1 00:00:06,020 --> 00:00:10,670 Good evening, welcome to tonight's Middle East Centre Friday seminar. 2 00:00:10,670 --> 00:00:16,910 My name is Walter Armbrister, I'm one of the fellows of the Middle East Centre and I'm chairing Tonight Session hosting our speaker. 3 00:00:16,910 --> 00:00:21,740 The theme for this series of lectures is environment in the Middle East, 4 00:00:21,740 --> 00:00:27,110 and I should say at the beginning that we will be taking questions through the Q&A feature. 5 00:00:27,110 --> 00:00:33,200 If you don't want your name to be identified when you ask a question, let me know that you want to be anonymous. 6 00:00:33,200 --> 00:00:41,090 So tonight's speaker is Jamie Prenez, who is currently a researcher at the Institute for Research on contemporary Margaret Tunis. 7 00:00:41,090 --> 00:00:48,500 But he's on leave from his position as a lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh based DPhil from Oxford, 8 00:00:48,500 --> 00:00:55,040 where I knew him well years ago when he was a student in the Department of International Development. 9 00:00:55,040 --> 00:01:01,130 He conducted fieldwork in Egypt and was there when I was there as well, so we know each other quite well. 10 00:01:01,130 --> 00:01:10,160 He researches primarily on topics pertaining to environment, waste and urban development is dissertation was titled Metaphors of Waste, 11 00:01:10,160 --> 00:01:15,720 Several Ways of Seeing Development and Cairo's Garbage Collectors. 12 00:01:15,720 --> 00:01:23,370 And he's spun off quite a few articles from his dissertation, including one titled post-Revolutionary Land Encroachments in Cairo, 13 00:01:23,370 --> 00:01:30,720 Rhizome Attic, Urban Space Making and The Lion of Flight from illegality in the journal Tropical Geography, 14 00:01:30,720 --> 00:01:42,390 Alternative Framings of transnational waste flows, reflections based on the Egypt China petty, which means polyethylene terephthalate plastic trade. 15 00:01:42,390 --> 00:01:50,160 That's an area the Journal of the Royal Geographic Society. He has a couple of entries in the Sage Encyclopaedia of Consumption of Waste, 16 00:01:50,160 --> 00:01:55,920 and he's curated a giant museum exhibition at the Museum of European and Mediterranean 17 00:01:55,920 --> 00:02:01,560 Civilisations in Marseilles titled Lives of Garbage The Economy of Waste, 18 00:02:01,560 --> 00:02:05,280 which resulted in the sale of one hundred and twenty nine thousand tickets. 19 00:02:05,280 --> 00:02:15,200 The title of his lecture tonight is the blue clad Fennec authoritarian environmentalism in Tunisia and its afterlives. 20 00:02:15,200 --> 00:02:18,830 You have the abstract already on our website, so you've already read that. 21 00:02:18,830 --> 00:02:24,650 I can confess that environmentalism isn't something I normally associate with authoritarianism, 22 00:02:24,650 --> 00:02:31,550 but it seems it was nonetheless a tool in the governmental repertoire of the now deposed Ben Ali regime in Tunisia. 23 00:02:31,550 --> 00:02:40,420 I look forward to hearing the details, and so with no further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Jeremy for this. 24 00:02:40,420 --> 00:02:47,620 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 00:02:47,620 --> 00:02:52,300 as well as the first to Michael Willis in absentia for having reached out to me, 26 00:02:52,300 --> 00:03:00,520 it's a pleasure to be able to join you and to be back, if only virtually amongst the Middle East studies crowd in Oxford. 27 00:03:00,520 --> 00:03:06,040 So I wanted to start with just a brief word on my transition from from Egypt to 28 00:03:06,040 --> 00:03:11,770 Tunisia because I guess it's with the work that I did on waste collectors in Egypt. 29 00:03:11,770 --> 00:03:15,520 Was that what you had in mind when you invited me? 30 00:03:15,520 --> 00:03:19,780 And when I started doing research in Tunisia a couple of years ago, 31 00:03:19,780 --> 00:03:25,660 I basically thought initially that I would transplant the work that I had done from from Egypt here. 32 00:03:25,660 --> 00:03:29,800 So I started taking an interest in what they called the big picture here, 33 00:03:29,800 --> 00:03:36,520 which are sort of a rough equivalent to the zabaleen in Cairo, although in fact they're really quite different. 34 00:03:36,520 --> 00:03:48,010 But these would be itinerant collectors of recyclable materials and then also the the fire or the gear or scrap metal collectors. 35 00:03:48,010 --> 00:03:55,060 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, 36 00:03:55,060 --> 00:04:00,460 was the omnipresence of the boulevards of the environment in Tunisia. 37 00:04:00,460 --> 00:04:04,630 And at some point I thought, Gosh, I mean, if I'm if I'm someone who's working in the environment, 38 00:04:04,630 --> 00:04:10,390 I have to find out at least a little bit about what the story of these these boulevards is. 39 00:04:10,390 --> 00:04:15,400 And the other thing that was really striking to me was the amount of signage in public space. 40 00:04:15,400 --> 00:04:25,210 Asking people not to litter so anti littering campaigns organised by NGOs by a lot of them are just spontaneous writings on walls. 41 00:04:25,210 --> 00:04:32,380 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. 42 00:04:32,380 --> 00:04:36,130 But you also find them like in public transit, pretty much everywhere you go. 43 00:04:36,130 --> 00:04:42,370 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. 44 00:04:42,370 --> 00:04:47,770 It's really extraordinary. And so I started kind of following these two avenues, 45 00:04:47,770 --> 00:04:56,440 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. 46 00:04:56,440 --> 00:05:03,160 And so tonight's papers sort of starts with the other of these two observations the boulevards of the environment, 47 00:05:03,160 --> 00:05:09,550 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 48 00:05:09,550 --> 00:05:19,240 environment was used as a device for propaganda and as a political device in the 1990s and 2000s prior to 2011. 49 00:05:19,240 --> 00:05:25,330 So during the Ben Ali regime, and that's hopefully going to be kind of the first part of the paper. 50 00:05:25,330 --> 00:05:30,370 And then hopefully the second part, the second part is going to be a little bit more messy. 51 00:05:30,370 --> 00:05:35,830 I'm going to try to sort of throw out through a series of examples an argument 52 00:05:35,830 --> 00:05:41,180 about what I think people are talking about when they talk about the environment. 53 00:05:41,180 --> 00:05:46,810 So the idea, I guess here is that the contours of the term environment, 54 00:05:46,810 --> 00:05:55,900 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. 55 00:05:55,900 --> 00:06:05,620 And of course, they're constantly shifting over time around the world is as the term is consolidated and rises in political and everyday importance. 56 00:06:05,620 --> 00:06:10,690 But again, this is sort of it sort of echoes back to to my experience in Egypt and in particular, 57 00:06:10,690 --> 00:06:15,070 we were talking before starting in the summer about Nicolas Hopkins', a lawyer. 58 00:06:15,070 --> 00:06:23,710 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 00:06:23,710 --> 00:06:31,030 which was a survey based study of people's attitudes towards the environment and pollution in Egypt. 