Colonialism, Racism, and Environmental Justice

New Imperialism

• Late 19th-early 20th century

• Global North imperial powers expand colonial territories on an unprecedented scale in search of

  • european empires wanted to expand there territories

    • resources and land (e.g., for cash crop agriculture)

    • cheap labor

• Second industrial revolution increases demand for both by increasing productive capacity, thereby creating increased demand for raw materials and new markets

  • both motivated by the second industrial rev

  • increaing prod capacity = demand for raw and new markets

New Imperialism & Socio-Ecological Crises

• Soil erosion

  • Colonial policies promote cash crops for export (i.e., monocultural farming aimed at mass production for exportation)

    • one type of crop

  • More land farmed more uniformly and more aggressively

    • mass prod of one crop

  • Market also incentivizes cash crop agriculture and encourages farmers to produce as much as possible as quickly as possible

    • the pressures of the market reinforced this and encouraged farmers to increase prod of export crops

    • market survival and success push them to do so unsustainability

    • colonial agr create first global env crisis (transenv crisis fraser)

  • In the long run, this erodes soil (i.e., first global environmental crisis)

    • wasn’t suited for the local env

• Starvation

  • Cash crops for export prioritized over food crops for local consumption

    • local fod crops declined and also nuticrian and dietary

  • Leading to a) decreased dietary variation and nutrition b) severe human made famines in colonized areas

  • Likened by some researchers to “late Victorian holocaust”

    • food was exported from colonized terrirories to international while local ppl starved

    • for halloman env and social crisis go togetaher (like fraser)

Colonialism-Environmental Harm Link

• Soil erosion was understood at the time to be a consequence of colonial conquest and agricultural practices

• Soil erosion was a “disease to which any civilization founded on the European model seems liable when it attempts to grow outside [of] Europe”

• • Soil erosion was a “warning that Nature is in full revolt against the sudden incursion of an exotic civilization – Europe – into her ordered domains

“The White Man’s Burden

• richard kiplings to assume us colonial control over philapeans

• Imperial view that the white race is morally obliged to civilize the rest of the

  world and facilitate its development through colonialism

  • burden of developing the planet through colonial rule fell to the white man

• Soil erosion framed as another “white man’s burden” (i.e., burden of

  development that white colonizers must manage despite having created)

  • even tho they caused the problem and famine

  • it was white mans burden to fix both crisis

    • not evidence of empires failing but a technological challange for imperial powers to resolve

• Recognition that colonialism creates socio-ecological crises alongside

  claim that these can be fixed with more colonialism

  • kinda logic to eco modernism

  • it creates crisis but these crisis can be solved through more colonialism

Colonialism and White Supremacy

• White supremacy was essential, according to Holleman, to new imperialism

  • essential component

• It provided a “justificatory” pretext for colonial conquest (i.e., alleged “superiority” means whites have an obligation to intervene around the world)

  • justification for the conquest and ethnical obligation to intervene

  • marrited and appropriate and these backward ppl had to be colonized through a moral and ethical sense

• Holleman argues environmental colonialism was shaped by both

  • material compulsions of capital accumulation

    • quest for econ (capitalism) growth took the form of colonization

    • capitalism and colonialism was no small part of function of racism

  • immaterial ideology of white supremacy

  • i.e., capitalistic economic growth could be pursued via colonialism because racism provided a legitimating pretext for intervention

  • web doctrine of the divine doctrone of white man to steal

Example: US Dust Bowl Background

• Early 1870s: US ends recognition of native tribal sovereignty

• 1887: Dawes Act authorizes federal government to privatize land held in common by native tribes

  • how they were organized

  • pushed further west and into tribal reservations

  • aimed to transform property within these tribal terrirories

  • subdivided what was communal land to private property

  • dawes said communal property was to socialist to private proeprty

  • in which ‘selfishless’ (private property) was the bedrock value to the west

• Privatization opens large tracts of “unassigned” land to settlers and economic actors (75% of previously indigenous land are designated as “unassigned” and opened up)

