Critical Conversations: The Aral Sea and Ecocide
The Collaborative Centre for Climate, Health & Sustainable Care is launching a new event series entitled: Critical Conversations. Our first Critical Conversation will be on The Aral Sea and Ecocide, presented by Dr. Ross Upshur.
The Aral Sea, once the fourth largest inland body of water in the world, has progressively receded with immense ecological consequences. The disappearance of the Aral Sea was described by Science Magazine as “perhaps the most notorious ecological catastrophe of human making.” But does this catastrophe constitute ecocide? In this seminar, Dr. Upshur will explore the evolving concept of ecocide as the “fifth crime against peace” and assess whether a prominent definition of ecocide would include the Aral Sea disaster. As well, it will be critically examined whether ecocide should be conceived exclusively as a criminal act.
About the Critical Conversations series:
A space for critical and heterodox ideas to develop and be tested.
Much academic work on climate change, planetary health and sustainable care aims at improvement of existing practices or systems, to reduce ecological harms or manage the health and well-being implications of climate change and ecological decline.
This series will provide an academic space to question assumptions about what changes are necessary or possible, how current practices are held in place, and how learners, educators, researchers, and practitioners might respond.
About the speaker:
Dr. Ross Upshur is currently the Dalla Lana Chair in Clinical Public Health and Head of the Division of Clinical Public Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. At the University of Toronto, he is a Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Department of Family and Community Medicine in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Associate Director of the Collaborative Centre for Climate, Health and Sustainable Care, Affiliate Member of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Member of the Joint Centre for Bioethics. He serves as Co-chair of the WHO Ethics and Governance Working Group, and is Special Advisor to the Ethics Review Board of Doctors Without Borders. Research interests span multiple domains at the intersection of ethics, epistemology, clinical medicine and public health with applications to climate change, pandemics and artificial intelligence. He is an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.
Recording: