Climate coloniality and democratic futures: Solidarity, cognitive justice and co-liberation in the climate movement

Abstract

Speaker: Tobias Muller In face of the climate crisis, climate movements are key actors pressuring for a fundamental transformation of politics, economy and society. The scale of the catastrophe that looms, particularly in formerly colonised countries in the Global South, puts into question the state’s capacity to protect its citizens, and thereby to fulfil its central obligation under the social contract. This condition has been called “climate coloniality” (Sultana 2022), under which those facing the worst effects of climate change while having done the least to cause it. Climate coloniality is a central challenge for any designs for democratic futures in the Anthropocene, since models of global and planetary governance and the emphasis on the more-than-human frequently leads to side-lining past and present violences of colonial extractivism. Climate coloniality has become an analytical concept and a political project advanced by groups that seek to shape democratic futures where ecological concerns are not instrumentalised to delay or postpone questions of social, racial and cognitive justice. This paper seeks to trace one such group, the Extinction Rebellion Being the Change Affinity Network (BCAN), where climate activists, ecofeminists and abolitionists are exploring democratic ways of decision making, practical solidarity and world-making that address climate coloniality as an intersectional polycrisis. The contribution traces the different forms of knowledge production that are used in this process, from trauma work, “co-liberation”, emancipatory education to decolonial theory, and how cognitive and epistemic justice is linked to climate and ecological justice. The paper will build on the concept of climate coloniality and refine its analytical focus by centring the question of democracy and political subjectivity. The paper contributes to the debate on more-than-human democratic governances by using the ideas of an emergent grassroots movement to explore pathways to address climate coloniality in conceptions of democratic futures.