By Lorena Piedrahita-Lopez
‘Climate Coloniality’ was coined by Farhana Sultana by building off Anibal Quijano’s concept of ‘Coloniality’ – the idea that even though colonialism has ‘officially ended’, its effects continue to shape contemporary society. Coloniality relies on racialised hierarchies of power developed under colonialism, which values proximity to European identity. Climate coloniality looks at another dimension of how colonialism shapes global power dynamics – the climate crisis. Farhana Sultana states in “The Unbearable Heaviness of Climate Coloniality” that the impacts of the climate crisis are not apolitical but rather that they result from colonialism, which makes racialised populations disproportionately vulnerable. Referencing Kyle Whyte’s article ‘Indigenous Climate Change Studies’, the change is not a ‘natural’ phenomenon but a consequence of the actions of specific groups of humans through processes of extraction, dispossession, hyper-consumption and settlement. Consequently, various groups have varying experiences and coping strategies to deal with radically different vulnerability levels.
Climate coloniality can present itself as green colonialism or fossil fuel capitalism. However, the outcomes are always domination and displacement. Increased climate-induced disasters are one expression of ‘climate coloniality’ where countries that contribute lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions are at the highest risk of climate damage. Gurminder K. Bhambra and Peter Newell, in “More than a metaphor”, describe how formerly colonising countries produce over 90% of excess emissions – yet these nations are less exposed to increasing catastrophic events. The notion of climate coloniality points to the climate crisis as a structural problem.
Historical Background
The Little Ice Age between the 16th and 17th centuries was a period of unusually cold winters across Europe, alongside other forms of extreme weather across the globe. While there is no singular theory about why this occurred, the ‘Great Dying’ is now considered a large contributor, as Alexander Koch, Chris Brierley, Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis suggest. 1492 saw the arrival of colonial forces to the Americas, which led to a decline in Indigenous populations – by 1600, there was an estimated population loss of 90%. These authors connect the mass death to significant changes in the earth’s atmosphere. For instance, Indigenous depopulation meant land was no longer used for agriculture, leading to increased terrestrial carbon uptake through reforestation. This elevated absorption of carbon dioxide into rising levels of vegetation reduced atmospheric carbon dioxide levels – the impacts of this were so substantial that a global cooling effect was produced, resulting in colder winters, according to Geoffrey Parker in his book, “Global Crisis.”
It is important to draw connections between the climate crisis and its relations to coloniality by formally introducing the term ‘colonialism’ into conversations around climate change to understand how this phenomenon has been brought about today. Colonialism was cast as a form of ‘development’ as claimed by Kathryn Yussoff in “A Billion Black Anthropocene or None” – a form of development that required the dispossession of land for extractive practices, which allowed colonial forces to drain the colonies of their natural resources. In turn, these resources were extracted for industrialisation in the colonial metropoles. As noted by Karl Marx in ‘Capital’, it was through the accumulation of these resources in colonial expansion that capitalism in Europe could grow as global markets were produced. Colonial forces were willing to commit environmental destruction, with Kyle Whyte noting some examples: deforestation, amplified soil use and terraforming, pollution and more.
This emerges due to the different relationship to nature to that of Indigenous peoples – Kyle Whyte notes that within the ‘West’, a hierarchy has been erected that places humans as superior as they’re conceptualised as the peak of evolution, with nature at the bottom. Indigenous knowledge systems instead emphasise a reciprocal relationship between humans and nature – for instance, viewing plants as teaching humans how to live. However, from a hierarchical ‘Western’ perspective, nature is a resource humans exploit for profit. This rhetoric remains prevalent today, as Gurminder K. Bhambra and Peter Newell pointed out regarding initiatives for supporting the ‘Global North’ through the climate crisis. For example, decarbonisation initiatives like electric vehicles require cobalt and lithium mining in Africa and Latin America – to this day, ‘Western’ development involves extracting Global South resources.
Glacial Melting and Climate Coloniality Today – A Modern Case Study
Climate coloniality can be illustrated through how climate disasters are distributed globally – specifically by studying how countries that contribute the least to the climate crisis experience the most intense impacts.
