Genocide and coloniality

In my talks about the importance of the genocide and its connectivity around the globe (yes it is an existential issue for all humanity) now averaging three talks a day, I am very frequently asked about the future. To answer pragmatically and logically requires a sober assessment of our current situation and the variables that could help or hinder a positive change towards a sustainable future. You do not have to be a researcher to realize that our species is in deep trouble. Even casual observers of our human condition can see and feel global climate change, raging wars, accelerating genocides, the destruction of our environment, invasive species, and much more. Further, even common people realize that the way we have been going (rampant capitalism, autocracies, racism, coloniality and colonialism) is not sustainable and it is critical to change direction. Even an isolated and uneducated person living in one of the thousands of metropolitan areas can intuitively understand what they are up against. They see prices of everything rising including housing, can see and feel changing climates, can see catastrophe of neighbors (e.g. genocide in Gaza, hurricanes, climate change, fires etc). 

Tens of millions of people are “climate refugees” fleeing areas no longer habitable while tens of millions of others are “political refugees” fleeing wars. Inequality is at an all-time high. The richest 1% now manage 50% of global wealth. The meetings of conference of parties (COP) for 29 years for climate change produces more blah blah blah while our planet is in critical condition. Bandaids do not help a patient with arterial bleeding. The COP meeting at capitals of states like the UAE and Azerbaijan and chaired by oil industry chiefs is like holding conventions to stop rape led by rapists or to stop piracy chaired by pirates. Western hypocrisy gone viral as makers of war and genocide appoint themselves as brokers of “peace” (read pacification of indigenous people) and guardians of a world order that clearly is functioning only to push us like lemmings off a cliff. You are excused if you get depressed about this bleak picture of our world. 29 COP meetings on climate change failed to achieve even their own inadequate targets and 17 COP meetings on biodiversity failed to put even a slow down on the loss of global biodiversity. Half the world coral reef systems are already gone and there is now more plastics in our oceans than there are fish. We all should be alarmed at what we scientists have been warning about for decades and now is coming at an accelerated pace; see for example this though this does not cover colonial and military impact, see for example our study on Israel’s war people of Palestine and its impact. The reasons for this bleak state of the world are obvious and revolve around the short-term interests of some members (99%) of people and of all the other millions of species that inhabit our planet. In short it is unfettered greed! Of course, this greed existed throughout our human history (as is opposition to it). Yet, the scale of damage and the stakes have never been so much higher than they are now as everyone now realizes. Collective action by common people is working to address some of this including more reliance on clean energy, reducing waste etc. Yet, the elites empowered by coloniality (consumerism and unfettered capitalism and militarism that benefit few) march on largely unhindered. In fact, they seem to get their way as evidenced by Trump and Netanyahu and their like-minded global genocidal companions. 

As Farhana Sultana noted that for us to decolonize global systems is a large undertaking because “coloniality maintains the matrix of power established during active colonization through contemporary institutional, financial, and geopolitical world orders, and also through knowledge systems” (her chapter in the book “Not too late: Changing the climate story from despair to possibility”). I would add to that is that coloniality also ensures support of active colonization as is being done in Palestine and Western Sahara as well as support for subjugation of the masses and of racism evident o the global north as pertaining to people of the global south. But this decade is critical and people living now must rise-up. Martin Luther King Jr wrote in his letter from Birmingham jail: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in the inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever effects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This has never been truer than today. The urgency of action and our woven destiny beckons us all to work together. At stake is nothing less than our humanity and civilization and the only home we know: planet earth.