On the Eve of an International Fossil Fuels Conference, Afro-Decendants Ask How Black Lives Can Matter Without Acknowledging Their Existence

Source: Black Agenda Report

Afro-descendant organizers are already being erased from a fossil fuels conference before it starts.

This week the Colombian and Dutch governments will host the First International Conference to Phase Out Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia. The official goal of the conference, in part, is to “initiate a concrete process through which a coalition of committed countries, subnational governments, and relevant stakeholders can identify and advance enabling pathways to implement a progressive transition away from fossil fuels creating sustainable societies and economies.” This in itself is a Sisyphean task, made even more difficult due to the fact that the world’s premier petro-state, the United States, will not be in attendance (they weren’t even invited), nor other nation states whose economies are coupled with the extraction, proliferation, and emission of fossil fuels. Nonetheless, the conference comes at a time when the failures and inadequacies of the United Nations’ Conference of Parties (COP) process are more ubiquitous and elucidated than ever with 30 years of global climate summits, and all the money spent to put them on and travel to them, failing to ratify an international treaty to rapidly reduce planet heating emissions and transition global energy systems and economies away from fossil fuels.

If anything, since the most recent global climate summit, COP 30, was held in Belem, Brazil, the world has witnessed increased emissions in concert with increased fossil fuel imperialism at the behest of the United States including the recent war of chosen aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran, where oil was specifically weaponized as part of the ecocidal machinations of the U.S. military , the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro, as part of an attempted resource grab of the nation’s fossil fuel deposits, and the siege against the Revolutionary Republic of Cuba, where the denial of oil is being weaponized to prevent the nation from providing basic and critical humanitarian services to its citizens. An alternative to the United Nations’ approach to a just and rapid transition from fossil fueled energy and economies is warranted as part of a series of requisite interventions that nation states, financial institutions, and even “leading” Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have been unwilling to make or who are simply not fit to advance for myriad reasons ranging from elite capture to outright complicity with racial capitalism and its preferred fuel source.

The idea of a Just Transition is already dominating the lexicon associated with the conference, which is encouraging. Additionally, many of the more progressive and forward thinking CSOs have also indicated and demonstrated a willingness to advance more discussions on the roles of militarism and ecological imperialism in the fossil fuel proliferation equation. And, more encouraging still, some of these same CSOs are showing they understand the need to build off the language contained in the COP 30 People’s Summit Declaration, which includes references to the lasting impacts of colonization and the need for oppressed and colonized people to lead any and all just transition from fossil fuels. As Grassroots Global Justice (GGJ) notes in their Just Transition Primer, “Without social justice, an energy transition will only be a means for greening the capitalist status quo. In order to be just, a transition must heal and repair the historic damages perpetrated through the wholesale plunder of colonised territories and peoples.” GGJ adds, “Colonialism, genocide, enslavement, and imperialism are crimes against humanity that must be redressed through reparations and various forms of restitution.”

While the veracious assertion that any Just Transition from fossil fuel energy and fossil fueled economies must also recognize the lasting impacts of colonization has been more embraced by the global climate community over the years, the who in this embrace are inconsistent and incomplete. Indigenous people, with warrant, enjoy little to no resistance from white/European-dominated climate spaces/institutions when it comes to the discussions on the lasting impacts of colonization, land theft, and genocide. However, when these same discussions are advanced by Afro-descendant peoples, the results are much different - if the discussions are even able to happen in the first place. Unfortunately, we are already witnessing similar trends on the eve of the First International Conference to Phase Out Fossil Fuels where the narratives and even the mention of Afro-descendant people are more seldom than Black NASCAR race car drivers, which surfaces ubiquitous contradictions that must be addressed if the conference is to have a modicum of success and not yield the same failures to center Afro-descendant peoples as observed during and following COP 30.

We are not off to an auspicious commencement.

One of, if not the first U.S.-based articles written about the Santa Marta conference was by the media outlet Drilled, who identifies as a “global multimedia reporting project focused on climate accountability.” This is a very nice and noble sentiment as the bourgeois press rarely focuses on climate accountability, nor the people most impacted by the climate crisis. But the question is did Drilled deliver on reporting climate accountability, or did the outlet continue the same trends we consistently observe when it comes to Afro-descendant peoples - that is invisibilization, tokenization, or a combination of both. In their piece entitled, What to Expect at the Santa Marta Conference, Drilled journalist Nina Lakhani writes, “ …there is some skepticism about the legitimacy and potential of the Santa Marta conference. Still some of the best and brightest climate justice experts and leaders are optimistic that Santa Marta is a historic first step towards meaningful climate action..” Again, we come to the question of who as it pertains to “best and brightest climate justice experts and leaders.” Lakhani actually names some of them noting, “The high level talks…will bring together ministers and civil society representatives to drill down on the solutions and pathways proposed through written submissions and refined through virtual dialogues and summits…” She continues, “…a broad spectrum of experts ranging from biodiversity and climate scientists, medical and human health experts to other knowledge holders including Indigenous peoples, peasant farmers, youth groups, gender and human rights experts, private sector and workers, subnational governments and parliamentarians."

Lakhani’s list of “experts” is a bigger black out than the one that occurred in New York City in 1977. And while Lakhani’s omission of the presence and leadership of Afro-descendant at the Santa Marta conference, even though it’s being held in a nation that is, by some estimates, 30% Black/Afro-descendant, and currently the only nation in South America with a Black woman Vice President, Francia Marquez, is curious, it’s neither surprising or uncommon. Yet, paradoxically, Lakhani may have done a great service to the Afro-descendant delegation who will be on the ground in Santa Marta as her omission of our presence pre-emptively provides a metric that will inform the success or failures of the Santa Marta conference while also providing opportunities to elucidate the aforementioned ubiquitous contradictions.

