BAP Perspective: Climate, Environment & Militarism

Climate & Environment Are a Front in The War Against Africans / Black People & a Lens For Resistance

A draft document from BAP’s Climate, Environment & Militarism working group | August 2025

The Black Alliance for Peace has recently formed a Climate, Environment, and Militarism working group to investigate and outline the formation’s organizing, movement support, and educational activities related to this intersection. This document represents BAP’s current working perspective on the topic. We share this in hopes of putting radical Black, anti-imperialist politics into practice with regard to the climate and environmental crises, which are accelerating the genocidal and ecocidal logics of capitalism and colonialism. We look for engagement and hope to work with those who share our political principles.

If you would like to connect with us around this work, please read our one-pager that briefly  summarizes key themes and lays out our proposed offerings for collaboration.

You can also find our previous related work on the Earth Day (2022) Fact Sheet on ‘U.S. Militarism & The Climate Catastrophe’: blackallianceforpeace.com/environment.

Please contact us at info@blackallianceforpeace.com to connect.

Background & Political Framing

The rapid increase in the intensity and frequency of impacts associated with climate change, the acceleration of environmental degradation, and the overarching climate crisis are disproportionately shouldered by African/Black peoples and  communities the world over. That said, it is also imperative to focus on the root causes of the climate and environmental crisis - capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonialism (the latter three being key variables of capitalism). These root causes manifest in the forms of emissions from various sectors of the white supremacist West’s economic machine including, but not limited to, toxic industrial operations, transportation, agriculture, energy production, militarism, and others that release and produce associated externalities that poison land, air, and water while also locking African/Black folks into larger systems of production that kill acutely and chronically.

Social control and stratification are also a key component of this destructive and poisonous economic system. The majority of U.S.-based African/Black Residents live and work in the most climate vulnerable areas of the U.S. - and this can also be said for global African/Black Resident communities situated throughout the so-called Global South and within nations that have been intentionally underdeveloped by global imperialist powers (building from Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, we might refer to these as ‘Intentionally Underdeveloped Nations [IUNs] as opposed to other terminology, such as ‘Developing Nations’, that obfuscates the dynamics of imperialist domination and colonial social control).  Meanwhile, the majority of African/Black people in the U.S. reside in the South, which faces deadly and destructive disasters and everyday climate calamities, and the largest Black populations north of the Mason/Dixon reside in cities that are situated on, or directly proximate to, the Great Lakes of the U.S., which represent 26% of the world’s remaining surface freshwater (Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee as well as surrounding cities like Gary and South Bend, IN, Minneapolis, and other smaller cities throughout the “Heartland”).

Climate and environmental crises continue to impact all sectors of life for our people, and as they accelerate, material conditions for African/Black Resident people and communities will deteriorate at precipitous rates. Recent legislative proposals and ratifications by both corporate parties forming the duopoly complex have and will exacerbate this rate. For instance, the recent rollback of key environmental statutes that acted, to some extent, as backstops for U.S. African/Black Resident communities including the National Environmental Policy Act, Executive Order 12898, and disparate impact tests via the Civil Rights Act have either been weakened or deracinated altogether.

Moreover, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), already known to be one of the most profoundly racist and peniaphobic agencies in the U.S. federal government, has signaled its intentions to reduce payouts to communities and households impacted by climate-fueled disasters, and home insurance corporations are either egregiously raising rates or denying coverage altogether in states across the country and, specifically in areas where Blacks/Africans reside such as Altadena, CA and throughout the Gulf South. When this is combined with federal and State rollbacks of critical human rights protections such as SNAP, Medicaid, and LIHEAP the stakes could not be higher for U.S. based African/Black Residents - as the intensity of the climate crises increases we are observing a direct correlation with the intensity of elements of the neoliberalism ethos including, but not limited to, increased austerity and atrophy of social welfare programs along with increased privatization of public serving entities associated with transportation and energy production/distribution as well as the defunding of governmental programs charged with the protection of air, land and water in concert with outright de-regulation.