60 00:06:31,030 --> 00:06:35,800 And one of the things that I'll never forget from that book was that when they surveyed people in Cairo 61 00:06:35,800 --> 00:06:41,350 about and I believe in some other cities in Egypt about what it was that threatened the environment, 62 00:06:41,350 --> 00:06:46,660 you got the series of usual answers like air pollution, waste and so forth. 63 00:06:46,660 --> 00:06:53,170 And then there were a whole series of answers that people gave, which related to religio moral purity. 64 00:06:53,170 --> 00:06:58,000 So they said things like, for instance, boys and girls who were unmarried, 65 00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:07,510 holding hands and going out in public people drinking alcohol, foul language, bad behaviour are threats to the environment. 66 00:07:07,510 --> 00:07:15,020 And I said, isn't that curious? And what then do people have in mind when they're thinking about the environment? 67 00:07:15,020 --> 00:07:21,290 So I guess the questions that I'm trying to ask in this research are what do people mean when they talk about the 68 00:07:21,290 --> 00:07:30,230 environment and then how is action in the field of environment constrained or oriented by these historical political uses, 69 00:07:30,230 --> 00:07:34,930 as well as sort of the general context for understanding the term? 70 00:07:34,930 --> 00:07:37,330 And so I guess the interest, I mean, 71 00:07:37,330 --> 00:07:46,180 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 00:07:46,180 --> 00:07:54,280 but also a sort of practical pitch for this is that in the kind of contemporary context where everyone is trying 73 00:07:54,280 --> 00:08:02,440 to federate political forces around the environment in order to save the planet and the future of our species, 74 00:08:02,440 --> 00:08:05,890 it's interesting to know to what extent you know, 75 00:08:05,890 --> 00:08:10,120 the people who who are having these discussions may have differing notions 76 00:08:10,120 --> 00:08:14,380 of what it is that we're trying to save or what the environment consists of. 77 00:08:14,380 --> 00:08:18,490 And of course, that policy can be productive as well, 78 00:08:18,490 --> 00:08:24,160 because sometimes easier to get people to agree, they think they're agreeing to different things. 79 00:08:24,160 --> 00:08:31,390 So let me talk a little bit about the people who see the blue clad finish that you see there and the boulevards of the environment. 80 00:08:31,390 --> 00:08:37,570 And I'll start with the boulevards of the environment, which are really omnipresent in the country. 81 00:08:37,570 --> 00:08:47,740 Every one of the larger cities. Well, I would say virtually every city in the country has one of these boulevards shut in would rather not democracy. 82 00:08:47,740 --> 00:08:52,840 Write it In French and in large cities, there'll be several poorer districts in Tunis, for instance. 83 00:08:52,840 --> 00:09:01,720 There'd be five or six of these things. And they tend to be sort of the pre-eminent avenue or boulevards of the neighbourhood or of the city. 84 00:09:01,720 --> 00:09:10,890 They often have a divider in the middle with some plants. So these are some examples from my travels around the country that I've I've photographed. 85 00:09:10,890 --> 00:09:14,880 These are some examples from Tunis or the one on the left, for instance, 86 00:09:14,880 --> 00:09:21,200 is in that Goulet famous locale for a film on which you've written an article. 87 00:09:21,200 --> 00:09:29,370 And it's like the one on the right is that seated beside a kind of a touristic village in the capital? 88 00:09:29,370 --> 00:09:33,360 And as you can see, it's things tend to be quite rundown. 89 00:09:33,360 --> 00:09:40,590 This one here, which was used on the poster for the talk, was taken in Algiers, which is in the northwest of the country, 90 00:09:40,590 --> 00:09:44,850 and you can see how it's got a bit of a tag on it and the rains has fallen from. 91 00:09:44,850 --> 00:09:49,480 It's fascinating. And no one has come around to repair it. 92 00:09:49,480 --> 00:09:57,280 So what this tells you, the fact that they're sort of left to ruin or in some cases even vandalised at a minimum, 93 00:09:57,280 --> 00:10:01,520 is that none of them has been created in sort of the last 10 to 15 years. 94 00:10:01,520 --> 00:10:08,440 So all of these from prior to 2011 and some of them go back to the early 1990s. 95 00:10:08,440 --> 00:10:14,050 So the new streets or large boulevards that are that are named more recently tend to be named, 96 00:10:14,050 --> 00:10:20,620 for instance, for the the past President Beji Caid Essebsi and above all, for Martyrs of the Revolution. 97 00:10:20,620 --> 00:10:29,470 So it's very common to to name roundabouts and streets or even rename them, in many cases for martyrs of the revolution. 98 00:10:29,470 --> 00:10:35,380 So I want to I want to talk just a little bit about the background of these many of the streets that 99 00:10:35,380 --> 00:10:41,170 were that are currently named boulevard of the environment that existed prior under a different name, 100 00:10:41,170 --> 00:10:45,430 and they tended typically to be the Bourguiba avenues. 101 00:10:45,430 --> 00:10:51,340 Bourguiba, of course, was the president of Tunisia from nineteen fifty seven to eighty seven, succeeded by Ben Ali. 102 00:10:51,340 --> 00:11:01,870 And he was the hero of decolonisation. So when Benali came to power with his sort of aspirations to to replace Bourguiba, 103 00:11:01,870 --> 00:11:08,860 one of his political projects was to deal with a bias if I can invent that word, public space. 104 00:11:08,860 --> 00:11:18,070 But at the same time, 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 105 00:11:18,070 --> 00:11:28,240 of himself would have been too crass and really kind of unthinkable because of the status of Uber in the country's history. 106 00:11:28,240 --> 00:11:34,540 So in this context, something more neutral, such as the environment was a way of erasing or keep it from public space, 107 00:11:34,540 --> 00:11:38,380 while at the same time not sort of scandalising public opinion. 108 00:11:38,380 --> 00:11:47,020 It also served a purpose, and this is my second point of giving the impression that Tunisia valued the environment very highly. 109 00:11:47,020 --> 00:11:56,080 And when you talk, I've done a little bit of kind of oral history, work with people who were in the ministry and had sort of other public roles. 110 00:11:56,080 --> 00:12:03,490 When you talk to them, it's clear that this was a deliberate political strategy of legitimisation in western eyes. 111 00:12:03,490 --> 00:12:11,350 And in that sense, it was comparable to Tunisia's position on family law and in particular, women's rights. 112 00:12:11,350 --> 00:12:16,450 So this was sort of greenwashing or quashing the idea being that they were able to sort of 113 00:12:16,450 --> 00:12:22,360 paper over and cause Western observers to ignore to some extent the violations of civil 114 00:12:22,360 --> 00:12:27,340 and political rights within the country by presenting themselves as progressive on these 115 00:12:27,340 --> 00:12:33,880 sort of hot button or touchstone issues in that kind of hierarchy of Euro American values, 116 00:12:33,880 --> 00:12:41,470 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, 117 00:12:41,470 --> 00:12:49,360 which would flow to environmental projects. So that's sort of my interpretation of the use of these words. 