Reliance on hi-tech solutions to climate crisis perpetuates racism, says UN official

Green solutions including electric cars, renewable energy and the rewilding of vast tracts of land are being implemented at the expense of racially and ethnically marginalised groups and Indigenous peoples, Tendayi Achiume told the Guardian in an interview.

In her reports, she has outlined how the extraction of natural resources, emerging digital technologies, and even global development frameworks were fuelling racial injustices, and the need for reparations for slavery and colonialism.

In her final report to the UN general assembly in October, she tackled the relationship between racism and the climate and ecological crises. It was, she said, an issue that had been raised from the very beginning of her tenure as one of the most important global factors in racial injustice.

Such groups are already suffering the brunt of climate breakdown and environmental harms, she said. Now they have been left the passive recipients of whatever solutions have been decided on by leaders from the global north.