1 00:00:06,680 --> 00:00:11,810 Good evening. Welcome to tonight's Middle East Centre Friday seminar. 2 00:00:11,810 --> 00:00:19,340 My name is Walter Armbrister. I'm one of the fellows of the Middle East Centre and I'm chairing tonight's session hosting our speaker. 3 00:00:19,340 --> 00:00:24,920 The theme for this series of lectures is environments in the Middle East, 4 00:00:24,920 --> 00:00:31,100 and I should say at the beginning that we will be taking questions through the Q&A feature. 5 00:00:31,100 --> 00:00:40,370 So tonight's speaker is Jamie Prenez, who is currently a researcher at the Institute for Research on Contemporary Margaret in Tunis. 6 00:00:40,370 --> 00:00:46,310 But he's on leave from his position as a lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. 7 00:00:46,310 --> 00:00:56,810 But he has a DPhil from Oxford, where I knew him well years ago when he was a student and in the Department of International Development, 8 00:00:56,810 --> 00:01:03,920 he conducted fieldwork in Egypt and was there when I was there as well, so we know each other quite well. 9 00:01:03,920 --> 00:01:12,950 He researches primarily on topics pertaining to environment, waste and urban development is dissertation was titled Metaphors of Waste, 10 00:01:12,950 --> 00:01:21,680 Several Ways of Seeing Development and Cairo's Garbage Collectors, and he's spun off quite a few articles from his dissertation, 11 00:01:21,680 --> 00:01:27,410 including one titled post-Revolutionary Land Encroachments in Cairo, Rise Rhizome Attic, 12 00:01:27,410 --> 00:01:33,860 Urban Space Making and the Line of Flight from illegality in the journal Tropical Geography, 13 00:01:33,860 --> 00:01:44,280 Alternative Framings of Transnational Waste Flows, Reflections based on the Egypt China peti, which means polyethylene. 14 00:01:44,280 --> 00:01:50,970 Terephthalate plastic tray. That's an area the Journal of the Royal Geographic Society. 15 00:01:50,970 --> 00:01:55,590 He has a couple of entries in the Sage Encyclopaedia of Consumption of Waste, 16 00:01:55,590 --> 00:02:01,860 and he's curated a giant museum exhibition at the Museum of European and Mediterranean 17 00:02:01,860 --> 00:02:07,500 Civilisations in Marseilles titled Lives of Garbage The Economy of Waste, 18 00:02:07,500 --> 00:02:12,030 which resulted in the sale of one hundred and twenty nine thousand tickets. 19 00:02:12,030 --> 00:02:21,960 The title of his lecture tonight is the blue clad Fennec authoritarian environmentalism in Tunisia and its afterlives. 20 00:02:21,960 --> 00:02:24,030 You have the abstract already on our website, 21 00:02:24,030 --> 00:02:31,410 so you've already read that I can confess that environmentalism isn't something I normally associate with authoritarianism, 22 00:02:31,410 --> 00:02:38,310 but it seems it was nonetheless a tool and the governmental repertoire of the now deposed Ben Ali regime in Tunisia. 23 00:02:38,310 --> 00:02:46,060 I look forward to hearing the details, and so with no further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Jamie for this. 24 00:02:46,060 --> 00:02:54,210 OK, thanks very much for the introduction, Walter. As well as having put me forward since I owe you, thanks for this invitation tonight, 25 00:02:54,210 --> 00:02:59,770 as well as, of course, to Michael Gillis in absentia for having reached out to me, 26 00:02:59,770 --> 00:03:09,810 it's a pleasure to be able to join you and and to be back, if only virtually amongst the Middle East studies crowd in Oxford. 27 00:03:09,810 --> 00:03:20,460 So I wanted to start with just a brief word on my transition from from Egypt to Tunisia because I guess it's with the work that I did on waste 28 00:03:20,460 --> 00:03:34,530 collectors in Egypt that that was that what you had in mind when you invited me and when I started doing research in Tunisia a couple of years ago, 29 00:03:34,530 --> 00:03:41,340 I basically thought initially that I would transplant the work that I had done from from Egypt here. 30 00:03:41,340 --> 00:03:46,260 So I started taking an interest in the what they call the big picture here, 31 00:03:46,260 --> 00:03:54,060 which are sort of the rough equivalent to the zabaleen in Cairo, although in fact they're really quite different. 32 00:03:54,060 --> 00:03:58,920 But these would be itinerant collectors of recyclable materials. 33 00:03:58,920 --> 00:04:06,720 And then also the the fire or the gear who were scrap metal collectors. 34 00:04:06,720 --> 00:04:14,880 But one of the things that that sort of struck me from day one here, and it's almost kind of as simple as to be ridiculous, 35 00:04:14,880 --> 00:04:21,240 was the omnipresence of the boulevards of the environment in Tunisia. 36 00:04:21,240 --> 00:04:26,310 And and at some point and I thought, Gosh, I mean, if I'm if I'm someone who's working in the environment, 37 00:04:26,310 --> 00:04:32,760 I have to find out at least a little bit about what the story of these these boulevards is. 38 00:04:32,760 --> 00:04:39,420 And the other thing that was really striking to me was the amount of signage in public space. 39 00:04:39,420 --> 00:04:50,910 It asking people not to litter so anti littering campaigns organised by NGOs by a lot of them are just spontaneous writings on walls. 40 00:04:50,910 --> 00:04:58,080 So people put these up in front of their houses or on the wall of their garden to try to discourage people from littering on their property. 41 00:04:58,080 --> 00:05:02,640 But you also find them like in public transit, pretty much everywhere you go. 42 00:05:02,640 --> 00:05:08,850 I mean, you almost kind of, you know, even if you're not looking for it, you sort of bump your head on these things as you're walking around here. 43 00:05:08,850 --> 00:05:15,780 It's really extraordinary. And so I started kind of following these two avenues, 44 00:05:15,780 --> 00:05:25,440 and I've I've done sort of one book chapter now that should be coming out soon in the Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies on these signs. 45 00:05:25,440 --> 00:05:32,190 And so tonight's papers sort of starts with the other of these two observations the boulevards of the environment, 46 00:05:32,190 --> 00:05:39,990 and I'm going to try to follow that sort of as a thread that's going to take us into a discussion of how the 47 00:05:39,990 --> 00:05:50,610 environment was used as a device for propaganda and as a political device in the 1990s and 2000s prior to 2011. 48 00:05:50,610 --> 00:05:57,480 So during the Ben Ali regime, and that's hopefully going to be kind of the first part of the paper. 49 00:05:57,480 --> 00:06:03,930 And then hopefully the second part, the second part is going to be a little bit more messy. 50 00:06:03,930 --> 00:06:09,960 I'm going to try to sort of throw out through a series of examples an argument 51 00:06:09,960 --> 00:06:15,900 about what I think people are talking about when they talk about the environment. 52 00:06:15,900 --> 00:06:21,960 So the idea, I guess here is that the contours of the term environment, 53 00:06:21,960 --> 00:06:31,860 while not entirely unfamiliar to someone like myself who grew up in North America, are at the same time a little bit different in Tunisia. 54 00:06:31,860 --> 00:06:34,380 And of course, they're constantly shifting over time around. 55 00:06:34,380 --> 00:06:43,140 The world is as the term is consolidated and rises in political and and everyday importance. 56 00:06:43,140 --> 00:06:48,210 But again. This is sort of it sort of echoes back to to my experience in Egypt and in particular, 57 00:06:48,210 --> 00:06:52,920 we were talking before starting the summer about Nicholas Hopkins', a liar. 58 00:06:52,920 --> 00:07:01,560 Hummel, who recently passed away, who who was the lead author on a book in the early 2000s called People and Pollution in Egypt, 59 00:07:01,560 --> 00:07:09,510 which was a survey based study of people's attitudes towards the environment and pollution in Egypt. 