118 00:12:49,360 --> 00:12:53,080 The third thing I might just add here is that here we could borrow, 119 00:12:53,080 --> 00:12:59,620 I guess maybe from James sites would seem like a state that these served as micro environments of apparent order. 120 00:12:59,620 --> 00:13:02,920 So if you remember in that book, he talks a lot about model villages, 121 00:13:02,920 --> 00:13:09,100 demonstration projects, new capitals and so on that are designed to transform society. 122 00:13:09,100 --> 00:13:14,560 And I think it's clear, in fact, that these boulevards had this sort of exemplary role. 123 00:13:14,560 --> 00:13:21,070 So they were they were supposed to be kind of the one space within the city that would be beautiful and clean. 124 00:13:21,070 --> 00:13:26,170 And by demonstrating that, you know, it's possible for at least one space to be clean, 125 00:13:26,170 --> 00:13:32,410 they were supposed to have a beneficial effect on society and the city as a whole. 126 00:13:32,410 --> 00:13:36,760 They were sort of by contagion supposed to influence for the better. 127 00:13:36,760 --> 00:13:45,790 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. 128 00:13:45,790 --> 00:13:51,820 So these were an avenue that, for instance, when you had a foreign dignitary who was visiting or perhaps even just, you know, 129 00:13:51,820 --> 00:14:00,460 a minister in the government that you could sort of whisk them down without embarrassment and give a positive impression of the country. 130 00:14:00,460 --> 00:14:07,810 This is just a photo to tell you that that this idea of these sort of demonstration spaces is one that persists today, 131 00:14:07,810 --> 00:14:16,600 even if the boulevards of the environment are no longer created. This is a photo in downtown Tunis of the House Marseglia, the Marseilles, 132 00:14:16,600 --> 00:14:23,980 which they have baptised in the houses what they call a small street here, Shari'a ZG. 133 00:14:23,980 --> 00:14:28,630 So this is like an ideal idealised kind of space what they call in French. 134 00:14:28,630 --> 00:14:38,680 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. 135 00:14:38,680 --> 00:14:42,880 Now, at the ends of these boulevards, and here we move on to the beach, 136 00:14:42,880 --> 00:14:48,070 the blue clad panic at the ends of these boulevards, typically at a roundabout. 137 00:14:48,070 --> 00:14:53,380 You'll find one of these statues now. This is a desert fox or Fenech. 138 00:14:53,380 --> 00:14:56,710 And he was the mascot of the environment. 139 00:14:56,710 --> 00:15:03,340 So just as I was saying earlier, the boulevards were often renamed some people boulevard to boulevard of the environment. 140 00:15:03,340 --> 00:15:13,210 You would often find this statue today or in particular between 1990 and 2011, at a place where a statue of Bourguiba once stood. 141 00:15:13,210 --> 00:15:15,580 There's different versions of the statue, 142 00:15:15,580 --> 00:15:22,990 like the one on the left here where he's pictured with children and they're dressed kind of like Boy Scouts here on the right, 143 00:15:22,990 --> 00:15:28,770 there's a giant version. I don't know if you can see the waste bin in the lower left of that photo. 144 00:15:28,770 --> 00:15:35,700 Gives you a sense of scale that's probably 25 feet high or something like that, and that's located. 145 00:15:35,700 --> 00:15:43,140 It's the largest one I've been able to find so far. I, of course, photograph these things in my travels as I go around the country. 146 00:15:43,140 --> 00:15:46,950 This is located in inartfully park, where there's a large number of them. 147 00:15:46,950 --> 00:15:52,860 There's about four or five of them in a massive park in Anthony Park is actually a lovely space even to this day. 148 00:15:52,860 --> 00:15:56,550 It's a large park space semi developed. 149 00:15:56,550 --> 00:16:06,360 It's it's semi wild. It's not entirely maintained in the city of Tunis, and it was supposed to be a space of environmental protection, 150 00:16:06,360 --> 00:16:12,630 but also a space where you would take children's groups, for instance, to have an experience in nature. 151 00:16:12,630 --> 00:16:20,380 And therefore it was appropriate for there to be statues of all different sizes of be throughout this park. 152 00:16:20,380 --> 00:16:23,290 But you you also find them at other locations, for instance, 153 00:16:23,290 --> 00:16:29,380 there's a kind of government run Epcot Centre here called Madina the Lume a city because it's like a 154 00:16:29,380 --> 00:16:37,570 planetarium where children's groups go and there is a large and the beep at the entrance to room as well. 155 00:16:37,570 --> 00:16:43,060 Now, as you can see, like the boulevards, these statues are also in disrepair. 156 00:16:43,060 --> 00:16:50,710 And part of that, as I say, is is simply that they're all, you know, 15 to 35 years old at this point. 157 00:16:50,710 --> 00:16:58,510 And as I've come to in a moment, probably never. We're very well-maintained, but since 2012 have explicitly been left to neglect. 158 00:16:58,510 --> 00:17:01,330 But it's not merely that they've fallen apart. 159 00:17:01,330 --> 00:17:12,130 They've actually been, in many cases, intentionally disfigured and damaged, and that occurred in the aftermath of the 2000 11 revolution. 160 00:17:12,130 --> 00:17:20,110 And this photo here I particularly like because of the way it was disfigured in the genitals. 161 00:17:20,110 --> 00:17:26,890 It gives a sense of the the the meaning that people attributed to this figure. 162 00:17:26,890 --> 00:17:30,340 This is more than just teenagers being arseholes. 163 00:17:30,340 --> 00:17:43,660 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. 164 00:17:43,660 --> 00:17:48,460 So everyone that you talked to who was around at the time remembers that these 165 00:17:48,460 --> 00:17:55,490 statues were attacked and the explanation as to why tend to differ a little bit. 166 00:17:55,490 --> 00:18:02,920 So for instance, I was talking to a mayor of a city in the northwest who's been an elected official for more than 20 years. 167 00:18:02,920 --> 00:18:08,710 I showed him this exact photo and I said, What do you think about the defacement of these the beast? 168 00:18:08,710 --> 00:18:13,780 And he said to me, Well, that's because the Beaver was a symbol of corruption. 169 00:18:13,780 --> 00:18:18,940 And so we began talking about this story, which is corroborated by a number of people, 170 00:18:18,940 --> 00:18:26,920 which pertains to the fact that the Minister of Environment, from nineteen ninety two to nineteen ninety nine was Ben Ali's nephew. 171 00:18:26,920 --> 00:18:32,560 So the ministry itself was a symbol of nepotistic appointment. 