Climate Change, Colonialism, and Genocide
As resources become scarcer due to ecological degradation and climate change, social justice issues and conflicts are exacerbated and members of vulnerable economically impoverished communities are forced to emigrate. Refugees often face stigmatization, marginalization, and economic poverty. Some researchers suggest that loss of culture due to displacement, increased conflict over scarce resources, and lack of asylum for refugees could create conditions conducive to cultural or ethnic genocide.
This is a work in progress. I am using this space to paint some broad strokes of what I think is happening and how, but I'm ultimately most concerned with why, at the individual level, we're causing these issues and what we can do to support those most affected.
I am beginning to research the relationship among climate change, colonialism and genocide. Specifically, I work to build capacity in marginalized communities to survive climate change. While Pedagogy for Restoration focused on restoring justice and healing the planet through education, I feel a need to also investigate pragmatic responses to the immediate and inevitable impact of climate change on the most vulnerable communities.
Colonialism is without question the fundamental cause of anthropogenic climate change. To make things worse, climate change exacerbates the neoliberal form of colonization that should rightly be identified as genocide.
Subsistence communities may be the most vulnerable to climate genocide because the world has already made these communities invisible, illegal and nearly impossible through international policies and trade agreements.
The pool of resources to be exploited by industrial nations in subsistence communities is shrinking, while consumption by highly industrialized nations continues to rise; resulting in such a scarcity of resources that those equipped with the capacity to live sustainably are no longer able to do so.
All too many of the communities managing to survive have become so vulnerable to floods, droughts, and other natural disasters, that climate change represents a ticking time bomb. The question is not if they will face a crisis threatening their existence, but when.
On top of that, neoliberal environmental organizations further exploit and colonize the few surviving subsistence communities by enforcing "pro-environmental" behavior that is at odds with the cultural knowledge that has sustained them for thousands of years including the past several hundred years of colonization and globalization.
The culmination of these neocolonial pressures force people and communities into reliance on international aid and results in loss of autonomy, de facto participation in global economy, and economic development as a means for survival. These economic pressures practically force communities to abandon subsistence farming and necessitate either unsustainable exploitation of natural resources or migration into more industrialized nations.
This is why the industrialized destroyers of earth have a moral obligation to increase capacity to provide asylum for climate refugees - but that's not nearly enough.
Even if we overcome the challenge of sustainably increasing the population capacity of our cities and reform our immigration policies, few refugees are likely to make it to our borders. More often refugees will be turning to neighboring nations also struggling to survive climate change and colonial exploitation and with little capacity to sustain themselves, much less refugees. This is and will continue to be a huge source of conflict in many parts of the world. The likely perpetrators of climate genocide could easily (but wrongfully) be identified, not as industrialized nations, but the developing nations we've forced into our rat race.
This is not something that could happen if we do not work to reduce climate change, it is something that is happening already. Whether intentional or not, Trump's policy on refugees and his refusal to support efforts to reduce the effects of climate change are leading exactly in the direction of the catastrophe I see us headed for.
So, what can be done?
It is critical to consider both indigenous and refugee subgroups as members of a continuum of oppressed populations affected by climate change, where indigenous populations are also vulnerable to becoming refugees if their resources are destroyed. Despite both communities likely having smaller carbon footprints due to lower consumption, they are pressured toward largely unattainable sustainability goals designed by and for privileged communities. It is critical to better understand the environmental issues faced by these vulnerable communities to promote their resilience and wellbeing.
I'm increasingly realizing that the people dying right now due to warfare, famine, floods, droughts, etc. don't have time for the epistemological shift that seems necessary to address what I believe is the root cause of this crisis. Awareness is an important step, but the world needs immediate and decisive action. The people most affected by climate change need those of us living in the luxury of the part of the world destroying their part of the world to put a wrench in the gears. I don't claim to have all of the answers, but I am committed to both research and action. Let me know your ideas.