Reconsidering Reparations

"Yes. It sprung to mind immediately following Amitav Ghosh because it is a really deeply thought-through response to the question: what do we do now? There are two key assumptions that he makes. One is that if we’re going to have to think about adapting to climate change, we’re going to have to assume a lens of justice. Yes. And I think, coupled with that, any kind of concept of political change must grapple with the question of fairness, and how changes impact differentially. Who is harmed and who is benefiting from any change being considered, and is that fair? I think those are both straight-forward, common-sense concepts. Climate justice is high on the agenda at places COP, but Táíwò widens the question of justice, because he’s got this Black Marxist background, and also a constructivist philosophy of history which makes a compelling argument for reparations as a result of the accumulated devastation of slavery and inherited injustice over time. The second assumption, then, is that if we are going to think about reparations, which is a live debate in and of itself, we should be thinking about that through the lens of climate change. And that very much ties with my starting point, which is that climate adaptation is systems change. So we’re thinking of reparations in terms of who has benefited and who has been harmed. The other thing I found really interesting was his detour into legal theory, the distinction between liability and responsibility. In law, you don’t need to necessarily have actively, knowingly done something wrong, or intended to hurt somebody, in order to be liable. For example, if someone trips over a kerbstone, the Council may be liable even if they didn’t intend the harm. This is key, because it avoids the difficulty that opponents of reparations seize on: that you can’t hold future generations responsible for things their parents or grandparents did. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter There are some good examples in case law, which I wasn’t aware of, regarding what’s called beneficiary responsibility—so, if you’ve benefited from something and the benefits have been accrued as a result of injustice or inequality, then you’re liable. And those benefits are liable. Like if you’ve benefited from ill-gotten goods, you’re liable to give them back. That’s a really important consideration as we grapple with adaptation to a future in a world that is increasingly uninhabitable. This book gives us a way of thinking about how to approach that question of fairness. Especially when you consider that according to Oxfam research, the cost of loss and damage for 55 vulnerable countries could be met out of the profits of the oil majors for only six months, and they’d still have $70 billion left over. This kind of argument is a very good basis for a really aggressive take on fossil fuel company assets. These are the shareholders and corporations that should be accepting liability. So, with the current conversation about what Exxon knew—what their scientists predicted—we don’t actually even need to prove that they did anything malicious. It’s simply the fact that they are liable. I find that compelling. We saw a lot of damage acknowledged at COP27, and a fund established. We’ve seen climate refugees acknowledged as such in the United States—there’s been federal money for the relocation of communities in Alaska and Louisiana. So I’m aware of that. I don’t know if there have been reparations, per se, but it does seem like something playing a role in international debates at the moment. And there are legal cases in which fossil fuel companies are being slowly pursued through the courts. This book suddenly opened my eyes to the fear that there must be at big fossil fuel corporations. Yes. We have a new degree, a BA in ‘Sustainable Futures: Arts, Ecology and Systems Change.’ There are various elements to that programme, but ecological literacy, climate literacy, and climate justice are all key elements. Reconsidering Reparations is one of the core texts, in fact. We don’t approach the curriculum through the lens of any particular subject, but rather through questions: How do we understand the past? How do we imagine the future? What are the principles we should be applying? That’s where climate justice comes in: Are the futures we are imagining fair for everyone?"