1st Edition

Confronting Climate Coloniality Decolonizing Pathways for Climate Justice

Edited By Farhana Sultana Copyright 2025
240 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

240 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

240 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This timely and urgent collection brings together cutting-edge interdisciplinary scholarship and ideas from around the world to present critical examinations of climate coloniality. Confronting Climate Coloniality exposes how legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism co-produce and exacerbate the climate crisis, create disproportionate impacts on those who contributed the least to... Read more

 

List of Figures

List of Contributors

Preface

 

1.     Urgency, Complexities, and Strategies to Confront Climate Coloniality and Decolonize Pathways for Climate Justice
Farhana Sultana

 

PART I:    CONFRONTING AND DECOLONIZING CLIMATE GOVERNANCE

 

2.     The Coloniality of Climate Apartheid: Excising Colonial Legacies in Climate Development and Governance
Joshua Long

3.     The De/Coloniality of Global Climate Governance and Indigenous Politics within the UNFCCC
Jamie Haverkamp

4.     State Power and Capital in the Climate Crisis: A Theory of Fossil Imperialism
Bernardo Jurema and Elias König

 

PART II:   CONFRONTING AND DECOLONIZING CLIMATE FRAMINGS AND POLICIES

 

5.     The Politics of “Heaviness” in Climate Emergency
Diren Valayden

6.     Buying the Dead, Burying the Poor: Climate Change and Pastoral Drought Coping Strategies in East Africa
Bilal Butt

7.     Towards an African Epistemic Site for Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Action
Aby L. Sène

8.     AlterNatives to Blue Carbon Coloniality: An ʻŌiwi Perspective on Redirecting Funding to Indigenous Stewardship
Andrew Kalani Carlson

PART III: CONFRONTING AND DECOLONIZING CLIMATE RESPONSES AND PRAXIS

 

9.     Performative Environmentalism and the Everyday Legitimization of Climate Coloniality
Manisha Anantharaman

10.  Fuera SpaceX: Resisting Climate Coloniality via Terra Nullius within Contested Boca Chica State Park
Danielle Zoe Rivera and Eliza Breder

11.  Antiblackness in Flood Risk in Hull: The Afterlife of Colonialism
Michael Lomotey

12.  Crises, Coloniality, and Energy Transformations in Puerto Rico
Laura Kuhl, Marla Perez-Lugo, Carlos Arriaga Serrano, Cecilio Ortiz-Garcia, Ryan Ellis, and Jennie C. Stephens

13.  Afterword
Mimi Sheller

 

Index

 

 

 

 

Biography

Farhana Sultana, PhD, is Professor of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University, USA and Visiting Faculty Fellow at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, Independent University, Bangladesh. She is an interdisciplinary feminist political ecologist researching the entanglements of climate justice, water governance, international development, and anti-colonial politics.

Confronting Climate Coloniality: Decolonizing Pathways for Climate Justice, edited by Farhana Sultana, is essential reading for finding just decolonising pathways for addressing climate colonialism. The contributions take us to the roots of climate change beginning with colonialism , addressing the continued colonisations in new forms of racism, capitalist patriarchy, and new forms of climate imperialism and  enclosures of the commons. They also show the path of solidarity, community and care which are paths of decolonising power & knowledge.”

 

Vandana Shiva, Founder, Navdanya, India, and recipient of the Right Livelihood Award

 

Confronting Climate Coloniality is an invaluable tool for educators, students and organizers seeking a deeper understanding of the myriad ways that ecological crises intersect with imperialism and racial capitalism. A vital contribution to the literature of climate justice.”

 

Naomi Klein, co-director of University of British Columbia’s Centre For Climate Justice

 

"Confronting Climate Coloniality: Decolonizing Pathways for Climate Justice  is an indispensable addition to the fast-growing literature on the many and varied connections between colonialism and the current planetary crisis."

 

Amitav Ghosh, author of The Nutmeg’s Curse and The Great Derangement

 

"Here is a book of the moment, boldly confronting coloniality of climate as an existential problem and deploying decoloniality as a necessity for its mitigation."

 

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Chair in Epistemologies of the Global South, University of Bayreuth, Germany

 

“There is enormous injustice in climate change. Those who have contributed the least will suffer the most. Confronting Climate Coloniality: Decolonizing Pathways for Climate Justice collects many  courageous examples of powerful resistance to such injustice coming from the majorities of the world, BIPOC populations fighting the coloniality of power and the coloniality of knowledge. It is an optimistic book in these times of despondency.”

 

Joan Martínez-Alier, Emeritus Professor, ICTA-Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and recipient of the Balzan prize 2020 and Holberg prize 2023

 

“This powerful collection of essays challenges mainstream narratives on climate change and makes an urgent case for radical climate justice. Drawing together material from various global locations, Confronting Climate Coloniality: Decolonizing Pathways for Climate Justice will be necessary reading for all those interested in equitable solutions to the looming climate catastrophe that acknowledge the historic role of colonialism in the present unequal distribution of its costs.”

 

Gurminder K Bhambra, co-author of Colonialism and Modern Social Theory