Carbon Trading as a Get out of Jail Free Card: Environmental Colonialism and Counterviews

We explore carbon trading in Africa from the nuanced implications of the arrangements underpinning such a trade that evoke or appear to be continuing or replicating the historical legacy of colonialism. As a means of sustaining the Global North (GN)’s consumerist and capitalistic economies, carbon trading may be (ab)used to “offshore” the externalities of carbon emissions and can be interpreted as giving developed countries a get out of jail free card. Carbon trading, conceived as projects in the Global South (GS) to help entities in the GN meet carbon emissions offsets can quickly become (if they are not already) imperialistic mechanisms for extending the powers, benefits and influence of the people already empowered and accorded a dominant status by such a system over the dominated people of the GS. We extend the environmental colonialism and postcolonial discourses to consider mechanisms for ensuring that carbon trading in Africa does not further shortchange the (black, indigenous and people of colour or BIPOC) citizens of the continent. Africa, typifying the GS, is already bearing the brunt of the environmental impacts of previous resource exploitation and extraction forays into the continent by imperialists. Any scheme capable of exacerbating subsisting inequalities and injustices requires careful review and appraisal. We recommend a clear delineation of carbon trading and offsetting projects and the benefits they would provide to BIPOC, concerted efforts at demonstrating transparency in the funds and value flows associated with carbon trading in Africa, an adequate and unambiguous valuation of intended benefits and externalities of carbon trading and adoption of rigorous governance arrangements and regulation with independent monitoring.