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Colonization is the action or process of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area. This has been happening all over the world for the last couple of hundred years but now we are seeing the dire effects this is having within the much larger issue of climate change.
Connecting the issues of colonization with the issues of climate change.
As colonization spread through the world, industrialization grew to parts of the world it wouldn’t have originally. Industrialization contributed to the release of greenhouse gases as well as deforestation which affected the indigenous peoples’ way of life. The climate change is affecting them the most and in the case of the Alaskan people of Savoonga who are now unable to travel north to hunt on the hard ice due to rising temperatures and rising sea levels.
Colonialism still lingers today within Kenya, and the mindsets of Kenyans. You see it within businesses and socially within the youth and every other aspect you can think of. When you talk about climate issues brought by colonialism it is very dense here. Communities, corporations and the public population, still rely on the traditional energy sources brought by the colonialists. This is very apparent when you visit rural areas and this happens due to there being a lack of awareness of cleaner or better alternatives and little to no information on the damage they cause. Moreover, businesses that exploit these weaknesses eg. What happened to the people of Turkana, there is no excuse to exploiting them and their land. This though is increasing Kenyan's role in identifying where their GHG emissions come from and switching to cleaner more affordable and renewable energy.
The role of the colonized and the colonizers in combating climate change and how each side navigate these roles. What does it mean to "decolonize" in support of climate change?
The role of the colonizers (those in power) is to provide a means of retrieving energy without it having a negative effect on the earth eg rising temperatures and deforestation but this is not happening the colonizers are looking into the world through a lens in which they don’t see how this effects native and indigenous peoples. this is something that needs to change, thy need to remove the lens and see how this will impact those who aren’t having their voices heard.
The aim of more developed countries is usually to help in the financing of the projects put in place to combat climate change as well as the help of research and incorporation of the national strategies put in place by themselves and less developed and less economically enabled countries. Whereas for developing countries is to make the national strategies and sticking to them in the sense of changing their policies to incorporate climate change actions. For both is to find a new suitable system in which corporations and countries may gain their wealth and money without the damage to the environment and their economic standing; a boost for both the LEDC’s and MEDC’s.
One factor of decolonizing in terms of climate change is for developing countries to find ways which get rid of the contracts and deals that leave them in shackles to the colonizers that gave some of their land away to corporation's greed. We as nations who have been colonized and as nations that have colonized others need to understand that their indigenous groups are important in the fight against climate change and to combine as one to help healing and allowing them to not only feel important but to also make them a vital part of this fight.
How can we participate in climate action in different contexts?
As activist of climate change all over the world we can educate people from the governments to the indigenous people, we can make it known that what companies are doing all over the world will have an adverse effect on everybody. We can show the government and officials about what they can do to help stop and eventually reverse the process of climate change. To teach the indigenous peoples of their rights and what’s happening in the outside world, and how what’s happening will impact their way of life.
As of right now we can use our platform of social media to spread the message and fight climate change as so many of us are already doing. This gives us a stage in which we can teach others and those younger than us; those who will face the consequences of climate change and will have to make the biggest attempt to fight it. We could also start to reduce our ecological footprint and carbon emissions but trying to live a greener life, recycling more often and using public transport or cycling to reduce carbon in the atmosphere.
This isn’t a problem that we can fix overnight but we will need to work together as a global community to slow down the hazardous effects of climate change that is affecting us currently and the generations that will follow. There is a change that needs to be made and that change starts with us.
“If you want to go fast, go alone... If you want to go far, go together.”
Done by: Mohammed, Aisha, Marlyn and Yasmin
