Seventh South South Forum on Sustainability

06/07/2020

Background

With the profound global crises bringing ecological and socio-economic catastrophes, thrusting increasing numbers of the world population over the edge, regional and global processes of addressing issues ranging from access to clean water and land, to macro changes in international institutions, are challenged with offering coordinated responses and viable alternatives.

Given the graveness and inter-connectedness of the crises threatening to destroy humanity and the earth, there is an urgency for intensive and extensive convergences and cross-fertilizations of theories and practices for fostering dynamic collaboration between and among thinkers and actors, and between and among the South. A sustained effort is required in rendering viable and effective intellectual commons through review of our historical experiences and production of new imaginations, new languages, and new responses.

The South-South Forums on Sustainability (SSFS) aim to bring together thinkers and actors predominantly from the South but also from the North for a dialogue and exchange on two key areas of concern – alternative development, and ecological sustainability, putting a focus on articulating and understanding experiences on the ground, especially relatively autonomous, self-managing local units and their interdependent networking and relations of mutuality.

As one of the many initiatives for such convergences, SSFS recognizes and values the large pool of existing efforts, resources and convergences, and aims at adding to cross-border exchanges in the endeavor for the formation of new historical subjects for cultural and social change for another possible world.

SSFS hopes to bring together old and new generations of committed people working for ecological and socio-economic justice to articulate knowledge produced by experiences on the field, common reflections, and new findings about the critical reality, in particular, from communities that defend their commons. It hopes to help cross-fertilize initiatives practiced by organizations and networks, not to duplicate the efforts, but to foster further inter-connections. It hopes to experiment with creative and self-reliant forms of interacting, networking and managing resources.

The Seventh South South Forum on Sustainability

The First South South Forum on Sustainability was held in Lingnan University in 2011. Since the Third SSFS in 2016, it has become an annual event in Lingnan University. All proceedings of the six Forums were video recorded and uploaded to the Lingnan Library website under KFCRD: http://commons.ln.edu.hk/southsouthforum/ and to the Global University website, the latest one being https://our-global-u.org/oguorg/en/sixth-south-south-forum-on-sustainability-ssfs6/

SSFS7 will be held on July 8 – 17, 2020, focused on the question of Climate Change, Global Crises, and Community Regeneration

The Forum will be structured along two lines of inquiry:

How to contextualize the question of climate change in relation to development, financialization, geopolitics, and ecological issues;

How to learn from and support the efforts of community-building that assemble agents in different locations across borders and defend ecological and social justice.