Let’s Connect the Climate Justice Voices of The People of East Asia

Since capitalist exploitation and production relations took over human civilization, wage labor for such exploitation has been extremely dependent on the operation of machinery through steam engines and the extraction of fossil energy. Meanwhile, the people(民衆/人民大衆) have always been the direct victims of all kinds of industrial pollution caused by capital's profit supremacy(利潤至上主義). In other words, today's climate crisis is not caused by "humanity" itself, as the mainstream media would have us believe, but is a product of the capitalist system. And it clearly shows the disparities(隔差) in the global capitalist system. This is evident in the fact that 19 million people in New York State consume more energy than 900 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, and the average 1 American citizen emits more carbon dioxide than 500 citizens of Ethiopia, Chad, Afghanistan, Mali, and Burundi.

When cotton production exploded with the development of capitalism, capitalists were always keen to find cheap labor to expand and reproduce exploitation. Black slaves, young female workers of Cheonggyecheon(Translator’s comment: An area in Seoul where there were clothing factories which exploited young female workers to work 16 hours a day.) in the 60s and 70s, female peasant workers(農民工) in southern China in the 1990s, and women in Southeast Asia since the 21st century have been forced to work 12 hours a day, six days a week, year-round in dusty, humid textile factories. If you were to tell workers in subcontracted clothing factory in Cambodia and Vietnam today about the exploitation that took place in the factories of Manchester in the 19th century, they would likely respond, "That's our story." This imperialist mode of production(生產樣式) hasn't disappeared, it's just been repeated in different locations. In a much larger and more catastrophic context of the climate crisis.

Let's focus on East Asia, where we live. Since the neoliberal transformation of capitalist accumulation, East Asia has become the "factory of the world". Neoliberal globalization has, on the one hand, intensified the economic logic of transnational capital movements and, on the other hand, greatly expanded the working population, while simultaneously pressuring the 'race to the bottom'. In the late 1990s, East Asia faced the crises created by liberalized financial markets, but instead of pulling themselves out of the wreckage, the ruling classes in each country were hell-bent on creating a much larger myth. The neoliberal cure that global finance capital imposed on East Asia thus reduced the share of labor income in national income, greatly increased the debt burden of developing countries, and triggered massive overcapacity. In turn, it created a new myth by completely reshaping the economies of the newly industrialized countries of East Asia, which were driven by export-led industrialization and authoritarian rule by governments. The key driver of industrial development in East Asia, symbolized by the "Four Asian Tigers," was cheap labor, and capital has always passed the buck to the people, and this myth has come at the cost of massive levels of ecological destruction.

e.g. According to the Jan, 2011 Greenpeace report, 『Hidden Consequences』, the view that "pollution is the price to pay for development" was pervasive in the Global South, and that this short-term perspective had led to the widespread dumping of hazardous chemicals at 30,000 industrial facilities along the banks of the Chao Phraya River in Thailand. Around the same time, a survey of 1,550 workers in three major industrial parks in Thailand found that 74% were concerned about toxic chemicals in factory wastewater and suffered from bad odors in the river.

e.g. From 1990 to 2019, 60 percent of the workers who lost their lives to pneumoconiosis worldwide were Chinese. In China, 137,000 people still suffer from pneumoconiosis every year, and more than 10,000 die.

On July 23, 2018, a dam built by SK eco-Plant collapsed on the banks of the Mekong River in Laos due to internal erosion caused by subcontractor price gouging and design flaws. The disaster left more than 200 people dead or missing and more than 7,000 lose their home. It destroyed the livelihoods of at least 15,000 people, including 2,300 who left their hometown before the dam was built and more than 5,400 who lost their livelihoods. The poor people of Laos lost their lives in a profit-making game of "green capitalism" that only makes profits to corporate and financial capital. There has been no compensation for this damage until now, and yet SK Ecoplant has continued to package its profit-making strategy with words like 'clean tech', 'net-zero', and 'ESG'. We call it green-washing, and the Global South is a stage for the greenwashing of capital.

