Beyond Climate Apartheid and Ecocide: Towards a Critical Climate Justice

• In Event: Education for Societal Transformation: Alternatives for a Just Future (Panel 1)

Proposal

The irreversible disruption of the Earth’s climate and ecosystem has become an increasingly pressing issue.

While the climate crisis affects all living things, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2021), has highlighted its unequal consequences across our globe and drawn attention to the disproportionate impact of climate disruptions on the world’s most vulnerable populations. In fact, some have even argued that the climate crisis is a crisis of racial colonial capitalism (Simpson and Choy, 2023). Bolivian President, Luis Arce Catacora has expressed his concern about a new carbon colonialism, whereby post-colonial countries are marginalized in international negotiations and power matrices. Asad Rehman, a leading climate activist, has referred to an economic and climate apartheid pointing to uneven vulnerabilities and inequitable implementation of policies (Bond, 2018).

The climate crisis is inextricably linked to questions of justice. In order to avert a total climate catastrophe, climate governance must urgently focus on issues of justice as not only a moral and ethical imperative but a social and political one (Harris, 2021, Boyce, 2019).

Climate justice underlines the structural inequalities that contribute to climate inequalities and human rights abuses. By approaching the issue from diverse perspectives including those of "culture, gender, indigeneity, race, and sexuality” it seeks to explore the underlying causes of the climate chaos and map out theoretically informed practices and strategies (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).

This paper will focus on an intersectional, transformative, critical climate justice for effective climate governance. The ways in which colonial and neocolonial structures have been reproduced and the coloniality of knowledge will be discussed. The paper will further address the relationship between climate policies and the widespread practices of silencing and marginalizing “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). Drawing upon the work of Aníbal Quijano and Cedric Robinson, the intimate link between capitalism and racism will be explored in the context of the present climate crisis, that can only be addressed by looking at cartographies of dominance and the way colonialism and modernity have shaped the present global landscape (Quijano, 2000, Robinson, 2000).

The presentation will also look at the distribution of resources and burden-sharing in order to mitigate and adapt to climate change. It will examine access to negotiations for all stakeholders and the rules of engagement and participation in policy formation (Wilkins and Datchoua-Tirvaudey, 2022). The discussion will focus on recognitional, procedural and distributional justice (Schlosberg, 2007; Caney, 2014) in order to strengthen a multi-level and multi-stakeholder climate governance (Huntjens and Zhang, 2016). Recent work by Simpson and Choy on decolonial climate justice movements will also be reviewed (Simpson and Choy, 2023).

Author

• Rezan Benatar, Independent Scholar