Essay: The climate crisis cannot be solved without antiracism

Antiracism can provide us with suitable tools to understand the effects of the climate crisis on different groups of people and thus help us find sustainable and genuinely fair solutions to solve the crisis.

Content warning: the text discusses racial discrimination and fascism.

Today marks the International Day against Racism. Antiracism extends to awareness of the consequences of indirect discrimination, imperialism and capitalism as well as active opposition to them. Antiracism is not limited to defending the rights of people who belong to ethnic or visible minorities – it is also linked to demanding rights for all oppressed people, including indigenous, poor and disabled people as well as women and children.

In February, the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) published on the links between the climate crisis and both colonialism and capitalism. The assessment report published around the same time by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognises, for the first time, the unjust effects that the climate crisis and colonialism have on indigenous people in particular. The countries of the Global North have been the ones accelerating climate change in a one-sided show of colonialism and a fanatical desire for endless financial growth for their own countries. The climate crisis cannot be solved without antiracism and anti-capitalism.

The mitigation of climate change and the status of the Sámi

Solutions to climate change have emphasised a just transition to ensure that marginalised groups of people are able to adapt to climate change. However, this has not been put into practice in the case of the Sámi.

According to Vice Chair Áslat Holmberg from the , maintaining Sámi ways of life has become more difficult due to climate change. As the climate warms up, winters have seen more rain than snow. This has resulted in the ground freezing, preventing reindeer from eating lichen. Sámi reindeer owners have been forced to feed their reindeer in other ways, which is expensive. The livelihood of the Sámi is also under threat from wind farms that have been built on land that the reindeer use for grazing. Even though wind farms are a better option than coal power plants, the climate crisis cannot be solved at the expense of indigenous people.

As Lapland gets busier, the importance of environmentally friendly public transport has grown. In 2019, Peter Vesterbacka, a game developer known for Angry Birds, and his company were planning an Arctic Railway that would have run between Rovaniemi and Kirkenes. Sámi youth pointed out that the railway would disturb reindeer herding in their home and reindeer management areas. They also emphasised the importance of including the Sámi at the very beginning of decision-making processes if the projects or reforms in question concern them or their land. Tiina Sanila-Aikio, the Chair of the Sámi Parliament at the time, considered the project to violate the constitutional prohibition on weakening the Sámi culture. Fortunately, the Regional Council of Lapland ended up unanimously rejecting the inclusion of the Arctic Railway in the regional plan.

Even though the importance of a just transition for all groups of people in any solutions to the climate crisis has been emphasised many times in the political sphere, the Sámi have not been sufficiently taken into account. In addition to the Sámi, the consequences of climate change also affect people living in the Global South as well as their rightful opportunities to seek asylum from the countries of the Global North.

Climate change and the tightening of border control

The countries of the Global South are hit with the worst consequences of climate change, forcing many to move to the north for safety. As the climate warms up, the countries of the south turn uninhabitable: their soil dries up and temperatures rise. Most colonised countries became impoverished by having their natural resources stolen, and these countries do not have realistic financial opportunities to adapt to the effects of climate change.

Every year, people flee from the Global South in search of a safer life, while Europe systematically tries to prevent this at its Mediterranean borders. The 2015 migrant crisis has been used as a major cautionary example of what happens when we allow ‘too many’ refugees into European countries.

As the climate crisis continues, European gatekeeping has been tightened in many ways. According to the report by the ENAR, new ways of identifying and detaining people have been innovated to help tighten border control. Companies develop and sell products such as and eye recognition devices and detention facilities for detaining refugees. The war industry has been lobbying for the tightening of border control at European borders.

The private sector determines European border control, and its primary goal is to make profits, not comply with human rights agreements. As the climate crisis deepens and despair kicks in, strong leaders and the simple solutions they offer may start to become more and more attractive.

The rise of ecofascism

The people involved in the climate movement have not acknowledged the connection between climate change and colonialism clearly enough. The climate movement operates in a colour-blind manner, without widespread acknowledgement of the racist aspects of climate change. This prevents us from genuinely solving the fundamental problems of the climate crisis.

