Decolonising mindsets around environmental sustainability

There is a global drive in healthcare to reduce emissions and create environmentally protective practices that reverse climate change. “Frugal innovations” have been posed as sustainable solutions.1 But these suggestions are not only reductively apolitical but also artefacts of biased mindsets that neglect the intersections between climate and race, history, politics, economics, and health.2345 To tackle the climate crisis pragmatically, it is vital to tackle these intersections.Decolonial environmental justice must be at the core of any sustainable endeavour. This is pertinent given the colonial and political backdrop to climate pollution, which disproportionately affects the “global south.” Forced displacement and traumatisation caused by rising sea levels23 and agricultural livelihoods because of changes to monsoon season4 are evidence of this.Before colonisation, Indigenous communities lived in climate protective ways, respecting the planet and embracing its health as important to their wellbeing.67 Sustainability was an intrinsic part of their cultures. But colonialism violently and…
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