‘From India to Africa, today’s climate crisis reflects a history of colonialism’

Olufemi O. Taiwo

teaches philosophy at

Georgetown University

. Speaking to

Times Evoke

, he explains the history of the climate crisis — and the case for climate reparations.
I work on social and political philosophy in a way that focuses on thinkers and themes in anticolonial, anti-capitalist and black radicalist traditions of thought. One connection between colonialism, capitalism and climate change is directly historical — the developments of the last 500 years linked much of the world in a planetary scale system of politics and economics. This system led to the Industrial Revolution which was, among other things, an energy revolution. These energy changes are where scientists link anthropogenic global warming to.



The same revolution explains who the haves and have-nots of both energy systems and climate change are. These questions of power will determine the future too, in terms of who is most vulnerable to climate impacts and who is protected from these. This history therefore has a deeply practical connection towards ensuring a future of climate justice.

HISTORY IS A DEEP WELL: Children in refugee camps in Africa, displaced by climate impacts, seek water in shallow puddles but a deeper depth explains their travails. Picture courtesy: iStock

The term ‘climate colonialism’, used by many academics including

Doreen Martinez

, the influential indigenous studies scholar, means climate impacts themselves as well as the kinds of policies that countries, corporations and other actors pursue to respond to these — importantly, these can result in a world where colonial power hierarchies are deepened. Whether it is mining minerals for making green batteries to dispossessing indigenous people living near sites of extraction or the distributive effects of climate disasters themselves, all of these can actually deepen colonial hierarchies.



We must keep this reality in mind to respond effectively to climate impacts — this is not just about rain and temperature. This is about our whole social system and how it responds to this colonial history. There is a real argument for climate reparations now — the global north’s governments refuse climate reparations. This allows social conditions in other countries to deteriorate under climate impacts, leading to an increase in climate-related disasters and displacements. This then creates a kind of self-justifying reality around xenophobia and border violence in the global north. These conditions are not practical.



Consider the pandemic — it can only be brought under control when the world population develops immunity by equitably distributing vaccines. The urge to protect only the elite interests of the global north is inhumane, morally wrong — and self-defeating from a practical perspective. People often make the argument that large developing economies like India and China are also responsible for emissions now — I think this argument shows the need for a historical and political analyses that moves beyond just tracking carbon emissions. If we analyse emissions per capita, on a cumulative historical basis, India and China are clearly not the real problems here.

But even if they were, the historical question of why these countries and others like them have pursued the particular development paths they have has everything to do with who was in power in previous generations and what forms of investments they were willing to allow — or stop — in the global south.

A lot of people making these arguments about India and China have been complicit in decades of directing the course of development in much of the global south. What is correct is hat emerging economies like India, China,

Brazil

and

South Africa

need to go in the direction of renewables — rather than pointing fingers, we need to take a practical approach towards ensuring climate reparations in the form of fiscal, technical and other assistance to enable these economies to grow along a renewable trajectory, rather than the old and polluting one. Several examples of climate injustice move me deeply on a personal level. These include the heatwaves impacting

South Asia

now, the cyclones that hit Mozambique and the hurricanes that damaged New Orleans — across all these examples, you find stories of people who have not in any serious way ever contributed to the climate crisis but are bearing the brunt of its most concrete effects. Beyond the destruction and displacement here lies a sense of deep unfairness.

To correct this, we need climate justice — to me, this means expanding self-determination of how governments and communities can relate to their future. This will have to be achieved in an era where the climate crisis and the accumulated ecological mistakes of the past represent a huge challenge — therefore, this endeavour means all the things justice always does. It will mean giving people genuine democratic inputs, devising community developed adaptation efforts, ensuring community-designed ways of energy provision and distribution and securing food sovereignty and resilience. Each one of these efforts is deeply tied into what climate justice means as a set of both ethical and practical projects now.