Adding to the calamities experienced and facing African/Black Resident communities is increased militarism both internationally and domestically. The clear nexus between increased military operations –including, but not limited to, armed conflicts/war, maintenance and operations of the military industrial complex, occupation and violence by domestic “police” and federal law enforcement agencies – and exacerbation of the increasingly deadly and disruptive climate/environmental crisis has been well established. However, the current climate and environmental justice movements have not elucidated the role and effect of militarism with the clarity, frequency, and urgency required, particularly given its debilitating and devastating impacts on African/Black, colonized, and poor and working class peoples and communities. Further, the limited current activism and mobilization that does attend to this nexus has not achieved a requisite scale or clarity to better activate and organize with African/Black peoples, specifically, and the greater public as a whole.

Surprisingly, substantial and effective linkages between climate, environment, and militarism have been rare, outside of individual studies or short-lived campaigns. And fewer still have focused on building mass-based power to challenge the capitalist, colonial, patriarchal structures at the core of this nexus. This void exists despite more recent attention to the U.S. military’s role as the largest single user of fossil fuels and the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses in the world. Even less attention is paid to the U.S.-led NATO operations that are increasing emissions at an unprecedented rate (there are no definitive accounting mechanisms for the exact amount of emissions, only estimates, attributed to U.S. military and NATO operations, to date). Perhaps unsurprisingly then, most global climate initiatives focus little on the structure and imperialist mission of U.S. and NATO militarism, which are antithetical to climate, environment, and individual health and stability.

While the vast majority of Black-led climate and environmental justice (CEJ) organizations claim to hold deep solidarity with African/Black Resident populations throughout the diaspora, most have been relatively silent on ongoing U.S. and NATO interventions and assaults against African peoples, such as the U.S. hatched and backed invasion of the revolutionary nation of Haiti. Moreover, these groups have also not embarked on programming aimed at developing mass consciousness among all peoples, of the impacts of climate change and militarism on African/Black Resident populations in nations across the Americas such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador. The same can be said for the direct and indirect impacts of the U.S. presence on the continent via AFRICOM and renewed U.S. interest in establishing and increasing fossil fuel infrastructure and an accompanying carbon market on the continent, as well as securing access to rare Earth metals in the Congo and beyond.

Additionally, there remains a need for an assessment and program of intervention for the direct and indirect climate impacts of domestic militarism on Black, poor, and working-class populations in the United States, especially with the explosion of Cop Cities. Moreover, while both militarism and the climate/environmental crisis disproportionately impact Black, Indigenous, nationally oppressed, and poor/working class people domestically and throughout the so-called Global South, grassroots CEJ formations seldom, if ever, raise the issue.  The same can be said of “mainstream,” historically white-led U.S. environmental organizations and the environmental philanthropic community.

BAP has documented and continues to monitor the expansion and maintenance of empire via AFRICOM, SOUTHCOM, NATO, the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine, and other consequences of the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination. The forces of capitalism and U.S.-led imperialism continues to wreak havoc on the peoples and environments of the so-called Global South. Further, the domestic militarism and  capitalist expansion it protects, like the proliferation of Cop Cities throughout the country and the proliferation of data centers to accommodate ‘artificial intelligence’, has innumerable negative environmental impacts. To combat this front of imperialist war against our people and nations, we are developing an effort to incorporate a climate and environmental lens to the overarching issue of militarism and imperialist domination, and toward a perspective based in the framework of People(s)-Centered Human Rights.  

In the face of accelerating militarism and climate catastrophe, we are developing this Climate, Environment, and Militarism working group as part of our understanding that our movement urgently needs a Black radical and revolutionary approach to climate and environmental crises, with coordinated actions based in fostering working class struggle, Black unity, anti-imperialist internationalist solidarity, and the Southern Roots of African/Black peoples in North America. Below, we detail the foundations and our perspective on the current strategic approach for BAP’s perspective to climate and environmental liberation.

Five pillars of Climate & Environmental Liberation work: Land, Water, Air, Energy, Militarism

To pursue climate and environmental liberation for African/Black people, we must root our work in a radical and anti-imperialist framework that identifies and dismantles the systems of oppression that have militarized our Earth. Our approach centers on five foundational pillars: Land, Water, Air, Energy, and Militarism.