  • gov prevailed through violence previously held in common

• Settlers of newly privatized land are often economically disadvantaged

  • ¾ of indigenous land was designated as privatized, unassigned, and open to up to settlers and econ firms

  • new imperalism looked like this in the us

  • poor europeans and americans buil new lives in the american west. the siezure of ind lands helped to neutralize class fiction and redirecting it

  • instead of those wealth v poor by capitalism. the poor can be relocated and enrolled in the mssion of white civilization

• White supremacy plus domestic New Imperial land grabs function as a “release valve” for class antagonism

  • econ unrest between rich and poor was decreased by telling poor white folks were superior to those of color and enlisting them to the white project

  • this project was not env sustainable

• Ensuing settler colonialism into Southern Plains region is organized around environmentally destructive cash crop agriculture where market logic – not environmental health – dictates how land and resources are used

  • couldnt be permanent of prosperous

  • us gov policy and compolsions of the market of cash crop

  • that approach of working w the earth is diff in its social and econ impat compared to susbsitance famring

  • 1) very volitile subject to market

  • 2) constant always money to be made when its the point of ag roductios w debt to be made

    • the endless movement of finance was not the best for env

    • = fields are planted when it might be better to rest and herds are expanded when it be better to calm them

Example: 1930s US Dust Bowl

• Environment of Southern Plains can’t sustain cash crop agricultural practices

• Empire, capitalism, and racism come to a head in the soil erosion of the 1930s US Dust Bowl

• Dust Bowl: period of severe dust storms and drought

• Not a domestic-regional problem

  • not isolated

  • 1 manifestation of the first globa enviornmental crisis driven by colonialism, capitlism and whtie supremacy

  • refelctive that white colonial control generated

• But an instance of the first global environmental crisis (i.e., soil erosion) driven by imperialism, white supremacy, and capitalism

Contemporary Implications: Holleman

• Soil erosion and desertification are likely to reemerge with climate change

  • with cc dust bowls will reemerge but come back harsher and more sustained

  • more likely

• Learning the wrong lessons from past soil erosion means we’re likely to mishandle new, climate-driven forms

  • we havent learned the right lessons

• Standard Dust Bowl lesson: soil erosion and desertification were caused by poor knowledge and inadequate tech and were resolved through better knowledge and tech

  • its common missapllied as the misapplication of farming techniques and how the us recovered by it by water and conservation programs by tech and know

  • the problem are a lack of money and know how through ignorance

    • this positiont wealthy countries as oversearers

    • not a structural problem but knowledge and tech

    • cycle once poor countries know better and have tech they can successfully handle it

• Holleman argues this isn’t the right lesson: soil erosion and desertification weren’t just a knowledge-tech problem in the past (i.e., because they were caused by imperialism, white supremacy, and capitalism) and won’t be just a knowledge-tech problem in the future

  • this misses the mark

  • the driver of the past wasnt poor info and inadq tech it was a toxic combo of white suprememacy, colonialism and , capitalism

  • these are likely to worsen and are unlikely to be solved through science and tech alone —> we need system chance

• Colonialism might be over, but coloniality endures in how the Global North calculates cost of climate action (i.e., sacrifices faraway peoples & places because changing its own relation to the environment is too inconvenient)

  • coloniality endures- power knowlegde and sense of self can sitll be dhaped in post colonial time

  • those in the global n think abt the costs of env action

  • they awk that what they dont do to mitigate it will have consequences including the s but they fail to take action

  • awk that the rest of the world will suffer. this resosne is colonial in its logic

Environmental Racism

• 1970s: scholars study distribution of environmental harms across society

  • were polluting industries were located and env regulations and how they were enforced traced race

• In racialized societies, allocation of environmental b ads/costs and good s/b benefits can track race

  env enforcement and protection all coincided with race

• E.g., in the US, non-white populations are more likely to live and work in environmentally degraded places

  • bollard sees this in huston texas

  • white communities were well off with wasteful facilities in comuntes of color

  • this extended beyond poor and wealthy but also race

• Environ mental racism: sacrifice of racial minorities’ environmental health and well-being for the sake of racial majority’ s health and well-being

