Season III Episode 5- Fadhel Kaboub: International Financial Institutions Rooted in the Intrinsic Link between Colonialism and Capitalism: How to End a System of Domination Through Climate Reparations?

Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur

This episode of Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur features Professor Fadhel Kaboub, who highlights the urgent need for decolonizing climate frameworks alongside a radical global economic transformation. He critiques the existing global financial system, in which $2 trillion flows annually from the Global South to the Global North, moving in the wrong direction while undermining development. Kaboub argues that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank exacerbate this imbalance by imposing conditionalities through loans, deliberately creating debt crises that keep the Global South trapped in cycles of dependency.

Fadhel Kaboub highlights the lack of sovereignty over food, energy and technology in the Global South, which limits the ability of these nations to negotiate as equals. He calls for South-South cooperation to challenge these dynamics and build alternative financial architectures that prioritize just transition and sustainability.

The conversation emphasizes that climate justice cannot be achieved without addressing the root causes of inequality—insisting that the global system must be decolonized to achieve decarbonization. Market-based approaches like carbon trading are dismissed as "pollution permits," designed to maintain the extractive colonial hierarchy through greenwashing. Kaboub advocates for transformative measures such as debt cancellation, unconditional grants, and the equitable transfer of green technologies.

He stresses that Africa must no longer serve as a source of cheap labor and raw materials for the Global North. True economic and climate justice requires a radical transformation, rethinking of economic roles, not mere reforms. Kaboub concludes with a call for collective action among Global South nations to dismantle exploitative systems and create a new framework for sustainable development that ensures justice for all.

Fadhel Kaboub is an Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is the author of Global South Perspectives on substack. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, an expert group member with the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, a member of the Earth4All Economic Transformation Commission, a Steering Committee member with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, a member of the African Forum on Climate Change, Energy and Development, and serves as Senior Advisor with Power Shift Africa. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023). He is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and is working on climate finance and development policies in Africa. You can follow him on X/Twitter @FadhelKaboub.

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