Land

Land is foundational to our survival, autonomy, and cultural continuance. In the U.S., Black communities have long been dispossessed of land—through racist lending policies, eminent domain, gentrification, and agribusiness expansion. In rural and urban spaces alike, land has been weaponized against us. In the South, petrochemical industries expand through Black neighborhoods without consent, leading to toxic environments like those in Cancer Alley, Louisiana. Meanwhile, across urban centers, housing is rendered unaffordable and insecure, transforming shelter into a commodity for profit rather than a human right. And beyond just housing, land is also an urban issue as a lack of green space and tree cover result in African/Black and poor neighborhoods suffering scorching temperatures due to the ‘heat island’ effect, being disproportionately exposed to cancer-inducing ultraviolet (UV) rays, and developing psychological damages related to a lack of recreational or “nature” spaces.

Colonial capitalist land-based violence takes place across locations and scales: continued containment of Native Americans / Indigenous peoples on colonial reservations, with routine violations of sovereignty; mass disabling in Cancer Alley (petrochemical corridor in Black neighborhoods); land seizures for pipelines in the Gulf South; rampant land seizures and deforestation throughout the Global South; displacement, ethnic cleansing, and land speculation after disasters like Hurricane Katrina and fires (particularly in the Gulf South and the U.S. West); the destruction of Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta for “Cop City”; resource extraction that destroys ecology and hyperexploits labor – the Congo, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Lithium Triangle in South America, and beyond.

Liberation means securing land not just for survival but for self-determination: for community-owned housing, sustainable farming, healing, and political power. It also means standing in solidarity with land defenders globally—especially Indigenous communities who are targeted for protecting ecosystems and resisting imperialist development. Land sovereignty, then, is a requirement for climate and environmental liberation.

Water

Water is life—but under colonial capitalism, it is treated as a tool of control and a commodity to be exploited for profit. African/Black communities in the U.S. face routine denial of access to clean and affordable water. The crises in Flint, MI and Jackson, MS are not anomalies but manifestations of systemic racism. Corporations and municipalities poison, overcharge, and privatize water while defunding infrastructure in Black neighborhoods.

Globally, water conflicts are intensifying as imperial powers seek to control freshwater sources through development projects, trade deals, and military occupation. The control of water intersects with forced displacement, agricultural disruption, and disease—all disproportionately impacting Black and Indigenous populations. The state neglect of water infrastructure and rights has led to contamination, privatization, and general corporate control of water resources that are essential to all life on Earth, effectively instituting environmental apartheid in communities where clean, fresh water is a relatively scarce resource. A liberatory vision for Water liberation means community-controlled water systems, full funding for safe infrastructure, and solidarity with nations resisting water colonialism—such as those resisting U.S. intervention in the African Great Lakes region and the Global South more broadly.

Air

Clean air is essential to individual and community health. Pollution, particularly in the air, has historically served as a catalyst for community awareness of environmental degradation and collective action against the hazardous impacts of capitalist production on our health – as it is often the easiest byproduct of capitalist waste for everyday people to identify. As the various waves of capitalist manufacturing revolutions spread across the U.S., African/Black communities throughout the U.S. were historically not only ‘redlined’ to keep them away from white enclaves, but also to trap them in areas near factories or other industrial production. This has resulted in the poisoning of our people’s bodies (e.g., high rates of lung cancer, COPD, asthma), reducing life expectancy and quality of life, as well as the poisoning of land and homes, resulting in destruction of community life and economic prospects.

Because of the visibility of air pollution, even white and wealthy neighborhoods have mobilized against this, particularly in the 70s and 80s. However, since the passage of legislation like the Clean Air Act, air pollution has become progressively more concentrated in ‘sacrifice zones’ – areas where polluting production is concentrated, typically in oppressed communities with limited formal political power in the U.S. (i.e. Black, indigenous, Latinx, and working class neighborhoods) and throughout the Global South. As a result, wealthier, whiter communities have significantly cleaner air than neighborhoods of African/Black people, the poor and working class, and other colonized communities – even in the same city. We see this with electric vehicles, where emissions from car exhaust are reduced in areas where electric vehicles are driven, but the production of electricity still relies heavily on fossil fuel-driven power plants that are concentrated in oppressed communities. At a global scale, this dichotomy is even more stark – with the imperialist powers of the world relegating some of the dirtiest industries and most dangerous production to the Global South. Fighting for clean air, then, is a struggle that interconnects community health, individual quality of life, childhood development, capitalist production, global power structures, and more.

