Climate Coloniality and Intersectional Decolonizing Pathways

Farhana Sultana considers climate breakdown as the inheritance of centuries of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and uneven development and as inequitably borne across intersectionally gendered, racialized, and classed bodies globally. Climate coloniality names this matrix and the ways it continues to operate through climate impacts, climate governance, and the very knowledge systems we use to make sense of the crisis.

She reminded us of that universities are not outside these entanglements. Curricula, citation practices, research partnerships, and institutional cultures all carry colonial legacies that must be confronted if scholarship is to support justice meaningfully.

Prof.dr. Farhana Sultana first addressed what climate coloniality means and how it can be used as a framework. Important reference is her recent book Confronting Climate Coloniality: Decolonizing Pathways for Climate Justice (2025). Her examples concerned coastal Bangladesh - where she grew up. It is an area of ongoing struggle with the impacts of development schemes that supposed to help control this delta. She traced the impacts of such colonial and post-colonial engineering legacy and explicated its roots in ongoing colonial and imperial power dynamics. Although these schemes are now aligned to climate adaptation stories, research found that people on the ground experience growing intensification of the impacts of the climate crisis affecting their daily lives. 

She therefore explicitly stressed that climate is not a neutral physical phenomenon to be fixed with technology, finances and behavioural change. She said that she, consequently, prefers using climate coloniality instead of climate injustice:'It brings history in the room and geopolitics alongside with it.'

Reflexivity and rethinking biases embedded in colonial mindsets require listening and working TOGETHER with local groups of people to learn about situated knowledge and optional local responses without demeaning them beforehand. 

The lived experiences and institutions at stake are gendered to the core. Farhana Sultana followed up this way on the slogan 'no climate justice without gender justice' by clearly stating: 'Gender sits not alongside climate coloniality but is interwoven throughout it.' 

Having her work grounded in critical, feminist, and anti-colonial epistemologies and methodologies, she pointed at the gender binary questioned in feminist and intersectional gender studies. It had travelled itself as a tool of colonial imposition disrupting pre-existing gender, family and kin systems. For instance, groups of Native Americans knew multiple genders and similarly as many other global examples of diverse gender and family constellations, these were fiercely battled, denied or entirely ignored to be replaced by the nuclear family of a married couple with kids as standard. Its consequences for such denying and altering of the foundations of people’s livelihood systems have only started to be acknowledged. 

Worldwide efforts are made to include historically marginalized peoples in international fora to do justice to their position and provide them with voice in the global debates. Nevertheless, as Farhana Sultana reclaimed: 'Not just having a seat at the table but determining what the table is, the terms of the debate, the framing of the conversations and having actual decision-making power.'

Acknowledging the depth of lived experiences is challenging and can weight upon one heavily as Farhana Sultana expressed from her own life, though: 'Recognizing Unbearable Heaviness opens up to honouring who live certain lives or lived before us.' 

Farhana Sultana ended her lecture with a call to reframing climate debates with insights from solidarity work with communities. That will help us unearth and redress root causes instead of seeking quick solutions, relying on allyship and solidarity across continents. The futures worth building are not colonial utopias of endless growth, causing an ecosystem collapse on a finite planet but futures organized around restoration, reparation and regeneration, care, kinship, dignity and flourishing for all.

Aligned with the visit a WASS Masterclass was held with mainly PhD students covering a wide range of disciplines. Six of them presented their research to be discussed. The students afterwards appreciated the space for sharing their dilemma’s and together learning about options to navigate their research questions, methodologies and careers within institutional challenging contexts. Farhana Sultana provided many examples how these challenges could be balanced as a tightrope walker. The responses certainly included to keep an open mind and equip oneself with social skills enabling to work with all kinds of peoples in open communications WITH them.

Likewise, the meeting with interested teaching staff made once again clear that decolonizing or integrating intersectional gender insights in academic work is not an add-on by one session or thematic course. It comes to reflecting and probing how to support one another to elaborate reflexivity on biases and look for the overlooked, and ultimately finding space to unlearn and relearn wherever appropriate.

Farhana Sultana’s visit is made possible by financial support of WASS, WUR staff group on decolonizing education, WUR Gender⁺ Equality Plan, SSG-KTI and ESG-WRM; and by organisers Margreet van der Burg (SSG-KTI), Birgit Boogaard (SSG-KTI) and Bert Bruins (ESG-WRM)