Colonization and Climate
"The historic meaning of decolonization focuses on the undoing of the kind of colonialism where one country dominates and rules another. e.g. New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, the U.S., etc."
"The modern usage [of decolonization] has more to do with reorganizing the relationship between indigenous and nonindigenous peoples by recognizing that many of the social and political structures we still live under are massively influenced by our shared history of colonialism and domination of one people over others. It seeks to gain a better understanding of the legacy of colonialism that we continue to live with and then find a better path forward based on shared respect for autonomy and freedom." -Jay! Tomlinson
Understanding colonialism is a very important part of understanding why there is human-induced climate change, how it affects people disproportionately, and why people are suffering its consequences that didn't choose to live by the resource extractionist system in the first place. The brief explanation of colonialism above touches on the issue that colonist ideologies are very entwined with the hegemonic systems and institutions of our day. And, the issue that hegemony rather than pluralism is still widespread. Hegemonic systems could be described as dominating societal systems that enforce a societal monopoly. They are entangled with issues of white privilege, meaning that often the societies and cultures that were dominated by colonist actions are those of color and of indigenous peoples.
To this day, many of these marginalized peoples live in areas that now experience the effects of climate change. Often they're expected to create adaptation strategies that help minimize the damaging effects. So, people were forced to assimilate to a large degree into a Western or colonial system, that system caused climate change. Now it's often those who were forced to live according to that system who carry the burden of cleaning things up or coming up with creative strategies. Sound like a form of slavery? Recently, Kiribati Island president Anote Tong has explained that climate change is indeed yet another form of slavery.
"Slavery is a system justified solely by its profitability. Morality was all that opponents of slavery had to argue against slave plantation economics. This is the same with climate change. Climate change is the consequence of a system justified solely by its profitability. The fossil fuel and coal industries, for example, are profitable. But they’re also immoral. They’re reaping profits for the few, while spreading the costs around the world. And some of these costs include the loss of whole homelands and livelihoods." -Anote Tong
Whether it's Kiribati or New Zealand or the U.S., colonization continues to enslave non-Western or non-European peoples in the name of material gain by imposing on their lands and livelihoods. In this way, the climate itself has become colonized. An additional factor in this most recent form of colonizing is that those who are doing the enslaving are being (or will be) forced to feel the effects of climate change as well. Inducing catostraphic climate change is ultimately not great for anyone on the planet, colonizer or not.
So what's being done to deal with climate change then? There are two major categories of climate adaptation strategies currently being utilized: adaptation via rapid technology advancement, and adaptation via the reversion to or integration of indigenous knowledges. In my next blog post, I discuss the use of indigenous knowledges for adaptation strategies in the U.S. and New Zealand. This is largely within the context of how this knowledge is being used for indigenous communities themselves, but I also touch on the use of indigenous knowledges for more widespread adaptation actions.
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