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Session Overview Gupta, J. (2024-64). Keynote, Just living within safe and just boundaries, Arizona State University, 8 November Details Report: Professor Gupta gave a lecture on climate change, safe and just Earth System Boundaries, and global Constitutionalism and invited the students to think with her. Discussion afterwards focused on the role of insurance sector, climate justice, and the question – how we can tame capitalism.  Around 20 students attended the lecture. Role: Lecturer

Session Overview Lecture 63: Gupta, J. (2024-63). Interview on stage, We are warming up Festival, Amsterdam, 7th November Details Report: The We are Warming Up conference was launched on 7 November at Tolhuistuin in Amsterdam by Professor Joyeeta Gupta. Here she was asked three questions: How are we fairing on climate mitigation and what can we do about it? Why is climate justice necessary? Why are you working on a global Constitution and how can we contribute? Following her responses, a musical Chilean indigenous ceremony involving Ibelisse Guradia Ferragutti and Chautuileo Tranamil invited the audience to think of the values and to engage with the constitution. Downstairs the climate museum has relocated to a new location, and once more the safe and just Earth System Boundaries with a story on climate change is displayed as well as an interactive board inviting ideas from the public on the global  Constitution.  

Session Overview Lecture 62: Gupta, J. (2024-62). Living within Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries, Organized by ING Bank at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 7 November Details Introduction: 120 people presents. This week, Professor Joyeeta Gupta gave a keynote talk at an event hosted by ING for directors of charities and endowment funds in the Netherlands. To kick off an afternoon focused on sustainability, Professor Gupta delivered a fiery argument for the critical need to take action to bring our societies within safe and just planetary boundaries. She discussed the critical state of the environment and climate, the potential pathways and actions needed to bring global emissions down to true zero, and the role of financial institutions, including banks and philanthropy, in doing so. Critical to bringing emissions down both net zero and true zero is ending new investment into fossil fuel and rapidly phasing out fossil fuel extraction. The afternoon’s talks were followed by a panel discussion which dove further into the steps and actions needed from different actors and levels of society, from municipalities and individual foundations up to the banking and broader financial sector, as well as national and international policy. Many of the ways that foundations and philanthropy could contribute to the transition were discussed, including the myriad possibilities for foundations to aid in phasing out fossil fuels, from funding training for transitioning workers to assisting with decommissioning fossil fuel assets. Drastic changes will be needed from all of us, including philanthropies. The panel also discussed the need to rethink the purpose of charitable trusts; rather than maintaining assets into perpetuity, they should critically assess their societal impact and actively work towards a sustainable future. We hope that foundations found this discussion provoking and fruitful for future discussion on how to evolve their own institutions in a rapidly transitioning world. The fossil fuel sector has made it clear that it will not be leading the transition; a good start for institutions dedicated to sustainability is to ensure that their finances, associations, and engagements are directed elsewhere. Role: Keynote speaker and panelist.

Session Overview Lecture 61: Gupta, J. (2024-61). Perspective on mapping human rights violations, 5th Global Land Programme OSM, Mexico, 5th November Details Topic: Leading a session at the 5th Global Land Programme OSM in Oaxaca, Mexico on mapping human rights violations. This session will explore the intersection of Human Rights and Environmental Health, from a legal and scientific standpoint, in light of the UN General Assembly’s resolution recognising the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment in July 2022. We aim to bring together lawyers and scientists to improve our capacity to map, monitor and act on human environmental rights violations across the world. Role: Gupta presented a power point on how human rights violations have been used to determine just boundaries (e.g. 1C for climate change), as safe planetary boundaries (eg. 1.5C) only ensure that the system does not go out of balance, she showed how meeting human rights to food, water, energy and infrastructure has a pressure on the environmental domains and that this pressure can be calculated in the same units as the boundaries revealing the safe and just corridor. Since we are outside the boundaries and have not yet minimum needs, it is of vital importance that we first meet minimum needs and then share the remaining budget. Vitally, we need to phase out fossil fuel and do this justly. This requires a radical change of our global system. She concluded by inviting the participants to write an essay on what they think should be part of a global Constitution.  

