Suzanne joins Parvinder Marwaha and Titilayo Farukuoye to explore the growing movement within the arts to engage with and address the UK’s colonial history, looking at how this is intimately connected with work on climate change as a neo-colonial issue.

Today the countries that were colonised are among the ones facing the largest consequences of climate change despite having the lowest carbon emissions. Nowhere is that clearer than in Pakistan, where people are being disproportionally harmed by climate change through heatwaves and flooding.

Through systemic extraction and large-scale change of the natural environment, British colonialism made countries like Pakistan more vulnerable to climate change. This extractivist mindset still endures and fuels the climate crisis and global inequality. This fact is recognised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the main scientific advisors on climate for the United Nations. Colonialism never went away – it just became invisible to some of us; through art, we can make these structural inequalities visible again.

Together we will develop an understanding of how decolonisation movements within the arts interact more broadly with work on climate change and we will create ideas and build connections between people working on decolonisation and climate in the arts.