Green Colonialism | Insights
‘Colonialism dressed up in Nice Green Finery’
#newspaperinlearning #greencolonialism
Social Ecology as the New Philosophy
Global Heating & Extractivism in the Arctic
The Newspaper on Sunday is something that the avid reader keenly looks out for. For in it, are contained some exclusive and highly informative feature articles that hold a lot of significance for the future of academia. On pressing topics that need our urgent attention, and topics that need to be discussed, dialogued and debated prospectively!
One such topic that was discussed on broadsheet in yesterday’s Sunday Times was on Green Colonialism.
Before we move on, let’s first place Green Colonialism in context.
Green Colonialism or Eco-Colonialism
In a nutshell, green colonialism involves developed nations exploiting the resources and labor of developing countries while framing their actions as ‘environmentally beneficial’.
Also known as eco-colonialism, it refers to the exploitation of the land, labour, and resources of the Global South by the Global North, often under the guise of environmental sustainability or climate action, perpetuating inequalities and environmental degradation, either through resource extraction, land grabbing or climate policies.
Three Book Recommends [from this Blogger] on Green Colonialism
In this regard, I wish to present three seminal books on the subject of Green Colonialism, that would be quite useful for research scholars working in this area.
The first book is titled, Handbook on International Development and the Environment, in which Ragnhild Freng Dale and Lena Gross have written an article titled, “The Arctic: last frontier for energy and mineral exploitation?”
They have a very profound elucidation to offer –
Historically, the Arctic has been imagined as the last frontier to conquer, tightly connected to ideas of manhood, adventure, and survival of the fittest.
In the last decades, the Arctic has caught new interest as a resource frontier for tourism, trade, energy, and minerals. Climate change has both opened new waterways in the Arctic Ocean and altered living conditions drastically for Arctic communities.
Multinational companies that come to explore for oil, gas, minerals, and wind power, tend to receive the blessing of the nation on which territory the resources are located.
Indigenous peoples who have occupied these lands since before the existence of these nation-states are yet again exoticised, displaced, or see their land appropriated for industrial purposes.
Politically, the Arctic Council is perhaps the institution that defines which states belong to the Arctic. It includes the eight states of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, and the United States, and six Indigenous People’s Organizations that are Permanent Participants in the Council.
Industrial development on Indigenous territory
Conflicts about industrial development on Indigenous territory are well known all over the world. These conflicts are not necessarily between the Indigenous population and the non-Indigenous governments or industries, as there – as in all communities – at times exist different, and at times opposing, interests also inside Indigenous communities.
Reindeer herders in Sápmi are a minority of a minority. The same is true for First Nation, Métis, and Inuit members that still rely to some extent on subsistence activities hunting, fishing, trapping, and gathering in Canada.
These activities, however, have a cultural meaning that goes far beyond their economic significance or the number of people who are directly connected to them for subsistence.
Knowledge Keepers and Language Keepers
People continuing these traditional land-use practices are knowledge keepers and often also language keepers for their nations.
Any encroachment on the land on which these activities depend are therefore also an encroachment on the material basis of Indigenous culture and language.
Internal Colonialism
The Nordic countries are seen as some of the most egalitarian democracies in the world with fair decision-making and due process for infrastructural development. However, Norway, Sweden, and Finland have a history of internal colonialism that continues in new and different forms today.
The three Nordic countries all treated the Sámi population as inferior people who either should be segregated from or assimilated fully into majority society.
When Norway gained its independence from Sweden in 1905, the cross-border reindeer herding was made difficult, and many Sámi lost their pasture lands when Sámi that were considered Swedish together with their reindeer herds were forcibly relocated from their summer homes in Northern Norway to Sweden, mostly the areas around Arjeplog, Jokkmokk, and Tärnaby.
Mined, logged, dammed and exploited for the gain of majority society
In all nation-states, the northern regions have been mined, logged, dammed for hydro-power, and otherwise exploited for the gain of majority society, often at the expense of land, rights, and livelihoods of the Sámi population.
Assimilation policies, displacement of communities, boarding schools, and loss of language were all part of the internal colonisation processes, the effects of which continue to this day.
Green Colonialism and Extractivism in the Arctic
A new term that has recently gained prominence in research focusing on Sámi rights in the Scandinavian part of Sápmi is “green colonialism”.
It was coined by Sámi activists and politicians before it was taken up in academia, most prominently by Eva Maria Fjellheim (forthcoming PhD thesis) and Susanne Normann (2021).
The planned “Arctic railway” as green colonialism
Aili Keskitalo, former president of the Sámi parliament in Norway, refers to policies and practices around large-scale wind power facilities, mining for minerals that are needed for the so-called “green shift”, and the planned “Arctic railway” as green colonialism.
