Climate change resettlement and inhabitation: Spatialising cultures of colonial pasts and alternative futures in the global south

Abstract

Climate change is an inherently human-made phenomenon that shapes the mobilities of species and things who, in turn, influence the ways climate change is experienced by humans. These multifaceted climate mobilities are grounded in the spatial histories of imperialism and settler-colonialism, and the legacies of socio-cultural injustice inflicted upon the Global South. Central to climate mobilities is climate change resettlement, which, because it is often informed by colonial cultures of modernity and capitalism, tends to exacerbate environmental change and collapse. Spatial forms of climate change resettlement and related urban and architectural forms of inhabitation, as this special issue highlights, are rooted in the cultural crisis of coloniality, legitimised among colonial powers and local populations in the Global South. An examination of the cultural dynamics and related politics of power embedded in urban and architectural discourses, we argue, is key in understanding and unlearning past and current (neo)colonial approaches to climate change. This introduction to the special issue argues that, by investigating climate resettlement in its broader definition and practices—within the historical complexities of ecological and national coloniality and warfare—enables a more thoughtful engagement with sustainable climate inhabitation. In order to surpass the limitations of coloniality and its entangled cultural-climatic relations with modernity, the articles of this special issue offer new frameworks to spatially examine colonial pasts and imagine situated, yet radically alternative approaches for the future. A broad temporal lens, we argue, is necessary as we face environmental upheaval and learn to cope with the destructive impacts of climate change in the Global South and beyond.