a long title 189 00:21:10,890 --> 00:21:19,440 and I love long title at the time to let the market demand the soldiers that I could not last, 190 00:21:19,440 --> 00:21:27,810 which in English could be contrarian notes on into culturalism and the left that does not wish to become a machine. 191 00:21:27,810 --> 00:21:38,010 Now those amongst you who are a little familiar with the work of the socialist poet next will recognise the reference to the futurist futurist poem. 192 00:21:38,010 --> 00:21:45,180 I want to become a machine from a poem which I think was you wrote in nineteen twenty three 193 00:21:45,180 --> 00:21:52,510 and that was a celebration of industrialisation and of the mechanisation of production. 194 00:21:52,510 --> 00:21:57,310 But in the early 2000s, on the eve of what we call today the climate crisis, 195 00:21:57,310 --> 00:22:03,880 it was obvious that this type of celebration of productivity and in certain ways of humanisation, 196 00:22:03,880 --> 00:22:11,980 of labour was not compatible with the type of slowing down of of of downsizing and what 197 00:22:11,980 --> 00:22:19,210 the French called the questions that was required to solve the ecological crisis, 198 00:22:19,210 --> 00:22:25,330 as at the time I was teaching 19th century Ottoman Turkish literature, the university in Ankara, 199 00:22:25,330 --> 00:22:32,470 I have been struck by the fact that the expression of environmental concerns had been up to a point, 200 00:22:32,470 --> 00:22:43,750 the significant aspect of the critique of modernisation that was characteristic for the writings of religiously conservative authors or some of them. 201 00:22:43,750 --> 00:22:49,690 For instance, in Panzeri Telemaque text inspired, as the title suggests, 202 00:22:49,690 --> 00:22:57,910 by finials Telemaque Methodic Efendi, who at the time had been sent into internal exile in A. 203 00:22:57,910 --> 00:23:04,540 So we are in 1870. So while he was praising intellectual and physical labour in this work, 204 00:23:04,540 --> 00:23:11,650 he put also emphasis on the need to respect the earth, the soil especially, and its fruits. 205 00:23:11,650 --> 00:23:16,720 Without such respect, the land would cease to be fertile ground. 206 00:23:16,720 --> 00:23:21,790 Now, if we were, to use today's political terminology, Methodic would be called an Islamist. 207 00:23:21,790 --> 00:23:26,320 But as we know, this is not at all a very useful term. 208 00:23:26,320 --> 00:23:33,610 But similarly, although it has dark aspects, another religious, conservative and nationalist in this case, 209 00:23:33,610 --> 00:23:40,600 namely reluctant to truc Anatolian socialism as a notable environmentalist agenda, 210 00:23:40,600 --> 00:23:48,220 the writings 60 70 years after Nematzadeh to share his dislike of modernity, 211 00:23:48,220 --> 00:23:56,630 leading him to develop a critique of it that put a strong emphasis on the need to respect the eco system. 212 00:23:56,630 --> 00:23:59,510 But if we go back to two Republican times, 213 00:23:59,510 --> 00:24:09,410 it would probably not come as a surprise that it is pioneers of science fiction into this who would express a certain amount of environmental anguish. 214 00:24:09,410 --> 00:24:15,860 Here, I will evoke the words of authors who can by no means be described as conservatives, 215 00:24:15,860 --> 00:24:24,470 but who drew this topic, portraits of the Future World, unlike other texts of speculative fiction of the era. 216 00:24:24,470 --> 00:24:31,730 These texts are not concerned about the impact of political, economic and industrial modernisation on national, 217 00:24:31,730 --> 00:24:38,060 cultural or religious identity and on the future of the Ottoman state. 218 00:24:38,060 --> 00:24:47,060 But rather they focus on the impact of technology and of industrialisation on the future of humanity. 219 00:24:47,060 --> 00:24:55,220 Jalaluddin, in an untitled short story. At the end of his story, he stood by his department's history of the future. 220 00:24:55,220 --> 00:25:04,490 Until our committee play the earthlings and thrifty quality of this short story really upset. 221 00:25:04,490 --> 00:25:09,290 This must be an illusion. This must be a dream. Paint a pessimistic future. 222 00:25:09,290 --> 00:25:16,220 The pessimistic picture of the future of humankind. Industrial colonisation of the seas and the oceans. 223 00:25:16,220 --> 00:25:21,050 The disappearance of seasons, the robotisation of everyday life. 224 00:25:21,050 --> 00:25:29,540 The destruction of human intercourse. The vanishing of the differences between human beings and robots, between men and women. 225 00:25:29,540 --> 00:25:35,150 And the installation of totalitarian governments are common themes in these three works. 