Climate apartheid and environmental refugees

The ideologies and technologies of the global North have long necessitated the forced migration, colonization and ecological plunder of the global South for imperial and capital expansionism. In recent decades, the excesses and demands of a global economy dependent upon unrelenting growth and industrialization have created new victims—entire populations now being dislocated by human-induced climate change—an emerging class of environmental refugees. The impact of climate change exacerbates existing pressures and inequalities related to economics, conflict, urban mega-development and land-use changes—all of which particularly affect the global South—and this chapter utilizes Connell’s (Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 2007) Southern theory to examine critically what has been termed ‘climate apartheid’ and explore its impacts on the increasing number of environmental refugees.