60 00:07:09,510 --> 00:07:14,400 And one of the things that that I'll never forget from that book was that when they surveyed people in 61 00:07:14,400 --> 00:07:20,850 Cairo about and I believe in some other cities in Egypt about what it was that threatened the environment, 62 00:07:20,850 --> 00:07:26,160 you got the series of usual answers like air pollution, waste and so forth. 63 00:07:26,160 --> 00:07:33,270 And then there were a whole series of answers that people gave, which related to religio moral purity. 64 00:07:33,270 --> 00:07:38,820 So they said things like, for instance, boys and girls who were unmarried, 65 00:07:38,820 --> 00:07:49,470 holding hands and going out in public people drinking alcohol, foul language, bad behaviour are threats to the environment. 66 00:07:49,470 --> 00:07:58,530 And I thought, isn't, isn't that curious? And what then do people have in mind when they're thinking about the environment? 67 00:07:58,530 --> 00:08:06,330 So I guess the questions that I'm trying to ask in this research are what do people mean when they talk about the environment? 68 00:08:06,330 --> 00:08:14,790 And then how is action in the field of environment constrained or oriented by these historical political uses, 69 00:08:14,790 --> 00:08:20,370 as well as sort of the general context for understanding the term? 70 00:08:20,370 --> 00:08:22,770 And so I guess the interest, I mean, 71 00:08:22,770 --> 00:08:31,920 I'm pursuing this as a as an academic project naturally that I think has interest in Middle East and North African studies and anthropology, 72 00:08:31,920 --> 00:08:41,550 but also a sort of practical pitch for this is that in the kind of contemporary context where everyone is trying 73 00:08:41,550 --> 00:08:50,490 to federate political forces around the environment in order to save the planet and the future of our species, 74 00:08:50,490 --> 00:08:54,900 it's interesting to know to what extent you know, 75 00:08:54,900 --> 00:08:59,100 the people who who are having these discussions may have differing notions 76 00:08:59,100 --> 00:09:04,650 of what it is that we're trying to save or what the environment consists of. 77 00:09:04,650 --> 00:09:05,220 And of course, 78 00:09:05,220 --> 00:09:16,890 that policy can be productive as well because sometimes easier to get people to agree if if they think they're agreeing to different things. 79 00:09:16,890 --> 00:09:25,110 So let me talk a little bit about about the people who see the blue clad finish that you see there and the boulevards of the environment. 80 00:09:25,110 --> 00:09:36,720 And I'll start with the boulevards of the environment, which are really omnipresent in the country, every every one of the larger cities. 81 00:09:36,720 --> 00:09:41,850 Well, I would say virtually every city in the country has one of these boulevards shut in. 82 00:09:41,850 --> 00:09:47,020 The app would rather, of course, they write it in French and in large cities. 83 00:09:47,020 --> 00:09:51,840 There would be several poorer districts. In Tunis, for instance, there'd be five or six of these things. 84 00:09:51,840 --> 00:09:59,730 And they tend to be sort of the pre-eminent avenue or boulevards of the neighbourhood or of the city. 85 00:09:59,730 --> 00:10:03,810 They often have a divider in the middle with some plants. 86 00:10:03,810 --> 00:10:10,020 So these are some examples from from my travels around the country that I've I've photographed. 87 00:10:10,020 --> 00:10:14,670 These are some examples from Tunis or the one on the left, for instance, 88 00:10:14,670 --> 00:10:24,210 is in is in that famous locale for a film on which you've written an article, Walter. 89 00:10:24,210 --> 00:10:35,070 And it's like the one on the right is in Sidi Bouzid, so a kind of a touristic village in the capital. 90 00:10:35,070 --> 00:10:39,690 And as you can see, it's things tend to be quite rundown. 91 00:10:39,690 --> 00:10:44,890 This one here, which was used on the poster for the talk, was taken in Algiers, 92 00:10:44,890 --> 00:10:53,460 which is in the northwest of the country, and you can see how it's got a bit of a tag on it and the as has fallen from. 93 00:10:53,460 --> 00:10:59,150 It's fascinating. And no one has come around to repair it. 94 00:10:59,150 --> 00:11:06,950 So what this tells you, the fact that they're sort of left to ruin or in some cases even vandalised at a minimum, 95 00:11:06,950 --> 00:11:11,610 is that none of them has been created in sort of the last 10 to 15 years. 96 00:11:11,610 --> 00:11:20,060 So all of these all of these date from prior to 2011, and some of them go back to the early 1990s. 97 00:11:20,060 --> 00:11:27,080 So the new streets that or large boulevards that are that are named more recently tend to be named, 98 00:11:27,080 --> 00:11:35,090 for instance, for the the past President Beji Caid Essebsi and above all, for Martyrs of the Revolution. 99 00:11:35,090 --> 00:11:43,940 So it's very common to to name roundabouts and streets or even rename them, in many cases for martyrs of the revolution. 100 00:11:43,940 --> 00:11:49,340 So I want to I want to talk just a little bit about the background of these. 101 00:11:49,340 --> 00:11:56,540 Many of the streets that were that are currently named boulevard of the environment that existed prior under a different name, 102 00:11:56,540 --> 00:12:01,910 and they tended typically to be the Bourguiba avenues. 103 00:12:01,910 --> 00:12:08,150 Bourguiba, of course, was the president of Tunisia from nineteen fifty seven to eighty seven, succeeded by Ben Ali. 104 00:12:08,150 --> 00:12:13,730 And here was the the hero of decolonisation. 105 00:12:13,730 --> 00:12:25,700 So when Ben Ali came to power with his sort of aspirations to to replace Bourguiba, one of his political projects was too deep for goodbyes. 106 00:12:25,700 --> 00:12:30,350 If I can invent that word, public space. But at the same time, 107 00:12:30,350 --> 00:12:39,440 to do so by putting up his own name in place of the hero of the anti-colonial movement and to replace the statue with the statue 108 00:12:39,440 --> 00:12:50,690 of himself would have been too crass and and really kind of unthinkable because of this status of Cuba in the country's history. 109 00:12:50,690 --> 00:12:53,960 So in this context, something more neutral, such as the environment, 110 00:12:53,960 --> 00:13:01,430 was the way of racing or keep it from public space, while at the same time not sort of scandalising public opinion. 111 00:13:01,430 --> 00:13:11,490 It also served a purpose, and this is my second point of giving the impression that Tunisia valued the environment very highly. 112 00:13:11,490 --> 00:13:23,030 And when you talk, I've done a little bit of kind of oral history, work with people who worked in the ministry and had had sort of other public roles. 113 00:13:23,030 --> 00:13:31,910 When you talk to them, it's clear that this was a deliberate political strategy of legitimisation in western eyes. 114 00:13:31,910 --> 00:13:41,450 And in that sense, it was comparable to the two Tunisia's position on family law and in particular, women's rights. 115 00:13:41,450 --> 00:13:46,550 So this was sort of greenwashing or quashing the idea being that they were able to sort of 116 00:13:46,550 --> 00:13:52,910 paper over and cause Western observers to ignore to some extent the violations of civil 117 00:13:52,910 --> 00:13:58,040 and political rights within the country by presenting themselves as progressive on these 118 00:13:58,040 --> 00:14:07,220 sort of hot button or touchstone issues in that kind of hierarchy of Euro American values, 119 00:14:07,220 --> 00:14:15,650 if I can put it that way. And the other part of this, of course, was that it helped to open up a lot of channels for international funding, 120 00:14:15,650 --> 00:14:25,820 which which would flow to environmental projects. So that's that's sort of my interpretation of of the the use of these boulevards. 