Share this on social media
Colonialism: why leading climate scientists have finally acknowledged its link with climate change
(The Conversation, 22 Apr 2022) The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)‘s sixth and latest report on the impact of global warming on our planet, published earlier this month, reiterates many of its predecessors’ warnings: chiefly that climate change threatens global disaster if we do not act to avert it. Yet it contains one key difference. For the first time in the institution’s history, the IPCC has included the term “colonialism” in its report’s summary.
Colonialism, the report asserts, has exacerbated the effects of climate change. In particular, historic and ongoing forms of colonialism have helped to increase the vulnerability of specific people and places to the effects of climate change.
The IPCC has been producing scientific reports on climate change since 1990. But in its more than 30 years of analysis, it has never yet discussed the connections between climate change and colonialism: until now.
The addition of one new term to the IPCC’s lexicon might not seem significant. But colonialism is a deeply complex word. Referring to the practice of acquiring full or partial control over another group’s territory, it can include the occupation of that land by settlers as well as the economic exploitation of land to benefit the colonising group.
In Australia, where I come from, British colonists invaded Aboriginal people’s land in the late 18th century and have since worked to establish a permanent settlement there. This was not a peaceful process. It involved violent acts of dispossession including widespread massacres of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the forced removal of those people from their land, and the forced separation of children from their families.
The Conversation, 22 Apr 2022: Colonialism: why leading climate scientists have finally acknowledged its link with climate change