In April 2023, ordinary people in Southeast Asia had to deal with a killer heat wave. On May 6, temperatures in Phnom Penh and Tuong Giang in northern Vietnam hit 44.2°C, while Luang Prabang hit 43.5°C. At the same time, Bangkok, Thailand, reached 41°C. To make matters worse, cities in northern Thailand recorded temperatures of 46-53°C, which caused 14 people to collapse while waiting outside polling stations on early voting day for the general election.

These climate disasters are likely to become more frequent. An atmospheric science paper published in the August 2022 issue of <Nature> predicts that "even if the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to 2°C is accomplished, exposure to dangerous heat index levels will increase by 50-100% in many parts of the tropics, and by 3-10 times in many mid-latitude regions." As a result, by 2050, there could be as many as 20 to 50 heatwave events exceeding 39.4°C per year. This catastrophic situation will be particularly pronounced in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa.

With temperatures rising and glaciers melting, sea level rise is an imminent reality. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC), sea levels are expected to rise between 0.6 and 1.1 meters by 2050, meaning up to 1.05 million square kilometers of low-lying land will be underwater. This would leave poor people living in Phnom Penh, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, and other cities in the southern province of Guangdong without a home. Eventually, wealthy cities like Amsterdam will build high dikes to protect their cities, and the people of the southern hemisphere will be forced to flee. In fact, the majority of female workers in Cambodia's brand-name garment factories are severely affected by the heat and air pollution, and feel it threatens their survival.

In East Asia, where we live, climate-destroying outsourcing is happening. Rules enforced by developed countries are destroying the natural environment and exploiting workers for very cheap labor in countries in the South hemisphere. While developed countries are reducing their per capita emissions by outsourcing production through expanding supply chains, the consumption of their citizens serves the exploitation in developing countries as a foundation. Europe's net emissions have fallen from 5.6 billion tons in 1990 to 4.2 billion tons in 2018, more than offset by Europe's increased consumption. This shows the falsity of a carbon accounting system divided by national borders in a global capitalism connected by supply chains.

Capital of the developed country is structurally shifting the costs of climate change to developing countries. Unregulated and invisible carbon-intensive production and environmental destruction dominate across East Asia. A Cambodian worker emits 400 kilograms of carbon per year, while a South Korean emits 38 times that amount - 15.5 tons. But today, it is poor Cambodian workers who are paying the harsh price of the climate crisis, which in turn leads to our suffering. It's hard not to call this "carbon colonialism".

Since the late 20th century, advances in telecommunications have made it possible to organize production over long distances, and with the massive growth of container logistics, global supply chains have begun to expand, intensify, and become more complex. Instead of trading finished goods, factories themselves have actually expanded across countries and borders, with part of a factory's production taking place in one country, part in another, and part in a third. In the fashion industry, for example, cotton is grown in China, Brazil, and the U.S., processed in China, and then finished in sewing factories in Cambodia and Bangladesh before finally reaching major buyers like Europe and the U.S. In this process, greenwashing of capital occurs without notice. Forests are cut down indiscriminately, and garbage is dumped in landfills without any standards. The resulting garments are packaged as "eco-friendly" and sold to consumers.

Carbon colonialism is pushing the people on the frontlines of the climate crisis into suffering and enriching a few capitalists. These facts prove why the action against the climate crisis must not be limited to national borders. It shows why our climate justice movement must become more class-based and more international.

But organizing the people on the frontlines of the climate crisis into resistance(抵抗) is undoubtedly a very difficult task. Even when on the front lines of struggle, it can be easily captured by the onslaught of increasingly nationalist ideologies, and sometimes be forced into a corner by the false promise of “local development for the good of all”. For example, the coal-fired power plant in Samcheok, Gangwon Province, which is set to go into commercial operation next Friday (April 19), was built in defiance of local protests that called for it to be halted due to its pollution of nearby beaches and the fact that it is coal-fired. The power plant was only able to be completed because of the consistent push from the two major parties in the government, as well as the bribes offered to the residents of Deoksan Village by Samcheok Blue Power's majority shareholders, Korea's financial capital (Nonghyup Bank) and POSCO International.

