E C O L O G I C A L R E P A R AT I O N S
CHEAD Decolonizing Decarbonization Zine
OUT in December 2022
(Excerpt)
‘As an accidental historian of science and postcolonialism[1]I want to pass on a very important message for the decolonizing of decarbonization: Euro-centric imperialism, land appropriation, ecological enslavement of African people and dominion, abuse and genocide of indigenous people are historically entangled and directly linked to current levels of forestation in the Global South and to levels of carbon in the atmosphere today. The problem of (de) forestation and (de) carbonisation is not one of individual countries, as borders are laid out today. It is the response-ability of oppressor societies to offer respectful reparations for these ecological histories, as part of decarbonisation.
[1] With a background in Fine Arts, I was awarded a AHRC scholarship in 2014 to undertake a collaborative doctoral award with Birkbeck, University of London and the Royal Society to study visual cultures and histories of expeditionary science to the tropics in the twentieth century, coming a marginal and oftentimes unwilling historian of -Western- science.