226 00:25:35,150 --> 00:25:43,670 If some developments such as to join the unity of humankind, the disappearance of ethnic, national and religious differences, 227 00:25:43,670 --> 00:25:51,050 longevity, longevity, well, I can never pronounce or even eternal life could see significant advances. 228 00:25:51,050 --> 00:25:57,530 Some, at least to some of us. This is not an opinion that would have been shared by these three authors. 229 00:25:57,530 --> 00:26:03,080 It was the end of the world as they knew it and a world they loved. 230 00:26:03,080 --> 00:26:11,990 But not all visions of the future were pessimistic. We have to turn to another religiously conservative author, namely Moulana Daftari, 231 00:26:11,990 --> 00:26:20,210 and his science fiction novel Riada tracking the progress and dream that we published around 1915. 232 00:26:20,210 --> 00:26:32,450 So although the author celebrates industrial industrialisation, much emphasis is put on the absence of pollution in the Islamic State of the Future. 233 00:26:32,450 --> 00:26:40,400 For instance, non-polluting engines that work with air and water are considered amongst the inventions of the New Age, 234 00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:49,770 which is indicative of an environmental consciousness. A similar environmental agenda, but rooted on secular grounds, 235 00:26:49,770 --> 00:26:59,040 can be witnessed in the giant utopian story hired to help feed the world or the life imagined. 236 00:26:59,040 --> 00:27:09,750 The narrator recounts the story about a group of people escaping civilised society and building a utopian commune on a distant island on this island, 237 00:27:09,750 --> 00:27:15,780 which reminds of paradise. The humans live in harmony with nature. 238 00:27:15,780 --> 00:27:24,270 Although the social order of the village is based on egalitarian and communal foundations, the layout of the houses, 239 00:27:24,270 --> 00:27:32,370 the four o'clock tea drinking ceremony and piano recitals tend to remind of life in an idealised English village, 240 00:27:32,370 --> 00:27:41,550 but somehow Midsomer murders without the murders. Another problem is, of course, the continuation of the patriarchal order of violence. 241 00:27:41,550 --> 00:27:50,730 In this respect, U.S. story reminds of English pastoral literature with the conservative core U.S. Giants village of Foma 242 00:27:50,730 --> 00:27:57,930 intellectual's resembles a kind of ivory tower built far from the realities of an ever changing world. 243 00:27:57,930 --> 00:28:03,420 The tower where an English teacher would feel more comfortable than an Anatolian miner. 244 00:28:03,420 --> 00:28:09,000 And Keat and I will conclude here literature in Turkish at the turn of the 19th and 245 00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:14,670 20th century presents many examples that could help us nourish not only Turkey. 246 00:28:14,670 --> 00:28:19,570 A reflection on the current climate crisis. Thank you. 247 00:28:19,570 --> 00:28:21,730 Thank you very much indeed, Lawrence, 248 00:28:21,730 --> 00:28:30,560 and for a very a wonderful example of how themes that we wouldn't necessarily immediately associate with environment, 249 00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:37,000 the late 19th century Ottoman history and literature are actually extremely relevant to the topic of the environment. 250 00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:42,670 It also shows us. That we tend to think that the environment has been a very modern and very recent preoccupation, 251 00:28:42,670 --> 00:28:47,830 but as you so beautifully illustrated, these concerns have been there for a long time. 252 00:28:47,830 --> 00:28:51,070 We tend to think of and I think we look and contemporary and modern things. 253 00:28:51,070 --> 00:28:54,610 We think of these things as being very new, that they've been there for a while. 254 00:28:54,610 --> 00:28:59,920 And we like to think it makes sense that we do history well as well and give you the historical conception. 255 00:28:59,920 --> 00:29:06,250 Thank you very much, Lauren Sommer. al-Hasani Lezama. 256 00:29:06,250 --> 00:29:15,760 Thank you so much, sort of really giving us quite a lot of breadth to, you know, the the subject, 257 00:29:15,760 --> 00:29:21,580 whether we're starting in urban Egypt today or going into the mists of history, 258 00:29:21,580 --> 00:29:25,580 as it were, for for the modern Turkish republic, 259 00:29:25,580 --> 00:29:35,050 my own sort of interest in the environment comes through the writings of the Ulama, the kind of a preoccupation of my own. 260 00:29:35,050 --> 00:29:46,590 And so I'm going to be briefly sharing my screen to talk about one of these scholars whom I've begun to explore his works. 