“It looks as if they threw the entire periodic table into the river”: a decolonial perspective for chemistry education in the context of environmental injustices

In this article I explore the case of the Mariana dam disaster in 2015 in Brazil seeking to contribute to reflections about the role of chemistry and chemistry education in environmental injustices. Drawing on stories about this disaster shared in the Dead River Podcast (2024), on wider literature and on other cases of environmental injustices associated with mining complexes around the world, I explore the historical and contemporary connections between chemistry-related knowledge, practices and industries with mineral resource exploitation. In particular, I examine how this example of a mining complex in the Global South, like many others across the world, can bring to light chemistry’s complex socio-political and socio-historical entanglements with extractivist, neocolonial and socially unjust practices that structure the triple planetary crisis we currently face. From this theoretical-exploratory work, I then elaborate on a decolonial perspective for chemistry education to support critical engagement with such entanglements. Here I seek to offer some insights around what a nuanced and critical decolonial perspective can bring to those interested in the role of chemistry education in the context of environmental injustices.