Energy

Energy is a vital tool of survival, exploitation, and geopolitical power. The global energy economy is built on the back of colonized peoples’ land and labor—from oil extraction in Nigeria to fracked gas pipelines through Black neighborhoods in Louisiana. Energy access is unequal; while poor communities face shutoffs and unaffordable bills, the U.S. military and corporate monopolies waste and pollute at massive scales.

The so-called “green energy transition” is not exempt from critique—it risks repeating the same exploitative models under a new greenwashed banner. We see this in countless examples. We see this in particular the greenwashing of capitalist exploitation, from the gross human rights violations in mines in the Congo justified to power so-called ‘climate-friendly’ technologies, to the coercive bind of climate-vulnerable small island states like Dominica turning to an Israeli-American firm embedded in settler-colonial economy to advance its geothermal development^[1]. We see the federal government-supported privatization of energy in Puerto Rico led by vulturistic disaster capitalists has led to frequent blackouts and unaffordable energy, with “green” options primarily only being available military installations and large corporate entities. We see this in the placement of data centers in African/Black and poor communities, like xAI’s ‘supercomputer’ compound in Memphis, TN that attacks residents by poisoning the air, depleting the water, and occupying the land – all while offering almost no local economic benefit. And perhaps most explicitly, we see this in the practices and priorities of ‘green’ capitalists like Elon Musk, who proudly asserted his role in the 2019 coup against Evo Morales (and continued acts of subversion in Bolivia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina) in order to secure access to lithium mines.

Liberatory energy must demand popular and national energy sovereignty, public ownership of utilities, a just transition for workers, and energy systems that heal rather than harm. This might include: democratized, community-controlled, and regenerative systems; community and public ownership of utilities; and a true just transition for workers and energy that serves people—not profits. 

Militarism

Militarism is both a tool and driver of ecological collapse. The U.S. military is the largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases on Earth, yet is exempt from most international climate accountability. Domestically, militarization—via police, prisons, Cop Cities, and surveillance—targets African/Black and working-class communities, defending systems of extraction and abandonment. Abroad, U.S. wars, bases, and military aid facilitate environmental devastation—from deforestation in Colombia to bombed-out water systems in Gaza. And private sector weapons manufacturers (e.g. Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumann) contribute to, and aid in the cover up of, environmental contamination and degradation of land, air, and water in Black/African neighborhoods – while cynically collecting economic development tax breaks to locate facilities in areas devastated by previous neoliberal deindustrialization.

Militarism enforces climate apartheid. It undergirds border regimes that criminalize climate refugees and maintains fossil fuel dependency through violent enforcement. The spread of AFRICOM, NATO operations, and occupation zones globally show that militarism is inseparable from climate injustice. As militarism expands and deepens imperialist domination, it also dehumanizes and discards the colonized and “surplus” populations by contaminating our ecosystems and poisoning our bodies – from the island nations of the Pacific to Puerto Rico to the coasts of West Africa.

The environmental destruction from imperialist militarism has devastated countries in the throes of U.S.-led militarism, such as Palestine, Iraq, Colombia, and Cambodia,, yet these impacts are not contained to the “Global South”. This destruction also has dire consequences for our people, neighborhoods, and communities in the U.S. as well. So-called “domestic” militarism via Cop Cities, prison expansion, and police violence in climate-vulnerable African/Black communities is a critical front of this war as well. Further, many “climate resilience” and other “green” programs led by capitalists and their governmental lackeys further entrench corporate control that enables additional surveillance and repression of African/Black, colonized, and working class communities.