261 00:29:46,590 --> 00:29:53,830 I'm starting with this scholar who's going so easily, although he's one of the scholars I'm studying. 262 00:29:53,830 --> 00:30:02,620 He's based in the country of Qatar, a tiny country jutting out of the Arabian Peninsula, which actually, 263 00:30:02,620 --> 00:30:10,870 according to Wikipedia in 2013, had the largest per capita usage of energy in the world. 264 00:30:10,870 --> 00:30:17,830 So in a sense, it's quite a pertinent sort of place to be concerned about the environment. 265 00:30:17,830 --> 00:30:23,110 And I suspect I mean, that's the latest data we have on Wikipedia from 2013. 266 00:30:23,110 --> 00:30:25,920 I suspect that it's maintained those sorts of levels. 267 00:30:25,920 --> 00:30:32,590 And what's fascinating to me is the number of countries from the Persian Gulf that are occupying the top 10. 268 00:30:32,590 --> 00:30:38,950 They basically make up the majority in terms of Muslim countries, Muslim majority countries, 269 00:30:38,950 --> 00:30:44,020 even, you know, Brunei, their Islam and the United States is number 10. 270 00:30:44,020 --> 00:30:48,190 So Omahaw isn't doing quite so bad as it were. 271 00:30:48,190 --> 00:30:59,680 But I think that this brings to the fore that there is a kind of massive inequity in energy in the Middle East itself. 272 00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:03,400 So we have this is very well known, but the petrochemical sorry, 273 00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:10,780 petro monarchies in the Gulf obviously have a significant amount of oil wealth and that 274 00:31:10,780 --> 00:31:16,760 allows them to consume on a level that is really unimaginable for most of the world. 275 00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:27,640 If I recall correctly written in this list falls under. So there is a nineteen thousand kilojoules of energy sorry, kilograms of oil equivalent. 276 00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:32,080 And Britain is somewhere in the range of, I think two to three thousand. 277 00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:38,290 So and the US actually, as you can see here, is around 7000, as you can see there. 278 00:31:38,290 --> 00:31:43,570 So just give us some sort of context to the amount of energy consumption that we have. 279 00:31:43,570 --> 00:31:51,970 That said, given the size of these countries, the energy consumption is minuscule compared to the global north. 280 00:31:51,970 --> 00:31:56,740 So that inequity is something that I'll briefly allude to as well. 281 00:31:56,740 --> 00:32:00,330 Turning to corroborees sort of book for a moment. 282 00:32:00,330 --> 00:32:06,850 So we actually wrote a book when I was little. I'm sort of surprised. 283 00:32:06,850 --> 00:32:17,530 Not surprised isn't the right term. But I was just thinking when Lahane described the 2000s as being the sort of early reflections on the environment, 284 00:32:17,530 --> 00:32:21,880 although he wrote this book in the year 2000, it was published in the year 2001. 285 00:32:21,880 --> 00:32:29,380 So I'm referring to this as a scholar is now in his 90s, is retired from public life, not really writing anymore. 286 00:32:29,380 --> 00:32:30,970 So this book may be a little dated, 287 00:32:30,970 --> 00:32:40,360 but it's one of the sort of recent historical texts that I'm looking at just to reflect on the question of the environment. 288 00:32:40,360 --> 00:32:50,870 And so, you know, in this book, which sort of you can actually download the entire book from his website currently just put it up there. 289 00:32:50,870 --> 00:32:57,160 I'm not sure the copyright situation is, but presumably his publishers are entirely aware of this in this book. 290 00:32:57,160 --> 00:33:08,500 I just wanted to sort of allude to how he is trying to draw on the Koran and the Hadith as a traditional island, 291 00:33:08,500 --> 00:33:14,800 as a scholar who is a graduate of the Azur and an Egyptian domiciled in Qatar, 292 00:33:14,800 --> 00:33:22,300 but someone who is also highly influential in various forms of media over the course of his career. 293 00:33:22,300 --> 00:33:29,620 And it's fascinating to just to briefly translate this verse on the top of the screen soon and briefly, 294 00:33:29,620 --> 00:33:33,100 hopefully that's going to help people be able to see it a bit more clearly. 295 00:33:33,100 --> 00:33:43,300 And this is a very strong from the Koran where it says, you know, call to your lord and be amongst those who are aggressing. 296 00:33:43,300 --> 00:33:51,760 And then in a sense, this is the set of verses that he wants to highlight wellat of civil liberties here, don't create corruption. 