172 00:18:32,560 --> 00:18:37,960 But also the second dimension of corruption here is that eventually, 173 00:18:37,960 --> 00:18:44,350 when he realised how important this sort of environmental communication and education 174 00:18:44,350 --> 00:18:51,760 was ended up firing the caricaturist who the ministry had hired to create the Beeb. 175 00:18:51,760 --> 00:18:59,350 And he created his own company, which was a public relations company that then obtained all of the contracts for the 176 00:18:59,350 --> 00:19:07,540 production of these statues and the paraphernalia that was used for environmental education. 177 00:19:07,540 --> 00:19:15,430 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 178 00:19:15,430 --> 00:19:21,250 public figures under Ben Ali engaged in profiting from their public position. 179 00:19:21,250 --> 00:19:26,380 You know, he was the guy who decided that there had to be a hundred thousand of these statues put up around the country. 180 00:19:26,380 --> 00:19:33,320 And at the same time, he was the guy whose company then received the contract to produce 100000 statue. 181 00:19:33,320 --> 00:19:39,920 The other interpretation that people have is which, you know, these are not mutually exclusive, they can they can be true. 182 00:19:39,920 --> 00:19:47,060 At the same time is that the Beeb was a symbol of the propaganda machine of the regime and therefore, 183 00:19:47,060 --> 00:19:52,160 I guess an attempt to to bamboozle people basically into thinking that, you know, 184 00:19:52,160 --> 00:19:57,320 because the country is progressive on environment and nothing else is wrong where, you know, 185 00:19:57,320 --> 00:20:03,380 we should ignore what's happening in the other realms of civil and political rights. 186 00:20:03,380 --> 00:20:07,550 Now, one other comment about Libya. 187 00:20:07,550 --> 00:20:15,890 There's a lot of Libyan paraphernalia, as I mentioned, so these are some items that I photographed in the personal archives of Chandimal Hamza, 188 00:20:15,890 --> 00:20:21,560 who's the caricaturist who was hired to originally draw and create the Libyan figure. 189 00:20:21,560 --> 00:20:28,640 So you can see, for instance, the deep was central to the World Environment Day in 1994. 190 00:20:28,640 --> 00:20:37,730 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. 191 00:20:37,730 --> 00:20:46,520 A sticker encouraging people to sort through waste sort today and you'll find tomorrow. 192 00:20:46,520 --> 00:20:53,330 So sort of your waste today for the protection of tomorrow. He was then featured on a stamp, et cetera, et cetera. 193 00:20:53,330 --> 00:20:58,910 And eventually there was the idea that there would be a proliferation of these mascots. 194 00:20:58,910 --> 00:21:05,330 So in addition to there being a mascot for the environment, that would be one for water, the sun and so forth. 195 00:21:05,330 --> 00:21:10,550 So on the left, these are the initial sketches made by the artists of those different mascots. 196 00:21:10,550 --> 00:21:19,720 And then on the right, this was his the way he imagined to float that would be used in a parade, the environmental protection parade of some kind. 197 00:21:19,720 --> 00:21:29,830 And in these television adverts, the figure of the Beeb is a kind of ambiguous one in the sense that he's a fairly disciplinarian kind of figure. 198 00:21:29,830 --> 00:21:35,710 So one, for instance, one nineteen ninety six Ministry of Environment publication described him as simultaneously 199 00:21:35,710 --> 00:21:41,320 an image of a sincere friend and a rigorous guide for children and the public. 200 00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:48,130 So in the television ads, for instance, he he lashes out at people who litter by zapping them with lightning bolts. 201 00:21:48,130 --> 00:21:55,450 He causes a pile of rubbish that people have left on the beach to be piled on top of them, so they're buried in their waste. 202 00:21:55,450 --> 00:22:00,970 So he's someone who is feared and was designed in that way. 203 00:22:00,970 --> 00:22:10,400 Now let me say a word about the Beeb after the revolution. In 2012, on the 13th of March, to be precise, 204 00:22:10,400 --> 00:22:17,020 the Minister of Environment at the time announced that the government would no longer be using the beef as a mascot, 205 00:22:17,020 --> 00:22:23,920 stating that this blue clad Fenech was too closely linked to the to the Syrian regime. 206 00:22:23,920 --> 00:22:32,650 And so this association negative association between the Beeb and the authoritarian character that I've 207 00:22:32,650 --> 00:22:39,400 been describing of the previous regime was acknowledged publicly and led to the abandonment of the figure. 208 00:22:39,400 --> 00:22:44,170 And you can still find people's reactions online to this on Twitter. 209 00:22:44,170 --> 00:22:52,330 And they range from from people saying free at last, from this torture master and rest in peace to the Beeb. 210 00:22:52,330 --> 00:22:59,440 Someone wrote, Rest in peace, live by love, aiming at your arse with my slingshot when I was a teenager to things like the 211 00:22:59,440 --> 00:23:03,430 Beeb is now a collector's item that's going to be worth a fortune on eBay. 212 00:23:03,430 --> 00:23:08,110 Or when I was the child, I didn't throw wrappers on the ground because I was afraid of the Beeb. 213 00:23:08,110 --> 00:23:16,510 Rest in peace. And in an interesting turn of events just this week, actually the the new Minister of the Environment, 214 00:23:16,510 --> 00:23:23,010 and if you've been following Tunisian politics over the summer, there's been a lot going on. 215 00:23:23,010 --> 00:23:26,670 The new minister of Environment just this week announced that they would be 216 00:23:26,670 --> 00:23:33,000 resurrecting the beef and that there would be a new champion based around him, 217 00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:38,550 but they're going to be organising a national competition, inviting children to do drawings and produce stories. 218 00:23:38,550 --> 00:23:48,550 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. 219 00:23:48,550 --> 00:23:56,410 So I guess the argument that I'm trying to make here is that this political instrumental ization of the environment and its uses of propaganda, 220 00:23:56,410 --> 00:24:02,800 as well as the way in which it became a symbol of nepotistic corruption as well as self-dealing, 221 00:24:02,800 --> 00:24:10,450 it has a significant impact or afterlife in contemporary Tunisia and in particular in the 222 00:24:10,450 --> 00:24:19,100 ways in which environment can be used as or not as as a political category of action. 223 00:24:19,100 --> 00:24:24,200 So that is that is the end of what I described as being the the first part of my paper. 224 00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:34,740 So in the interest of leaving time for questions, perhaps if I could just take about five minutes to kind of conclude haphazardly on the second part, 225 00:24:34,740 --> 00:24:38,300 but I'll just be sort of throwing things at the screen here and we'll see what sticks. 226 00:24:38,300 --> 00:24:43,130 And if some of it appeals to you, we can perhaps return to it in questions. 227 00:24:43,130 --> 00:24:51,080 So basically, what this history has has led me to to ask, I guess this is a question about. 228 00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:55,250 So I guess this a question about what is content and what is context. 