121 00:14:25,820 --> 00:14:30,890 The third thing I might just add here is that here we could we could borrow, I guess, 122 00:14:30,890 --> 00:14:37,130 maybe from James Scott's book seem like a state that these served as micro environments of apparent order. 123 00:14:37,130 --> 00:14:40,430 So if you remember in that book, he talks a lot about model villages, 124 00:14:40,430 --> 00:14:46,910 demonstration projects, new capitals and so on that are designed to transform society. 125 00:14:46,910 --> 00:14:54,200 And I think that these boulevards, it's clear, in fact, that these boulevards had this this sort of exemplary role. 126 00:14:54,200 --> 00:15:00,710 So they were they were supposed to be kind of the one space within the city that would be beautiful and clean. 127 00:15:00,710 --> 00:15:06,110 And by demonstrating that, you know, it's possible for at least one space to be clean, 128 00:15:06,110 --> 00:15:12,830 they were supposed to have a beneficial effect on society and the city as a whole. 129 00:15:12,830 --> 00:15:18,920 They were sort of by contagion supposed to to influence for the better. 130 00:15:18,920 --> 00:15:28,790 And of course, they also were a space of appearance of order as Mitchell talks about and colonising Egypt, where they were a picture of something. 131 00:15:28,790 --> 00:15:35,120 So these were an avenue that, for instance, when you had a foreign dignitary who was visiting or perhaps even just, you know, 132 00:15:35,120 --> 00:15:46,090 a minister in the government that you could sort of whisk them down without embarrassment and give a positive impression of the country. 133 00:15:46,090 --> 00:15:52,120 So now, oh, this is just a photo to tell you that that this idea of these, 134 00:15:52,120 --> 00:16:01,000 these sort of demonstration spaces is one that persists today, even if the boulevards of the environment are no longer created. 135 00:16:01,000 --> 00:16:09,730 This is a photo in downtown Tunis of the House Marseglia, the Marseilles, which they have baptised. 136 00:16:09,730 --> 00:16:14,720 A house is what they call a small street here. 137 00:16:14,720 --> 00:16:23,620 Shari'ah ZG So this is like an ideal idealised kind of space what they call in French. 138 00:16:23,620 --> 00:16:33,670 Every team wants, or it's supposed to testify to the fact that at least one street in downtown can be kept clean, beautiful and orderly. 139 00:16:33,670 --> 00:16:38,200 Now, at the ends of these boulevards, and here we move on to the beach. 140 00:16:38,200 --> 00:16:47,200 The blue clad finish at the ends of these boulevards, typically at a roundabout, you'll find one of these statues. 141 00:16:47,200 --> 00:16:53,800 Now this is a desert fox or Finnick. And he was the mascot of the environment. 142 00:16:53,800 --> 00:17:00,670 So just as I was saying earlier, the boulevards were often renamed from People Boulevard to Boulevard of the environment. 143 00:17:00,670 --> 00:17:12,190 This is, you would often find this statue today or in particular between 1990 and 2011, at a place where a statue of Bourguiba once stood. 144 00:17:12,190 --> 00:17:14,800 There's different versions of the statue, 145 00:17:14,800 --> 00:17:23,290 like the one on the left here where he's pictured with with children and they're dressed kind of like Boy Scouts. 146 00:17:23,290 --> 00:17:28,870 Here on the right, there's a giant version. 147 00:17:28,870 --> 00:17:32,380 I don't know if you can see the waste bin in the lower left of that photo. 148 00:17:32,380 --> 00:17:38,110 It gives you a sense of scale that's probably 25 feet high or something like that. 149 00:17:38,110 --> 00:17:42,220 And that's located. It's the largest one I've been able to find so far. 150 00:17:42,220 --> 00:17:46,430 I, of course, photograph these things in my travels as I go around the country. 151 00:17:46,430 --> 00:17:51,370 This is located in an Nataly Park where there's a large number of them. 152 00:17:51,370 --> 00:17:57,370 There's about four or five of them in a massive park in Anthony Park is is actually a lovely space, even to this day. 153 00:17:57,370 --> 00:18:03,880 It's it's a it's a large park space semi developed. 154 00:18:03,880 --> 00:18:10,360 It's it's semi wild. It's not entirely maintained in the city of Tunis. 155 00:18:10,360 --> 00:18:18,580 And it was supposed to be a space of environmental protection, but also a space where you would take children's groups, for instance, 156 00:18:18,580 --> 00:18:30,430 to have an experience in nature, and therefore it was appropriate for there to be statues of all different sizes of liberty throughout this park. 157 00:18:30,430 --> 00:18:33,340 But you you also find them at other locations, for instance, 158 00:18:33,340 --> 00:18:40,600 there's a kind of government run Epcot Centre here called at the Loom city because it's like a 159 00:18:40,600 --> 00:18:49,360 planetarium where children's groups go and there was a large beep at the entrance to the room as well. 160 00:18:49,360 --> 00:18:55,180 Now, as you can see, like the boulevards, these statues are also in disrepair. 161 00:18:55,180 --> 00:19:03,490 And part of that, as I say, is is simply that they're all, you know, 15 to 35 years old at this point. 162 00:19:03,490 --> 00:19:07,300 And and as I've come to in a moment, probably never. 163 00:19:07,300 --> 00:19:13,450 We're very well maintained, but since 2012 have explicitly been left to neglect. 164 00:19:13,450 --> 00:19:17,320 But it's not. It's not merely that they've they've fallen apart. 165 00:19:17,320 --> 00:19:29,860 They've actually been, in many cases, intentionally disfigured and damaged, and that occurred in the aftermath of the 2000 11 revolution. 166 00:19:29,860 --> 00:19:35,630 And this photo here, I particularly. 167 00:19:35,630 --> 00:19:43,630 Like, because of the way it was disfigured in the genitals, it gives a sense of. 168 00:19:43,630 --> 00:19:57,550 Of the the the the meaning that people attributed to this figure, this is more than just teenagers being arseholes. 169 00:19:57,550 --> 00:20:12,440 The symbol of the Beeb became a representation of the dictatorship and therefore was a kind of focal point of people's anger in 2011. 170 00:20:12,440 --> 00:20:17,620 So everyone that you talked to who was around at the time remembers that these 171 00:20:17,620 --> 00:20:25,810 statues were attacked and the explanations as to why tend to differ a little bit. 172 00:20:25,810 --> 00:20:33,730 So for instance, I was talking to a mayor of a city in the northwest who has been an elected official for more than 20 years. 173 00:20:33,730 --> 00:20:41,410 And I said to him, I showed him this exact photo and I said, What do you think about the defacement of these, of these, the Beeb's? 174 00:20:41,410 --> 00:20:47,290 And he said to me, Well, that's because the Beeb was a symbol of corruption. 175 00:20:47,290 --> 00:20:53,380 And so we began talking about this story, which is corroborated by a number of people, 176 00:20:53,380 --> 00:21:01,360 which pertains to the fact that the Minister of Environment from nineteen ninety two to nineteen ninety nine was Ben Ali's nephew. 