297 00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:58,000 And after it has been brought into a state of health, as it were, MetroHealth and whatnot, 298 00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:05,870 but it's interlinking that with one's sort of commitment to worship of God and worship God with. 299 00:34:05,870 --> 00:34:14,900 And with hope, indeed, God's mercy is close to the bone to those who are upholders of accidents, 300 00:34:14,900 --> 00:34:25,190 and then this verse is sometimes quoted as explicating a kind of Koranic conception of how the water cycle works. 301 00:34:25,190 --> 00:34:37,700 It says he is the one God is the one who sort of spreads the winds as kind of glad, glad tidings and the manifestation of his mercy. 302 00:34:37,700 --> 00:34:42,710 And then it takes the clouds from one place to another and it revives dead us. 303 00:34:42,710 --> 00:34:49,490 It's a fascinating energy. It's quite poetic. And I'm not doing justice to it, obviously in my off the cuff translation. 304 00:34:49,490 --> 00:35:04,700 And then it says that the water descends and through it the sort of fruit come forth from the earth and we gather any kind of ritual motor and. 305 00:35:04,700 --> 00:35:11,630 That's how we revive the dead in a sense such that so that you may reflect now. 306 00:35:11,630 --> 00:35:17,060 And related to that is this verse which is often quoted in the context and the environment. 307 00:35:17,060 --> 00:35:24,920 And it's worth remembering, you know, this is a workable I believe is a revelation that came fourteen hundred years ago. 308 00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:28,430 And so although historians will look at this and say, OK, 309 00:35:28,430 --> 00:35:39,470 this was obviously speaking to its own context to draw on sort of the idea of Moshe Halbertal and the notion of having these canonical texts, 310 00:35:39,470 --> 00:35:42,560 which you believe to be speaking to you in every moment. 311 00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:48,060 In a sense, someone is saying, well, this applies to our treatment of the Earth in our own time. 312 00:35:48,060 --> 00:35:50,390 The whole facade of the human body being, like I said, 313 00:35:50,390 --> 00:36:01,970 that as the sort of corruption has manifested on the on the land and in the sea due to what the hands of men have brought you, the lady, 314 00:36:01,970 --> 00:36:13,100 I mean, in order to give you a taste literally of some of the corruption in the sense that you have engaged in in order, 315 00:36:13,100 --> 00:36:17,450 it says in the third person, in order for them to return to God, in a sense. 316 00:36:17,450 --> 00:36:25,100 And so, you know, these sorts of evocative verses can be seen as quite general in their purpose. 317 00:36:25,100 --> 00:36:36,920 But another switch back to her boyhood. But at the same time, they actually do provide enough sort of reflective material for him to develop a system, 318 00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:44,030 as it were, that he explicate over 264 pages in this book and he does this relatively early. 319 00:36:44,030 --> 00:36:54,320 So I wanted to just start off with kind of explicating Karbo is sort of a brief having a brief overview of his ideas in this regard. 320 00:36:54,320 --> 00:37:00,680 But I wanted to perhaps the next three minutes or so, if that's right, if I'm OK for time, 321 00:37:00,680 --> 00:37:11,420 just outline in brief some of my own reflections on some of these sorts of questions in how they relate to Islamic studies, 322 00:37:11,420 --> 00:37:14,840 particularly in the traditional guise as own Sharia. 323 00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:23,840 So the sort of in places like the US here, which is the Arab world's pre-eminent centre for Islamic learning, 324 00:37:23,840 --> 00:37:31,400 based in Cairo and the historic centre of learning that is definitely older than Oxford, 325 00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:36,710 you know, they study various Uloom Sharia meaning disciplines or, 326 00:37:36,710 --> 00:37:41,210 you know, fields of knowledge that are related to the Sharia in some way, whether it's Koranic studies, 327 00:37:41,210 --> 00:37:48,830 Hadith studies, Islamic legal studies or a whole host of other sort of theology and all the rest of it. 328 00:37:48,830 --> 00:37:55,970 And I just wanted to sort of mention that a number of these fields have direct sort of things 329 00:37:55,970 --> 00:38:01,310 to say in a sense about the environment and can be extrapolated from and this is in a sense, 330 00:38:01,310 --> 00:38:13,560 the the major challenge that modern Muslims are going to have to reflect on as they sort of respond to the environmental crisis. 