Scratches on the wall: racial capitalism, climate finance and Pacific Islands

Abstract

ABSTRACT Critique surrounding climate finance is mounting against a backdrop of an escalating ecological crisis manifesting unequally across the globe. This paper uses learnings from racial capitalism to unpack the modalities of climate finance, using the Pacific region as an illustrative case. It argues that racial capitalism is enacted through modalities of climate finance, in part, by the erection of walls. One type of wall enacted by climate finance is epistemic: its definitions place it as the inherent object of Northern interventions. Moreover, financial walls are maintained through debt in climate finance, creating borders of deprivation through ongoing practices of indebting already burdened regions. The paper also highlights the way borders can manifest through regulation, in particular, through climate funds delineating arduous benchmarks of already burdened states. These walls contribute to the racialized process of creating ‘sacrifice zones’: places that have borne the cost of benefits accrued elsewhere, left without in a state of depletion. The paper explores the material futures that are being enacted by these modalities of climate finance through the case of climate migration. Yet these dystopian futures must not be taken for granted, rather, the walls which separate climate affected communities from hopeful futures must be dismantled.