229 00:24:55,250 --> 00:25:01,550 So in a way, this political history of the Beeb and the Bill of Rights of the Environment is context for 230 00:25:01,550 --> 00:25:07,340 understanding how the environment is understood and can and cannot be used today in Tunisia. 231 00:25:07,340 --> 00:25:19,910 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. 232 00:25:19,910 --> 00:25:26,540 And the category. And so what I've been trying to do through some other field work, which consists, for instance, 233 00:25:26,540 --> 00:25:36,680 of looking at how NGO and civil society organisations pitch environmental projects to donors, but also the signage that I mentioned earlier, 234 00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:44,960 some efforts at understanding the naming and evolution of the environmental institutions, including the ministry in Tunisia, 235 00:25:44,960 --> 00:25:50,840 and then also the ways in which environment in particular we sort of erupt into the 236 00:25:50,840 --> 00:25:57,770 political sphere recently is to try to understand what it is people may mean by this term. 237 00:25:57,770 --> 00:25:59,960 That's a little bit unfamiliar to me. 238 00:25:59,960 --> 00:26:11,390 And I guess the argument, as I put it in the abstract, is essentially that the term is, I think, dominated by a kind of proximity individuality. 239 00:26:11,390 --> 00:26:16,550 So to put that in very simple and concrete terms, when you say to people, 240 00:26:16,550 --> 00:26:25,070 what is the environment consist of what threatens the environment, you really often turn up wastes as a response. 241 00:26:25,070 --> 00:26:28,820 And I guess on one level, there's nothing surprising about that. 242 00:26:28,820 --> 00:26:33,650 But the point I'm trying to make is that it really eclipses a lot of other and 243 00:26:33,650 --> 00:26:37,850 in particular more large scale conceptions of what the environment would be. 244 00:26:37,850 --> 00:26:44,780 So, you know, the climate, planetary scale issues, even water, for that matter, 245 00:26:44,780 --> 00:26:54,480 tend to be neglected in favour of much more proximate and visual environmental threats. 246 00:26:54,480 --> 00:27:00,900 So I'll just give you two little pieces of evidence about that, and then I'll end it there. 247 00:27:00,900 --> 00:27:05,790 One of them, I don't know if I can really even call this evidence, but I find it interesting. 248 00:27:05,790 --> 00:27:12,930 I always thought that the Arabic term for employment was that was sort of what I was brought up on when I was in Egypt. 249 00:27:12,930 --> 00:27:18,600 And when I got here, I found out that in the signage and even in some of the institutional names, 250 00:27:18,600 --> 00:27:22,200 you have this word and mohit, which I thought meant the ocean. 251 00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:30,300 So, for instance, the the National Agency for Protection of the Environment is said we can Al-Watan nearly Houma and Mahi, 252 00:27:30,300 --> 00:27:33,720 whereas the Ministry of the Environment, as was it at the VA. 253 00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:41,100 And I've had some interesting conversations with people about this, and generally they just say, you know, they're synonyms. 254 00:27:41,100 --> 00:27:43,080 There's nothing too much to it. 255 00:27:43,080 --> 00:27:51,060 But if you dig a little bit more, here is is actually, I think, closer to what we would say in English or the environs. 256 00:27:51,060 --> 00:27:55,680 It's environment in the sense of what actually immediately surrounds you. 257 00:27:55,680 --> 00:28:03,720 And I think that that way of thinking about the environment is significant in people's conception of environmental threats in Tunisia. 258 00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:15,390 And then here this is where I've ended. This was a opinion survey done by the foundation of the German Green Party in Tunisia. 259 00:28:15,390 --> 00:28:24,720 The surveyed about 1000 people, and when they asked people when the question here was When I say environment, 260 00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:29,580 what are the first words that you think of? So these were spontaneous responses. 261 00:28:29,580 --> 00:28:32,760 There was nothing. It was not multiple choice. And you can see that. 262 00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:43,740 Fifty five fifty six percent of people said waste, dirtiness, cleanliness and only six percent of people said pollution. 263 00:28:43,740 --> 00:28:50,150 You can see the beep is number four there with with two percent, so he still lives on in people's memory. 264 00:28:50,150 --> 00:28:56,670 Now, when they gave that multiple choice, they turned up a slightly different result there. 265 00:28:56,670 --> 00:29:04,620 So these were assisted responses and they were they got about one third of people talking about cleanliness and waste. 266 00:29:04,620 --> 00:29:09,330 And they elicited about one third of responses with respect to water. 267 00:29:09,330 --> 00:29:16,170 So people responded differently when they were given a list of problems related to the environment. 268 00:29:16,170 --> 00:29:23,190 And we're sort of poked in the direction of of discussing water pollution or other issues. 269 00:29:23,190 --> 00:29:33,930 So that's very sort of anecdotal, perhaps, or at least sort of what do you call it as it's sort of more a suggested and then conclusive. 270 00:29:33,930 --> 00:29:38,400 But I think I'll stop there and I look forward to the discussion that we can have 271 00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:44,200 and perhaps going a little bit more in-depth on some of these points of possible. 272 00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:52,630 Thank you, Jamie. That was wonderful. Let me remind all of the attendees, if you want to ask questions, there's a Q&A button. 273 00:29:52,630 --> 00:30:00,550 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. 274 00:30:00,550 --> 00:30:03,880 We have a question from Matteo Renzi. First of all, 275 00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:08,770 thanking you for the excellent talk and he's asking Has a connexion ever been explicitly 276 00:30:08,770 --> 00:30:16,340 drawn between the environment and personal law or women's rights by the old regime? 277 00:30:16,340 --> 00:30:23,600 And I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure what the the answer to that is. 278 00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:30,920 The connexion that I was drawing in the paper was an analytic rather than an empirical connexion. 279 00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:39,380 So from my admittedly limited knowledge of the, well, Tunisian history in general, 280 00:30:39,380 --> 00:30:45,800 but in particular of the the tools of legitimation of the Ben Ali regime, 281 00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:54,920 I interpret the environment and personal law and women's rights as as having functioned in a similar way. 282 00:30:54,920 --> 00:31:00,170 So, so that's me. Who's drawing the connexion now? 283 00:31:00,170 --> 00:31:05,240 To what extent was that done explicitly and where would you be able to find that? 284 00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:10,400 I can't entirely answer that. Maybe one small element is that they are not evil. 285 00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:19,760 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. 