Abstract
Market environmentalists often champion carbon markets and offsetting mechanisms as “effective” solutions to climate change. Yet mounting evidence shows that they enact neocolonial violence. Globally, they reinforce unequal market dynamics and facilitate land grabbing in the Global South. Locally, they erode Indigenous sovereignty and violate human rights through dispossession, violence, and killings. Epistemically, they silence Indigenous voices in project initiation, negotiation, and decision-making. At the heart of such coloniality lies an entrenched epistemological bias in climate knowledge production: 1) the fragmentation of nature and society into isolated domains; 2) the dominance of positivist techno-managerial frameworks; and 3) the hegemony of Western elite knowledge systems. Grounded in the scholarship of political ecology, human geography, and decolonial theories, this research highlights an alternative epistemological framework: 1) de-isolated, recognizing the interconnectedness of ecological, social, and economic systems; 2) de-positivist, centering emotions, reflexivity, and lived experiences; and 3) de-colonial, amplifying place-based knowledge and the agency of local and Indigenous communities. These principles culminate in a participatory mapping workshop, a research method that invites diverse market actors, policymakers, and local communities to make visible their understandings, emotions, lived experiences, and embodied conflicts about carbon offsetting. Using written words, drawings, and visual connections, participants build collective maps that confront market proponents with the neocolonial plights of local groups, while amplifying alternative environmental stewardship rooted in equity, care, and reciprocity. By emphasizing relational, embodied, and place-based epistemologies, it offers a possible roadmap for decolonial climate justice that centers Indigenous sovereignty and pluralistic climate knowledge production.
Presenters
Shoutao WuStudent, Master's, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2026 Special Focus—Unseen Unsustainability: Addressing Hidden Risks to Long-Term Wellbeing for All
KEYWORDS
Carbon Markets, Environmental Neocolonialism, Epistemological Pluralism, Participatory Mapping, Climate Justice
