(Decolonising) The Road To Paris: From Historical Responsibility to Tunis
Since the Lima Summit ended in a business-as-usual fashion last year, The Delegation has been busy working to make the conditions possible for the decolonisation of Paris later this year and is sending a representative to the World Social Forum underway in Tunisia.
Last month, the international bureaucracy of the IPCC produced, the draft Negotiating Text for Paris, a scandal that resulted in the appointment of a new (acting) Chair for the organisation. and a vision of its future which admitted low participation from developing countries but did not reflect upon why that might be.
The Negotiating Text: Historical Responsibility Research
The draft negotiating text contains text that will be contested in the coming months, critical issues of committing to the non-exploitation of the majority of remaining fossil fuels and the resilient evasion of historical responsibilities remain, ‘up in the air’.
Commenting on the text, Duriana’s Science minister Pradip Yogiki invited scholars to burn the midnight oil to develop the evidence and conceptual basis for historical responsibility.
“In a world where carbon trading regimes are institutionally backed and trees are carbon banks, we need to articulate our positions with high quality science and data, focused on our needs vision and predicament. Its clear that the international NGOs and academic industrial complex are not interested. The data and ecological jurisprudence to support Historical Responsibility is critical at this moment in time.
Ideas and methods of quantifying embodied carbon, and carbon intensity of development have shifted the way we think and see of the problem. I am confident that we can understand and respond better with tools concerning the coloniality of emissions, the global fossil fueled development architecture and subnational emissions inequalities.
Humanities scholars often complain about being sidelined, I ask them to take this problem and grapple with it.”
WSF2015: Engaging the Eurocentric Left Internationale
Speaking to journalists from the Nature-Culture Times late last night at Durianopolis Airport on her way to engage the World Social Forum in Tunisia, Ping Delima Puteri justified the ecological and economic expense of what many are calling an NGO talking shop.
“Yes, the NGOisation of international climate activism is a problem. It privileges certain ways of talking, knowing and mobilising about important political matters. I know this because of my experience in the development industry, and how my political opponents have in the past labelled me an NGO facility girl. That was a hurtful thing to say but I understand where it was coming from.
I am going on our country’s behalf, and not to greenwash, whitewash, pinkwash or leftwash our message. We need to develop a presence there for the greater benefit, to improve each other’s respective platforms. There are plenty of powerful and not so powerful organisations out there who would prefer these conversations not to happen.
If we just look at the level and organisers of scheduled ClimateSpace events, in comparison to the sophistication of The Man at the IPCC, we can see just how much work has to be done to ….. colourise the space, which is crying out for decoloniality.”