286 00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:27,780 So I mean, when you think about it in the 1990s, this is relatively late, I guess you could say for I mean, 287 00:31:27,780 --> 00:31:35,120 the Ministry of the Environment was created in Tunisia in 1992 to the National Agency for the Protection of the Environment. 288 00:31:35,120 --> 00:31:40,760 I think in 86. So I mean, just from an institutional history perspective, 289 00:31:40,760 --> 00:31:47,960 that's that's relatively later than the reform of the family code, for instance, and also fairly late, I guess. 290 00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:55,040 I don't know if this comparison is fair, but I mean, it's it's later than a lot of European or North American countries, 291 00:31:55,040 --> 00:32:05,270 I think, and many people connect that to the Rio summit in 1992 that that was supposed to have been kind of a watershed moment. 292 00:32:05,270 --> 00:32:10,610 I guess that was said to have been the moment when that when Ben Ali and the people who were at the summit 293 00:32:10,610 --> 00:32:18,560 realised the significance that this team was going to have going forward and then to kind of get on the bandwagon. 294 00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:21,770 OK. Let me ask a question. 295 00:32:21,770 --> 00:32:31,460 I can't help listening to your talk and thinking about the sort of environmental discourse or potentially instrumental ization in Egypt, 296 00:32:31,460 --> 00:32:34,850 as I'm sure you must have since you've done fieldwork there as well. 297 00:32:34,850 --> 00:32:40,260 And as far as I know, Egypt doesn't have anything like Libya, don't have a campaign like that. 298 00:32:40,260 --> 00:32:40,640 And of course, 299 00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:50,330 the campaign itself seems to be extremely unfortunate because the Ben Ali regime appears to have given environmentalism a bad name in Tunisia. 300 00:32:50,330 --> 00:32:58,760 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, 301 00:32:58,760 --> 00:33:07,350 rather than to come up with an entirely new strategy for, you know, trying to raise environmental awareness in the country. 302 00:33:07,350 --> 00:33:11,940 And as far as I know in Egypt, environmental is and doesn't have a very high profile, 303 00:33:11,940 --> 00:33:16,440 except in one way which I think does kind of echo what you're talking about, 304 00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:24,690 which is that you have a kind of waste and disorder is often used in Egypt as a pretext for moving 305 00:33:24,690 --> 00:33:31,330 people away from areas that the state or private interests wanted to appropriate for their own, 306 00:33:31,330 --> 00:33:38,850 which is something you've written about as well. And was environment used in that way and in Tunisia, you know, 307 00:33:38,850 --> 00:33:47,910 as a as a pretext for the state doing things against people that you know otherwise wouldn't have been able to do? 308 00:33:47,910 --> 00:33:59,640 Well, yeah, that's a very good question. I think that this is, I mean, that is that is such a striking and repeated narrative in Egypt, 309 00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:06,130 and it's it's much less salient, I think, in in Tunisia by comparison. 310 00:34:06,130 --> 00:34:11,080 One of the things that this isn't really an answer, but maybe I can buy myself some time with this, I mean, 311 00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:18,310 one of the things that in Egypt I learnt was that it can also be a pejorative term, 312 00:34:18,310 --> 00:34:26,380 so people sometimes will will refer to to other people as being nasty to illness. 313 00:34:26,380 --> 00:34:34,600 And I guess the full sentence, I think is is what they're from a low environment. 314 00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:39,400 And I guess the perhaps that's also a reference to environment in the in the social sense. 315 00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:47,860 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. 316 00:34:47,860 --> 00:35:01,090 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. 317 00:35:01,090 --> 00:35:11,590 So I think the the problem with taxation of chaos and disorder and kind of the negative environment of say, you know, 318 00:35:11,590 --> 00:35:22,300 the ESRI yet equivalent here is not something that I've really encountered, but it is true that that discourse is sometimes deployed. 319 00:35:22,300 --> 00:35:29,080 I mean, you know, for example, the salt lakes around Tunis, they tend to, you know, 320 00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:34,150 they're foreground and, you know, they're sort of half in the water and so on. 321 00:35:34,150 --> 00:35:38,980 And there's, you know, a lot of the land building takes place there. 322 00:35:38,980 --> 00:35:49,450 And so, you know, one of the arguments that is used to explain, you know, why these are problematic is that they're damaging the the ecosystem there. 323 00:35:49,450 --> 00:35:55,270 But it doesn't take on the same sort of inflexion. I think I need to think more about them. 324 00:35:55,270 --> 00:35:59,450 But that's that's my best crack at it for now. Yeah. OK. 325 00:35:59,450 --> 00:36:05,720 Here's another question, and this is I'm going to kind of adapt a question that we've got from Frank Timoney, 326 00:36:05,720 --> 00:36:11,810 who's asking about, again, the stuff that you don't really want to focus on very much on your project, 327 00:36:11,810 --> 00:36:21,020 which is, you know, actual environmental issues such as the state of aquifers or plans for renewable energy and air quality and so forth. 328 00:36:21,020 --> 00:36:29,440 But you are focussing on, you know, sort of activity by NGOs, and they must have some problems with. 329 00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:30,050 I mean, I mean, 330 00:36:30,050 --> 00:36:40,640 you're essentially kind of subjecting environment to standards of cultural relativism and trying to understand what people mean by environment. 331 00:36:40,640 --> 00:36:47,840 But the NGOs presumably are trying to talk about, you know, what they perceive as facts and sort of real environmental issues. 332 00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:52,970 So what are they talking about and how do I mean to to the extent that you're following what I mean, 333 00:36:52,970 --> 00:36:57,470 what sort of environmental issues does Tunisia face? Yeah. 334 00:36:57,470 --> 00:37:01,160 Thanks, Walter and Frank French, I think. Yeah. 335 00:37:01,160 --> 00:37:08,390 So I guess I can sense in questions in that perhaps this is true for some the other people who are here today that you know, 336 00:37:08,390 --> 00:37:13,790 they want to know about the actual environmental issues in a positive sense. 337 00:37:13,790 --> 00:37:23,990 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. 338 00:37:23,990 --> 00:37:28,890 I mean, I struggle with this because I, of course, have an opinion about what is and is not part of the environment. 