Postcolonial lessons and migration from climate change: ongoing injustice and hope

Abstract

AbstractThe 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that the ongoing impacts of colonisation compromise the ability of many peoples to adapt to the effects of climate change. The interaction between climate justice and postcolonial justice raises many important questions about the interconnectedness and common causes of coloniality and anthropogenic climate change. We recognise a dynamic interaction, and that it is a feature of necropolitics causing both coloniality and anthropogenic climate change. Through grounded experience of cultural traditions in Pacific Islands countries (PICs), and use of transdisciplinary anticipatory systems and resilience theories, we proffer conceptual models to show how IPCC scenarios can be used to assist both climate justice and postcolonial justice, but also to forewarn how IPCC scenarios can also be used to deepen injustice. There are strident expressions within PICs to proactively engage in restorative climate justice. Our conceptual models summarise this as an emerging multi-scalar process, which we term tri-SSM. We argue tri-SSM is a hopeful regenerative kernel empowering vulnerable communities, including their proactive use of migration.