Observing glacial melting is a valuable way to understand climate coloniality as it visually represents a changing environment. The Andes is one possible case study as there has been a significant disappearance of tropical glaciers in the region – a phenomenon observable since the 1970s and has been increasing ever since. However, countries in the Andes region contribute little to greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, despite producing less than 0.4% of the world’s emissions, Peru is ranked at high risk from climate damages, such as glacial lake outbursts, rockslides, avalanches and glacial runoff, which pose threats to biodiversity but also to Indigenous communities surrounding tropical glaciers.
As of May 2024, Venezuela is the first Andean country to lose all its tropical glaciers, with its final glacier, ‘Humboldt’, shrunk to the point where scientists have re-classified it as an ‘ice field’ – a result of increasingly warming temperatures in the Andes by up to 4 degrees from the average. However, Venezuela is not a unique situation. Instead, this predicts what will come next with other countries in the Andes, most notably Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, likely to follow the same pattern of glacial retreating.
Sources
Bhambra, Gurminder K., and Peter Newell. 2022. “More than a Metaphor: ‘Climate Colonialism’ in Perspective.” Global Social Challenges Journal 2 (2): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1332/eiem6688.
Camacho, Francisco. 2024. “At Least Two Countries Have Lost All Their Glaciers.” Scientific American. May 25, 2024. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/at-least-two-countries-have-lost-all-their-glaciers/.
Collyns, Dan. 2013. “Peru Develops Early Warnings of Melting Glaciers – in Pictures.” The Guardian, April 12, 2013, sec. Global development. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2013/apr/12/peru-warnings-melting-glaciers-in-pictures.
Garay, Jorge. 2023. “Perú Está Entre Los Países Con Mayor Riesgo Por Desbordamiento de Lagos Debido al Cambio Climático.” WIRED. February 8, 2023. https://es.wired.com/articulos/peru-en-riesgo-por-desbordamiento-de-lagos-debido-al-cambio-climatico.
Kaplan, Sarah. 2022a. “A Melting Glacier, an Imperiled City and One Farmer’s Fight for Climate Justice.” Washington Post. August 28, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2022/peru-climate-lawsuit-melting-glacier/.
———. 2022b. “A Melting Glacier, an Imperiled City and One Farmer’s Fight for Climate Justice.” Washington Post. August 28, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2022/peru-climate-lawsuit-melting-glacier/.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Milkweed Editions
Koch, A., Brierley, C., Maslin, M. and Lewis, S.L. (2019). Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492. Quaternary Science Reviews, [online] 207, pp.13–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.12.004.
Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, Samuel Moore, Edward B Aveling, and Ernest Untermann. (1867) 2013. Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics Of World Literature.
Moens, Jonathan. 2020. “Andes Meltdown: New Insights into Rapidly Retreating Glaciers.” Yale E360. January 30, 2020. https://e360.yale.edu/features/andes-meltdown-new-insights-into-rapidly-retreating-glaciers.
Parker, G., (2017). Global crisis: war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth century / Geoffrey Parker. (Abridged and revised edition.)
Quijano, Aníbal. 2007. “COLONIALITY and MODERNITY/RATIONALITY.” Cultural Studies 21 (2-3): 168–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601164353.
Sultana, Farhana. 2022. “The Unbearable Heaviness of Climate Coloniality.” Political Geography 99 (March): 102638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102638.
Vallangi, Neelima. 2024. “Venezuela Loses Its Last Glacier as It Shrinks Down to an Ice Field.” The Guardian, May 8, 2024, sec. Environment. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/venezuela-loses-its-last-glacier-as-it-shrinks-down-to-an-ice-field.
Verbist, Koen, Anil Mishra, Wouter Buytaert, Staycie Domzalski, Patricio Crespo, Raquel Guaita, and Elma Montaña. 2018. The Andean Glacier and Water Atlas : The Impact of Glacier Retreat on Water Resources. Edited by Anil Mishra and Koen Verbist. Paris, France: Unesco ; Arendal, Norway. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322504763_The_Impact_of_Glacier_Retreat_in_the_Andes_International_Multidisciplinary_Network_for_Adaptation_Strategies_-_Background_Papers.
Whyte, Kyle. 2017. “Indigenous Climate Change Studies: Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene.” English Language Notes 55 (1-2): 153–62. https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-55.1-2.153.
Wills, Matthew. 2017. “The Last Glacier of Venezuela.” JSTOR Daily. August 29, 2017. https://daily.jstor.org/the-last-glacier-of-venezuela/.
Yusoff, Kathryn. 2018. A Billion Black Anthropocene or None. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
