New Worldmaking: Reparations as climate justice, climate justice as reparations
A review of Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò's "Reconsidering Reparations"
I recently read Dr. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s book, Reconsidering Reparations. The book's subtitle, "Why climate justice and constructive politics are needed in the wake of slavery and colonialism", lays the groundwork for the connections it draws between climate justice and reparations. It may not be clear how colonialism, slavery, and reparations are related to climate and ecological crises, but Táíwò carefully and clearly articulates the overlaps throughout the book.
And I think the overlaps are important. Táíwò's book forces a conversation that we don't have often enough in ecological discourse. Our current ecological and climatological crises are inseparable from our histories of slavery and colonialism. I often discuss the ways the capitalism is the cause of these environmental crises, but capitalism itself was produced by the legacies of colonialism. There is no global system of capitalism without the transatlantic slave trade. In that context, I want to discuss Táíwò's book, as it aligns with things I've also been thinking about lately.
On that note, I strongly recommend reading the book for yourself, because my discussion that follows will not fully elaborate on all of its important points. You can get a copy of it here.
In Reconsidering Reparations, Táíwò argues that history is a process of accumulation. Advantages and disadvantages accumulate along lines of class and, particularly, race. Our current distributions of advantages and disadvantages are inseparable from the histories of colonialism and slavery that created them–namely advantages for slave owners and disadvantages for slaves.
It's not just the history of this dichotomy that Táíwò emphasizes, but the cumulative nature of advantage and disadvantage. One disadvantage begets another, or, at the very least, makes a subsequent disadvantage more likely. And vice versa. As the processes play out over space and time, the result is uneven distributions of wealth, status, breathable air, drinkable water, access to healthcare, and ultimately, freedom. Freedom in the sense that without the ability to access these resources, one also lacks agency over their own life, and the ability to self-determine the way they live.
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To correct this uneven distribution, Reconsidering Reparations calls for the construction of a new world. In recognizing that the unevenness is the result of global, historical patterns, Táíwò argues reparations must also reflect that scale. This contrasts with many of the predominant views of justice, which often begin from the position that justice is first an issue of the state, before it is a global issue (if it's global at all). But, as Táíwò demonstrates, the current world order is the product of slavery, and slavery was not confined to a single nation. It was the product of many nations; many continents, in fact. The continuation of this legacy into the world we inhabit today is what Táíwò names the "global racial empire". Dismantling this global empire requires, by definition, the making of a new world.
So, if the problem is one of globally uneven distributions, the question then becomes, what should be distributed to correct the unevenness. Returning to the idea that freedom is ultimately what's unevenly distributed, for Táíwò the correction requires a re-distribution of capabilities and functions. This means distributing not merely resources or wealth (although that is certainly necessary), but also–literally–constructing a world in which the people who have accumulated disadvantages can begin to accumulate advantages, by creating new infrastructures, investments, and institutions. A worldmaking project that distributes justice in accordance with the current uneven distributions.
Global climate change threatens the possibility of new worldmaking. The disadvantages the climate crisis will cause (and is already causing) will be distributed unevenly, disproportionately affecting those who are already disadvantaged from previous accumulations throughout history. Heatwaves are far more dangerous to those who can't afford air conditioning. Flood risks are greater to those who already live in flood-prone areas and can't afford to leave. Wildfires are destroying more homes in communities that don't have the resources to rebuild them. And on and on. If disadvantages are already unevenly distributed, climate change will only exacerbate the patterns, to the point that mere survival will become untenable for millions, if not billions, of people.
Táíwò doesn't leave the argument here, but also provides several tactics and targets which he thinks would redistribute the kind of capabilities and functions that align with his constructive worldmaking view of reparations and climate justice. These include actions like unconditionally transferring wealth to disadvantaged people (i.e. descendants of the transatlantic slave trade), the establishment of global climate funds that distribute advantages from wealthy nations to disadvantaged ones, and eliminating tax havens that the rich use to accumulate more advantages for themselves.
Just as important, though, is to protect re-distributed advantages, by placing them in the control of the communities that receive them. Allocating resources to disadvantaged people and places means nothing if they can be rescinded at the whims of the already advantaged.
Other tactics include divesting from fossil fuels and investing in communities, empowering communities through knowledge, and democratically deciding the best pathways forward. The systems we have in place currently will always privilege and advantage the few. Democratic decision-making is vital to distributing justice.
Perhaps the most important part of Reconsidering Reparations is the end. Táíwò directly confronts the pervasive idea that there is a progressive trajectory to history, that society naturally becomes more just over time. This, as Táíwò points out, is not the case. In order for a better world to emerge, we have to act. This can seem like a daunting task, given the global scale of the problem outlined in the book, but global solutions don't have to be built overnight.
Ideas about creating alternatives to capitalism and hierarchy often suffer from all-or-nothing thinking that prevents any meaningful action at all. There may well be a world-changing revolution on the horizon that upends the entire global system, allowing for the creation of a new one. Or there may not. We don't know. In the absence of that revolution, there is still work to be done. In fact, all revolutions are the products of previous actions, taken step by step, piecemeal, until the conditions arise that allow them to flourish. I strongly agree with Táíwò that the current time is no different. We must continue the work of our predecessors, so that our future selves, or our descendants, can continue ours. As Dr. Angela Davis put it, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. It’s not a destination, but a developmental process that is never finished.
Climate justice as reparations, and vice versa, are important steps in that process.