177 00:21:01,360 --> 00:21:16,600 So the ministry itself was was a symbol of nepotistic appointment, but also the the second dimension of corruption here is that eventually, 178 00:21:16,600 --> 00:21:23,740 when he realised how important this sort of environmental communication and education 179 00:21:23,740 --> 00:21:32,110 was ended up firing the caricaturist who the ministry had hired to create the Beeb. 180 00:21:32,110 --> 00:21:40,840 And he created his own company, which was a public relations company that then obtained all of the contracts for the production 181 00:21:40,840 --> 00:21:49,450 of these statues and the Labib paraphernalia that was used for environmental education. 182 00:21:49,450 --> 00:21:58,030 So it wasn't just his nepotistic appointment. He also then became a symbol symbol of the kind of self-dealing that a lot of public 183 00:21:58,030 --> 00:22:04,110 figures under Ben Ali engaged in profiting from their their public position. 184 00:22:04,110 --> 00:22:09,280 You know, he was the guy who decided that there had to be a hundred thousand of these statues put up around the country. 185 00:22:09,280 --> 00:22:16,990 And at the same time, he was the guy whose company then received the contract to produce one hundred thousand statue. 186 00:22:16,990 --> 00:22:23,560 The other interpretation that the people have is is which, you know, these are not mutually exclusive. 187 00:22:23,560 --> 00:22:34,750 They can they can be true. At the same time is that the people was a symbol of the propaganda machine of the regime and and and therefore, I guess, 188 00:22:34,750 --> 00:22:39,970 an attempt to to bamboozle people basically into thinking that, you know, 189 00:22:39,970 --> 00:22:45,430 because the country is progressive on environment, you know, nothing else is wrong. 190 00:22:45,430 --> 00:22:55,970 We're, you know, we should ignore what's happening in the other realms of civil and political rights. 191 00:22:55,970 --> 00:23:02,790 Now. One other comment about Libya. 192 00:23:02,790 --> 00:23:06,620 There were a lot of there's a lot of the impeachment paraphernalia, as I mentioned. 193 00:23:06,620 --> 00:23:13,770 So these are some these are some items that I photographed in the personal archives of Bill Hamza, 194 00:23:13,770 --> 00:23:20,850 who is the who's the caricaturist who was hired to originally draw and create the Libya figure. 195 00:23:20,850 --> 00:23:28,800 So you can see, for instance, the deep was central to the World Environment Day in 1994. 196 00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:38,880 He was printed on in the top right there. That's a brown paper bag for groceries or recyclable grocery bags in the bottom right. 197 00:23:38,880 --> 00:23:48,930 A sticker encouraging people to sort their waste sort today and you'll find tomorrow. 198 00:23:48,930 --> 00:23:56,250 So sort of your waste today for the protection of tomorrow. He was then featured on a stamp, et cetera, et cetera. 199 00:23:56,250 --> 00:24:03,390 And eventually there was the there was the idea that there would be a proliferation of these mascots. 200 00:24:03,390 --> 00:24:10,320 So in addition to there being a mascot for the environment, that would be one for water, the sun and so forth. 201 00:24:10,320 --> 00:24:15,570 So on the left, these are the initial sketches made by the artists of those different mascots. 202 00:24:15,570 --> 00:24:16,440 And then on the right, 203 00:24:16,440 --> 00:24:27,210 this was his the way he imagined to float that would be used in it in a parade for the environmental protection parade of some kind. 204 00:24:27,210 --> 00:24:30,850 And in these television adverts, 205 00:24:30,850 --> 00:24:42,030 the figure of the beep is a kind of is a kind of ambiguous one in the sense that he's he's a fairly disciplinarian kind of figure. 206 00:24:42,030 --> 00:24:48,870 So one, for instance, one nineteen ninety six Ministry of Environment publication described him as simultaneously 207 00:24:48,870 --> 00:24:54,720 an image of a sincere friend and a rigorous guide for children and the public. 208 00:24:54,720 --> 00:25:01,980 So in the television ads, for instance, he he lashes out at people who litter by zapping them with lightning bolts. 209 00:25:01,980 --> 00:25:10,410 He causes a pile of rubbish that people have left on the beach to to to be piled on top of them, so they're buried in their waste. 210 00:25:10,410 --> 00:25:19,980 So he is someone who who is who is feared and was designed to in that way. 211 00:25:19,980 --> 00:25:32,330 Now let me say a word about the Beeb after the revolution in 2012, on the 13th of March, to be precise, 212 00:25:32,330 --> 00:25:39,210 the Minister of Environment at the time announced that the government would no longer be using the people as a mascot, 213 00:25:39,210 --> 00:25:47,520 stating that this blue clad Fenech was too closely linked to the to the old regime. 214 00:25:47,520 --> 00:26:00,180 And so this association negative association between the Beeb and and and the authoritarian character that I've 215 00:26:00,180 --> 00:26:06,930 been describing of the previous regime was acknowledged publicly and led to the abandonment of the figure. 216 00:26:06,930 --> 00:26:12,060 And you can still find people's reactions online to this on Twitter. 217 00:26:12,060 --> 00:26:19,900 And they range from some people saying free at last from this torture master would and rest in peace. 218 00:26:19,900 --> 00:26:25,470 The beep someone wrote Rest in peace would be loved aiming at your arse with my slingshot when I was a 219 00:26:25,470 --> 00:26:33,060 teenager to things like the Beeb is now a collector's item that's going to be worth a fortune on eBay. 220 00:26:33,060 --> 00:26:37,770 Or when I was a child, I didn't throw wrappers on the ground because I was afraid of the Beeb. 221 00:26:37,770 --> 00:26:49,380 Rest in peace and in it. In an interesting turn of events just this week, actually the the new Minister of the Environment. 222 00:26:49,380 --> 00:26:56,280 And if you've been following Tunisian politics over the summer, there's there's been a lot going on. 223 00:26:56,280 --> 00:27:01,500 The new Minister of Environment just this week announced that that they would be 224 00:27:01,500 --> 00:27:09,600 resurrecting Libya and that there would be a new a new campaign based around him. 225 00:27:09,600 --> 00:27:15,150 But they're going to be organising a national competition, inviting children to do drawings and produce stories. 226 00:27:15,150 --> 00:27:26,460 So I don't know whether in what form [INAUDIBLE] be reborn, whether [INAUDIBLE] be recognisably the same or altered, but we'll have to see. 227 00:27:26,460 --> 00:27:31,110 So gosh, I've already been speaking 25 minutes with the goal of ending in 25 to 30. 228 00:27:31,110 --> 00:27:40,230 So I guess the argument that I'm trying to make here is that this political instrumentalized issue of the environment and its uses of propaganda, 229 00:27:40,230 --> 00:27:48,540 as well as the way in which it became a symbol of nepotistic corruption as well as self-dealing. 230 00:27:48,540 --> 00:27:59,200 It has a significant impact or afterlife in contemporary Tunisia and in particular in the ways in which. 231 00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:08,800 Environment can be used as a or not as as a political category of action, 232 00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:14,890 so that that is not is the end of what I described as being the the first part of my paper. 233 00:28:14,890 --> 00:28:18,580 So in the interest of leaving time for questions, 234 00:28:18,580 --> 00:28:27,860 perhaps I if I could just take about five minutes to kind of conclude haphazardly on the second part. 235 00:28:27,860 --> 00:28:32,080 But this I'll just be sort of throwing things at the screen here and we'll see what sticks. 236 00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:37,750 And if some of it appeals to you, we can perhaps return to it in question. 