Is Climate Vulnerability the New Poverty? The Possibility of Anti-colonial Climate Justice

• In Event: 3183 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 04. Climate and Environmentalism

Abstract

Climate change is often presented as a new problem, something unlike the world has ever experienced. While this may be true in atmospheric and geological assessments, socially the impacts of climate change mirror relations of power and oppression that have existed for centuries. International approaches to reducing climate vulnerability bear close resemblance to development models that perpetuate global power hierarchies. This has led to what I refer to as a “vulnerability regime” that defines climate justice in a way that eliminates historical liability of industrialized nations and constructs relationships of dependency between the Global North and South. Thus, vulnerability comes to resemble poverty as it is used as justification for international intervention in developing countries. Drawing on critiques of development and post-coloniality and fieldwork at the United Nations climate negotiations, I find parallels between the discourse and logics of climate change action and development regimes. In doing so, I highlight the complexity of climate change as an urgent and universal problem that primarily threatens those who contributed to it the least. Finally, based on interviews with government planners, experts, and development practitioners, I briefly take Bangladesh as a case of a nation working simultaneously toward development and climate resilience, which illustrates how these dual goals overlap and interact.

Author

• Danielle Falzon, Brown University