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What is meant by “white man’s burden”? It is a duty formerly asserted by white people to manage the affairs of people of colour whom they believed to be less developed.Over a century ago, Rudyard Kipling wrote of the "white man’s burden", addressing the civilisation of non-white people, unflatteringly described as “half devil, half child”.
In the wake of climate change, this phrase has acquired modern relevance. Oddly enough, we are embarked on a contemporary ``civilizing mission'' in the name of saving the environment that we, ourselves, are largely responsible for destroying.
I do not doubt that when you think of climate change in the modern times, you think of a white, blonde teenager preaching change- Greta Thunberg. However, how many of us here have heard of the 23-year-old Ugandan activist,Vanessa Nakate? She had appeared at a summit with prominent climate activists, including Greta Thunberg. But when a news agency published a picture of the event, Nakate had been cut from the image – which showed only the four white activists. I would like all of you to think about a crucial point she raised after the event- “Environmental activism has been framed as Europe influencing the world – not the other way around. POC have become used to our perspectives being excluded.”
It is an established doctrine in the West, that ``rampant population growth'' is a timebomband third-world people are primarily responsible for that growth. This equation is, quite simply, wrong. It is not population that threatens the environment but how much that population consumes. Americans are less than 5 percent of the world's population, but they consume over half of all its resources. So who consumes the most? Certainly not the poor of the world!
In conclusion, the false good-intentions of Western neo-colonialism for the non-white world, show us how the process of whitewashed climate activism is not the white man’s burden at all.
POINTS TO ELABORATE ON:
1. Countries like Australia argue that they are exercising moral leadership by depriving the poorest of the desired coal. However, this sounds awfully like the logic of the Empire.
2. “Climate activism among youth is perceived by the larger society as a ‘white thing’. The un-cropped photo didn’t fit the model,” Dr Robert Bullard (considered the “father of environmental justice”) said. “Racism has the intended purpose of making people of color invisible.”
3. Environmental degradation is a crisis the whole world faces today, but until the environmental movement accurately assesses the dominant white role in environmental destruction, places poor people among those endangered, and considers their needs on a par with our own, third world people will find its self-serving morality no more acceptable than that of the colonialists a century ago. Otherwise, environmentalism bodes well to become the imperialism of the 21st century.
4. In 2017, for instance, eight persons reportedly owned 50% of the world’s assets held by an equivalent of 3.5 billion people (half of the total global population). The latter were mostly non-white and from Africa, Asia and Latin America. In contrast, the eight were all white middle-aged males.
5. By crafting this as the incumbent “burden” for the white man to civilise the world, this unleashed the ruthless power laid squarely on the shoulders of the white colonisers. It was a convenient opportunity to impose their values and expansion of power on the largely Asian population against their will and dehumanising them. The relationship with the present issue becomes more evident as the US emerged to be the world’s worst polluters, dragging the colonies (new and old) along the same tragic path of unsustainable development practices! Ditto Europe.