339 00:37:28,890 --> 00:37:32,330 And I also care deeply about the protection of the environment. 340 00:37:32,330 --> 00:37:37,910 I mean, it's not a coincidence that I've been working on these topics for for 15 years. 341 00:37:37,910 --> 00:37:47,330 But what I'm trying to do here is to treat the environment as a category that others used in 342 00:37:47,330 --> 00:37:56,930 their discourse at a particular place and moment in time without putting into it any positive. 343 00:37:56,930 --> 00:38:04,280 This the content of my own, to the extent that that I can do that now. 344 00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:11,300 So, so much for my approach now about about these sort of international donors. 345 00:38:11,300 --> 00:38:16,910 I mean, that's a critical angle here. Obviously, as I mentioned, even going back to the 1990s, 346 00:38:16,910 --> 00:38:23,540 there's huge interest on the part of the international community and therefore, you know, money flow pertaining to the environment. 347 00:38:23,540 --> 00:38:33,440 And that continues to be true today. And I guess I mean, that is contributing to a shift in the way in which people conceive of the environment. 348 00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:43,310 So there's like an iterative process through which ideas as they flow from the German Development Corporation or whatever USAID I mean, 349 00:38:43,310 --> 00:38:48,520 one of the huge USAID projects here is on demolition waste, for instance. 350 00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:56,770 The ideas are moving at the same time as as money flows and one illustration I could give of sort of the misunderstanding, 351 00:38:56,770 --> 00:39:01,090 it's not it's not entirely a misunderstanding, but I found it interesting. 352 00:39:01,090 --> 00:39:07,250 I worked for the French Research Centre here in Sydney, invited me to be part of the what they call the jury. 353 00:39:07,250 --> 00:39:16,060 So the committee that was evaluating projects to receive funding from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Environmental Projects, 354 00:39:16,060 --> 00:39:25,150 and they gave 24 grants of about 15000 euros each to civil society organisations in all the governments of the country. 355 00:39:25,150 --> 00:39:28,870 And one of the things that drove people crazy in this committee was that, 356 00:39:28,870 --> 00:39:39,130 like two thirds or more of the proposals were to do garbage pickup and to plant trees or tent gardens. 357 00:39:39,130 --> 00:39:44,260 And everyone kept saying, Oh God, like, can't, can't they come up with something more original? 358 00:39:44,260 --> 00:39:49,210 Can't they get a more expansive notion of the environment basically now? 359 00:39:49,210 --> 00:39:52,360 I mean, part of that is just that these are small NGOs, so you know, 360 00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:56,380 they don't necessarily have the means to be able to tackle climate change in a 361 00:39:56,380 --> 00:40:01,390 meaningful way or the imagination to come up with an idea for how they can do that. 362 00:40:01,390 --> 00:40:06,760 But I think part of it is is also what I was talking about and is kind of part of this heritage. 363 00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:10,510 So I think this is an illustration, I guess, of what I was trying to do. 364 00:40:10,510 --> 00:40:17,440 And so there's a process there where certain projects get funded and others don't, and that can lead to a shift in the, 365 00:40:17,440 --> 00:40:24,520 I guess, the landscape with respect to what's being done on the topic of environment in the country. 366 00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:30,730 OK, we have a couple more questions that come in. One from Manuel Shehab, who also thanks you for the excellent talk. 367 00:40:30,730 --> 00:40:34,690 And her question is that I'll read it verbatim. 368 00:40:34,690 --> 00:40:42,040 I find the naming of the different characters in the caricature interesting the sun and water, etc. all had female names, 369 00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:49,150 except for Libby, who was also depicted as this authoritarian figure who scares people so they won't litter. 370 00:40:49,150 --> 00:40:54,070 This could be a coincidence, but feels like Libby was actually created to represent the state, 371 00:40:54,070 --> 00:40:59,170 the regulator in the imagination of the and authoritarian male. 372 00:40:59,170 --> 00:41:08,350 You said you don't know how the deed will be resurrected, but could we see a labour? 373 00:41:08,350 --> 00:41:20,320 That's such a wonderful comment question that I think I think I will borrow from you now in trying to improve and continue working on this. 374 00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:26,410 I have to confess that I didn't actually cotton on to that myself until you pointed it out. 375 00:41:26,410 --> 00:41:29,860 But it's it's it's very true, which you point out. 376 00:41:29,860 --> 00:41:35,820 And I guess maybe following on from that, one of my questions would be, you know, is there anything? 377 00:41:35,820 --> 00:41:45,600 Is there, as I mentioned, none of those other mascots really got much traction now, is that somehow related to to what you're pointing out? 378 00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:48,960 Or is it simply that they were invented kind of late in the game? 379 00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:54,330 And, you know, there's only so many, you know, so many of these things that you can put up, you know? 380 00:41:54,330 --> 00:41:58,680 So is it more of a practical sort of constraint? 381 00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:06,630 But it will be very curious to see. I mean, the gendering of nature and the environment is a fascinating question. 382 00:42:06,630 --> 00:42:12,250 People tend often to gender in nature and the environment in the feminine. 383 00:42:12,250 --> 00:42:18,750 I mean, I'm speaking more broadly here than than just Tunisia, but I think that's also true in Tunisia. 384 00:42:18,750 --> 00:42:25,320 Just last week, I was at a conference about environmental law, and so these were all jurists. 385 00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:29,190 But they tend to give sort of a sort of introduction or conclusion. 386 00:42:29,190 --> 00:42:34,080 There's a moment where there's a kind of rhetorical flourish on their part about, you know, 387 00:42:34,080 --> 00:42:41,430 why it's important to protect the environment and how you know, Tunisia is, you know, marginalised and so on. 388 00:42:41,430 --> 00:42:50,190 And they tend to invoke female metaphors in trying to describe the environment and the 389 00:42:50,190 --> 00:42:54,750 relationship that we have to the environment and why it's important to protect it. 390 00:42:54,750 --> 00:42:58,350 So it is funny that the mascot would be male in a way. 391 00:42:58,350 --> 00:43:03,660 I guess he doesn't represent the environment, perhaps himself, but rather the protector. 392 00:43:03,660 --> 00:43:07,870 Perhaps, as you say, the state even. Yeah. 393 00:43:07,870 --> 00:43:14,410 And we have a question from Virginia McFadden, which again starts with an immature empirical question, 394 00:43:14,410 --> 00:43:21,410 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. 