Green Colonialism: Colonialism dressed up in Nice Green Finery
She has described green colonialism as “when colonialism has dressed up in nice green finery and we are told to give up our territories and our livelihoods to save the world because of climate change” (The Arctic Circle 2020).
Indigenous lands, rights, and livelihoods are taken, minimised, or endangered
Like other colonial processes, Indigenous lands, rights, and livelihoods important for cultural continuity are taken, minimised, or endangered. The difference is that in the circumstances of green colonialism, this happens under the moral imperative of common good, namely, to fight climate change that threatens the world as we know it.
‘Green Sacrifice Zones’ where acts of violence are rendered as innocuous or necessary
The areas in question become “green sacrifice zones” where acts of violence are “erased, trivialized, naturalized, justified and rendered as innocuous or necessary”.
These mechanisms of constructing prettifying narratives continue a pattern of colonial Arctic history where forced displacement and domestication of Arctic Indigenous peoples, Indian residential schools, and large-scale environmental destruction for oil and gas extraction are all justified by narratives of the common good like the improvement of life conditions, education, or energy security.
This brings us to the second book on the subject. Hamza Hamouchene, in their book titled, Dismantling Green Colonialism has this to offer –
Renewable Energy Colonialism
Green colonialism, or “renewable energy colonialism” can be defined as the extension of the colonial relations of plunder and dispossession (as well as the dehumanization of the other) to the green era of renewable energies, with the accompanying displacement of socio-environmental costs onto peripheral countries and communities, prioritizing the energy needs of one region of the world over another.
Green Grabbing
Scholars and activists have coined another useful concept: “green grabbing”. This refers to cases where the dynamics of land grabs take place within a supposedly green agenda. In other words, land and resources are appropriated for purportedly environmental ends.
Installation of big wind farms on Agropastoralists’ land without their Consent
This ranges from certain conservation projects that dispossess indigenous communities of their land and territories, to the confiscation of communal land in order to produce biofuels, and to the installation of big solar plants/wind farms on agropastoralists’ land without their proper consent.
Now coming to this feature article in today’s Times of India –
Klaus Dodds, Executive Dean for the School of Life Sciences and Environment at Royal Holloway, opens up on the subject with Srijana Mitra Das.
‘The best way to start is to say the Arctic is no longer reliably frozen — earlier, we could say this region had short, intense summers and long, cold winters where ice was permanent. That became a reliable platform for humans and animals — this is no longer true and the implications are incredibly wide-ranging’.
First, if ice is no longer as stable, humans and animals, like polar bears and seals, can no longer travel over it safely or use it to find food or give birth, as seals do on ice platforms, if the ice is thinner.’ It doesn’t stop there.
The loss of ice is profound. But the same ice is imagined very differently in diverse narratives.
Ice is an Enabler for the Indigenous: A Problem for the Westerner
‘In indigenous cultures, ice has a very special place — it is not considered an obstacle but an enabler. During winter, ice allows indigenous peoples to travel all over the Arctic. Secure ice was integral to dog sledging — there were almost ice highways, trails running across the Arctic, where indigenous peoples could move from one part to another and retain community networks.
That contrasts sharply with
Westerners, who tend to think of ice as a problem, something that needs to be
removed to make the Arctic ‘better’.’
‘Now, it’s interesting how all this Western interest in the Arctic
pivots around ice loss. Suddenly, Westerners are going, ‘Isn’t it tragic that
we’re losing all this Arctic ice and the region is imperilled?’
‘I think this leads to the idea that Westerners are going to ‘save’ the Arctic and indigenous peoples need ‘saving’ — while, in fact, indigenous peoples have shown over millennia that they’re able to adapt to the Arctic when its ice varied.
Their cultural frameworks contain an extraordinary ability to live seasonally with ice and think of this as intimately connected with land, sea, air and all the living things that depend on it.’
The Growth of Ice Humanities
Studying relationships with ice, says Dodds, who predicts the growth of ‘ice humanities’, reveals a lot. ‘You discover this is far more than scientific. It’s linked to histories, food and water security, identity, sport, culture — even cosmology.’
Dodd terms the ground beneath land ice as ‘the material geopolitics of frozen soils’ in the Arctic. He explains, ‘This largely means permafrost — again, indigenous and Western views on these soils vary. I’d include Russia in this.
For the former Soviet Union, permafrost was seen as a mysterious
obstacle, frustrating the plans of Stalin in particular to industrialise the
Russian North and expand agriculture there. An idea formed that the Russian
Arctic needed to be warmed, so permanently frozen ground could be thawed and
used more ‘productively’.
