Planetary Specters - by Neel Ahuja

About the Book

"Neel Ahuja traces the development of "climate migrant" discourses in public media and policy over the past decade, arguing that journalists, security experts, politicians, and NGOs have often oversimplified climate change and obfuscated the complex processes that have led to mass and supposedly environmental-change driven migration. To understand the systemic reasons for mass migration, Ahuja argues, it is necessary to reframe climate disaster as interlinked with the history of capitalism and the global politics of race, wherein climate change exacerbates existing issues such as land displacement, labor exploitation, debt finance, and pollution"--

Book Synopsis

Neel Ahuja tracks the figure of the climate refugee in public media and policy over the past decade, arguing that journalists, security experts, politicians, and nongovernmental organizations have often oversimplified climate change and obfuscated the processes that drive mass migration. To understand the systemic reasons for displacement, Ahuja argues, it is necessary to reframe climate disaster as interlinked with the history of capitalism and the global politics of race, wherein racist presumptions about agrarian underdevelopment and Indigenous knowledge mask how financial, development, migration, and climate adaptation policies reproduce growing inequalities.

Drawing on the work of Cedric Robinson and theories of racial capitalism, Ahuja considers how the oil industry transformed the economic and geopolitical processes that lead to displacement. From South Asia to the Persian Gulf, Europe, and North America, Ahuja studies how Asian trade, finance, and labor connections have changed the nature of race, borders, warfare, and capitalism since the 1970s. Ultimately, Ahuja argues that only by reckoning with how climate change emerges out of longer histories of race, colonialism, and capitalism can we begin to build a sustainable and just future for those most affected by environmental change.

Review Quotes

"A vital and stimulating read--both for its piercing rebuttal of the racism inherent in current ideas of climate migration, and for its analysis of the material changes of the past seventy years in the age of oil."--US Intellectual History

"As the planet continues hurtling toward disaster at breakneck speed, Ahuja presents a convincing framework for understanding environmental racism."--Scientific American