Race and Climate; Compounding Injustices

Event summary by Bridget Stuart

During this event, we had three brilliant and distinguished women discuss the complex intersection of race and climate.
 
Elizabeth Yeampierre is an attorney and climate justice activist leader born and raised in New York, with Puerto Rican heritage and African and Indigenous ancestry. She is the Executive Director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest community-led organisation. In her speech, she imparted a resonant message: we cannot tackle climate change and race as separate issues.
 
The lives of non-white communities around the world are disproportionally impacted by pollution, toxic air, extreme weather events, which—when compounded with poorer healthcare and less support from organisational bodies—makes them increasingly vulnerable to the negative effects of climate breakdown. And  yet, Elizabeth posed the stark question, “Why do people care more about polar bears than people of colour?"
 
The roots of the climate activism can be found in the social justice movement, and a just transition must be led by front-line communities, striving for people-centred solutions towards a resilient, regenerative and equal society.
 
Dr Ariadne Collins is a lecturer in International Relations at St Andrews University, and her work lies in market-based conservation and post-colonial development. She focused on the countries of Guyana and Surinam, and how their 500 years of colonial histories need to be recognised as structural conditions in order for conservation interventions to be effective. Detailing the histories of both nations, Ariadne critiqued the UN-led REDD+ programme, highlighting how the programme side-steps the colonial past.
  
Archana Soreng is an environmental activist and UN Youth Advisor on Climate Change, who belongs to the Khadia Tribe in Sundergarh, India. She started off by talking about how the colonial, extractivist, developmental worldview has been demeaning and destroying indigenous people and their ways of life for centuries. These indigenous communities are the least responsible for the climate crisis, yet it is these people who are both disproportionately suffering from the negative effects of climate change and who are on the front-line of climate justice activism and action.
 
Archana made the point that the traditional expertise and first-hand perspective of indigenous people is extremely valuable in the fight against climate change. These marginalised voices must be included and listened to, if we are to create real change.
   
Here are some take away points from the Q+A:

• People of colour on the frontlines of climate justice activism need to be helped and supported, without being supplanted. This can be achieved by forming just relationships.
• People in the ‘Global North’, who want to be ‘allies’ must think about the far-reaching consequences of our actions, try to change the way we behave and try to influence policies which affect countries in the ‘Global South’.
• To fully understand and fight injustice, we cannot focus on a single issue in isolation. Instead, we must recognise the web of interconnected systemic problems and extend our action to other systems of oppression. This requires shared leadership and solutions from collective action.