237 00:28:37,750 --> 00:28:47,470 So basically, what this history has has led me to to ask, I guess this is a question about. 238 00:28:47,470 --> 00:28:51,620 So I guess this a question about what is content and what is context. 239 00:28:51,620 --> 00:28:58,630 So in a way, this political history of the beep and the and the boulevards of the environment is context for 240 00:28:58,630 --> 00:29:04,420 understanding how the environment is understood and can and cannot be used today in Tunisia. 241 00:29:04,420 --> 00:29:19,960 But at the same time, this history, I guess, is nested within a context of sort of cultural and linguistic meanings that are associated with the word. 242 00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:29,500 And the category. And so what I've been trying to do through some other fieldwork, which is consists, for instance, 243 00:29:29,500 --> 00:29:40,270 of looking at how NGOs and civil society organisations pitch environmental projects to donors, but also the signage that I mentioned earlier. 244 00:29:40,270 --> 00:29:47,200 Some some efforts at understanding the naming and evolution of the environmental institutions, 245 00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:52,030 including the ministry in Tunisia and then also in Ffion, 246 00:29:52,030 --> 00:30:02,650 the ways in which environment in particular we sort of erupt into the political sphere recently is to try to understand what it is, 247 00:30:02,650 --> 00:30:07,780 what it is people may mean by this term. That's a little bit unfamiliar to me. 248 00:30:07,780 --> 00:30:12,550 And I guess the argument, as I put it in the in the abstract, 249 00:30:12,550 --> 00:30:22,270 is is essentially that the term is, I think, dominated by a kind of proximity individuality. 250 00:30:22,270 --> 00:30:27,520 So to put that in very simple and concrete terms, when you say to people, 251 00:30:27,520 --> 00:30:37,630 what's the what is the environment consist of what threatens the environment, you really often turn up wastes as as a response. 252 00:30:37,630 --> 00:30:41,380 And I guess on one level, there's nothing surprising about that. 253 00:30:41,380 --> 00:30:47,320 But the point I'm trying to make is that it really eclipses a lot of other and 254 00:30:47,320 --> 00:30:51,700 in particular more large scale conceptions of what the environment would be. 255 00:30:51,700 --> 00:31:00,880 So the climate, planetary scale issues, even water, for that matter, 256 00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:14,190 tend to be neglected in favour of much more proximate and and visual environmental threats. 257 00:31:14,190 --> 00:31:20,640 So I'll just give you two little pieces of evidence about that and then ended there. 258 00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:25,200 One of them, I don't know if I can really even call this evidence, but I find it interesting. 259 00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:33,540 I always thought that the Arabic term for environment was that was sort of what I was brought up on when I was in Egypt. 260 00:31:33,540 --> 00:31:39,600 And when I got here, I found out that in the signage and even in some of the institutional names, 261 00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:43,200 you have this word and mohit, which I thought meant the ocean. 262 00:31:43,200 --> 00:31:52,260 So, for instance, the National Agency for Protection of the Environment is said we can Al-Watan nearly Houma and Mahi, 263 00:31:52,260 --> 00:31:55,920 whereas the Ministry of the Environment is visited the VA. 264 00:31:55,920 --> 00:32:03,690 And I've had some interesting conversations with people about this, and generally they just say, you know, they're synonyms. 265 00:32:03,690 --> 00:32:05,640 There's nothing too much to it. 266 00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:14,430 But if you if you dig a little bit and it is is actually, I think, closer to what we would say in English or the environment, 267 00:32:14,430 --> 00:32:19,560 its environment in the sense of what actually immediately surrounds you. 268 00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:29,160 And I think that that way of thinking about the environment is is significant in people's conception of environmental threats in Tunisia. 269 00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:39,930 And then here this is this is where all all ended. This was a opinion survey done by the foundation of the German Green Party. 270 00:32:39,930 --> 00:32:51,330 People in Tunisia. The surveyed about 1000 people, and when they asked people when the question here was when I say environment, 271 00:32:51,330 --> 00:32:56,460 what are the first words that you think of? So these were spontaneous responses. 272 00:32:56,460 --> 00:32:59,640 There was nothing. It was not multiple choice. And you can see that. 273 00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:12,660 Fifty five fifty six percent of people said waste, dirtiness, cleanliness and only six percent of people said pollution. 274 00:33:12,660 --> 00:33:19,680 You can see the is number four there with with two percent, so he still lives on in people's memory. 275 00:33:19,680 --> 00:33:28,230 Now, when they gave multiple choice, they turned up a slightly different result there. 276 00:33:28,230 --> 00:33:36,780 So these were assisted responses and they were they got about one third of people talking about cleanliness and waste. 277 00:33:36,780 --> 00:33:41,460 And they elicited about one third of responses with respect to water. 278 00:33:41,460 --> 00:33:49,590 So people, people responded differently when they when they were given a list of problems related to the environment. 279 00:33:49,590 --> 00:33:58,620 And we're sort of poked in the direction of of discussing water pollution or other issues. 280 00:33:58,620 --> 00:34:06,060 So that's very, very sort of anecdotal, perhaps or at least sort of what do you call it? 281 00:34:06,060 --> 00:34:11,640 It's sort of more suggestive than than conclusive, 282 00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:16,170 but I think I'll stop there and I look forward to the discussion that we can have 283 00:34:16,170 --> 00:34:21,970 and perhaps going a little bit more in-depth on some of these points of possible. 284 00:34:21,970 --> 00:34:32,080 Thank you, Jamie. Was wonderful. I let me remind all the attendees, if you want to ask questions, there's a Q&A button. 285 00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:40,810 You can write your questions in and if you want to remain anonymous, say so and that I won't say your name when I read out the questions. 286 00:34:40,810 --> 00:34:49,000 We have a question from Matteo Renzi, which is, first of all, thanking you for the excellent talk. 287 00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:59,040 And he's asking Has a connexion ever been explicitly drawn between the environment and personal law or women's rights by the old regime? 288 00:34:59,040 --> 00:35:07,890 And I'm not really sure, um, I'm not really sure what the the answer to that is. 289 00:35:07,890 --> 00:35:16,170 The connexion that I was drawing in the paper was there was an analytic rather than an Purick connexion. 290 00:35:16,170 --> 00:35:27,840 So from my admittedly limited knowledge of, of the, well, Tunisian history in general, 291 00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:35,610 but in particular of the the tools of legitimation of the the Ben Ali regime, 292 00:35:35,610 --> 00:35:45,660 I interpret the environment and personal law and women's rights as having functioned in a similar way. 293 00:35:45,660 --> 00:35:52,590 So, so that's me. Who's drawing the connexion now? 294 00:35:52,590 --> 00:35:58,590 To what extent was that done explicitly and where would we be able to find that? 295 00:35:58,590 --> 00:36:04,740 I can't. I can't entirely answer that. Maybe one small element is that they are not evil. 296 00:36:04,740 --> 00:36:14,460 So I think that the the family law issue and the status of women in particular in the country came earlier than the environment issue. 