The intersections between climate justice and racial justice have come into greater focus in recent years. We have much further to go when it comes to addressing racism at the structural levels of society. We see this in injustices and unequal outcomes in health, housing, work, education, exposure to pollution, border violence, and political influence. The climate crisis holds a mirror to these existing inequities and threatens to reinforce them.
We need an integrated approach to anti-racism, social justice, and policy change that is inseparable to a just transition. Our hope is to embark on a journey that is about learning together, engaging with areas of work beyond the Sector itself, and sparking a broader interest in climate justice that can move us towards greater collective action.
Keep your eyes peeled as we will be launching our official Environmental Strategy soon, alongside key dates for Climate Justice workshops!
The history that precedes the climate crisis is one of slavery, colonialism and corporate capitalism. It is the pursuit of unfettered growth and new frontiers to exploit, with the dearest social, physical and environmental costs borne out by marginalised and racialised communities. And it is one that has shaped our world and our climate beyond its natural, human and planetary boundaries.
Climate Justice is formal recognition and reparations for the harms done towards racialised people and nature through colonial and neocolonial projects.
It is a transition to a greener economy that does not leave existing exploitative power structures and systems of oppression untouched.
It is a commitment to climate action at the scale and urgency required so that the global majority, least responsible for this crisis, are not further exposed to vulnerability, hunger, deprivation, displacement, and premature death.
It is understanding that disproportionate exposure to pollution, unequal access to green space and safe, secure housing to shelter from the growing risk and severity of climate events, is a slow violence against our most vulnerable and marginalised communities.
Our world is marked with borders, binaries, and hierarchies. How do we make sense of this in the context of climate injustice, environmental degradation and climate breakdown that knows no borders?
The climate crisis is occurring during a time of vast inequality, increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the few and mobilisation of far-right social and political movements.
The Climate Apartheid is a way of depicting this very divide between those with the power and affluence to distance themselves from the climate crisis, and those who are left most vulnerable to its worst effects.
‘We risk a ‘climate apartheid’ scenario where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger, and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer’
(UNHCR, 2019)
As we saw during the recent race riots, insecurity, anger and unease have been wrongfully directed at racialised and minoritised groups.
The scapegoating of minority populations will only lead to more violence and dispossession whilst doing little to resolve the problems of economic insecurity, access to healthcare and a lack of public investment across all areas of public life including education, social care and public transport.
The lives of Indigenous peoples that are so forcibly changed as a result of land grabs, environmental degradation and other forms of violence, is an illustration of the growing divide between those who are able to stay and those who are forced to leave. Undoing the harms of settler colonialism means bringing an end to harm that is done towards indigenous peoples as well as to nature. Both are inextricably linked.
LandBack is an Indigenous liberation movement to get Indigenous lands back into Indigenous hands:
‘It is the reclamation of everything stolen from the original peoples: land, language, ceremony, food, education, housing, healthcare, governance, medicines, kinship. It is a relationship with Mother Earth that is symbiotic and just, where we have reclaimed stewardship’
(LandBack, 2024)
It is an ongoing struggle that reflects the deep social and ecological impacts of settler colonialism particularly in the context of European expansion:
‘Although Europe represents only about 8 percent of the planet’s landmass, from 1492 to 1914, Europeans conquered or colonised more than 80 percent of the entire world’
(Caltech, 2015)
Black and Indigenous lives and lands were controlled, devalued and considered disposable in order to accumulate wealth for white communities.
Settler-colonies hold and enforce a very different relationship to land. Land is seen as a resource, property, or a means of capital accumulation. In contrast, Indigenous communities treat land as relational, belonging to all living and non-living beings who share and make sense of a place together.
Although Indigenous peoples account for just over 6% of the global population, they steward 80% of the world’s biodiversity within their lands:
‘Biodiversity thrives in the care of indigenous communities, and integrating their insights into conservation is proving indispensable.’
(IUCN, 2019)
The climate movement is a movement towards nurturing and caring for our collective pursuits, needs and values more equitably. At times of crisis, we will come to depend on collective care in more ways than we might recognise or imagine at present. Power shared, is power harnessed. How do you show up for your community and turn to it for support?
Protest, activism, and community organising are powerful tools to rediscovering the agency that we have in us to affect change.
Communities are an important site of struggle that emphasise shared spaces, resources and alternative ways of living.
Climate action that is led by and sustained by communities can allow us to practice love, empathy and care for one another in ways that we know best. By showing up differently, we prove that change is possible in the here and now.
Community gardens, fridges, cafes, childcare collectives, community care and response teams, libraries and farmers’ cooperatives. These are all examples of how we can begin to weave small but transformative projects into our communities.
Jennifer Wat, Environmental Strategy Intern
References
Alston, P. (2019, June 25). UN expert condemns failure to address impact of climate change on poverty. Retrieved from OHCHR: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/06/un-expert-condemns-failure-address-impact-climate-change-poverty#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWe%20risk%20a%20'climate%20apartheid,water%20will%20be%20dramatically%20affected.
IUCN. (2019, August 9). IUCN Director General's Statement on International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples 2019. Retrieved from IUCN: https://iucn.org/news/secretariat/201908/iucn-director-generals-statement-international-day-worlds-indigenous-peoples-2019
Landback. (2024, August 10). Landback Manifesto. Retrieved from Landback: https://landback.org/manifesto/
Stoller-Conrad, J. (2015, September 1). Why Did Western Europe Dominate the Globe? Retrieved from Caltech: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/why-did-western-europe-dominate-globe-47696
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