331 00:38:13,560 --> 00:38:18,080 Um, so we've seen some verses from the Qur'an cited by Karlovy. 332 00:38:18,080 --> 00:38:25,820 But you have Hadith from the Prophet as well, such as a Hadith where the prophet exhorts his companions, 333 00:38:25,820 --> 00:38:32,140 don't waste water even if you're at the bank of a river at the bank of the flowing river. 334 00:38:32,140 --> 00:38:37,850 That quite literally and in this regard, in a sense, what you have is the you know, 335 00:38:37,850 --> 00:38:45,970 there are these principles that can be drawn or that are found across a variety of traditions, principles of moderation, principles of abstemious. 336 00:38:45,970 --> 00:38:54,800 There's a lot of which will be expressed in Islamic law, but more usually would be expressed as values in a sense, 337 00:38:54,800 --> 00:39:04,070 to use modern terminology as ethical values that we would embody sort of that Muslims would embody in their own sort of personal lives. 338 00:39:04,070 --> 00:39:11,790 And that usually manifests in. The tradition known as Sufism, or at least in certain elements of that sort of a tradition, 339 00:39:11,790 --> 00:39:21,870 and so in a sense, you know, these religious values which Islam may share with other religious traditions. 340 00:39:21,870 --> 00:39:31,410 The prophetic traditions of Koranic, you know, the Koran and the Hadith, as it were, will provide a lot of food for thought, 341 00:39:31,410 --> 00:39:43,140 for people to reflect on how to engage in moderate living, kind of the opposite of impulse of a capitalist consumption led culture. 342 00:39:43,140 --> 00:39:51,340 And in many respects, I would argue that those sorts of traditions are probably what Muslims can draw on. 343 00:39:51,340 --> 00:39:56,790 But at the same time, given the sort of the status of the global south and the global order, 344 00:39:56,790 --> 00:40:02,790 it's not necessarily they that need to particularly prioritise this as a set of values. 345 00:40:02,790 --> 00:40:05,880 And finally, I just wanted to highlight I mean, 346 00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:13,740 I was meant to mention this with respect to those actually quite cognisant of that global south north divide. 347 00:40:13,740 --> 00:40:25,620 He actually, in his discussions, took talks about the global north as being the major consumers and that the global south in many respects, 348 00:40:25,620 --> 00:40:29,580 and he criticises the way in which governments accept these kinds of policies, 349 00:40:29,580 --> 00:40:40,980 will take the weight of the global north for a fee and thereby dramatically damage the sort of the environments, 350 00:40:40,980 --> 00:40:44,790 the proximate environments of this country. And in that sort of context, 351 00:40:44,790 --> 00:40:51,900 I think it's important to highlight and conclude on this point that a lot of the people whom we're thinking of in this 352 00:40:51,900 --> 00:40:59,190 echoes what Malta was saying earlier in the Middle East region are not really in a position to do a great deal about it, 353 00:40:59,190 --> 00:41:11,340 about that situation and are, you know, less the producers of the global climate crisis and more the recipients of the global climate crisis. 354 00:41:11,340 --> 00:41:16,350 And that's something I think those of in the global north need to think about. Thank you very much. 355 00:41:16,350 --> 00:41:22,950 Thank you very much indeed. Thanks very much for another fascinating talk and links in well with the previous two ones. 356 00:41:22,950 --> 00:41:32,580 And I think you highlighted as you hit yourself that this is a growing field of interest and scholars of Islam about the relation to the environment. 357 00:41:32,580 --> 00:41:38,820 And it fits in in all sorts of other ways with the sort of issues that you're looking at. 358 00:41:38,820 --> 00:41:44,370 Thank you. Finally, let's turn just to say something about my own research and what I've been working on, 359 00:41:44,370 --> 00:41:52,420 looking more towards political issues and looking particularly at the Maghreb, the region. 360 00:41:52,420 --> 00:42:01,590 But I carry out research on I recently completed a book on Algerian politics that I hope will be coming out in February. 361 00:42:01,590 --> 00:42:08,190 And the book surveys politics across the spectrum. But environmental issues come to the fore. 362 00:42:08,190 --> 00:42:14,370 And part of the book and I think show how these issues are feeding into a much broader 363 00:42:14,370 --> 00:42:20,400 patterns of politics and broad aspects of politics than actually we commonly realise. 