Abstract
Carbon Colonialism is an uncomfortable book. It is a profound critique of colonial capitalism in the era of human-induced climate change. The arguments laid out speak to many issues discussed in Organization, and the thoughtfully written intense accounts of global supply chains are eye-opening. Its direct and colloquial language moves readers and lays bare the ongoing injustices, exploitation, and destruction unfolding in the global South. It has an activist agenda as much as an academic one, and we believe it should reach beyond an academic audience, and even be available in grocery stores, newsstands, and clothing retailers at the very least!
In his introductory chapter, Laurie Parsons problematizes the much-touted phrase that readers in the global North constantly hear: “sustainable future.” He opens the book with a conversation with the reader about how the production of everyday goods is linked to climate breakdown in the global South and why residents of the global North do not know about it. Already in these early pages, examples from his fieldwork pull readers into the book where he connects well-known clothing labels to landfills, textile waste to the brick industry, thick black toxic smoke to child workers, and farming to debt bondage in factories. In the rest of the book, Parsons unpacks carbon colonialism in two parts. The first, “Greenwashing the global factory,” engages with the misleading narratives of economic development in the global South and false claims about environmental progress and the sustainability of supply chains and consumption in the global North. The second, “Manufacturing disaster in the global factory,” discusses how economic inequalities and power asymmetries in global environmental decision-making create climate vulnerabilities in the global South.
Chapter 2 steps back and provides a brief account of brutal industrial economic development and globalization from the perspective of laborers’ lived experiences in the global South. Parsons extends previous studies by making visible how environmental change due to industrial production and consumption creates a self-reinforcing vicious cycle, pushing more farmers into factories despite the horrific labor conditions—a point he returns to in Chapter 5’s description of “climate precarity.” Chapter 3 responds to the question “what can consumers do about it?,” switching to a global North consumer perspective. By describing the lack of transparency and contractual relationships in global supply chains, Parsons argues that we cannot consume our way out of exploitation and climate change, despite corporate claims of “sustainable supply chains” and “ethical consumption” in the global North. Instead, Parsons calls readers to engage with politics and legislation, demanding oversight of global supply chains by independent authorities.
Chapter 4 brings Parsons’ overall argument home. Carbon colonialism, as he describes it, involves not just the offshoring of horrific labor conditions but also “the ability to effectively outsource emissions from richer to poorer nations [. . .] emphasising the historical power relations that underpin carbon accounting” (p. 82). National carbon accounting is the core target of Parsons’ critique here, about which he makes two important points. First, carbon accounting is a calculation system that is based on carbon produced within national borders without incorporating emissions of imported and consumed goods; thus, the carbon reductions declared by the global North are illusory. Second, the shortcomings of national monitoring capacities in countries of the global South entail that not all production-related emissions are being recorded either. Despite awareness of such incoherency, the national carbon accounting system is deemed acceptable by those in power in global environmental governance. Carbon colonialism, Parsons argues, is “about how systems set up to protect the environment also demarcate which parts of the environment matter and which do not” (p. 97).
The second part of the book begins with Chapter 5’s challenge to scientific narratives homogenizing climate change as a global phenomenon. With painful fieldwork examples from the global South, Parsons describes the production and maintenance of “climate precarity” and argues that economic inequality is the main determinant of how climate change is experienced by different populations. Chapter 6 extends this economic inequality discussion to environmental governance and participation in policymaking. He suggests we can only decolonize environmental laws if the voices of farmers and factory workers from the global South are prioritized. Specifically in environmental policy, he argues, we must create space for “a ‘place-based science’ of climate impacts, in which locality and local knowledge carry greater value” (p. 149). Chapter 7 continues the theme of environmental governance and discusses actors’ divergent interests and visions. Parsons argues that we must read between the lines of green policy and identify the market rhetoric of green growth discourses that suggest economic growth and global sustainability are compatible (a position already adopted by many in the Organization community). Chapter 8 concludes by summarizing the book’s main arguments via six myths regarding natural disasters, sustainable consumption, net-zero initiatives, climate migration, climate science, and carbon accounting.
Carbon Colonialism is an overwhelming book. It is also an ambitious undertaking, attempting to account for the many issues co-constituting climate change. While this account is powerful, some of its interesting and important arguments do not come across as sharply as they could. Parts of the book might have benefited from engagement with previous conversations further refining its invaluable fieldwork insights. For instance, Parsons’ important argument about so-called “natural” disasters—as more saliently rooted in economic vulnerabilities—could have been bolstered by drawing on feminist technoscience studies that articulate the inseparability of nature and culture as well as capitalism’s role in knowledge production (Haraway, 1997). Similarly, the story of “gambling on the rain” in Chapter 7 could have been elaborated via discussions in postcolonial and feminist science studies that problematize Western knowledge production practices and question whose knowledges count, for what purposes, and whose knowledges are silenced (Harding, 2008; Subramaniam, 2009).
Nevertheless, Carbon Colonialism is an important book and offers critical insights to organization studies. First and foremost, Parsons’ account expands existing climate change conversations, bringing visibility to colonial discourses and practices producing climate injustices and precarity in the global South. These insights have vital implications for conceptualizations of future imaginings in response to climate change (Böhm et al., 2012; Wright et al., 2013). Second, Parsons’ account contributes to critiques of economic growth by qualitatively illustrating the cost of “sustainable development” to peoples’ lives and climate in the global South at present. Complicating the “green growth” narrative with deadly global supply chains, and flushing out the colonial premises in market policies and practices, Parsons’ account can enhance the discussions of post-growth social imaginaries and alternative forms of organizing (Banerjee et al., 2021; Zanoni et al., 2017). Finally, Parsons’ reference to animistic conceptions of nature speaks directly to more recent conversations in indigenous writings, feminist posthuman and new materialist accounts (Willey, 2016), which organizational scholars have already engaged with in challenging market-based view of nature (Banerjee and Arjaliès, 2021; Ergene and Calás, 2023; Ehrnström-Fuentes, 2022; Jørgensen and Fatien, 2024). This line of work provides tools to begin developing decolonial environmental thinking, the larger agenda that Parsons promotes.
All in all, Carbon Colonialism is a roaring call for decolonizing climate change. It commands us to read between the lines of green policy, lobby for rigorous supply chain laws, and demand scrutiny and just transformation in environmental policy and practice. It is a call that merits all our voices.
