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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Damien Gayle

Climate emergency is a legacy of colonialism, says Greenpeace UK

London Street protest over energy firm's rebuild plans for a waste incinerator in Edmonton
A 2021 protest in London over plans to rebuild a waste incinerator in Edmonton, which protesters labelled ‘environmental racism’. Photograph: Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/Rex/Shutterstock

The climate and ecological crises are a legacy of systemic racism and people of colour suffer disproportionately from their harms, a Greenpeace UK report says. Globally, the report says, it is people of colour who, despite having contributed the least to the climate emergency, are now “disproportionately losing their lives and livelihoods” by the millions because of it.

“The environmental emergency is the legacy of colonialism,” the report says. This was because colonialism had “established a model through which the air and lands of the global south have been … used as places to dump waste the global north does not want”, the report says.

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