Johanna Tunn - Climate coloniality and political ecologies of climate finance: insights from Vanuatu
Lecture abstract
The climate crisis is a lived reality in Vanuatu. Its impacts demand substantial resources for adaptation, losses and damages, and future resilience. In this regard, international climate finance and multilateral funds have been positioned as mechanisms of justice: a way to redistribute resources and support adaptation in regions disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. In practice, however, this promise remains unfulfilled. Access to multilateral climate finance remains limited, often framed through donor narratives of so-called ‘inadequate capacity,’ and has been criticised in its reproduction of subordination, subjugation and dependencies. Building on political ethnography in Vanuatu, I will explore the impact of green fund activities in Vanuatu through the lens of political ecology. While communities in Vanuatu navigate the uneven impacts of socio-ecological crises, they are simultaneously required to adapt to global, hierarchical donor requirements that exacerbate epistemic, temporal and material conflicts. The talk concludes by situating ‘climate coloniality’ as a helpful concept for understanding these mechanisms as structurally and historically conditioned.
About the lecturer
Johanna Tunn studied International Development at the Universities of Vienna and Sussex. Her work focuses on climate justice, finance, adaptation, loss and damage and ‘green hydrogen’ through the lens of political ecology as well as postcolonial and feminist science and technology studies.
She is currently a PhD student at the University of Vienna, analyzing the activities of green funds in Vanuatu. She has taught at several universities on the topics of climate crisis, epistemic violence and resistance struggles. Prior to her doctorate, she worked at the University of Hamburg and in NGOs in the fields of international climate and energy justice.