Colonialism, SRM, and Contending with DSG’s Privilege

Debates around climate response, especially solar radiation modification (SRM), continue to reflect the legacies of colonialism. At the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering (DSG), we recognize that the ability of diverse stakeholders to set agendas, define “responsible” pathways, and disburse resources is deeply fractured and slanted in favor of colonial powers, i.e., Global North powers. We also cannot pretend that our work exists outside such realities. We are a Global North-based organization, with access to funding, visibility, and convening power that many of our peers and partners in the Global South struggle to secure. These privileges enable us to operate, but they also situate us within the very structures of power that we seek to transform. Acknowledging this truth helps identify strategies to navigate the SRM discourse with greater authenticity.

Our own backgrounds reflect this tension with diverse identities across the organization. For us, the authors of this piece, as individuals with South Asian immigrant roots — one a first-generation Indian American, the other born in Pakistan and now also a U.S. citizen — we carry complex identities shaped by colonial history. We are neither direct victims nor colonizers. But our lives are deeply shaped by the consequences of entrenched power dynamics. 

Recognizing and engaging with these identities and the wider set of diverse realities is central to how DSG designs its work and how we measure ourselves against the principles of justice we endeavor to serve.

We are writing this piece because DSG cannot be effective at building legitimate governance capacity if our own privilege quietly shapes who sets agendas, who benefits, and whose knowledge counts. Naming this is the first step toward ensuring a continued thoughtful process in how we partner, convene, fund, and share authority.

Colonialism’s imprint on climate change

Colonialism is a complex term describing structures of domination (political, socioeconomic, epistemic) that have and continue to shape who bears climate harms, who holds decision-making power, and whose knowledge is authoritative. It can mean different things to different people across different regions, religions, cultures, and communities. 

It also persists through neo-colonialism - a term that is becoming more ubiquitous as communities are contending with the legacies of direct colonial impacts. One widely used framing from Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister of Ghana, emphasizes that colonial “domination and exploitation” can exist without formal occupation “through political, economic and socio-cultural arrangements that institutionalise relationships of dependence or subservience and enable the extraction of wealth and resources.”  

Neo-colonialism is embedded within the climate crisis. Fossil fuel-based industrialization, accelerated by colonial and imperial extraction, set the stage for today’s warming, while providing a growth trajectory for many developing countries, subsequently splitting climate responsibility along Annex-I and non-Annex-I countries. Colonial powers amassed wealth through exploitation; the ensuing independence movements created unequal and conflict-prone systems. Water treaties, border disputes, and development traps (what some have called “time bombs”) still shape post- or neo-colonial realities today.

Global climate governance has also repeated these patterns. Massive business interests in the fossil fuel industry, despite knowing about the impacts of the greenhouse gas emissions from the use of their products, stymied political and economic action to curb growing climate concerns. The consequences of climate inaction are being disproportionately felt in Global South nations and regions that suffered, and continue to suffer, from the effects of colonialism. While debates over mitigation and adaptation have remained complex, climate finance has consistently fallen short, reinforcing unequal burdens on Global South countries facing the worst climate impacts. 

Against this backdrop, SRM has emerged as a suite of climate-altering technologies that could potentially help reduce certain near-term climate risks. But without care, SRM could increase risks, including by deepening the very colonial legacies that created the climate crisis.

The intersection of colonialism and SRM 

The broader SRM field has thus far not fully engaged in the discussion on the role colonialism plays in SRM discourse. From advocates for rapid SRM acceleration to purist non-climate intervention groups actively seeking to shut down open conversation about SRM, colonialism is often sidestepped across the spectrum. Principled opposition to SRM can be a legitimate endpoint; but when SRM is labeled as inevitably colonial and deliberations are shut down, it can result in performative colonialism that substitutes inclusive, meaningful participation with static conclusions that lack independent, appropriate reflection and input from vulnerable communities. Similarly, disregarding inclusion and participation in decisions that accelerate SRM through the lens of viewing use of these technologies as inevitable can position legitimate governance as an afterthought — while also externalizing risks onto those with the least say. Both ends of this advocacy spectrum quietly guide Global South policymakers to adopt positions that serve Global North agendas, a form of neocolonial influence dressed as solidarity. 