297 00:36:14,460 --> 00:36:22,480 So I mean, when you think about it in the 1990s, this is relatively late, I guess you could say for I mean, 298 00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:30,210 the Ministry of the Environment was created in Tunisia in 1992, the National Agency for the Protection of the Environment. 299 00:36:30,210 --> 00:36:32,190 I think in 86. 300 00:36:32,190 --> 00:36:43,140 So I mean, just from an institutional history perspective, that's that's relatively relatively later than than than the reform of the the family code, 301 00:36:43,140 --> 00:36:48,270 for instance, and also fairly late, I guess I don't know if this comparison is fair, 302 00:36:48,270 --> 00:36:55,350 but I mean, it's it's later than a lot of European or North American countries, I think, 303 00:36:55,350 --> 00:37:05,160 and many people connect that to the Rio summit in 1992 that that was supposed to have been kind of a don't know watershed moment. 304 00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:12,900 I guess that that was that was said to have been the moment when the when but now the and the people who who were at the summit 305 00:37:12,900 --> 00:37:21,270 realised the significance that this team was going to have going forward and then and then to kind of get on the bandwagon. 306 00:37:21,270 --> 00:37:25,080 OK. Let me ask a question. 307 00:37:25,080 --> 00:37:35,220 I can't help listening to your talk and thinking about the sort of environmental discourse or potentially instrumental ization in Egypt, 308 00:37:35,220 --> 00:37:42,650 as I'm sure you must have since you've done fieldwork there as well. Mean, as far as I know, Egypt doesn't have anything like Libya. 309 00:37:42,650 --> 00:37:44,400 It didn't have a campaign like that. Of course, 310 00:37:44,400 --> 00:37:54,750 the campaign itself seems to be extremely unfortunate because the Ben Ali regime appears to have given environmentalism a bad name in Tunisia. 311 00:37:54,750 --> 00:38:03,510 And I was also dismayed when you were talking about how you know, the post Ben Ali regime, the best they could do is to try to revive Libya, 312 00:38:03,510 --> 00:38:13,130 rather than to come up with an entirely new strategy for, you know, trying to raise environmental awareness in the country. 313 00:38:13,130 --> 00:38:17,670 As far as I know in Egypt, environmental and doesn't have a very high profile, 314 00:38:17,670 --> 00:38:22,770 except in one way which I think does kind of echo what you're talking about, 315 00:38:22,770 --> 00:38:31,290 which is that you have kind of kind of waste and disorder was often used in Egypt as a pretext for 316 00:38:31,290 --> 00:38:39,690 moving people away from areas that the state or private interests wanted to appropriate for their own, 317 00:38:39,690 --> 00:38:48,570 which is something that you've written about as well. And did you find that sort of I mean, it was was it was was environment used in that way? 318 00:38:48,570 --> 00:39:00,560 And in Tunisia, you know, as a as a pretext for the state doing things against people that you know, it otherwise wouldn't have been able to do. 319 00:39:00,560 --> 00:39:08,100 Well, yeah, that's a very good question. I think that this is. 320 00:39:08,100 --> 00:39:20,580 Oh, I mean, this is I mean, that is that is such a striking and repeated narrative in Egypt, 321 00:39:20,580 --> 00:39:31,350 and it's it's much less salient, I think, in in Tunisia by comparison. 322 00:39:31,350 --> 00:39:36,030 One of the things that this isn't really an answer, but maybe I can buy myself some time with this. 323 00:39:36,030 --> 00:39:45,930 I mean, one of the things that you know in Egypt, I learnt was that it can also be a pejorative term, 324 00:39:45,930 --> 00:39:54,810 so people sometimes will will refer to to other people as being nasty to illness. 325 00:39:54,810 --> 00:40:03,720 And I guess the full sentence, I think is is what they're from a low environment. 326 00:40:03,720 --> 00:40:08,550 And I guess the perhaps that's also a reference to environment in the in the social sense. 327 00:40:08,550 --> 00:40:16,980 So, so they've been, you know, kind of debased or whatever by their exposure to to, you know, other low class people and that sort of thing. 328 00:40:16,980 --> 00:40:31,440 And and I've asked many people in Tunisia about that usage or that that sort of range of meanings and it it seems to really not really not exist here. 329 00:40:31,440 --> 00:40:44,160 So I think the the problem with taxation of sort of, you know, of chaos and disorder and kind of the negative environment of, 330 00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:51,900 say, you know, the ESRI yet equivalent here is not something that I've really encountered. 331 00:40:51,900 --> 00:40:57,630 But it is true that that discourse is sometimes deployed. 332 00:40:57,630 --> 00:41:05,700 I mean, you know, for example, the the salt lakes around Tunis, they tend to, you know, 333 00:41:05,700 --> 00:41:11,190 they're foreground and, you know, they're sort of half in the water and so on. 334 00:41:11,190 --> 00:41:16,830 And there's, you know, a lot of the unplanned building takes place there. 335 00:41:16,830 --> 00:41:27,300 And so, you know, one of the arguments that is used to explain why these are problematic is that they're they're damaging the the ecosystem there, 336 00:41:27,300 --> 00:41:33,420 but it doesn't take on the same sort of inflexion. I think I need to think more about them. 337 00:41:33,420 --> 00:41:38,080 But that's that's my best crack at it for now. Yeah. OK. 338 00:41:38,080 --> 00:41:45,190 Here's another question, and this is I'm going to kind of adapt a question that we've got from Frank Timoney, 339 00:41:45,190 --> 00:41:51,310 who's asking about, again, the stuff that you don't really want to focus on very much on your project, 340 00:41:51,310 --> 00:42:02,080 which is, you know, actual environmental issues such as the state of aquifers or plans for renewable energy and then air quality and so forth. 341 00:42:02,080 --> 00:42:15,600 But you are focussing on, you know, sort of activity by NGOs, and they must have I mean, they must have some. 342 00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:17,220 Problems with I mean, I mean, 343 00:42:17,220 --> 00:42:27,810 you're essentially kind of subjecting environment to standards of cultural relativism and trying to understand what people mean by environment. 344 00:42:27,810 --> 00:42:35,220 But the NGOs presumably are trying to talk about, you know, what they perceive as facts and sort of real environmental issues. 345 00:42:35,220 --> 00:42:40,350 So what are they talking about and how did I mean to to the extent that you're following what I mean, 346 00:42:40,350 --> 00:42:46,650 what sort of environmental issues does Tunisia face? Yeah, thanks. 347 00:42:46,650 --> 00:42:50,940 Thanks, Walter and Frank. 348 00:42:50,940 --> 00:42:59,130 I think, yeah, so I guess I can sense in questions in that perhaps this is true for some of the other people who are here today that, 349 00:42:59,130 --> 00:43:04,800 you know, they want to know about the actual environmental issues in a positive sense. 350 00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:16,200 Whereas I'm trying to come at this on a kind of second order level of abstraction where what I'm interested in I would. 