This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
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It’s time to decolonise our multilateral system for climate justice
By: []
Date: 2021-12
“We are fighting for a future that is not riddled with anxiety and fear that another Haiyan might come anytime”, Marinel Ubaido, a survivor of super typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in November 2013, said at the final panel of COP26 in Glasgow last month. “We do not deserve to live in fear. We deserve a hopeful future. We demand urgent action.”
Ubaido, along with the majority of those who have contributed the least to the climate crisis but suffer the most, was ultimately ignored by the wealthiest countries who dictated the parameters of the conference.
The power imbalance at the root of COP26’s failures could be seen in the mundane practicalities of attending the conference itself. Many delegates from the countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis were not even present at the conference. Small island states stressed that without vaccination, their delegations could not attend. Whilst those on the frontlines of the crisis were excluded, at least 503 fossil fuel lobbyists for some of the world's biggest polluting oil and gas giants were granted access to the negotiations.
Other challenges included a lack of available COVID-testing facilities; restrictions on accessing the inner sanctums of the negotiation space; limited civil society observer spaces to scrutinize emerging text; and an absence of corridor influencing, where activists used to have some opportunity to review potential policy proposals. COVID safety measures were a useful proxy for narrowing the decision-making table and invizibilising the process.
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These dynamics didn’t happen by mere coincidence. They were the logical outcome of a multilateral system – which includes institutions like the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund – whose nature is fundamentally colonial. It is governed by a logic of extraction, privatization and racialized exploitation. It curates a knowledge system where categories, metrics and analytics are produced by those in power. As a consequence, colonial ways of seeing and knowing constitute the evidence and analysis that define the solutions, all constructed to support the view that the richest nations at the helm of the multilateral system care and can be entrusted with solving the crisis.
Net-zero fallacies
The coloniality of the multilateral approach to the climate crisis was most evident in the cornerstone of the Glasgow Pact: the proposal to pursue ‘net zero by 2050’ to achieve the 1.5°C goal. Net zero means that instead of actually decreasing carbon emissions, those who can afford to pay can offset them through emissions trading schemes.
Global South negotiators, such as Bolivia’s chief negotiator, Diego Pacheco Balanz, asserted that this net-zero proposal was a false solution to enable a “great escape” from wealthier countries' responsibilities to actually reduce carbon emissions. Some climate justice activists also fiercely resisted the proposal, arguing that the ‘net’ in ‘net zero’ delays and deflects from cutting carbon emissions at source while allowing business as usual to flourish through fossil fuels and industrial agriculture. They have also claimed that it could lead to land grabs that dispossess farmers, rural and indigenous communities.
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