Kolonialismus und Klimakrise: Die Hinterlassenschaften und Wanderbewegungen des Kolonialismus neu überdenken

This lecture examines the tangled paths that connect the history of colonialism to the climate crisis. It looks at climate inequality at the intersection of colonialism and the postcolonial response to it. It is well established in scholarship that colonial-era resource extraction was linked to the long-term commodification of nature and fossil fuel dependency that lie at the root of our current environmental catastrophes. Postcolonial leaders, in their attempt to redress economic backwardness, which was perceived as a consequence of colonialism, often enforced top-down environmental transformation, thus heightening the risks that locally vulnerable groups were already exposed to. Finally, the lecture looks at the implications of decolonization for large scale population migration and for people's access to mobility, which is central to the climate crisis today.