Difference in Indigenous and Western ‘Ways of Seeing’ the Arctic
Again, a big difference between indigenous and Western — including Russian — views is this idea of making the Arctic a ‘more productive space’. Indigenous worldviews see productivity in the seas and ice there. Frozen land is considered invaluable because you can establish temporary settlements.
In contrast, for Westerners, frozen ground has always been seen as an obstacle, something that must be changed to become more advantageous.’ Dodds adds this casually but it encompasses an entire world of history, ‘There is this constant desire within Western worldviews to somehow make the Arctic something else.’
However, certain groups try to study the Arctic as it is. TE asks Dodds
about scientific research in the most remote part of Earth. ‘Until the recent
breakdown between Russia and the West following the full-scale invasion
of Ukraine, the Arctic was fairly renowned for international scientific
collaboration — Western scientists, for example, got access to the Russian
Arctic which is 50% of the region.
Who gets to define
sustainability? What are we trying to Sustain?
Science is intricately bound with technology though and the world is now hearing about how the Arctic — and Greenland — offers technological breakthroughs via mineral resources.
Getting those minerals will involve the same drilling, mining and extractions which have denuded other parts of Earth. Can this region develop its own idea of sustainability? Dodds replies with alacrity,
‘We must ask — who gets to define ‘sustainability’? And what are we trying to sustain?
Indigenous Views on Sustainability
Indigenous understandings of sustainability will look very different to what Arctic states might envision. For example, in Finland today, the indigenous Finnish Sami want to retain their autonomy over reindeer herding, etc.
However, the government in Helsinki might say, with the Ukraine situation, Europe must end its dependency on Russian energy and increase mining and renewable energy production — and what better place than the Nordic Arctic with suitable weather? Hence, indigenous peoples are complaining these countries are conducting ‘green colonialism’, where environmental reasons are used as a proxy to exert control.’
As the whiteboard behind him remains resolutely icy, Dodds underlines his words
verbally, ‘Sustainability can therefore never be divorced from politics,’
says Dodd in this insightful ToI article.
Coming back -
How does Postcolonial Ecocriticism [or Green Postcolonialism] help?
This brings us to the third defining book on the subject of Green Colonialism. Bonnie and Alex in their book titled, Postcolonial Green: Environmental Politics and World Narratives, emphasise on the importance of a new field of study - environmental justice ecocriticism, one of the emergent strains of “second-wave” environmental criticism. They also harp on the growing relevance of postcolonial ecocriticism due to the unselfconscious parochialism prevalent in the existing field of American ecocriticism.
Here goes -
Resistive discourses in Postcolonial Ecocriticism
Within the developing field of postcolonial ecocriticism, critics are increasingly exploring the efficacy of postcolonial literatures and literary criticism to formulate resistive discourses to the economic dispossession, social injustice, and environmental degradation resulting from the continuing forms of colonialism and processes of exploitative global development across the world.
The Converging Critique of materialist and ecologist ideologies
The “converging critique” of materialist and ecologist ideologies draws on Herbert Marcuse’s idea of a revolution that would radically transform not only society but also the relation between man and nature. It carries through Raymond Williams’s statement of the need for a “green socialism” combining ecology and economics into a “single science and source of values, leading onto a new politics of equitable livelihood”, and continues into David Pepper’s call for an “eco-socialism” that unites the struggle for social justice with environmental justice.
Ecocriticism Met with Suspicion
Ecocriticism has been met with suspicion by some third-world intellectuals in Africa, Asia, and Latin America for what they view as a hegemonic, white-centered, Eurocentric discourse emanating primarily from the metropolitan centers of Japan, Europe, America, and Australia.
Yet writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Wole Soyinka exercise a “concordant, radical postcolonial and ecological vision” throughout their fiction and nonfiction, while Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh, Derek Walcott, and Edward Brathwaite have all written about and taken positions on environmental problems in South Asia, South Africa, and the Caribbean, thus demonstrating the global relevance and urgency of ecocritical writing.
More importantly, he observes, “we are on the threshold of a new phase in the development of environmental ethics, where a new synthesis is taking the place of the three contending visions [agrarianism, wilderness thinking, and scientific industrialism] of an earlier phase”.
Social Ecology as the New Philosophy
“This new philosophy,” he elaborates, “would take from primitivism the core idea of diversity, from peasant culture the ideal of sustainability, and from modern society (though perhaps not specifically from scientific industrialism) the value of equity”. He suggests that the emerging philosophy could be called, as Murray Bookchin terms it, “social ecology”.
Works Cited
Benedicte Bull & Mariel Aguilar-Støen, Ed. Handbook on International Development and the Environment. UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2003.
Bonnie Roos and Alex Hunt, Ed. Postcolonial Green: Environmental Politics and World Narratives. Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2010.
Hamza Hamouchene and Katie Sandwell, Ed. Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region. London: Pluto Press, 2023.