351 00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:21,070 I mean, I struggle with this because I, of course, have an opinion about what is and is not part of the environment. 352 00:43:21,070 --> 00:43:24,510 And I also care deeply about the protection of the environment. 353 00:43:24,510 --> 00:43:29,620 I mean, it's not a coincidence that I've been working on these topics for for 15 years. 354 00:43:29,620 --> 00:43:39,600 But but what I'm trying to do here is to treat the environment as a category that others 355 00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:50,670 used in their discourse at a particular place and moment in time without putting into it. 356 00:43:50,670 --> 00:44:00,420 Any positive is the content of my own to the extent that that I can do that now. 357 00:44:00,420 --> 00:44:07,440 So, so much for my approach now about about this sort of international donors. 358 00:44:07,440 --> 00:44:09,720 I mean, that's a critical angle here. 359 00:44:09,720 --> 00:44:17,130 Obviously, as I mentioned, even going back to the 1990s, there's huge interest on the part of the international community and therefore, 360 00:44:17,130 --> 00:44:22,770 you know, money flow pertaining to the environment, and that continues to be true today. 361 00:44:22,770 --> 00:44:31,390 And I guess I mean, that is contributing to a shift in the way in which people conceive of the environment. 362 00:44:31,390 --> 00:44:41,460 So there's like an iterative process through which ideas as they flow from the German Development Corporation or, you know, whatever USAID. 363 00:44:41,460 --> 00:44:49,350 I mean, one of the huge USAID projects here is on demolition waste, for instance. 364 00:44:49,350 --> 00:44:58,260 The ideas are moving at the same time as as money flows and one illustration I could give of sort of the misunderstanding. 365 00:44:58,260 --> 00:45:03,330 It's not. It's not entirely a misunderstanding, but I found it interesting. 366 00:45:03,330 --> 00:45:11,290 I worked on it. I worked for the French Research Centre here, and so they invited me to be part of the what they call the jury. 367 00:45:11,290 --> 00:45:20,820 So the committee that was evaluating projects to receive funding from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Environmental Projects. 368 00:45:20,820 --> 00:45:30,600 And they gave 24 grants of about 15000 euros each to civil society organisations in all the governorates of the country. 369 00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:36,210 And one of the things that was that drove people crazy in this committee was that like two 370 00:45:36,210 --> 00:45:46,110 thirds or more of the proposals were to do garbage pickup and to plant trees or tent gardens. 371 00:45:46,110 --> 00:45:52,800 And everyone kept saying, Oh God, like can't can't come up with something more original, can't they? 372 00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:57,720 Can't they get a more expansive notion of the environment, basically? 373 00:45:57,720 --> 00:46:01,200 Now, I mean, part of that is just that these are small NGOs, so, you know, 374 00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:05,250 they don't necessarily have the means to be able to tackle climate change in in a 375 00:46:05,250 --> 00:46:10,230 meaningful way or the imagination to come up with an idea for how they could do that. 376 00:46:10,230 --> 00:46:17,310 But I think part of it is is also what I was talking about in this kind of part of this heritage of of of. 377 00:46:17,310 --> 00:46:22,080 So I think this is an illustration, I guess, of what I was, what I was trying to do. 378 00:46:22,080 --> 00:46:32,130 And so there is there's a process there where certain projects get funded and others don't, and that can lead to a shift in the in the, 379 00:46:32,130 --> 00:46:38,720 I guess, the landscape with respect to what's being done on the topic of environment in the country. 380 00:46:38,720 --> 00:46:45,260 OK, we have a couple more questions that come in. One from Manuel Shehab, who also thank you for the excellent talk. 381 00:46:45,260 --> 00:46:49,220 And her question is that I'll read it verbatim. 382 00:46:49,220 --> 00:46:56,570 I find the naming of the different characters in the caricature interesting the sun and water, etc. all had female names, 383 00:46:56,570 --> 00:47:03,650 except for Libby, who was also depicted as this authoritarian figure who scares people so they won't litter. 384 00:47:03,650 --> 00:47:08,600 This could be a coincidence, but feels like Libby was actually created to represent the state, 385 00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:13,670 the regulator and the imagination of the and authoritarian male. 386 00:47:13,670 --> 00:47:22,870 You said you don't know how to be will be resurrected, but could we see a libérer? 387 00:47:22,870 --> 00:47:38,300 That's such a wonderful comment question that I think I think I will I will borrow from you now in trying to to improve and continue working on this. 388 00:47:38,300 --> 00:47:46,930 I I have to confess that I didn't actually cotton on to that myself until you pointed it out. 389 00:47:46,930 --> 00:47:50,380 But it's it's it's very true what you point out. 390 00:47:50,380 --> 00:47:57,510 And I guess I guess maybe following on from that, one of my questions would be, you know, is there is there anything? 391 00:47:57,510 --> 00:48:03,750 Is there, as I mentioned, none of those other mascots really got much traction now. 392 00:48:03,750 --> 00:48:11,100 Is that somehow related to to what you're pointing out or is it simply that they were invented kind of late in the game? 393 00:48:11,100 --> 00:48:16,500 And, you know, there's only so many, you know, so many of these things that you can put up, you know? 394 00:48:16,500 --> 00:48:24,930 So is it more of a practical sort of constraint, but we'll be very curious to see. 395 00:48:24,930 --> 00:48:30,930 I mean, the gendering of nature and the environment is a fascinating question. 396 00:48:30,930 --> 00:48:38,040 People tend often to gender nature and the environment in the feminine. 397 00:48:38,040 --> 00:48:44,520 I mean, I'm speaking more broadly here than in just Tunisia, but I think that's also true in Tunisia. 398 00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:49,290 Just last week, I was at a conference about environmental law. 399 00:48:49,290 --> 00:48:55,380 And so these were all jurists. But they tend to give sort of a sort of an introduction or conclusion. 400 00:48:55,380 --> 00:49:00,270 There's a moment where there's a kind of rhetorical flourish on their part about, you know, 401 00:49:00,270 --> 00:49:09,300 why it's important to protect the environment and how you know, Tunisia is, you know, marginalised and and and so on. 402 00:49:09,300 --> 00:49:19,470 And they tend to to invoke female metaphors in trying to describe the environment and and 403 00:49:19,470 --> 00:49:24,390 the relationship that we have to the environment and why it's important to protect it. 404 00:49:24,390 --> 00:49:27,990 So it is funny that the mascot would be male in a way. 405 00:49:27,990 --> 00:49:33,330 I guess he doesn't represent the environment, perhaps himself, but rather the protector. 406 00:49:33,330 --> 00:49:38,180 Perhaps, as you say, the state even. Yeah. 407 00:49:38,180 --> 00:49:46,190 And we have a question from Virginia McFadden, which again starts with an immature empirical question, 408 00:49:46,190 --> 00:49:54,350 which you probably want to engage with or but you could try. She's asking and picking up from a few of the comments in the chat box. 409 00:49:54,350 --> 00:49:58,370 Have there been unusually high temperatures in Tunisia this past summer, 410 00:49:58,370 --> 00:50:03,230 as there have elsewhere, but perhaps more in line with what you're doing in this project? 