Climate change is a global phenomenon that will impact everyone in this world, but it won’t do so equally. Today, marginalized communities both inside our borders and around the world have disparate experiences of environmental hazards, as communities of color in the US struggle to get adequate disaster relief after hurricanes and families in the Global South suffer the impacts of food insecurity in drought-impacted regions.

But why are some communities more impacted than others? I would like to propose that it is the result of historical legacies of power inequity, exploitation, and subjugation that continue to exist today in new manifestations, deepening and widening in times of crisis. This relationship between power inequity and the climate crisis is called Climate Apartheid.

We are already beginning to see the reality of how power impacts the disparate experiences of the climate crisis in the Global North and the Global South. Data shows that nations in the Global South have begun experiencing disproportionate effects of climate crisis phenomena compared to their counterparts in the Global North due to inadequate health care systems, reliance on vulnerable industries like agriculture, less economic capacity for disaster relief after extreme weather events, and other systemic issues caused by institutions crippled by poverty and distrust. Political, economic, and social institutions within nations of the Global South aren’t “naturally weaker” than those of nations in the Global North, they were designed as such through colonial processes of domination and subjugation.

By installing oppressive public institutions focused on coercing colonial subjects into serving the extractive purposes of colonial regimes, rather than public institutions designed to protect and serve the people living in the country, colonizers maximized the flow of surplus out of colonized communities and into their own pockets. The enforcement of unequal power dynamics during this period of globalization has had lasting impacts on post-colonial societies, contributing to the disparities that we see today between countries’ experiences of the climate crisis. Furthermore, it was through these systems of exploitation that the Global North was able to first industrialize and create the climate crisis that the entire world is now grappling with unevenly.

Global Climate Apartheid identifies the intersectional problem of imperial legacies and nations’ unique experiences of climate change. Throughout this website, I will further flesh out the relationship between colonialism, neocolonialism, institutional capacity, and climate change to explain why the climate crisis is so much more severe for the Global South. I will also explore solutions, focusing on what individuals, communities, institutions, governments, and NGOs can do to decolonize our global climate.