Debt and Reparations

The systemic transformation required to achieve climate justice starts with reparations. The impacts of the climate crisis, and the responsibility for creating them, are unevenly distributed thanks to economic and ecological debts incurred throughout colonial-capitalist history.  This research stream engages with emergent thinking and movement-building for reparations and economic redistribution as foundational elements of climate action – as historian Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò has argued, reparations is a constructive project oriented toward building the foundations for a better world. 

Topics in this research stream:

  • Land back 
  • Debt and tax reform 
  • Nature-based reparations 
  • Wealth redistribution 

People

Publications

Biodiversity Capital Research Collective. (2021). Beyond the Gap: Placing Biodiversity Finance in the Global Economy. Third World Network. Available at: https://twn.my/title2/books/Beyond%20the%20Gap/BeyondTheGap%20complete%20report.pdf 

Dempsey, J., Irvine-Broque, A., Bigger, P., Christiansen, J., Muchhala, B., Nelson, S., Rojas-Marchini, F., Shapiro-Garza, E., Schuldt, A. & DiSilvestro, A. (2021) Biodiversity targets will not be met without debt and tax justice. Nat Ecol Evol (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01619-5. Also available at: https://rdcu.be/cE6PN 

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