411 00:50:03,230 --> 00:50:09,110 What are Tunisian views or political views, perhaps on environmental failings elsewhere in the world? 412 00:50:09,110 --> 00:50:13,490 And this, I think, probably would be a kind of issue for public discourse, 413 00:50:13,490 --> 00:50:21,360 which might well articulate with the kinds of things that you're looking at. 414 00:50:21,360 --> 00:50:31,440 Yeah, I mean, I guess I guess I have to acknowledge like as as as Frank and in Virginia and others have been have been pointing out, 415 00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:42,330 I mean, there were particularly high temperatures in Tunisia this summer and it was a source of public discussion and concern. 416 00:50:42,330 --> 00:50:47,310 And I think it I mean, it took a fairly predictable form, I guess. 417 00:50:47,310 --> 00:50:52,110 I mean, it's it's being interpreted and discussed, I guess, in much the same way. 418 00:50:52,110 --> 00:50:54,930 Extreme weather events are all around the world. 419 00:50:54,930 --> 00:51:08,800 I mean, it's a kind of yeah, it's just sort of an experiential confirmation of the reality of climate change for people. 420 00:51:08,800 --> 00:51:09,750 And yeah, I mean, 421 00:51:09,750 --> 00:51:17,220 I don't want to give the impression that like these issues are not mobilising people or that or that they're not concerned about them. 422 00:51:17,220 --> 00:51:27,660 I mean, there's there's tons of mobilisations around, you know, pollution from the large factories and industrial sites, especially in the south. 423 00:51:27,660 --> 00:51:32,140 And get this and in deficit around water. 424 00:51:32,140 --> 00:51:36,780 I mean, the water issue is is multiple, multifaceted. 425 00:51:36,780 --> 00:51:40,960 Many people don't have access to the grid, so it's about public service, 426 00:51:40,960 --> 00:51:50,340 but there's also people who do but whose water is polluted or about people who used to have wells that would supply water that no longer do. 427 00:51:50,340 --> 00:51:54,990 And you know, there's a conflict there, for instance, with agriculture. 428 00:51:54,990 --> 00:52:01,920 I mean, bearing in mind that much like Egypt, actually, you know, Tunisia's agriculture is export oriented. 429 00:52:01,920 --> 00:52:09,120 So it's a it's a cash crop oriented agricultural system that exports to Europe. 430 00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:14,520 So, you know, people make the argument that that's a form of water exportation, basically where, you know, 431 00:52:14,520 --> 00:52:24,570 by sending melons and oranges and so on to Europe, we're selling the Tunisian water to Europe at a cheap price. 432 00:52:24,570 --> 00:52:29,880 So those those arguments certainly do do exist. 433 00:52:29,880 --> 00:52:35,460 I'll be very curious to talk to people when they get back from the cop conference in Glasgow. 434 00:52:35,460 --> 00:52:42,210 I know someone who's in the Tunisian delegation. Yeah. 435 00:52:42,210 --> 00:52:47,150 Actually, since you since you mentioned political mobilisation. 436 00:52:47,150 --> 00:52:56,900 One other question that occurs to me is is are there groups outside the government that are attempting to use environmental issues, 437 00:52:56,900 --> 00:52:58,850 although perhaps not labelled as such, 438 00:52:58,850 --> 00:53:19,230 but as you say, water air pollution and so forth in places like Gaza to form the basis of of, you know, political opposition against the government. 439 00:53:19,230 --> 00:53:27,570 And if so, I mean, who would be doing this? Yeah, I think that's a that's a very important question. 440 00:53:27,570 --> 00:53:34,380 And it's it's an area that's sort of where the ground is shifting fairly quickly. 441 00:53:34,380 --> 00:53:40,220 So. There are there definitely are. 442 00:53:40,220 --> 00:53:43,790 I mean, one of the example that I'm most familiar with, 443 00:53:43,790 --> 00:53:53,690 because because of my my continued interest in waste would be political movements around the siting of landfills. 444 00:53:53,690 --> 00:53:58,100 And that's a huge issue in Indonesia right now. 445 00:53:58,100 --> 00:54:04,850 In fact, several landfills since 2011 and including very recently, 446 00:54:04,850 --> 00:54:14,090 just in the last few weeks have been closed because of the mobilisation of of the people who live around the site. 447 00:54:14,090 --> 00:54:24,560 And this can create some huge problems because typically the agencies that are responsible for finding the new site, 448 00:54:24,560 --> 00:54:30,470 you know, are unprepared and are not able to locate one for several years or sometimes even at all. 449 00:54:30,470 --> 00:54:33,140 So like on the island of Djerba, for instance, 450 00:54:33,140 --> 00:54:44,350 or close to the city of minus here they're dumps have been closed for almost a decade without there having been a new official site located, 451 00:54:44,350 --> 00:54:50,960 and that leads to some, some terrible consequences. 452 00:54:50,960 --> 00:54:57,860 Now those I mean, those are complex cases because typically the people who are protesting believe that it's 453 00:54:57,860 --> 00:55:02,120 an example of environmental injustice that the site was placed there in the first place. 454 00:55:02,120 --> 00:55:10,160 So they consider themselves to have been, you know, already had to have been marginalised and ignored in the siting process. 455 00:55:10,160 --> 00:55:21,320 And then also often the site has has has overflowed, so it's outlived its useful lifespan and is affecting them with bad smells or, 456 00:55:21,320 --> 00:55:26,930 you know, the liquid that's leaking out or, you know, everything you could imagine. 457 00:55:26,930 --> 00:55:32,790 And then people on the other side react to say, Oh, well, you know, this is just nimbyism, not in my backyard. 458 00:55:32,790 --> 00:55:39,320 You know, the waste has to go somewhere and nobody wants it next to them, you know, but somebody's got to take the hit. 459 00:55:39,320 --> 00:55:45,170 So these people should just, you know, suck it up and stop being so selfish. 460 00:55:45,170 --> 00:55:53,380 OK, OK. We've been going for an hour now, and that's what we aim to do. 461 00:55:53,380 --> 00:56:01,770 I don't have any more questions in the Q&A box. I give I'll give the audience one last chance to ask questions, do they have any? 462 00:56:01,770 --> 00:56:13,440 I'm not seeing any. And so if that's the case, then I'm going to to thank you, Jamie, for a lively and fascinating presentation, 463 00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:19,440 and I look forward to seeing more of the results of your research, and I wish I could come visit you in Tunis. 464 00:56:19,440 --> 00:56:26,670 Maybe I'll try and bring my son here. Yeah, and don't hesitate to get in touch. 465 00:56:26,670 --> 00:56:31,510 And actually the invitation that I would extended to any students in the audience as well. 466 00:56:31,510 --> 00:56:41,700 Tunisia is a lovely place for field work and you know it, it's long been neglected in research that's changing now. 467 00:56:41,700 --> 00:56:46,830 But but there's a lot of there's a lot of unploughed fields here. 468 00:56:46,830 --> 00:56:50,430 Yes, I love to and I spent I spent nine months there staring out. 469 00:56:50,430 --> 00:56:57,750 So yeah, it's a great place and thank you very much for your talk and thank you to all of the audience who attended. 470 00:56:57,750 --> 00:57:03,630 And we will see you next week for another episode of our Friday seminar. 471 00:57:03,630 --> 00:57:15,019 Goodbye to All.