364 00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:24,930 And I think this is not not unique to Algeria, but we see it in other places. 365 00:42:24,930 --> 00:42:31,670 I'd be interested to see where that will spread. 366 00:42:31,670 --> 00:42:39,830 It really the bit part of my book in which these issues come up is it is is not a book where I examine unrest and protest movements, 367 00:42:39,830 --> 00:42:47,090 but it occurred in some of Algeria's more distinct regions over the past 20 years, in particular in January 20, 368 00:42:47,090 --> 00:42:52,070 30, 15 in the town of Salaat, deep in the Sahara and south of Algeria, 369 00:42:52,070 --> 00:42:56,090 there were protests following a visit by the National Minister for Energy Use 370 00:42:56,090 --> 00:43:01,760 USA to the region who was there to inaugurate new gas wells near the city. 371 00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:08,990 Now, while the development of new resources might have been expected to have attracted local popular support rather than hostility, 372 00:43:08,990 --> 00:43:15,350 it was the nature of the wells being inaugurated that attracted substantial local ire, 373 00:43:15,350 --> 00:43:20,510 euphemistically termed Algeria's first nonconventional gas wells the government. 374 00:43:20,510 --> 00:43:29,090 For them, they were, in fact, Algeria's first foray into the exploitation of its apparently substantial shale gas resources. 375 00:43:29,090 --> 00:43:34,940 As we know, use of a technique of fracking to eventually extract these resources had provoked global controversy 376 00:43:34,940 --> 00:43:41,090 over its alleged damaging effects on local water resources and possible provoking ground tremors. 377 00:43:41,090 --> 00:43:49,880 Environmentalists, activists and salaat were also many of whom actually worked in the oil and gas sector locally, which I find very interesting. 378 00:43:49,880 --> 00:43:54,170 The fact that these were people who were very familiar with energy issues and therefore much more, 379 00:43:54,170 --> 00:43:57,770 much more aware and informed about the sort of the negative side. 380 00:43:57,770 --> 00:44:04,580 These weren't uninformed activists, the people very engaged actually in the industry themselves. 381 00:44:04,580 --> 00:44:10,670 But many of these activists were the first to raised vocal objections to the plans against the wells and 382 00:44:10,670 --> 00:44:17,390 were able to mobilise a thousand local residents to protest in the days that followed the minister's visit. 383 00:44:17,390 --> 00:44:19,430 Now, these protests grew over the days and weeks, 384 00:44:19,430 --> 00:44:27,020 followed soon drawing an estimated 15000 people to them in a city with a population barely twice that number. 385 00:44:27,020 --> 00:44:35,450 So nearly half the population came onto the streets to protest against the potential of fracking. 386 00:44:35,450 --> 00:44:40,250 Moreover, large supportive demonstrations were held in other southern towns and cities, 387 00:44:40,250 --> 00:44:44,090 mobilising an estimated four thousand people in the city of Tamanrasset. 388 00:44:44,090 --> 00:44:50,300 Five thousand joining a march in Wagler where activists have begun to mobilise against shale gas exploitation. 389 00:44:50,300 --> 00:44:59,510 The previous June, there was particular resentment in these demonstration that the fact that the Algerian authorities had allowed a specifically 390 00:44:59,510 --> 00:45:07,760 French company total to test unconventional extraction techniques and these techniques were not permitted in France itself. 391 00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:16,460 Now, this has resonance is not just in the fact that France, of course, was the former colonial power in Algeria, but much more significantly, 392 00:45:16,460 --> 00:45:23,300 it was the south of Algeria where the French had been permitted to carry out nuclear weapons tests in the 1960s. 393 00:45:23,300 --> 00:45:31,850 And thus the return of total evoked very important and very resentful memories amongst a lot of the population of the South. 394 00:45:31,850 --> 00:45:35,960 This French involvement did indeed allow protesters to characterise the fracking as a 395 00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:42,100 neocolonial project and thus frame their movement as one protecting national sovereignty. 396 00:45:42,100 --> 00:45:51,760 Environmental concerns activist spearheaded the protests we've seen over the inauguration of these projects, but they tapped into widespread concerns, 397 00:45:51,760 --> 00:46:02,320 a broader issues of marginalisation and the absence of benefits enjoyed by people of the region in the exploitation of these rich local resources. 