Unraveling the colonialities of climate change and action

Abstract

In this introduction to the special section on the Colonialities of climate change and action we provide a conceptual mapping that can help us engage critically with existing approaches to thinking and acting in the context of climate change. We carry out this exercise inspired by Latin American decolonial and political ecology scholarship, as well as by Farhana Sultana's notion of climate coloniality. In an effort to pluralize our understanding of climate coloniality, the articles we present in the special section reflect the diversity and interconnectedness of theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and activists' traditions on several continents. Beyond these contributions, we make a call to further pluralize our understanding of the colonialities of climate change and action, taking into consideration different intellectual strands of postcolonial thought, subaltern studies, and decolonization, including those that engage critically with them.

Keywords

• climate change
• climate coloniality
• green colonialism
• extractivism
• Latin American political ecology