The Global Governance of Environmental Injustice: Spectral and Climate History of Indigenous Genocide in Colombia

Paulo Ilich Bacca

Chapter 19 in Research Handbook on Global Governance, 2025, pp 431-450 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Drawing on Benjamin's and Derrida's interpretation of history, this chapter stresses the permanent interaction between past, present, and future in order to analyze the genocide by ecological means of Indigenous peoples in the here and now. This is what is termed in the chapter ‘spectral history’, that is to say, a historiographical move in which the past is spectrally weighted in the present. On the one hand, the chapter challenges the inclination among commentators of international criminal law to view killing as the only method of committing genocide, leaving out the continued violation of the biocultural rights of indigenous peoples, for what is in fact, a genocide by ecological means. On the other, presenting the Colombian case, it argues that it is an example of the global governance of environmental injustice. This highlights that although defining genocide in international criminal law has sometimes resulted in impunity, the documentation of key cases, like the genocide of the Palestinian people, offers crucial insights for critically examining and improving international law.

Keywords: Indigenous peoples; Environmental injustice; Climate crisis; Neoextractivism; Genocide studies and prevention; Indigenizing international law; Colombia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781789906325
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