398 00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:07,780 Protesters argue. But despite the strategic importance of a region with its gas and water resources, 399 00:46:07,780 --> 00:46:13,240 actually insula is next to one of the largest reservoirs in the Sahara Desert. 400 00:46:13,240 --> 00:46:21,100 There had been little development in the region and even the exploitation of conventional gas had brought scant local benefits to a local population, 401 00:46:21,100 --> 00:46:29,350 even though these were things that were exploited locally. Local people saw very little and referring to the perceived environmental damage. 402 00:46:29,350 --> 00:46:37,320 Fracking for shale could do, one local activist argued. Shale gas will take what little we have and we don't want it. 403 00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:43,260 Now, the combined pressure of a protest likely contributed to the dismissal of the architect of shale gas project. 404 00:46:43,260 --> 00:46:48,270 Energy Minister Yusuf used to be a May 20 15, said it cost him his job ultimately. 405 00:46:48,270 --> 00:46:54,750 And such was the popularity of the of the protests that other groups and activities became involved. 406 00:46:54,750 --> 00:47:04,620 And they prompted an attempt to hold the first major protest by opposition groups and parties in the capital, Algiers, since the Arab Spring. 407 00:47:04,620 --> 00:47:14,460 Now, very interestingly, other slightly more unusual political groupings also began to be seen to involve 408 00:47:14,460 --> 00:47:19,140 themselves in environmental issues and could be seen as jumping on the bandwagon. 409 00:47:19,140 --> 00:47:30,330 And there was an attack in March 2016 on a gas facility by the city of Inshala by what was the largest jihadi group in the region, 410 00:47:30,330 --> 00:47:39,840 al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. And this group rather unusually justified the attack on the on the gas facility as 411 00:47:39,840 --> 00:47:44,760 an attempt to protect the environment and discourage further shale gas exploration. 412 00:47:44,760 --> 00:47:49,920 So you were getting the jihadis coming in on on the environmental issue. 413 00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:54,190 Now, it was rather implausible that this was claim, 414 00:47:54,190 --> 00:48:02,010 but I think it's perhaps better explained by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb its desire to align itself with a major local grievance. 415 00:48:02,010 --> 00:48:10,770 But it does show the power of these grievances. However, such an endorsement was was not welcomed by the main protest movement, as you can imagine, 416 00:48:10,770 --> 00:48:17,520 because it then subsequently had to fend off the inevitable official accusations that somehow concerns about the environment were about terrorism. 417 00:48:17,520 --> 00:48:24,780 Every time we find too often in the region that there is a movement that the authorities don't like, they try and link it to terrorism. 418 00:48:24,780 --> 00:48:29,910 And this was the routine setting for this. However, as a result of all of this pressure, 419 00:48:29,910 --> 00:48:35,310 the authorities announced that the exploitation would be delayed for a number of years, perhaps five to 10 years. 420 00:48:35,310 --> 00:48:40,650 But following a successful campaign of repression and cooption of the protests, 421 00:48:40,650 --> 00:48:46,230 they receded and the shale gas initiatives were revived in late twenty seventeen. 422 00:48:46,230 --> 00:48:52,740 However, the protests themselves were revealed in the context of a huge national protest movement, 423 00:48:52,740 --> 00:48:56,070 what became known as the Iraq, but developed across Algeria. 424 00:48:56,070 --> 00:49:05,400 In twenty nineteen, it secured the resignation of a sitting President Bouteflika, an enormous crisis in Algeria, 425 00:49:05,400 --> 00:49:16,860 and one of the weekly protests in January 20 20 was explicitly devoted to calls for the government to abandon its plans to exploit shale gas, 426 00:49:16,860 --> 00:49:22,950 which were condemned in the protests. There were banners and chants that week that was the theme of the weekly protests. 427 00:49:22,950 --> 00:49:25,560 And there were, they argued. 428 00:49:25,560 --> 00:49:32,280 But what was really happening there was their attempts to sell Algeria to multinational corporations and especially the French. 429 00:49:32,280 --> 00:49:39,780 So overall, in this way, we can see that environmental concerns have found their way into wider politics for expressions 430 00:49:39,780 --> 00:49:46,140 as diverse as a national protest of the Hirak which dominated and rather surprisingly, 431 00:49:46,140 --> 00:49:48,480 al-Qaida's franchises in the region. 