Decolonial Enviromental Justice: from the Middle East and North Africa to North America

Project Information

DEJMENA

Grant agreement ID: 101024045

DOI

10.3030/101024045

Project closed

EC signature date 19 March 2021

Start date 1 March 2022

End date 2 March 2025

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 224 686,08

EU contribution

€ 224 686,08

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DEJMENA (Decolonial Enviromental Justice: from the Middle East and North Africa to North America)

Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2024-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

DEJMENA—Decolonial Environmental Justice: from Middle East and North Africa to North America aims to provide a reading of environmental justice at the intersection of indigeneity and feminist decoloniality. The project draws on activists’ and indigenous communities’ struggles with environmental (in)justice, particularly land and water protection, across the contexts of the Levant (Palestinian women farmers in the Southern West Bank), and North America (Native American women activists of the Lakota people in the Midwestern region of the US). In doing so, it provides a novel and a much urgent grounding of the locally global impact and value of decolonial feminist ecologies. DEJMENA combines a decolonial feminist approach to the question of Environmental Justice (EJ) as it emerges from the historical and material specificity of everyday confrontation with and survival against the violence of the settler colonial regimes (Israel and the United States).The objective of DEJMENA is to map out how EJ intersects and mutually interacts with indigenous strife for land and water protection across Indigenous locales. While DEJMENA utilizes the expertise that I have built in relation to decolonial feminist epistemes from below responding to socio-political injustices of [settler]colonial and/or neo-colonial statist settings of the global south, it expands this by revealing their deeply ecological implications. There are three interrelated and specific objectives: SO1 (WP3). To expand the theorising of decolonial EJ as it emanates from the indigenous locales of MENA. It does so via an excavation of the (hi)stories of ecological colonialism as they unfold from indigenous voices, narration of experiences and memories of present-past traumas and living mechanisms for adaptation, land, and water protection.
SO2 (WP4). To explore the ways in which such decolonial EJ frame equally embeds itself into the strife of feminist indigeneity. That is, to investigate how the colonial and ecological present realities simultaneously embed socialising and class processes of gendering and racializing a native other. This, in turn, allows an understanding of the historical and material positionality of feminist indigeneity as deeply ecological.
SO3 (WP5). To explore the significance of grassroots decolonial/indigenous forms of EJ and the impact they could potentially have on top-down EJ mechanisms.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

WP1 - Management and Training: I have been in constant contact with my supervisor and admin team at UNIVE, making sure to reach an informed decision throughout every step of the research project. I had regular meetings with the administration team at UNIVE, where I have received great support, especially from Ms. Laura Burighiel, throughout the entire length of the fellowship. I have also received extensive support in the management of the financial part of the project, which fell under the remit of UNIVE administration. Monthly meetings were held with both supervisors until the end of the outgoing phase, after which I interacted mostly with Prof Legrenzi at UNIVE, as we refined the career development plans. At both institutions, I was given the opportunity to supervise MA and PhD students working on topics closely related to ecology and gender.
WP2 – Foundation: The work undertaken in this WP has been mainly conducted during the outgoing phase. I have completed all required ethics reporting and received the approval from the designated committee during the outgoing phase and, as mentioned in the intermediate report, I worked on identifying fieldwork gatekeepers in the context of the Lakota. The same process took place in relation to my fieldwork on Palestine, although I later switched to more online-based methods (including online ethnography and interviews). I also completed the process of extensive readings on the Lakota and Palestine context, as well as drafting of a methodological chapter for the monograph.
WP3 - Decolonial EJ: I have written one more article with a focus on the decolonial environmental justice, whose revisions I am currently working on. This article adds to the other two published with Journal of Political Geography and the journal of Social and Cultural Geography.
WP4 - Gendering EJ: I have used a feminist methodological framework to conduct the research and data gathering. I have completed data analysis related to SO2. I have written three articles (in total) that contribute to the gendered aspect of environmental justice (see Report 1).
WP5 - Grassroots EJ: I completed the process of data collection and analysis related to SO3. I have completed ethnographic work in Lakota context. while I was planning to start the next phase of the project’s ethnographic research in Palestine by October 2023, this required some major deviations due to the historical circumstances. As such, I dedicated more time to desk research related to the Palestinian context, I have focused my energies in gathering more archival material and other online sources that directly pertain to the research goals (see Report 1).
WP6 – Consolidation: I have completed three-quarters of the monograph. I have consolidated my profile in the field of Human Geography through dissemination of project findings in major Human geography peer-review journals, and beyond.I have engaged with other staff and students who shared my research interests and laid the ground for a potential collaboration on the theme of indigeneity, ecological justice and Palestine.I am now in the process of organising and thematising findings from the empirical data that has been collected throughout this fieldwork.
WP7 - Dissemination: I have completed and submitted data management plan. I have participated to the organising and attendance of various International conferences.
I have disseminated research findings in various academic outlets. For Each of these publications I have made sure to comply with the requirements of EU on Open Access as well as acknowledge the GA as required by the Grant Agreement.
WP8 – Communication: I have been regularly communicating with UNIVE officers on the project’s ongoing developments. During the incoming phase I have organized an online series of lectures for the general public in collaboration with Middle East Critique journal, the focus was on Palestine and Imperialism; I have given talks open to the general public at various international venues (see below) and I collaborated the grassroots organisation, South Feminist Futures, where I gave a lecture on sex, gender and genocide.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project so far fills a gap in the literature on ecology and environmental justice that fails to take seriously the settler colonial framework to historically situating our contemporary ecological disaster. In doing so, its findings from both the Palestine and Lakota Indigenous contexts advance an engagement with the greenwashing (progressive environmental narrative) that settler colonial states practice in the attempt to conceal their inherent responsibility for the unfolding human and ecological disasters on local and global scales. Additionally, the project contributes to expanding the debate on the significance of a feminist decolonial positionality to combat and overcome our current planetary crisis and the challenges it poses on economic, social, and ecological fronts.

Oral History tent CRST Indian Reservation