Untold Climate Stories: Feminist Political Ecology Perspectives on Extractivism, Climate Colonialism and Community Alternatives

Abstract

In this chapter, we explore what is learned when our reflections on the systemic injustices that underpin climate change are woven together through feminist political ecology, with its emphasis on situated knowledges, lived experience and the everyday. Drawing on our research and activism in Kenya, Indonesia and the United Kingdom, we exchange reflections relating to extractivism and its logic of endless growth, corporate enclosure of land and water, erosion of biodiversity and the exploitation of life, enabled through coloniality. Extractivist depletion is what creates myriad forms of climate injustice. Bringing together stories from diverse contexts including communities impacted by mining and oil palm in Indonesia, oil drilling in the United Kingdom and pastoralists in Kenya, we show that while extractivism alters relationships with the land in extraordinarily harmful ways, mainstream climate stories obscure these realities and continue to decentre any sense of root causes. We share our reflections on the consequences that follow, but also show how shining a light on extractivism can reveal the persistence of healthier, reciprocal and replenishing relations with the land, water and creatures.