Research Seminar in Human Rights Studies: Brooke Ackerly (Vanderbilt University)

“Funding Justice: a human rights approach to climate justice”
Brooke Ackerly and Mujibul Anam, 

 

Abstract

Philanthropy is under scrutiny for being unable to address injustice and for being implicated in its perpetuation. Even when philanthropists intend to support social justice movements such as women’s movements, structural conditions and their own funding practices can undermine them. We develop a new critical theory of philanthropy that identifies five ways that philanthropy is implicated in social, political, and economic hierarchies – even those it may intend to address – and outline five practices that can and have enabled philanthropy and foreign aid to mitigate these concerns because they function in explicitly political ways to resist these practices and support social movements and political advocacy in a rights-based way. We apply these findings to the problem of climate justice in a location often characterized by academics and policy makers as one the most vulnerable to climate change. Based on over a decade of research we demonstrate the nature of the injustice of their climate vulnerability and the role of their concept of human rights in their understanding of the injustice they face. Using the critical theory of philanthropy, we offer politically attentive implications for philanthropy (wealth and foreign aid) to address both structural injustice and its consequences as they are revealed in the lived experience of villagers in southwestern Bangladesh who live at the frontline – the coastline – of climate change. Funding climate justice requires a critical approach to philanthropy and foreign aid.