Genocide, climate injustice, and eco-colonialism in Palestine
Introduction to a new series
I work in climate policy in the United States. I usually love my job, because I have the opportunity to work on so many issues that I care about: climate change is global and intersects with every other axis of oppression, which means our solutions – if we craft them with a real commitment to justice – can be equally intersectional.
But over the past six months, I have been horrified to see the silence from mainstream climate organizations in the U.S. (mostly white-led, like the one I work for) on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, which has killed countless Palestinians (literally; the official reports of over 32,000 are enormous underestimates) and will lead to the death of millions if Israel’s bombardment and engineering of famine and disease persist. And this, on top of the century plus of colonialism and occupation, by Britain and then by Israel backed by the entire western world, all of which has had genocidal intent and impacts, decimating Palestine’s population, dispossessing Palestinians of their homes and freedom, and destroying their environment.
Genocide, climate injustice, and eco-colonialism in Palestine are inextricably linked, so last winter, I wrote a series of posts in collaboration with Stephanie Noren, James Williams, Emily Pinckney, Brittney Miller, and Neiko Alvarado, which we intended to have published in a different space. But after months of trying and failing to find a platform for this writing, I decided, with their permission, to put it out myself. In this series, I’ve looked to the leadership of Palestinian organizations working towards climate justice through organizing, research, policy development, and communications, including Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network, Al Shabaka, Stop the Wall, Jadaliyya, Al Haq, and Decolonize Palestine.
This series will focus on climate mitigation impacts rather than adaptation, simply because that is where my own expertise lies. If you’re new to reading about climate justice, I’ve included a primer (below the mutual aid request) with definitions and explanations of things like mitigation and adaptation, climate justice, and eco-colonialism. Stay tuned for the first post, which I expect to put out sometime this week.
Mutual Aid Request
This newsletter will never be monetized, but I believe that mutual aid is one of the ways we can build community and support the folks who need it the most. If you like my writing, please consider giving; even just a few dollars (or whatever currency you’re paying in) can help.
Ezzideen Shehab is working to evacuate his family from Gaza and needs urgent help. Ezzideen has already lost 72 family members since October 7, 2023, and he is currently trapped in north Gaza with his parents, siblings, and younger brother Mazen.
Please give what you can to help Ezzideen and his loved ones escape genocide.
Climate Justice 101
Definitions for common climate terms
Climate
The term “climate” refers to a long-term weather pattern, usually averaged over thirty years. The difference between “weather” and “climate” is in the time scale: the temperature outside or the rain falling on you right now are weather, while temperature or rainfall trends over decades are climate. This distinction is important because while day-to-day weather is very hard to forecast more than a week or so ahead, overall climate trends are actually far more predictable because they are averaged over time.
Greenhouse gas emissions
Greenhouse gases are gases that trap heat in our atmosphere, raising overall surface temperatures of the earth. There are many different greenhouse gases, including things like water vapor. But when we talk about greenhouse gas emissions, we are referring to the increase in greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane that are coming directly from human activity, usually from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. Greenhouse gas emissions are also sometimes referred to as “carbon emissions” or even just “carbon”.
Climate change
In general usage, climate change refers to the shift in global and regional climates as a result of increased greenhouse gas emissions raising average global temperatures. The impacts are vast, and they will also manifest differently in different areas. The major global impacts are higher temperatures (on average, over time), sea level rise, ocean acidification, and more volatile weather. This last one is the hardest to wrap your head around, because depending on where you are and what the context is, climate change can cause both increased and decreased precipitation at various times, leading to flooding in some places/times and droughts in others.
Clean energy
Clean energy (or renewable energy) refers to things like hydropower, wind energy, and solar energy, where electricity is generated through the energy that is given off naturally by these resources, which usually do not diminish over time. Note that renewable energy is “clean” in the sense that it doesn’t increase greenhouse gas emissions, but it can have other environmental impacts: for instance, hydropower is generated through the construction of dams that destroy ecosystems and often decimate indigenous lands. (There’s also a lot of debate about whether nuclear energy is “clean”.)
How do we think about fighting climate change?
When we talk about fighting climate change, we are actually talking about two things: trying to stop climate change from getting worse, and also trying to adapt to the impacts of climate change that are already happening (both in the sense of what we’ve already experienced, and because greenhouse gases last a long time in the atmosphere, so even if we got to zero global emissions today, we would still see climate impacts for decades).
The first one is known as climate mitigation and is centered around trying to cut human-made (also referred to as “anthropogenic”) greenhouse gas emissions. This can include burning fewer fossil fuels, trying to trap carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere, etc.
The second is known as climate adaptation (or climate resiliency), and includes a vast range of strategies that are very context-dependent to the location we’re talking about. For instance, islands or coastal areas that have to deal with sea level rise might do things like build higher seawalls or move populations further away from coastlines, while desert communities might have to develop water reuse practices to deal with increased drought conditions.
In the climate field, mitigation and adaptation are often talked about separately because they can require different approaches, but this is not always the case, and there are strategies that get at both simultaneously. For example, creating homes that are highly energy efficient, well-insulated, and waterproofed can be a mitigation strategy because it lowers the energy use needed to heat or cool the home, but it is also an adaptation strategy in that it can protect the residents from the impacts of climate change like hotter summers and more volatile storms.
What is climate justice?
Climate change is a global phenomenon that touches every one of us, but the degree to which we are impacted by climate change is not equal. In fact, climate change intersects with every aspect of systemic oppression, causing the most harm to the most marginalized people. Not only that, but the people most impacted by climate change are those with the least responsibility for creating and perpetuating it.
We can easily see this on a global scale. Historically, the countries in the Global North colonized those in the Global South, enslaved their people and extracted their natural resources, and then eventually used that stolen labor and resources to industrialize, which led to an unprecedented increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the 1800s onwards. The Global South, who started industrializing far later and have harmed the climate far less, also have less power and capacity to adapt to the impacts of climate change because of the ongoing impacts of colonialism and western hegemony. But this pattern repeats at every level. Within countries – even those in the Global North – the most vulnerable communities have the lowest greenhouse gas emission burden while still facing the brunt of the impacts.
Climate justice, then, is the idea that fighting climate change must center the most impacted, both to prevent further harm to marginalized people and to equally distribute the benefits of climate adaptation. Climate justice also understands climate action to be inextricable from fighting other systems of oppression including racism, colonialism, capitalism, and much more.
Climate justice movements developed out of environmental justice movements, which began through Black and Indigenous leaders fighting against environmental racism and colonialism (in areas not just limited to climate change). There are also myriad approaches thinking about to how environmental degradation harms the most marginalized, including environmentalism of the poor, eco-socialism, eco-feminism, and more.
The weird other side of climate injustice coin is the way in which people and countries use “environmentalism” to justify colonial exploits. This is known by many names including eco-colonialism or imperialism, green colonialism or imperialism, environmental imperialism, or sometimes as “greenwashing”, but I’ll primarily be referring to it as eco-colonialism.
Some examples of climate eco-colonialism include mining cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo to supply electric vehicle companies, and thus driving genocide, slavery, and child labor of Congolese people. (I plan to write in more detail about eco-colonialism in the DRC in future posts after this first series.) Another example is siting new dams on Indigenous lands to shift fossil fuel energy sources to hydropower, while destroying Indigenous homes and resources and displacing entire Indigenous communities. And of course, I'll have more examples to share specific to Palestine in my next post on this topic.