Ecological Justice and Resilience: Unpacking Capitalism and Colonial Legacies at HOMEF’s School of Ecology

By Homef

There is a swath of current statistics that reveal appalling levels of environmental degradation and climate vulnerability across nations, especially in Global South regions. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), one such statistic, up to “3.6 billion people are currently living in contexts highly vulnerable to climate change”, with Africa experiencing disproportionate impacts despite contributing least to global emissions. This vulnerability is escalated by multiple intertwining factors such as economic inequalities, rapid and unchecked resource extraction, loss of biodiversity, industrial pollution, and accelerating climate disasters that directly impact communities’ livelihoods and access to clean environments.

Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, global temperatures have continued to rise, with 2023 being confirmed as the hottest year on record. While international forums emphasize “green transitions”, extractive activities like deep-sea mining, expanded oil exploration, and large-scale land acquisitions for carbon credit schemes continue rapidly across the Global South. Many of these initiatives operate under the banner of “green capitalism”, in which market mechanisms and technological solutions are promoted as pathways to sustainability.

But we must ask ourselves the question: can these market-based approaches truly address the structural inequalities driving ecological devastation in the world today?

To answer this question, Health of Mother Earth Foundation held a School of Ecology session from March 24-28, 2025, with the theme: Ecological Justice and Resilience. The week-long program, facilitated by various Instigators pulled from a crop of seasoned environmental activists, and attended by up to 40 passionate Scholars from across Nigeria, examined the intersections of capitalism, climate justice, and indigenous, community-based alternatives while unpacking the systemic drivers of ecological degradation.

This maiden one-week session was hosted at HOMEF’s headquarters in Benin City, Nigeria and, during this time, Instigators and Scholars alike challenged the neoliberal Imperialist paradigms that have driven the world as we know it today to the environmental dystopia it has now become.

Dr. Nnimmo Bassey, in his opening session on The Environment and the Web of Life, stated thus: “The web of life tells us that we are all relatives, both human and non-human beings because we are all sharing the planet, and we all depend on each other. We are all completely interconnected.”

This was the foundation that set the tone for the next five days of intensive lectures and cohort activities which all served the purpose of hammering home the need for a generation equipped with the knowledge to destroy the parasitic and destructive anthropocentric and capitalist system and to return to the wisdom of our ancestors, who lived and thrived in a system that honoured Nature as her own being, with her own rights. 

The syllabus of this session of the school emphasized ecological health as not being a commodity but a fundamental right essential for all life to flourish. Instigators went in depth, highlighting and exploring topics surrounding indigenous knowledge systems, pastoralist adaptations to changing landscapes, feminist ecological perspectives, and community-driven alternatives that promote ecological regeneration, just transitions, and environmental sovereignty.

In one such session, “The Colours of Capitalism,” it was posited that capitalism had “no preferred colours”, but merely functioned to maintain exploitative relations for profit while providing an ecological veneer that lured unsuspecting people into the cycle of extractivism. Another session shed some light on how environmental degradation disproportionately impacted women while highlighting the need for their inclusion in movements for reshaping the world’s system.

The school emphasized that ecological justice required confronting colonial legacies, extractivism, and power imbalances that continued to maintain structural inequalities while also advancing community-driven alternatives.

By the end of the school, Scholars all promised to take their knowledge back to their communities, to educate their people about the dangers believing false solutions and gaining knowledge to stand up for themselves against Big Polluters. They stated that the school helped them unlearn various misconceptions they’d believed about these false solutions being peddled to them. They promised to actively advocate for the recognition of environmental rights in policy frameworks; community control over resource decisions; reparations for ecological debt; defense of land and environmental defenders; and for the support of just transitions that prioritize both ecological integrity and social well-being.

This session of the school successfully highlighted the critical connections between environmental sovereignty, climate justice, and colonial practices while providing concrete actionable steps for scholars to contribute to more resilient and just ecological systems across Africa.