Invitation to Educators, Users Guide

Climate Science and Colonialism: An Invitation to Educators

Dear Educators, Welcome to this Project.

The Climate Science and Colonialism Education Project is an initiative of the My Climate Risk Education Working Group. It is intended to help you to help your students by providing tools and resources for them to think critically and ethically about major existential problems and sweeping changes that will impact students throughout their lives. From preparation for new kinds of jobs to recognizing the difference between real solutions and false solutions, from acting for just transitions to working with their communities to make adaptation just and relevant, a new kind of thinking, conceptualizing and acting is called for. We hope that this Project will be of use for high school curricula as well as undergraduate and introductory graduate-level college courses.

Why this initiative?

We currently face a multitude of existential threats, including climate change, which exacerbates all other crises, from mass extinction of species to poverty, hunger, inequality and conflict. For students to understand why the world looks the way it does in the 21st Century, it is, of course, imperative to understand how colonialism has shaped our perceptions and response to the climate crisis. In addition, it is crucial also to explore how climate science itself, from its inception to current-day practices, is inextricably tied to its colonialist origins. The entanglement of climate science with colonialism is the focus of this Project. This teaching and learning resource provides students with a broad historical perspective on the origins of ideas and key concepts that underpin the conceptual structures and practices of science in general and climate science in particular. It illustrates how colonialist practices that are part of our default thinking can be recognized and provides opportunities for students to consider what alternatives might take their place. It suggests an orientation toward the local, wherever ‘local’ might be, in order to make climate knowledge meaningful, actionable and relevant to students everywhere. It is our hope that this approach, along with the twin lenses of climate science and colonialism, will not only provide students with transferrable skills to support critical and creative thinking across the curriculum, but will enable them to liberate their imaginations and inspire actions toward the realization of a better world.

Content, organization, and cross-cutting themes

This project is based on a 2-part webinar series on climate science and colonialism that was organized by the My Climate Risk Education Working Group in October 2023, with the help of the MCR Ateneo de Manila hub and the World Climate Research Programme secretariat. Eight scholars, most from the Global South, delivered seven talks, which have been organized into Modules. The accompanying Users’ Guide provides several suggestions as to how these may be used in a pre-existing course in any discipline, or as the foundation for an independent course.

The project will introduce students to contemporary research into the role of colonialism and coloniality in shaping our understanding of climate change and how the world is responding to it. Alongside videos of the original webinar series, we have included key themes within each talk, introductory questions for students, ideas for student debates and independent research, as well as lists of further reading and resources, (including a glossary of commonly used technical terms and acronyms). We strongly recommend that educators add their own resources that reflect issues and dilemmas that are most relevant locally and encourage students to reflect on ‘their’ climate risk, the challenges their communities are facing, and the steps people are taking locally in response to these.

The materials, broadly speaking, can be categorized as follows.

1. Science and Colonialism through history.

   
   This sets out the wider landscape and includes a talk on world historical factors that shaped climate science; reference is made to a talk on a case study of colonialism in tropical medicine that illustrates some key features.

2. Colonialism and Climate Science in the present day – the transnational scale.

   
   This section includes a discussion of (i) the work of the IPCC and geo-political dimensions that reflect the colonial legacy and (ii) a case study looking at Ocean Science Diplomacy in the Atlantic.

3. Colonialism and Climate Science in the present day – the local scale.

   
   Two talks illustrate the damage that can be caused by ‘expert led’ interventions and highlight how this can be countered by working in decolonial ways. Case studies are taken from South Asia and the Arctic regions of Alaska.

4. Decolonizing Science

   
   - local to global, drawing from a local, situated experience of colonialism and resistance toward a holistic and decolonial epistemological opening up of science.

There are several cross-cutting themes across the seven talks, which can further connect to broader themes beyond the talks themselves, such as just transitions and challenges, agricultural change, cultural ideas on food production, food security and livelihoods, structural and cultural racism in the climate & sustainability sciences, and challenging the assumption that the Global South must go through the same process of development as the Global North. Questions that can be raised more broadly, to which this Project can contribute, include, for example: How did we get to the current situation? How might we deal with the tension between co-existence with the rest of Nature and human needs? What would a sufficiency-based scenario (Yamina’s talk) look like in a local, situated context?

Please see the Users’ Guide for broad learning outcomes, an overview of topics and themes, and ideas and recommendations about implementation.