The way in which all kinds of corporate activities that are harmful to the climate are outsourced to the Global South is one example of how the link between colonialism and the climate crisis can be seen today. Accumulating wealth through capitalist means has also strengthened racial hierarchies. It is not a coincidence that rich countries are concentrated in the Global North and poor ones in the Global South.

If these links between colonialism and climate change are not recognised in the climate movement and politics, an increasing number of people may start to find the solutions of ecofascism attractive during desperate times. Ecofascism is an authoritarian ideology that is focused on environmental policy, unconcerned with justice and based on eugenics. Ecofascists see population size as the key issue in the climate crisis.

The ideas of ecofascism can be traced back to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) of Nazi Germany. NSDAP justified its pursuit of the Greater Germanic Reich and the genocide of Jews with the ‘Blood and Soil’ (Blut und Boden) ideology: the Germans had their roots in the land, whereas Jews and other unwanted groups of people did not. This perspective to environmental policy was one of the many reasons why NSDAP became so popular.

The best known Finnish ecofascist is Pentti Linkola. When the green movement (current Green League) was being founded, he tried to challenge the movement to radicalise its goals and purpose. Linkola believed that Finland should save the nature and people by any means necessary. The goals he proposed included decreasing Finland’s population to one million people through population planning and even violence, by banning the import and export of foodstuffs and by opposing social security to stop support for people in the weakest positions in society. Linkola’s attempts to redefine the green movement largely ended in failure, and his policies were not included in the movement’s programme of objectives.

Linkola has later proposed even more dramatic eugenic solutions to save the nature. He has suggested biological weapons as a solution to the large population of the Global South. In an interview published in Helsingin Sanomat, Linkola said that refugees should stay in their home countries and that borders should be closed at the Mediterranean. Even though his ideas are drastic, many people, especially in the far right, consider him a great prophet. Others – me included – consider Linkola a stain in Finnish history.

After Linkola, similar widespread movement has not been openly visible in Finnish politics or climate movement in recent times. However, ecofascism may become more popular in both Finland and Europe if we are not able to acknowledge the connections between racism, capitalism and climate change in the fight against climate change and in politics. If the links between climate change and both colonialism and capitalism are not recognised and acknowledged, racist far-right ideology may yet become attractive as desperation deepens.

Antiracism can provide us with suitable tools to understand the effects of the climate crisis on different groups of people and thus help us find sustainable and genuinely fair solutions to solve the crisis.

Antiracist and anti-capitalist solutions for the fight against climate change

In this essay, I have discussed the impact of the climate crisis on the Sámi community, the role of capitalism in the tightening of European border control as the climate crisis deepens and the potential rise in popularity of ecofascism. Climate movements and political decisions lack vision on antiracism and anticapitalism. Based on the reports of the ENAR and the IPCC, here are some key solutions:

1. Cooperation between antiracist organisations and those involved in the climate movement.
   • Climate change is a complex issue that requires diverse skills from different parties. Especially identifying ecofascism and green nationalism as well as dismantling colonialist features require an antiracist approach that the climate movement by itself cannot provide.

2. Support organisations fighting for the rights of refugees and immigrants.
3. No climate action without involving indigenous and racialised people.
4. Visibly oppose the politics of ecofascism and the far right.
   • Opposing them silently does not give a clear signal or show people who are hesitating that ecofascism and far-right activity are wrong.

5. Climate crisis aid must be established alongside development aid to provide financial support from the countries of the Global North to the Global South.
   • The countries of the Global South are hit with the worst consequences of climate change. Adapting to these consequences requires money.

6. In political decision-making processes, endless green financial growth must be replaced by degrowth.
   • Degrowth does not necessarily equal decreasing the GDP – it translates into moving beyond GDP-based development. The accelerating climate change is a capitalist problem that requires anti-capitalist solutions. The decision to adopt degrowth as a policy requires pressure from climate movements, antiracist organisations and other people.
   • Scotland, for instance, has established a Just Transition Commission, which comprehensively assesses different solutions to the climate crisis in addition to reducing fossil fuel use.

Jenny Kasongo

Member of the Board (equality, subsistence, students with a family)