MESA Banner
Decolonising Climate Justice – Reflections from Palestine
Abstract
Climate justice has been widely criticised for its limitations in addressing and acknowledging non-western perspectives, meanings and experiences of harm. It has been increasingly scrutinised by academics and scholars, whether in the global South or pertaining to indigenous communities in the global North. In the Middle East, such a critical turn is needed to flag the issues inherent in western conceptualisations of Climate justice, which disregards systematic injustice inherent in settler colonial and post-colonial regimes which have shaped the region as we know it today. Drawing on literature in Latin American engaging with decolonial thought, and with indigenous realities of Climate injustice in the USA, this paper puts forward the proposition that in order to engage and address Climate injustice in the region, colonial and settler colonial legacy and disruption of way of life and meaning needs to be foregrounded. Learning from those experiences, this paper aims to begin a discussion on how to decolonise Climate justice discourses in the Middle East, especially those related to climate change, Climate peacebuilding and green energy. It argues that such understandings of environment disregard colonial disruptions in indigenous modes of life, devaluing of ancestral knowledge and altering of rights and responsibilities of communities in relation to the natural environment and resources. Focusing on the case of Palestine, the paper explores how decolonial approaches can break the mould under which policy and knowledge production has been developed, offering avenues for community-led and produced knowledge and scholarship inspired by grassroots movements working on food sovereignty and water justice.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Palestine
Sub Area
None