Consequently, climate and environmental liberation cannot exist without demilitarization. Despite the lack of mass mobilization responding to this fact, grassroots and people(s)-centered movements have been resisting. We must oppose U.S.-led imperialism, dismantle the military-industrial complex, and reject false solutions that expand surveillance or policing in the name of “resilience” or “security.” This means at minimum dismantling the military-industrial complex, ending fossil fuel wars and occupations that are a pretext for imperialist full-spectrum dominance; and redirecting military budgets to community climate and care infrastructure.

In struggling against the militarization that is contributing to, reinforcing, and taking advantage of the climate crisis and environmental degradation, it is clear that the bifurcation of “domestic” and “international” limits the effectiveness of any potential strategic action. Therefore, understanding these crises as a key component of the war against Africans and Black people globally is essential as we engage in our central strategic campaign: ‘No Compromise No Retreat’.

Connecting to ‘No Compromise, No Retreat’ campaign

“No Compromise, No Retreat: Defeat the War Against African/Black People in the U.S. and Abroad” is the key programmatic work of the Black Alliance for Peace. While the term war is often used to denote international conflicts between trained enemy combatants, we recognize that the continued militarization of police forces –with their extensive resources and global reach–blurs the fictional imperialist line between the foreign and the domestic. We can understand “war” as “the strategic invasion, destabilization, dispossession, and, at times, elimination of a community,  people, land, resources, culture, customs, and agency by political , armed, economic, and psychological means.”

From fires in Altadena, California to hurricanes in New Orleans and the entire U.S. Gulf South to flooding in Nigeria to earthquakes in Haiti, we have witnessed firsthand the power of Mother Nature. However, we cannot overlook the deliberate negligence by the U.S. government, in domestic and global political arenas, in facing the fact that the climate crisis disproportionately affects African/Black people and other oppressed groups. In the U.S., the meager (if any) distribution of aid and compensation after a natural disaster or public health crisis entrenches pre-existing disparities. Globally, aid schemes most often reinforce imperialist underdevelopment, entrench neocolonial social and political control, create debt traps, and leave people vulnerable to future calamities.  Individuals and families, already suffering from the buckling weight of a decaying capitalist society, are plunged further into economic impoverishment and instability; meanwhile politicians line their pockets and corporations skate away unharmed while occasionally receiving federal assistance or outright buying legislative influence.  It is apparent that there is a structural element to the climate “crisis” which is buttressed by the well oiled machinery of white supremacy and capitalist exploitation.

This crisis is not an unfortunate byproduct of capitalist expansion or of ‘progressive development’. On the contrary, there are times when the U.S. government and political leaders have played a hand in mass death and widespread disabling of the African/Black population. With policies like ‘eminent domain’, fossil fuel companies gain increasing free range in the U.S. South as they criss-cross through African/Black neighborhoods and cities in the Bayou, seizing land (and homes) for their transcontinental gas pipes.  African/Black people and communities are directly in the cross hairs of the deadly effects of pollution because of lax environmental regulations and zoning practices by the city/governing bodies, as well as limited worker protections. Crumbling infrastructure leaves us defenseless against contaminated water and hazardous materials in our homes and schools. Climate change kills, but so does white supremacy. And when combined, they cause high death tolls and force many to live half-lives, sacrificed for the sake of insatiable capital and political consolidation.

The organized abandonment of African/Black people within the U.S. mirrors the overt violence unleashed on those in the Global South. Many well meaning people are taking the steps to change lifestyle patterns to address climate change, yet we know the elephant in the room is the bloated military expenses and endeavors around the world that are propelling us into ecocide while simultaneously genocides in Gaza and Sudan are livestreamed to us daily. Millions of metric tons of military equipment and infrastructure around the world work against the liberation of the land and of African/Black and oppressed people. The US foreign policy of full spectrum dominance is a 24/7 operation of constant military surveillance and operations, pumping tons of carbon into our fragile system.