395 00:43:21,410 --> 00:43:25,420 Have there been unusually high temperatures in Tunisia this past summer, 396 00:43:25,420 --> 00:43:30,310 as there have elsewhere, but perhaps more in line with what you're doing in this project? 397 00:43:30,310 --> 00:43:37,210 What are Tunisian views or political views, perhaps on environmental failings elsewhere in the world in this, I think, 398 00:43:37,210 --> 00:43:45,820 probably would be a kind of issue for public discourse, which might well articulate with the kinds of things that you're looking at. 399 00:43:45,820 --> 00:43:54,550 Yeah, I mean, I guess I guess I have to acknowledge like as as Frank and Virginia and others have been pointing out, I mean, 400 00:43:54,550 --> 00:44:02,740 we're particularly high temperatures in Tunisia this summer, and it's it was a source of public discussion and concern. 401 00:44:02,740 --> 00:44:06,520 And I mean, it took a fairly predictable form, I guess. 402 00:44:06,520 --> 00:44:11,320 I mean, it's it's being interpreted and discussed, I guess, in much the same way. 403 00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:23,390 Extreme weather events are all around the world. I mean, it's a kind of experiential confirmation of the reality of climate change for people. 404 00:44:23,390 --> 00:44:30,620 Yeah, I mean, I don't want to give the impression that these issues are not mobilising people or that they're not concerned about them, I mean, 405 00:44:30,620 --> 00:44:38,120 there's there's tons of mobilisations around pollution from the large factories and industrial sites, 406 00:44:38,120 --> 00:44:42,860 especially in the South and Gabi's and in gaffes around water. 407 00:44:42,860 --> 00:44:49,610 I mean, the water issue is multifaceted. Many people don't have access to the grid, so it's about public service, 408 00:44:49,610 --> 00:44:58,370 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. 409 00:44:58,370 --> 00:45:02,090 And you know, there's a conflict there, for instance, with agriculture. 410 00:45:02,090 --> 00:45:08,480 I mean, bearing in mind that much like Egypt, actually, Tunisia's agriculture is export oriented. 411 00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:14,610 So it's a cash crop oriented agricultural system that exports to Europe. 412 00:45:14,610 --> 00:45:18,770 So, you know, people make the argument that that's a form of water exportation, 413 00:45:18,770 --> 00:45:29,270 basically where by sending melons and oranges and so on to Europe, we're selling the Tunisian water to Europe at a cheap price. 414 00:45:29,270 --> 00:45:39,230 So those those arguments certainly do exist. I'll be very curious to talk to people when they get back from the COP conference in Glasgow. 415 00:45:39,230 --> 00:45:46,830 I know someone who is in the Tunisian delegation. Actually, since you since you mentioned political mobilisation. 416 00:45:46,830 --> 00:45:55,350 One other question that occurs to me is are there groups outside the government that are attempting to use environmental issues, 417 00:45:55,350 --> 00:45:57,270 although perhaps not labelled as such, 418 00:45:57,270 --> 00:46:07,800 but as you say, water air pollution and so forth in places like Gaza to form the basis of political opposition against the government? 419 00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:15,390 And if so, I mean, who would be doing this? Yeah, I think that's a that's a very important question. 420 00:46:15,390 --> 00:46:21,480 And it's it's an area that's sort of where the ground is shifting fairly quickly. 421 00:46:21,480 --> 00:46:25,020 So there are there definitely are. 422 00:46:25,020 --> 00:46:34,830 I mean, the example that I'm most familiar with because of my continued interest in waste would be political movements around the siting of landfills. 423 00:46:34,830 --> 00:46:38,670 And that's a huge issue in Indonesia right now. 424 00:46:38,670 --> 00:46:44,910 In fact, several landfills since 2011 and including very recently, 425 00:46:44,910 --> 00:46:52,200 just in the last few weeks have been closed because of the mobilisation of the people who live around the site. 426 00:46:52,200 --> 00:47:00,970 And this can create some huge problems because typically the agencies that are responsible for finding the new site, 427 00:47:00,970 --> 00:47:06,510 you know, are unprepared and are not able to locate one for several years or sometimes even at all. 428 00:47:06,510 --> 00:47:12,360 So like on the island of Djerba, for instance, or close to the city of Ministeres, 429 00:47:12,360 --> 00:47:19,620 they're dumps have been closed for almost a decade without there having been a new official site located, 430 00:47:19,620 --> 00:47:25,320 and that leads to some, some terrible consequences. Now those I mean, 431 00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:30,530 those are complex cases because typically the people who are protesting believe that it's 432 00:47:30,530 --> 00:47:34,770 an example of environmental injustice that the site was placed there in the first place. 433 00:47:34,770 --> 00:47:41,790 So they consider themselves to have been, you know, already had to have been marginalised and ignored in the siting process. 434 00:47:41,790 --> 00:47:51,090 And then also often the site has overflowed, so it's outlived its useful lifespan and is affecting them with bad smells or, 435 00:47:51,090 --> 00:47:55,860 you know, liquid that's leaking out or, you know, everything you could imagine. 436 00:47:55,860 --> 00:48:01,720 And then people on the other side react to say, Oh, well, you know, this is just nimbyism, not in my backyard. 437 00:48:01,720 --> 00:48:06,930 You know, the waste has to go somewhere and nobody wants it next to them, but somebody's got to take the hit. 438 00:48:06,930 --> 00:48:12,580 So these people should just, you know, suck it up and stop being so selfish. 439 00:48:12,580 --> 00:48:17,310 OK. I don't have any more questions in the Q&A box. 440 00:48:17,310 --> 00:48:20,970 I'll give the audience one last chance to ask questions if they have any. 441 00:48:20,970 --> 00:48:29,610 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. 442 00:48:29,610 --> 00:48:35,640 And I look forward to seeing more of the results of your research, and I wish I could come visit you in Tunis. 443 00:48:35,640 --> 00:48:38,610 Maybe I'll try and bring my son here or someone who's. 444 00:48:38,610 --> 00:48:47,010 Yeah, and don't hesitate to get in touch and actually an invitation that I would extended to to any students in the audience as well. 445 00:48:47,010 --> 00:48:52,800 Tunisia is a lovely place for fieldwork, and it's long been neglected in research. 446 00:48:52,800 --> 00:48:57,480 That's changing now. But there's a lot of unploughed fields here. Yes. 447 00:48:57,480 --> 00:48:59,850 I love to and I spent nine months there staring out. 448 00:48:59,850 --> 00:49:06,420 So, yeah, it's a great place and thank you very much for your talk and thank you to all the audience who attended. 449 00:49:06,420 --> 00:49:11,580 And we will see you next week for another episode of our Friday seminar. 450 00:49:11,580 --> 00:49:21,894 Goodbye to All.