First, the contradictions. It’s not lost on Afro-descendant peoples that the co-host of the Santa Marta Conference is the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The fact that the nation still refers to itself as a kingdom instantly triggers massive contradictions - for while the Netherlands is one of the smallest nations, land mass wise, of the European Union nations, its “kingdom” extends beyond Europe and into the Caribbean and portions of the pacific?? It’s also a nation that still very much benefits from pillage of lands, bodies, and natural resources via colonization and imperialism. Not to mention, the East India Dutch Trading company, the very first publicly traded corporation, was a catalyst for global racial capitalism that exacerbates the climate crisis through an economic system that is nourished by the profligate extraction, trading, use, and emissions of fossil fuels. The Dutch played a leading role in the processes of institutionalized colonization that fostered the conditions we observe today.

As GGJ reminds us, “Industrialising countries and regions pushed other regions, many of which they controlled as colonies, into providing raw materials and people, and buying their manufactured goods.” They further note, “In this way global flows of commodities began to emerge. Natural resources (and enslaved human beings) were extracted especially from the countries now called the global South, and transferred to the global North to further enrich wealthy people there.,” and conclude, “Patriarchal and white supremacist ideologies, together with ideas of the so-called invisible hand of the market and the primacy of private property, provided an ideological justification for this plunder. The distribution of wealth and power globally today is a result of this historical injustice and violence.”

Is it appropriate for a nation that still benefits from colonization and the unpaid debts of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, which, in large part, form the foundation and impetus of fossil fuel extraction and proliferation, as well as fossil fueled economies, to co-host a conference about phasing out fossil fuels and fossil fueled economies - can any nation that still benefits from these systems be viewed as trusted partners in dismantling racial capitalism and the racial capitalocene (aka climate change)? This question becomes even more salient when considering the recent vote on a resolution at the United Nation on the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and characterizing it as a crime against humanity.

As Jacqueline Luqman wrote last week after the United States, the Zionist Ethnostate of Israel, and Argentina voted against the resolution and the United Kingdom and all 27 European Union members abstained, “This bloc of opposition represents not only the former colonizing nations that participated in the chattel slave system in some way, but also their allies who benefited from the wealth those colonizing nations amassed from that inhumane institution in the past and continue to do so today.” This much is true, but it’s what Luqman adds that is particularly germane to the forthcoming Santa Marta conference and the already documented invisibilization of Afro-descendant peoples, “Their opposition to the resolution reflects the Pan-European, white supremacist, Western-primacy attitudes that gave rise to slavery and the immense wealth and power these nations wielded to dominate the world in the first place, and which they are still trying to protect.” The omission of Afro-descendants in any discussion about a Just Transition from fossil fuels and fossil fueled economies is an extension and continuation of the Pan-European, white “supremacy” ideology that Luqman names, which is to also say that it’s an extension of colonialism and ecological imperialism. If this attitude, impediment, and ideology is not phased out of spaces that purport to address and confront the impacts of fossil fuels, any and all attempts to phase out fossil fuels will be bereft of efficacy and a null set of specious and insouciant solutions.

Ensuring Afro-descendant peoples are humanized and simply seen as people who exist may seem like an elementary task, but as the U.S., Israel, Argentina, and the 27 member EU bloc just demonstrated this is not the case. Luqman characterizes this willful inability to simply view Afro-descendants and all African people adroitly, “This is a morally bankrupt, cynical, legalistic deflection from confronting the basic human rights of African people that their ancestors ignored to profit from trading in human flesh. The institutions in these nations —including colleges, churches, and corporations—profited richly and continue to compound wealth and power from the legacy of the profits of slavery, colonialism, and the legal frameworks created to maintain the economic imbalance of those systems…” One set of those corporations is certainly the corporate fossil fuel cartels, Royal Dutch Shell, now a British company, being one of the largest in the world.

As it pertains to opportunities, the Afro-descendant coalition, which is being co-lead by the Black Alliance for Peace and The Chisholm Legacy Project and representing 10 nations including Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the United States are planning on lifting up the myriad contradictions as part of a concerted process to frame any Just Transition from fossil fuels as an issue of people(s)-centered human rights. We believe this will be key in drawing clear and irrefutable connections between fossil fuels, colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade and asseting a narrative that these continuing harms must be repaired with real solutions that don’t replicate the conditions, attitudes, ideologies, and practices that contine the dehumanization and invizibilization of Afro-descendant peoples.

Renowned Black scholar and Marxist, Cedric Robinson once said,, “...for the realization of theory we require new history….Black radical theory was not made by choice but dictated by historical inheritance.” Afro-descendants will take on the task of advancing this new history by building off the idea that while a transition is inevitable justice is not. Justice begins by affirming our existence, our peoplehood, and our self determination as part of any fossil phase out without apology and with unapologetic vigor. White “supremacy,” like climate change, in part, gets its power from its ability to render itself invisible, while invisibilizing those who aim to confront and dismantle it. That can’t be allowed to happen in Santa Marta where Afro-descendants intend to make a collective case that Black lives cannot be seen to matter if they aren’t even seen, and without Afro-descendant leadership and agency we may emerge with just-A-transition, which is not the same thing as a Just Transition.

Next week we will report more on the outcomes of these interventions.

No Compromise

No Retreat

Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.