When the Western powers are framing themselves as “leaders” in the fight against global warming, they must face up to the aftermath of their colonial past: there’s no justice on environment without justice on history and human rights.
Hundreds of years ago, across continents, colonialists overused, polluted and deforested the entire landscapes. They left, but the grave consequences of their disruptive exploitation remain a curse to the life and prosperity of local people. In blind pursuit of profit, colonialists abandoned time-tested and locally rooted agricultural traditions and replaced them with arbitrary monoculture of cash crops for export. Today, descendants of the colonized people inhabit poorer land that shows the scars of soil degradation, erosion and exhaustion, making them even more vulnerable to climate change. In the Caribbean islands, for example, the tree-bare terrains left by plantation economies have become ideal incubators for mosquitoes carrying malaria and yellow fever.
The disparity between polluters and victims of environmental consequences does not disappear following the doom of colonialism. Western countries like France, Germany, the UK and others often outsource the most carbon intensive industries elsewhere, industrializing themselves while exporting pollution to others. As a result, developing countries are feeding Western demand at their own expense. Moreover, local people are extremely vulnerable to human rights abuses of all-mighty multinational corporations. The term “blood coal” in Colombia referring its coal supply to Germany originates from severe human rights abuses and contract killing carried out by paramilitaries on behalf of international coal suppliers.
That’s why caution is necessary when Western governments and politicians are boasting themselves for the credit of “sustainable and competitive” green policies at home, especially when many of those solutions again involve displacement of indigenous populations from their lands. When some British politician asked world leaders to “grow up,” he should be reminded of his own country’s historical and present damage to developing countries. It is a persistence of injustice to ask former colonies to pay the heaviest price for a crisis disproportionately caused by the colonizers.
In fact, this vicious circle of injustice may not be a deadlock. Scholars have proposed methods such as paying poorer countries carbon debts, together with initiatives of various kinds of developmental projects and donations. However, the Achilles’ heel is still the true attitude of Western governments: whether or not they acknowledge the mistake of their colonial past and learn to value lives and livelihoods of the developing world as much as they value their own.
At least, Western powers need to “look down” and behold the social, economic and ecological struggles of developing nations derived from past injustices. Unfortunately, given the shameful gap of medication and vaccination between developed and developing countries revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic, they seem to have a long way to go.
The author is a commentator on international affairs, writing regularly for Global Times, CGTN, China Daily, etc. He can be reached at xinping604@gmail.com