Further, the zionist entity’s current longest and deadliest genocide against the Palestinian people has caused more carbon emissions than 100 individual countries. Within this reality lies the heart of the intersection of climate, environment, and militarism: Indigenous peoples and their ways of being are in direct opposition to capitalism and its twin settler colonialism. Whether in Palestine, Africa or Our Americas, imperialism necessitates the erosion of self-determination and the dispossession of land through economic policies, lawfare or by brute force, usually in the form of a military or militarized forces. Every year, hundreds of Black/African and Indigenous activists are murdered in defense of land and natural ecosystems, against capitalist militarism.^[2] 

Imperialists see anti-colonial/Black liberation as a threat because it impedes profit accumulation and the socioeconomic order based in imperialist domination. Accelerating climate and environmental crisis is the end result of the decaying, US capitalist empire, desperate to maintain global hegemony. BAP understands that domestic and foreign policies are part of the same imperialist global system of domination. The liberation of the land and the masses of African/Black people depends on us recognizing the U.S.’s role in destabilization and oppression in the so-called U.S. and abroad. We cannot be myopic in our approach to tackling the various arms of domination. The actions of the U.S.-led militarism and capitalist mode of production are primary causes of this devastating crisis. Furthermore, their actions are one piece of the multifaceted, protracted war against the Black, colonized, and poor and working class people. Defeating this war, and halting the environmental and climate crisis requires a unified struggle against the root cause of these crises, the Pan-European white supremacist colonial/capitalist patriarchy and the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination that upholds it.

We know that peace is not the absence of violence. Through class struggle, oppressed people will confront the arbiters of their premature deaths, whether at the hands of militarized violence or the slow death of climate destruction. Guided by the campaign “No Compromise, No Retreat Campaign: Defeat the War Against African/Black People in the U.S. and Abroad’ we remove geographical boundaries. This deepens the campaign and offers new opportunities to broaden our strategic and tactical framework both in the United States and globally. In this struggle, we place ourselves on the side of the global majority and the working class against imperialism. We must now evolve this framework to recognize the Earth itself as part of that struggle and recognize our obligation to it. 

Recommendations and proposed political objectives

This Climate, Environment, and Militarism work we set out to deepen is necessary not only due to the urgency of the capitalist crises that present a threat to human well-being and survival, but also the strategic gap in our broad anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, anti-capitalist work. In addition, the consistent unwillingness of bourgeois and PWI climate/environmental groups to take firmer stances of solidarity with African/Black Resident communities beyond specious and intermittent rhetoric as exemplified by the ongoing biological/environmental warfare still taking place in locales including, but not limited to Cancer Alley, LA and Flint, MI, as well as a national crisis of food apartheid and increased displacement of African/Black Residents via gentrification.

We must move past the limitations of climate and environmental “justice” as there can be no justice for our people and communities until there is first a concerted and long-term effort that affords them climate and environmental liberation through processes that directly combat capitalism and militarism. Climate and environmental liberation requires moving beyond justice because in a world that has become so imbalanced and unequal, exacerbated by a white supremacist, capitalist-fueled climate crisis, achieving ‘justice’ or ‘ecological balance’ is impossible with liberation, which requires defeating the interlocking systems of oppression that cause this imbalance and inequality: capitalism, white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, militarism, and all forms of imperialism.

For BAP, any work we set forward will advance climate and environmental liberation, follow our Principles of Unity, and be implemented in alignment with our campaign “No Compromise, No Retreat”.

“...understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act…”

– George Jackson

Related work to explore:

• Climate, Environment, and Militarism webpage: blackallianceforpeace.com/environment
• One Pager: Our Perspective and proposed offering to the movement
  https://bit.ly/BAP-climate-environment-offering
• BAP SoCal: “Dispatch: Through the Fire” - BAP SoCal on the Altadena Fires
• BAP SoCal: The PEOPLE and the L.A. Fires: BAP SoCAL Speaks
• BAP Mid-Atlantic: Info Sheet on Maryland Data Center

Our campaigns and relevant programmatic work

• No Compromise, No Retreat campaign presentation video: https://bit.ly/NCNRvideo
• North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights: https://peoplescenteredhumanrights.com/
• US Out of Africa Network:
  https://blackallianceforpeace.com/usoutofafrica/
• US/NATO Out of Our Americas Network:
  https://zoneofpeace.org/
• NATO & Ukraine resources:
  https://blackallianceforpeace.com/resourcesonukraine