Climate Crises and Crypto-Colonialism: Conjuring Value on the Blockchain Frontiers of the Global South

Abstract

This commentary explores how climate crises are used to justify "crypto-colonialism," whereby blockchain technology is used to extract economic benefits from those suffering the scars of historic colonial expansion in the Global South. These benefits include land, labor, data and other resources needed to facilitate capital interests elsewhere. As with past neoliberal development agendas imposing structural economic reforms, the contemporary crypto-colonial exercises discussed here are driven in pursuit of a common good-to protect the global commons and improve people's lives. The paper explores how investors are drawn to the sustainable development frontiers-the code/spaces where crypto-colonial conjuring manifests. Blockchain is implicated within crypto-colonialism in three ways. Firstly, it plays into ongoing narratives of "green grabbing," where local claims to resources are liquidated for green investments. Secondly, the technology perpetuates North-South trade and investment inequalities, and thirdly, a new power asymmetry is enabled by the technology through data colonialism and surveillance capitalism. In reviewing the spaces where crypto-colonialism manifests, the paper argues that despite being distributed, technoecological fixes are never placeless. How people configure, use, and are impacted by blockchain platforms is geographically contingent.

A Route to Commons-Based Democratic Monies? Embedding the Governance of Money in Traditional Communal Institutions

“…In the engineering world of code, standardized rules translate into 16 Such are the neoliberal economics encoded in crypto-currency projects that some observers have started to argue that blockchain technologies are being introduced to intently advance the neoliberal agenda in the Global South. They call these efforts a "new form of crypto-colonialism" (see Crandall, 2019;Howson, 2020). algorithms programmed ex-ante (Rozas et al, 2018), before communities are even given the opportunity to articulate their priorities and idiosyncrasies.…”

A Systematic Review of Blockchain Applications

“…Manmade greenhouse gas emissions are the main cause of global warming, which will increase by 2.8°by 2050 if no action is taken in this decade [79]. The author in [79] emissions from forests [80], [81]. The authors analyzed several flaws of REDD+ and found solutions in blockchain technology, such as cryptocarbon management, green finance, and sustainable investments.…”

Blockchain, health disparities and global health

“…Conversely, it is important to be cognisant of the potential surge of crypto-colonial practices in global health and international development in line with past colonial and neo-colonial activities that advance capital interests abroad. 11 This may present itself as green investments, investment inequalities and power asymmetry as a result of data colonialism. Despite being a distributed ledger, blockchain may thus not be full without geography if not configured appropriately.…”