No more false climate solutions: It’s time to reject colonial practices in a green costume
By Gina Cortés Valderrama
In its 6th report released in April this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) formally recognized what we in the climate justice movement and grassroots organizations have known for decades: colonialism is a root cause of the climate crisis.
The recognition of colonialism by the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change goes beyond the mention of a word that has been intentionally avoided by industrialised countries and rich corporations. For activists like me, it is a step towards acknowledging the ecological debt and historical responsibilities of countries fueling the extractive economic systems that underpin the climate crisis, as well as a legacy of social inequalities. It is a step to hold colonial powers accountable for centuries of plunder.
Rampant production and consumption has manifested in high energy and material use, particularly by countries in the Global North. Economic models that promote infinite growth have given a free rein to the exploitation of land, labour, and resources from marginalized countries and communities. This has left them disproportionately concentrated in global “sacrifice zones”: regions rendered dangerous and even uninhabitable due to environmental degradation.
What is less well known — and what the IPCC rightly states — is that colonialism is not just a historical cause of climate change, but an ongoing one. This means that there can be no meaningful way out of these intersecting crises without concrete actions to address the many proposed climate “solutions” that are just colonial practices in a green costume.
I’m part of a constituency of climate and gender justice activists at the 27th annual climate negotiations advocating to ensure that global efforts to combat climate change do not perpetuate the same injustices that created the climate crisis in the first place.
Too often, activists in these global policy spaces spend an outsized amount of energy combating harmful proposals that fail to result in actual reduction of carbon emissions while allowing those most responsible for climate change to avoid their obligations. That’s because the colonial subordination in the Global South is disguised in many forms.
A very retro “costume” is the latest proposal from the G7 to address loss and damage: the “Global Shield against Climate Risks.” At its core, the Global Shield works by providing insurance to poorer countries already impacted by climate change. This positions individuals in these countries as potential customers of profit-oriented institutions and keeps the burden on them through insurance premiums. Not only do G7 countries avoid paying for their role in the climate crisis, but their proposed insurance mechanism expects those harmed by rich countries’ notions of development to now pay them as well to deal with the damages.
Another popular costume that has been on the market over the past years and promoted by developed countries is well known as “net zero by 2050.” It contains several concerning aspects.
Firstly, given that some climate systems may already have passed the point of irreversible change, focusing commitments on a 2050 timeframe completely ignores the urgency of taking immediate action on keeping the global temperature increase to 1.5°.
Furthermore, even though they may sound similar, the phrase “net zero emissions” does not mean “zero emissions.” What net zero really means is that emissions will continue, but these will be balanced out through efforts to absorb carbon dioxide based on the assumption that in the future new technologies will be able to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.
This “burn now, pay later” scheme has become popular and marketed as a mechanism for achieving net zero climate emissions, despite depending on unproven, underperforming, or risky technologies. For instance, extensively deploying one of these carbon removal techniques known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) would require growing large tree plantations to sequester CO2 with a land area equivalent to up to three times the size of India. History has shown us that such land would end up being appropriated from the Global South.
This often comes with human rights violations, including the forced displacement of local, Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) communities from their native lands. The case of Kenya’s indigenous Sengwer, for example, evidenced how carbon offsets were empowering corporate recolonisation of the South. And the story repeats time and again.
Whatever disguises countries and companies choose, these false solutions — deemed so by climate justice civil society organisations, activists, and advocates — will distract us from the real solutions we need to invest in.
Innovation from a feminist perspective challenges power dynamics and redistributes decision-making spaces so that all have a say in building a desirable world together, instead of following a predefined template for how it should look. However, our solutions based on principles from care economy, degrowth, ‘El Buen Vivir’, and agroecology, among many others — currently do not feature prominently at high-level intergovernmental conferences, in mainstream media, or in academic journals.
In the final days of COP27 and beyond, discussions must move away from over-relying on market-based solutions for rich countries to buy their way out of the climate crisis. Discussions inside and outside COP27 must instead center instead on a comprehensive and long-overdue transformation of our exploitative and destructive economic systems.
Although the transformative goal of 1.5°C global temperature increase is challenging and involves high stakes, countries must integrate gender-transformative, community-based, and decentralized mitigation and adaptation initiatives. These solutions will restore an approach to nature conscious of its boundaries moving drastically towards a life of dignity for all.
