Decolonial Imaginaries in Global Climate Governance: Towards Transformative Climate Justice

• In Event: Responding to the Climate Crisis: Decolonial Imaginaries and Regenerative Education

Proposal

In an age of great planetary undoing, the irreversible and rapid disruption of the Earth’s climate and ecosystem has become one of the most pivotal and pressing issues. While the climate crisis affects all living things, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC,2021), has highlighted its unequal and uneven consequences across our globe and drawn attention to the disproportionate impact of climate disruptions on the world’s most vulnerable populations. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has also underlined the importance of climate justice in global climate governance. Indeed, in order to avert a total climate catastrophe, climate governance must seriously focus on issues of climate justice which is not only a moral imperative but a social and political one, pivotal to a just and effective climate praxis (Harris, 2021, Boyce, 2019).

This paper will look into the normative, epistemological and ontological assumptions that have heretofore guided climate governance and international policy. It will draw attention to the way in which colonial and neocolonial structures have been reproduced and will focus on the coloniality of knowledge at the “nexus of academic knowledge production and policy formation”. It will also address the relationship between climate policies and the widespread practices of silencing,“distorting, marginalizing and disregarding the ways of knowing and experiences of those most affected” by the climate crisis (Grosfoguel, 2002, Wilkins and Datchoua-Tirvaudey, 2022), Escobar, 2011, Rodríguez and Inturias, 2018). The need for an intersectional, transformative, critical climate justice for effective climate governance will be emphasized.

Aníbal Quijano argues that the different modes of knowledge production and the production of perspectives and systems of images constitute a key component of coloniality and a contested terrain (Quijano, 2007). Given that climate change is a collective action problem, the question of justice must be at the core of all policy decisions. Consequently, a decolonial approach that embraces diverse ways of knowing and different sites of knowledge production, becomes central to a concept of critical climate justice.

Critical climate justice, examines the various structural inequalities that contribute to climate injustices. By approaching the issue from diverse perspectives including those of "culture, gender, indigeneity, race, and sexuality as well as challenging colonial histories and capitalist presents", it seeks to explore the underlying causes of the climate chaos and map out theoretically informed practices and strategies for a better planetary future within a framework of "sustainable and just… policies and practices" (Bhavnani, Foran, Kurian and Munshi, 2019). Underlining issues of differential exposure, risk and vulnerability, critical climate justice focuses on equity considerations, accountability and obligations for a critical climate justice praxis (Sultana, 2021).

Moreover, a decolonial and critical climate justice focuses on issues of equity in decision making and policy formation. It examines the distribution of resources and burden-sharing in order to mitigate and adapt to climate change. It looks into access to negotiations for all stakeholders and the rules of engagement and participation in policy formation (Wilkins and Datchoua-Tirvaudey, 2022). In setting its definitional parameters, Schlosberg emphasizes notions of distributive justice based on recognition, capabilities, and participation, while Chaney focuses on harm avoidance and burden sharing, putting the concept of justice at the very forefront of a transformative critical climate praxis (Schlosberg, 2007; Caney, 2014).




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Author

• Rezan Benatar, Independent ScholarConsultant