The case of environmental injustice and its impact on indigenous rights
Climate change is widely perceived as a by-product of our contemporary socio-economic model, which rotates around the exploitation of nature, unrestrained extractivism, excessive pollution, deforestation, land degradation. Nevertheless, the environmental crisis is in itself a consequence of colonialism, as the imperial expansion heavily relied on the widespread plunder of colonies’ natural resources, thus marking the ‘genesis’ of environmental destruction. Nature’s conservation became a priority when colonisers recognised the rapid environmental decay caused by their own activities, as it acted to their detriment of the colonial powers. It is thus important to highlight that, albeit framed as a universal good, the first environmental policies were structured to solely benefit the West.
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