Session Overview Lecture 60: Gupta, J. (2024-60). Panel Member, Trippenhuis Talks – Museum Dialogues, 5 November, Amsterdam Details Introduction: Panel discussion during the public lecture Trippenhuis Talks – Museum Dialogues. This event will take place on November 5, 2024, from 18:00 to 21:00, and is organized in close collaboration with artists Micha Hamel and Jonas Staal in response to their project Earth Workers Requiem/Jubilate, which will be exhibited at the Noordbrabants Museum this fall. 50 people ca. video Role: Speaker. In the first panel, Joyeeta Gupta and Diana Suhardiman will join Jonas Staal to address the question: how do we deal with the reality of earth workership from the perspective of emancipatory governance? And what is needed to arrive at forms of governance in which property relations are no longer central?  These questions are also central to the artwork Earth Workers Requiem/ Jubilate.

Session Overview Lecture 59: Gupta, J. (2024-59). Interview on stage, UVA New Climate Initiative, 4 November, Amsterdam Details Introduction: The University of Amsterdam launched the Climate Initiative called Seven on 4 November 2024 at De Brug in the Roeterseilandcampus, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Building D, 4th floor. This programme was for guests from different universities, social stakeholders and businesses. 80 people presents ca. Gupta’s role Gupta was interviewed about the state of the climate today – and she answered we were moving towards 3C, and higher if the developing world would use their ‘fair’ share of the fossil resources. Since we have not left them enough of the carbon budget for their fair share, there is a very big likelihood that we will go beyond 3C and that would be disastrous given that 1C is the just target and we are already at 1.2C. This underscored the urgency of leaving fossil fuel underground. Moreover, this also underscores the need for climate justice – globally to enable the energy transformation and finance loss and damage and nationally to ensure that entire municipalities mobilize for change rather than giving individuals subsidies as these are then used by the rich people. This is necessary as otherwise people will vote for governments that don’t believe in climate change as in the Netherlands. Finally, even if at national level there is little leadership, the question is how we mobilize at municipal and provincial level. There is a track record of local level leadership in countries like the US and Australia when national leadership failed.  Afterall, climate change is here; it is not a left wing or right-wing issue, it is not made up, it is a reality that will hit us all. Brief summary: here

Session Overview Gupta, J. (2024-58). 10 Member Group Priorities, for the Side Event to the Multi-stakeholder Hearing for Financing for Development Conference, Side Event: Strengthening Science, Technology and Innovation for Achieving the SDGs: Drawing Lessons from the UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism and Innovative Financing Models, 29 October, New York (hybrid) Details Topic: The 2023 SDG Summit emphasized the importance of bridging science, technology, and innovation (STI) divides and leveraging STI as drivers of sustainable development. The Pact for the Future reaffirmed the potential for STI and digital cooperation to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) if these tools are affordable and accessible to all. In response to these calls, and in preparation for the discussions at the Fourth International Financing for Development Conference (FfD4), this side event aims to explore lessons learned from efforts since 2015 to leverage STI for SDG implementation, and more specifically on the operationalization of the Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM) Role: Speaker

Session Overview Gupta, J. (2024-57). Leaving Fossil Fuels Underground, UN 10 Member Group Meeting, 22 October, Lausanne

Session Overview Gupta, J. (2024-56). Earth system (climate) Boundaries, Foundations and Transformations, UN 10 Member Group Meeting, 22nd October

Session Overview Gupta, J. (2024-53). Towards a fossil-free future: governance challenges and opportunities for leaving fossil fuels underground, Earth System Governance Forum, 14 October Details Topic: Rapidly phasing out fossil fuels, as is needed to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change, will require radical transformation of major stakeholders in the fossil fuel empire, including among others, oil and gas companies, governments, and investors. Doing so in a way which accounts for the many justice implications of climate change will require rethinking and challenging many of the principles and institutions which govern these actors. Working towards a just transition poses many challenges and uncertainties (fairly distributing the losses associated with a fossil fuel phase out, implementing a just transition for workers, ensuring access to the needed finance, among others). Yet, the institutions and policies currently guiding the energy transition are often unsuited to meeting these challenges. In this panel, we examine the norms, regulations, and institutions which govern and guide the fossil fuel sector and its stakeholders, the ways in which these policies hinder a just phase-out, and ask, what changes or disruptions are needed to enable an equitable and rapid transition away from fossil fuels? video Role: Speaker