But rapid urban growth is a challenge for cities everywhere – from the effects of climate change and natural disasters to mass migration, urban sprawl, pollution and lack of affordable housing.

During an evening of film screenings and discussion, we explore these tensions and what solutions can be found to make cities places that leave no one behind and that are a joy to live in for everyone.

The evening will begin with the screening of two recent films made by PLACE, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s website covering land and property rights stories around the world.

Film 1 – Falling Freetown

“Falling Freetown” looks at Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone in the wake of last year’s landslide that claimed the lives of about 1,000 people, a disaster many said was waiting to happen due to poor urban planning combined with rapid migration, deforestation, and freak weather events linked to climate change.

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/266505415/4f76fbd4df

Film 2 – Urban Nomads

“Urban Nomads” looks at the challenges facing Mongolia’s herding community and the mass migration from rural areas into the capital Ulaanbaatar as climate change and socio-economic changes force people into the city.

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/266537726

A panel discussion with urban experts will explore the themes raised in the films and discuss solutions that turn these challenges into opportunities for cities. The filmmakers will also be available to answer questions.

Chair

Astrid Zweynert  is an award-winning journalist, editor of PLACE and social media specialist. Astrid drives coverage and production of Thomson Reuters Foundation’s global news services covering humanitarian crises, human rights and social innovation for the foundation’s website and the Reuters global newswire.

Speakers

Sarah Colenbrander is a Senior Researcher on urban issues at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Her areas of expertise include financing urban infrastructure, urban governance for inclusion and sustainability, and climate and energy policy in urban areas. She is also Global Programme Lead and Senior Economist at the Coalition for Urban Transitions, a network of research, government and private sector organisations. In addition to academic publications, she has contributed to World Bank, New Climate Economy and UN Environment reports and is Associate Editor for the journal ‘Environment and Urbanization’. She is also a guest lecturer at the University of Oxford, University College London and University of Manchester.

Anna Locke – Head of Programme of Agricultural Development and Policy at ODI (The Overseas Development Institute). Her work focuses on land governance and large-scale investment, biofuels and food security. She has in-depth experience working on market-led agriculture, analysing and advising on how to develop agriculture to promote sustainable growth and reduce poverty, based on principles of competitiveness, market access and inclusiveness.

Euphemia Sydney-Davies is a Sierra Leonean fashion designer and founder of the Sydney-Davies label who is passionate about ethical and sustainable fashion.  Instead of outsourcing work to India or China, she set up a small tailoring workshop in Freetown, where she trains local men and women how to make garments for her clothing ranges. After the mudslide Sydney-Davies went home to help her people and raised funds in the UK, where she is based, to assist those most affected. She remains in touch with those who lost everything in the disaster and is critical of the government’s handling of the crisis.

Charles Landry is an author, speaker and international adviser on the future of cities. He is best known for popularising the Creative City concept. Its focus is how cities can create the enabling conditions for people and organisations to think, plan and act with imagination to solve problems and develop opportunities. He has chaired multiple urban innovation juries including The European Capital of Innovation Award – iCapital, New Innovations in the Creative Economy (N.I.C.E.) and Actors for Urban Change. He is a fellow of The Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin.

Each week, at least four men and women vanish without trace or are found dead, cut down in a hail of gunfire. Mysterious disappearances, political murders, the killing of women, gangland hits: thousands of cases, seemingly unrelated, are reported every year from all corners of the globe.

But according to political scholars and activists, there is a connection: more and more are dying protecting their land and homes from global industry’s relentless push to develop the natural resources that lie beneath their feet.

This bloodshed is both interconnected and global, they say, and is a direct product of a phenomenon dubbed ‘necropolitics’ or the ‘politics of death’.

This event will be a film screening and panel discussion on the Thomson Reuters Foundation special investigation, in eight countries, of the violent phenomenon dubbed ‘The Politics of Death’.

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/220826482/3d21502466

Run Time: 25 mins

Check out Place’s ‘Politics of Death’ website here: http://www.thisisplace.org/shorthand/politics-of-death/

Moderator: Paola Totaro, Editor, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Paola is the Land and property rights editor at the Thomson Reuters Foundation. She is an award winning journalist and immediate past Persident of the Foreign Press Association in London. Paola has worked as a writer and correspondent specialising in European affairs, politics, social policy and the arts and a former Editor of The Saturday Sydney Morning Herald.

Speakers  

Ana Zbona, Project Manager for Civic Freedoms & Human Rights Defenders Project  – Business and Human Rights Resource Centre

Ana joined the Resource Centre in 2016. Before joining, she worked as a manager of a fair trade/community development program with the NGO Mosqoy, working with indigenous communities in the Peruvian Andes. Prior to that, Ana was an advocacy assistant in the EU advocacy team of Human Rights Watch in Brussels, a research assistant for the Slovenian Human Rights Ombudswoman, and a fellow at the EU Delegation to the UN and at the Slovenian Mission to the UN.

Joe Avapura Moses – HRD and Chairman Paga Hill Heritage Association

Joe Avapura Moses is a community leader and a land rights defender with the Paga Hill community who lived along the waterfront of the Port Moresby peninsula in Papua New Guinea (PNG) before their homes were illegally bulldozed to make way for the Paga Hill Development Company Ltd. to develop a hotel, marina and exhibition centre.

As a result of his human rights work spearheading a legal resistance to this land grab, Joe has endured intimidation and police harassment, which ultimately forced him, his wife Ceyline and their two children into hiding.

Erin Kilbride – Media Coordinator, Front Line Defenders

Erin has conducted field research and led campaigning initiatives on human rights defenders facing severe threats in Bangladesh, Egypt, Tunisia, Burma/Myanmar and Bahrain, among others. She has reported for media outlets including Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, Think Progress, The Diplomat, Middle East Eye and Voice of America.

Professor Bobby Banerjee, Professor of Management, Cass Business School – Bobby’s primary research interests are in the areas of sustainability, climate change and corporate social responsibility. He has published extensively in leading scholarly journals and is the author of two books: Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and The Ugly and the co-edited volume ‘Organisations, Markets and Imperial Formations: Towards an Anthropology of Globalisation’. He serves on the editorial board of seven international journals and is Senior Editor at Organisation Studies.