432 00:49:48,480 --> 00:49:58,470 So that gives you a hopefully a taste of how it's affected Algerian politics and quite such some more unusual ways. 433 00:49:58,470 --> 00:50:08,520 Now, we have just about a few minutes left to raise any questions that anybody would have with any of our speakers want to contribute, 434 00:50:08,520 --> 00:50:13,530 if you would like to have a question. There is a question and answer panel you'll see on the screen. 435 00:50:13,530 --> 00:50:19,260 If there is anything you'd like to ask, do please put a question that's now I see there is one question that's come through. 436 00:50:19,260 --> 00:50:28,320 I can just look at that one. Which from I'll allow you briefly to talk about maybe an easy one. 437 00:50:28,320 --> 00:50:31,620 Can you hear me? Welcome, member. How are you? Yeah, good. How are you? 438 00:50:31,620 --> 00:50:35,610 Thank you very much. So I'm sorry, I couldn't I didn't see the Q&A section there. 439 00:50:35,610 --> 00:50:39,480 But yes, my question would be to Professor Lowe next. 440 00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:44,550 Thanks very much for this wonderful talk and for this brief survey of kind of the 441 00:50:44,550 --> 00:50:50,310 depiction of environmental concerns as reflected in Turkish speculative fiction. 442 00:50:50,310 --> 00:50:57,630 My question was, if Professor Lawrence sees a utopian impulse and a revitalisation of utopian blueprints, 443 00:50:57,630 --> 00:51:04,440 then Turkish literature, especially in literary dystopias that illustrate environmental and ecological breakdown. 444 00:51:04,440 --> 00:51:14,340 Thank you. So I think you're probably referring more to to to to recent fiction. 445 00:51:14,340 --> 00:51:24,570 Yes, fiction in 20th and 21st century life, but I mean as also kind of as you referred to, kind of the beginning of 20th century. 446 00:51:24,570 --> 00:51:29,400 Yes. Now, I think I mean, 447 00:51:29,400 --> 00:51:41,850 the that the post to thousands more generally in the Turkish literary world has allowed the development of a whole series of jars 448 00:51:41,850 --> 00:51:51,570 and of fiction that have been very much marginalised before then for a variety of reasons and certainly speculative fiction, 449 00:51:51,570 --> 00:51:56,190 science fiction, dystopic fiction is one of them. 450 00:51:56,190 --> 00:52:10,800 And in the context of some of these developments, quite naturally, the question of the environment is is quite high on the agenda. 451 00:52:10,800 --> 00:52:15,530 So I would say more than ever, probably. Thank you very much. 452 00:52:15,530 --> 00:52:21,770 I suppose this is something we can talk about, because I know you work on those topics. 453 00:52:21,770 --> 00:52:26,310 Yes, yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm looking to see if there are any other questions. 454 00:52:26,310 --> 00:52:31,130 I don't think they are, but thank you very much for your question. And I'll draw the session to a close. 455 00:52:31,130 --> 00:52:36,290 I just want to thank our speakers. Thank you for joining us. And I hope what the session has done a number of things. 456 00:52:36,290 --> 00:52:46,430 It's shown that the concerns about the environment spread across a whole range of aspects and dimensions in the Middle East, 457 00:52:46,430 --> 00:52:52,400 and that the way we understand the Middle East and North Africa, the Middle East centre taps into a lot of those concerns. 458 00:52:52,400 --> 00:52:57,740 And the way we look at the region more broadly, even beyond environmental issues, varies in different ways. 459 00:52:57,740 --> 00:53:00,160 But there are many, many common themes coming through. 460 00:53:00,160 --> 00:53:08,480 We can see those things coming through, concerns about local communities and communities, about not having control over what is happening, 461 00:53:08,480 --> 00:53:14,810 concerns about the rate of technological change, changes wrought by actually bring benefits that local people see. 462 00:53:14,810 --> 00:53:23,570 These are perennial concerns, and I'm sure that be brought up again and again throughout our throughout the programme as we speak. 463 00:53:23,570 --> 00:53:29,510 And just to say that we will be starting the series with the individual speakers next week. 464 00:53:29,510 --> 00:53:38,270 And please join us this time next week at five o'clock for her husband, Hussein will be speaking on Jordan and Water. 465 00:53:38,270 --> 00:53:42,710 And please, please join us. And we wish you a good weekend. 466 00:53:42,710 --> 00:53:56,205 And thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. Bye bye.