According to the '2021 Corporate Citizenship Report' published by POSCO, the company's carbon emissions in 2021 were 78.48 million tons, accounting for about 11.6% of Korea's total carbon emissions. The amount of carbon emitted by companies like POSCO is overwhelming(壓倒的). POSCO has also received good ratings for its so-called ‘ESG (environmental, social, and governance)’ indicators. The word "environment" appears 594 times in the aforementioned report, which propagandize the company's efforts to deal with climate change, improve air quality, and preserve biodiversity. For example, it propagandized the development of hydrogen reduction steel technology(水素還元製鐵技術), the production of silicate fertilizer from steel slag, the recycling of waste scrap in the steelmaking process, and the use of multi-use lunch boxes for employees instead of single-use ones. Last year, the ‘Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry(大韓商工會議所)’ proudly recommended POSCO as an example of ESG management. However, these propagandas cannot escape the criticism that they conceal POSCO's hypocrisy. As we know, POSCO is the largest emitter of carbon emissions in Korea, and even more serious when it comes to global scale.

In Myanmar, POSCO International is earning record profits from its total directional(全方位的) carbon business, which includes extracting natural gas in solid cooperation with the country's notoriously military authorities(軍部). These businesses are mythologized in South Korea as "Companies in oil-less countries patriotize with overseas business" and in Myanmar and elsewhere, they are sprinting with no finish line. Sometimes these businesses are packaged as "expansion of energy territories," which reveals the idea of carbon colonialism.

Therefore, a framework for climate justice must go beyond a focus on distribution, procedures, and recognition, and take a decolonizing movement stance(路線) against social, racial, and regional disparities, poverty, and inequality. This can be realized through connecting main agents(主體) on the frontlines of the climate crisis and through the practice(實踐) of internationalist climate justice for all oppressed and exploited people.

Starting with the Climate Justice March in 2022 and 2023, the climate justice movement in South Korea has taken a new step toward systemic change in the face of the climate crisis. Climate justice movements around the world are submitting a vision of 'system change' to overcome the climate crisis caused by the global capitalist system, and are trying to move forward as a political and social movement. However, this cannot be achieved by localized or disconnected voices. Now we need to take the leap to a collective climate justice movement of the peoples of East Asia. We need to explore the hotbeds(溫床) of the climate crisis across East Asia and connect contemporary resistances.

Of course, the political and social conditions in different parts of East Asia are different and harsh. In some places, it is impossible to organize even the smallest political action. We cannot deny these conditions for now, but life will go on, and we must not fall into lethargy. It is important to start a new journey from small but meaningful actions.

To this end, we propose the following small steps for the future.

• Organize and connect climate justice movements across East Asia to publish a declaration for climate justice by the people of East Asia by September this year.
• Create a web of resistance that connects people in East Asia who are suffering from heat waves, air pollution, pneumoconiosis, coal power plants, reckless dam building, and pollution of the Mekong River.
• Through collective action and solidarity, large and small, let's make the climate justice movement a force for building a new world.
• Build international solidarity against the climate and ecological destruction caused by transnational(超國籍) capital's supply chains.
• Let the climate justice movement be a mediator(媒介者) for creating a network of hope against the despair and destruction of our time(時代).

Reference

• 「Thailand's Rivers Polluted by Factory and Residential Waste」, 中华人民共和国生态环境部 Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China, 2011. 9.
• Jie Li, Peng Yin, Haidong Wang, Lijun Wang, Jinling You, Jiangmei Liu, Yunning Liu, Wei Wang, Xiao Zhang, Piye Niu, 「The burden of pneumoconiosis in China: an analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019」, BMC Public Health, 2022.
• Laurie Parsons, 『Carbon colonialism: How rich countries export climate breakdown』, Manchester University Press, 2023. 5.
• Ishaan Tharoor, 「Asia’s heat waves are a grim sign of the times」, The Washington Post, 2023. 5. 9.
• Lucas R. Vargas Zeppetello, 「Probabilistic projections of increased heat stress driven by climate change」, Communications Earth & Environment, 2022. 8.
• 「Global Warming of 1.5 ºC SPECIAL REPORT (SR15)」, IPCC, 20
• A. Hooijer, 「Global LiDAR land elevation data reveal greatest sea-level rise vulnerability in the tropics」, Nature Communications, 2021. 6.
• data from climateactiontracker.org
• 「The net-zero transition: What it would cost, what it could bring」, McKinsey Global Institute, 2022. 1.

Myungkyo Hong | Platform C Activist