Vulnerability and human mobility: a perspective from the Global South about colonialism and history ; Vulnerabilidad y movilidad humana: desde una perspectiva del Sur Global sobre colonialismo e historia

The process of contemporary environmental change is characterized by being global, considering that for a long time, the impacts were more local. The first point is to highlight the difference between climate change and environmental change: the first is related to climate imbalances, while the second analyses not only the climate imbalances, but also other planet dynamics, such as the infrastructure, the resources exploitation, how territories are occupied and changed in the biogeochemical cycle of the planet; this is part of a broader vision of the planet and all the relations inside of it, the world-ecology. The second point to highlight is the social perspective of the global environmental changes, which means, it is not only a physical process, but rather a social, economic and political one. It is a social process because of how societies exploit the resources, including the workforce, and which may result in environmental impacts. It is essential to note that these changes do not occur in a homogeneous way because its main characteristic is to be heterogeneous. Still though, considering countries’ historical characteristics- the level of social and economic inequality, the demographic components, the consumption modes, among others- there are huge differences in terms of the intensity of the disasters faced and how they impact the populations (the environmental events that directly affect human populations).The study topic of this paper is the Global South territories. The Global South is composed of countries from Latin America, Asia and Africa. They all have (in different intensities) a history of colonialism based on the massive exploitation of resources and human beings, first from the slavery system, and afterwards from low wages. The importance of focusing on the Global South is twofold:1) the impacts of environmental changes directly affect their populations; 2) there is need to introduce a perspective from the Global South in order to tell its own history. This second reason is well related to the ...