Climate change lengthens colonialism's long tail

The links between colonialism and climate change were under the microscope during this year’s Craft Lecture.

Welcoming the panellists and other guests, Dean Professor Andre Spicer outlined how the School had taken the difficult decision to drop its association with Sir John Cass in 2021 due to heightened awareness of his involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.

He emphasised that the School and university recognised the need to go beyond rebranding – by fostering socially responsible management practices and addressing social inequality. The annual Craft Lecture and new scholarships for Black students living in Britain were important examples of that, he said.

Malla Pratt, Bayes’ Director for Racial Equity and Inclusion, outlined how the School mapped out that journey – including careful consideration of a name for the new lecture series, which honours Elaine and William Craft.

Born into slavery in the US, they escaped north to campaign against the slave trade in America and Britain.

Malla said: “They took on the challenging conversations of their time and I would like to see this lecture as one of those events where we take on the challenging conversations of our time. The focus of the panel discussion tonight is colonialism and climate change.

“Colonialism involved the extraction of resources and exploitation of people for the benefit of imperial powers. Although there's a global push to combat climate change, it appears that there's a new form of colonialism emerging with the imposition of environmental policies and practices by developed nations on developing countries. Often, they seem to have little or no regard to the rights, property or needs of the local population.”

Several panel members highlighted that many of those former colonies have contributed relatively little to the global build-up of greenhouse gas emissions.

They called for a just transition to a sustainable future. Speakers also highlighted the need to address systemic racism in climate policy.

Colonial attitudes 'shape modern democracy and global decision-making'

Gurminder K Bhambra, Professor of Historical Sociology at the University of Sussex, said modern democracy and capitalism are shaped by colonial attitudes that prevent former imperial powers making the sacrifices needed for a fairer global response to climate change.

“Colonial histories aren't separate to the histories of modern democracy and until we understand that our democracy itself is based on colonial expropriation and colonial extraction, we won't understand why people here will not make a sacrifice so that other people are able to live well. That is the logic of the last five centuries.”

She suggested that while climate change could mean the end of our world, that scenario is one that colonised peoples actually lived through when Europeans arrived.

The panel Chair, Dr Sujata Visaria, an economist and Reader of Finance at Bayes, discussed the historical impact of colonialism on the environment and the persistence of colonial institutions. Her research, which focuses on development and finance, has underlined the power of incentives and information in addressing global problems.

“There might be a temptation to think that colonialism is something from the past while climate change is a very present thing. As Malla explained, colonialism was very much about economic gain, about extracting economic benefit from the colonies for the benefit of the colonisers. That involved changing the nature of production and agriculture – for example, a movement to cash crops that would help the colonisers.

“It also involved new rules about how common property would be managed, how it would be owned, who would have the rights to use it. Evidence suggests that colonialism actually had a direct and pretty large impact on the environment, even at the time. There are reasons to think that colonial powers created institutions that have persisted to this day.”

In Nairobi, she said, colonial-designed water infrastructure, which prioritised supply to the colonial rulers, still affects access to water resources. She also pointed to contemporary examples of colonialism, such as the disparities in infrastructure and disaster relief which the US enforces on Puerto Rico.

MP cautions of need to remember class

Labour MP Clive Lewis, who chaired the Commons environmental audit committee until May, emphasised the link between climate change and class.

“Many of the issues that are confronting the Global South are also confronting working people in this country. One of the jobs for politicians like me is making the link between people in the Global South and my constituents – people whose children sit in a school whose ceiling is collapsing on their heads or who can't get proper cancer treatment or are dealing with price gouging privatised utilities.

“Those corporations were set up to run the empire to extract wealth, and that model now runs our country. And so, in many ways, what's happened in the Global South continues to have implications for us here and vice versa.”

Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins, Senior Campaigner on Global Climate Justice at War on Want and Assistant Professor of Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick, said discussions around reducing emissions and mitigating the impact of climate change could not be divorced from history. This included the disproportionate contribution of western nations to global warming.

War on Want, he said, has long campaigned for a global green New Deal to address climate colonialism and highlighted the relationship between climate change and inequality – including tax, trade and possible debt relief.

He questioned why the international community had accepted a target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees when even that figure would have very serious consequences for island states in the Caribbean and the South Pacific, as well as in Africa and Asia. The impact would disproportionately affect former colonies – and much earlier than in former imperial powers such as Britain.

“I asked myself ‘what is it that is allowing this to happen’? And I couldn't really answer that question without drawing on the work of people like Gurminder and others who have written about the relationship between colonialism and society. It is also, as Clive mentioned, an issue of class and of how resources are so maldistributed that some people have way, way more than they could ever use while most do not have enough to live a dignified life.”

The Panel discussed the new government’s focus on economic growth and a reliance on corporations that they see as and on wealthy individuals armed with expert tax advisers. Even if former imperial powers agreed to pay reparations, some argued, we need system changes to ensure the funding actually improves collective wellbeing.

In making the case for redistribution of wealth from Britain and other former imperial powers, Professor Bhambra said taxes raised on the people of India in 1861 funded the development of British infrastructure and institutions which still generate wealth for the UK today. Taxes, including from the colonies, funded the compensation paid to slave-owners – but not the enslaved – when Britain abolished slavery.

Panellists highlighted the need to engage the public in a conversation about the historical legacy of colonialism and its impact on the UK's wealth and institutions – rather like that undertaken in Germany about the crimes of the Nazis.

The panel agreed on the need for a more comprehensive approach to climate justice that considers the social and historical context of emissions. The rise of populism and extreme wealth inequality have hampered conversations around reparations from the Global North to the Global South, panellists felt. For example, the ‘fund for loss and damage’ established during COP27 in 2022 has so far secured few funding commitments.