These dynamics reveal that colonialism runs through both sides of the SRM debate. This is not to say all actors in SRM fall into these categories, but that these are broader trends in how the field is being shaped. The vast majority of those who control SRM narratives are still situated within historic colonial powers, highlighting the need for accountability measures that ensure inclusion for vulnerable peoples occurs in ways that do not reinscribe the same power dynamics. Confronting how colonial legacies are shaping this field's development and legitimacy should account for whose ideas are prioritized and whose voices are silenced. 

DSG’s tensions

DSG lives in these tensions in our work, and we acknowledge this openly. Our U.S. base gives us visibility, access, and resources, but our mandate is to empower civil society in climate vulnerable communities to choose if and how they explore SRM. We continue to iterate and update our thinking as we move through this complex space, both as an organization and as individuals with relevant experiences. Our immigrant identities remind us that colonialism is not just a past injustice but a living structure, and that we must balance it with an understanding of the privilege and history we also find ourselves progressing through.

DSG aspires to remain genuinely neutral on eventual outcomes around the use of SRM, which does not mean indifference. We do not try to pre-decide what societies ‘should’ choose about SRM. Instead, we are explicitly committed to just process, specifically transparency, broad participation, and safeguards against undue influence or capture. This implies that legitimate processes can point to many endpoints, including research safeguards or ultimate use or non-use of SRM. 

Discussing the influence of colonialism on SRM is uncomfortable. It is difficult to offload the framing of “colonized” and “colonizer” that attempt to neatly divide history and set it aside. But this framing misses the point – colonialism’s consequences are alive in how funding flows, who has decision-making authority, and whose knowledge is valued. Re-framing the SRM discourse around these aspects helps to further DSG's goals of broadening the SRM ecosystem and providing pathways for those living with the legacy of colonialism to advocate for their authority to make decisions on SRM. 

Recurring patterns of academic reasoning without shared authority

In this vein, academic analysis is essential to strong, healthy SRM debate; it is a key part of due diligence. Our concern is that those who have thus far had the opportunity to deeply engage can minimize legitimacy by advocating for outcomes without just process.

We are actively seeing how quickly SRM can reproduce neo-colonial dynamics if legitimacy conditions are treated as optional on both ends of the advocacy spectrum. In pushing for idealized outcomes, Global North-led ideas/efforts can create agendas and engagements where Global South participants are consulted, but do not co-own outputs or knowledge that enables them to set direction. Or where research calls for specific actions, but was written in the North, with limited or no local engagement.

These examples point to the core problem within SRM governance: SRM actors can move from inquiry to influence without legitimate infrastructures for shared authority that are required for decisions of planetary implications. 

Path forward

Ultimately, our purpose in writing this piece is to reflect how enshrining hard truths can build trust on a topic where complexity reigns supreme. Perspectives from the Global South or colonial backgrounds are not inherently “more right”, but the heterogeneous peoples and institutions there deserve real access, opportunity, and sustained influence to define priorities, evidence, and governance on equal footing. Colonialism in SRM cannot be reduced to a blunt binary of North and South / white and non-white / “for” or “against”. For DSG, these “entanglements” are not abstract: money is a redistribution tool that often comes with strings; partnerships  can empower or co-opt; and narratives can either democratize or weaponize. There is a fragile balance. 

It has never been, nor will it ever be, easy to work within systems that carry historical trauma. This is why DSG tries to design accountability into our engagement activities, including: building engagement work with local partners where we are invited; co-designing agendas and outputs with local partners; disclosures of purpose and funding; and prioritization of useful and accessible materials and resources. We aim to avoid one-off engagements and to build follow-through pathways for academic and civil society partners in vulnerable nations. DSG’s core goal is that SRM decision-making emerges from deliberation that is transparent, broadly participatory, and protected against undue influence or capture, rather than from the default preferences of the best-resourced actors. Our responsibility is to model a different way of doing governance, one that redistributes authority rather than centralizes it, deliberating on the colonial intersections with partners and others in the field to help achieve that mandate.

This principled neutrality with a just deliberation stance comes into conflict with those who argue the most just outcome is to dismantle the SRM field entirely, given the risks of reproducing unequal power dynamics. We take that critique seriously, but our concern is that dismantling discourse does not eliminate the risks of climate change or SRM; rather, it will shift decisions to less accountable venues. This is why DSG prioritizes legitimacy-first processes and capacity sharing, and why addressing colonialism-based entanglements is imperative to progressing DSG’s mission. 

DSG will continue to create space for honest engagement, hold ourselves accountable, and ensure our future work builds towards dismantling the neo-colonial norms that have become entrenched in climate work.