Shedding the coloniser in us!

illuminem

June 5, 2024

https://illuminem.com/illuminemvoices/shedding-the-coloniser-in-us

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7203729537296138240/

My Op-ed for illuminem on the eve of #WorldEnvironmentDay.

A tiger is a metaphor for the apex of the food chain, relentlessly hunting it is nothing but brutalising #Nature. We continue to exterminate the magical #biodiversity that we inherited.

“For centuries, the dominant global powers have seen #Earth – its plants, its animals, and its nonwhite peoples – as brute objects: mute, without agency, and available for the taking and killing… Writes Amitav Ghosh in The Nutmeg’s Curse.

Much, if not most, of humanity today lives as #colonialists once did – he reminds – viewing the Earth as though it were an #inert entity that exists primarily to be #exploited and #profited from, with the aid of technology and science. Yet even the sciences are now struggling to keep pace with the hidden forces that are manifesting themselves in climate events of unprecedented and uncanny violence”.

As we get closer to breaching all the #Planetaryboundaries – Mexican President elect – Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo – is a ray of hope. #Patriarchy has forever been a key driver of #Climatebreakdown. Much of political and corporate leadership – across the world – suffers serious deficit in understanding the gravity of an #existential crisis. As a first woman head of state in North America and a Climate expert – may she usher the much-awaited inflection.