Climate Imperialism: Ecocriticism, Postcolonialism, and Global Climate Change
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.2.2021.3809Keywords:
climate change, imperialism, colonialism, ecocriticism, postcolonialism, indigenous resistance, Tropics, empireAbstract
Global climate change threatens to kill or displace hundreds of thousands of people and will irrevocably change the lifestyles of practically everyone on the planet. However, the effect of imperialism and colonialism on climate change is a topic that has not received adequate scrutiny. Empire has been a significant factor in the rise of fossil fuels. The complicated connections between conservation and empire often make it difficult to reconcile the two disparate fields of ecocriticism and postcolonial studies. This paper will discuss how empire and imperialism have contributed to, and continue to shape, the ever-looming threat of global climate crisis, especially as it manifests in the tropics. Global climate change reinforces disparate economic, social, and racial conditions that were started, fostered, and thrived throughout the long history of colonization, inscribing climate change as a new, slow form of imperialism that is retracing the pathways that colonialism and globalism have already formed. Ultimately, it may only be by considering climate change through a postcolonial lens and utilizing indigenous resistance that the damage of this new form of climate imperialism can be undone.
References
Arbino, D. (2019). “The ugliness of my surroundings”: Tip Marugg’s Ecogothic Poetics of Isolation. eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the Tropics 18(1), 125-140. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.18.1.2019.3668. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.18.1.2019.3668
BBC News. (2018, Aug. 29). Puerto Rico increases Hurricane Maria death toll to 2,975. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45338080.
Chakrabarty, D. (2012). Postcolonial studies and the challenge of climate change. New Literary History, 43(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2012.0007 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2012.0007
Chwala, G. L. (2019). Ruins of Empire: Decolonial Queer Ecologies in Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven. eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the Tropics 18(1), 141-156. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.18.1.2019.3690. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.18.1.2019.3690
Coto, D. (2017, Dec. 29). Anger grows as half of Puerto Rico remains without power months after hurricane. Time. http://time.com/5082225/hurricane-maria-puerto-rico-no-power/.
Davenport, C. (2021, June 19). The Keystone XL pipeline project has been terminated. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/business/keystone-xl-pipeline-canceled.html.
DeLoughrey, E. & Handley, G.B. (2011). Introduction: Toward an aesthetics of the earth. In DeLoughrey, E. & Handley, G.B. (Eds.) Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment (pp. 3-39). Oxford UP. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195394429.003.0001 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195394429.003.0001
Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. Viking.
Edwards, J. D. (2008). Postcolonial literature. Palgrave Macmillan.
Fontaine, T. (2017, May 27). 'A perilous pipeline': Indigenous groups line up against Keystone XL. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/indigenous-groups-keystonexl-2017-approval-1.4042381.
Ge, M., Friedrich J., & Damassa T. (2014, Nov. 25). 6 Graphs explain the world's top 10 emitters. World Resources Institute. https://wri.org/blog/2014/11/6-graphs-explain-world%E2%80%99s-top-10-emitters. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0262-1762(14)70228-7
Ghosh, A. (2016). The great derangement: Climate change and the unthinkable, U of Chicago P. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226323176.001.0001 DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226323176.001.0001
Harvard University Press. (2013, Nov. 14). When slow violence sprints [Interview with R. Nixon]. https://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2013/11/when-slow-violence-sprints-rob-nixon.html
Hurricane Maria 2017. Climate Signals, Climate Nexus. http://www.climatesignals.org/headlines/events/hurricane-maria-2017.
Klein, N. (2014). This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. Simon & Schuster.
Memmi, A. (1991). The Colonizer and the Colonized. Beacon.
Mulia, K. (2021, Feb. 19). With new national plan, Singapore leads region’s sustainable green tech innovations. KrAsia, https://kr-asia.com/with-new-national-plan-singapore-leads-regions-sustainable-green-tech-innovations.
Nixon, R. (2011). Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Harvard UP. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674061194 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674061194
Nunez, C. (2017, March 28). China poised for leadership on climate change after U.S. reversal. National Geographic. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/china-takes-leadership-climate-change-trump-clean-power-plan-paris-agreement/.
Office of Special Investigations, Office of Inspector General, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, (2021). Review of HUD’s Disbursement of Grant Funds Appropriated for Disaster Recovery and Mitigation Activities in Puerto Rico (Report No. 2019SU008945I). Author.
Perez, C. S. (2020). Poems. eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the Tropics 19(1), 42-64. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.19.1.2020.3676. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.19.1.2020.3676
Regis, H. (2020). Subjection and Resistance: Landscapes, Gardens, Myths and Vestigial Presences in Olive Senior's Gardening in the Tropics. eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the Tropics 19(1), 151-166. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.19.1.2020.3682. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.19.1.2020.3682
Robles, F., Davis K., Fink S., & Almukhtar S. (2017, Dec. 9). Official toll in Puerto Rico: 64. Actual deaths may be 1,052. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/08/us/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-death-toll.html?_r=0.
Sealy-Huggins, L. (2017). “1.5°C to stay alive”: climate change, imperialism and justice for the Caribbean." Third World Quarterly, 38(11), 2444-2463, https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1368013 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1368013
Spence, M. D. (1999). Dispossessing the wilderness: Indian removal and the making of the national parks. Oxford UP.
Squarzoni, P. (2014). Climate Changed: A Personal Journey through the Science. Harry N. Abrams.
Vick, K. (2017, Oct. 3). A land they no longer recognize: Desperation and resilience in hurricane-battered Puerto Rico. Time, http://time.com/a-land-they-no-longer-recognize/.
Whyte, K. P. (2017). Is it colonial déjà vu?: Indigenous peoples and climate injustice. In J. Adamson & M. Davis (Eds.), Humanities for the Environment: Integrating Knowledge, Forging New Constellations of Practice (pp. 88–105). Routledge.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 CC-BY
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who submit articles to this journal agree to the following terms:
1. Authors are responsible for ensuring that any material that has influenced the research or writing has been properly cited and credited both in the text and in the Reference List (Bibliography). Contributors are responsible for gaining copyright clearance on figures, photographs or lengthy quotes used in their manuscript that have been published elsewhere.
2. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License that allows others to share and adapt the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, or publish it in a book), with proper acknowledgement of the work's initial publication in this journal.
4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access or The Open Access Citation Advantage). Where authors include such a work in an institutional repository or on their website (i.e., a copy of a work which has been published in eTropic, or a pre-print or post-print version of that work), we request that they include a statement that acknowledges the eTropic publication including the name of the journal, the volume number and a web-link to the journal item.
5. Authors should be aware that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License permits readers to share (copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the work) for any purpose, even commercially, provided they also give appropriate credit to the work, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do these things in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests you or your publisher endorses their use.