  • policies and ratices thsat affect ppl based on race like public policy and also private actors (industrial practices)

  • env racism is often colonial and designates racially segregated places as sacrifice zones to be env degraded similar to hooloman and the global n indifference to climate in the global south

• Logic of sacrifice links environ mental colonialism and environmental racism

• Just as Global North sacrifices Glob al South’ s environ mental well-being for its own ( Holleman ), racial majority with in North may sacrifice racial minority ’s environmental well-b ein g for its o wn ( Bullard )

  • env hard are offloaded to communties of color through the env wellbeing of whte communities

  • this is reflected in the research of env racism , where pockets of the s us as the us own third world and a colonial mentality prevaded. this colonial mentalited manifested in raial minority over racial majority

  • later analysis argued that env racism can be not at work not only individually but also embdded in social structures

Environment and White Privilege

• White privilege: benefits and advantages that accrue in highly racialized societies to white people simply due to whiteness

  • can work in tandem w overt racism

• Different from overt racism because not intentional

  • can also be non intentional

  • keeping things at the status wuo is alrdy a proble,

• Can occur even when no one means to be racist (e.g., in a context where social structures reproduce white privilege, just maintaining the status quo will benefit whites)

• White privilege means environmental racism (i.e., environmental sacrifice of racial minority for racial majority) can be unintentional

Environmental Injustice givens

• That environmental-material benefits enjoyed by some are paid for at others’ environmentalmaterial expense is unjust

• Ecologically unequal exchange (EUE): structural relationships between more and less powerful groups can lead to the uneven, unfair, and unequal distribution of environmental flows, good and bad

• EUE can play out at the international level (e.g., between Global North and Global South, per Givens et al.) or within single countries

  • global n has more access to natural resources and sink capacity

    • or within global n aswell

Givens: EUE and Environmental Injustice

• Injustice

  • The Global North takes more environmental goods or resources from the GlobalSouth (i.e., tap)

    The Global North dumps more environmental bads or waste in the Global South(i.e., sink)

• Environmental load displacement

  • Global North physically or spatially relocates environmental bads to South(e.g.,shipping of waste, offshoring environmentally taxing industry)

    • treats the south as a sink by physically moving it

    • shipping garbage

  • Global North temporally relocates environmental bads to South (i.e., future generations in general will be obliged to bear the burden of environmental harms that they didn’t create and this phenomenon will be magnified in South)

    • the gn offloads harm it generates to future generations

    • but in the south they cope with it even more

• Above dynamics may be overlooked without a global perspective (e.g., Netherlands Fallacy)

  • incorrect assumtion of improved levels in NL are achieved w/o offloating to others

  • calls for env justice need to keep a global perpetice in mind

  • the concept of EUE can help by stressing the unfiar relaton between the north and south and understood to global dynaimis

Givens: Ecological Debt

• Ecological debt: unequally and unjustly treating the Global South as an environmental tap and sink (EUE), the Global North developed by incurring a material debt to the Global South

  • the cots of the N gain has been disp born by the south

  • the n could of only have been developed by a tap and sink by the south

  • the n has a debt to the south

• ”Paying off” this debt could mean:

  • Global North mitigating its emissions

  • Global North helping Global South to achieve comparable development, ideally in a now less environmentally taxing way

Two Call Backs

• Ecologically unequal exchange connected to colonialism and coloniality

• Fraser

  • Environmental cost of fixing metabolic rift in the North was borne by the South (e.g., 19th century guano-nitrates trade and the War of the Pacific)

  • Environmental good of soil repair in the North was achieved via the imposition of environmental (alongside social and political) bads in the South Fraser

• Holleman

  • Historical environmental cost of growing capital in the North was borne by the South

  • Today the environmental cost of climate inaction in the North is borne by the South

Distributive Environmental Justice (EJ)

• • IF environmental injustice = unfair distribution of environmental goods/benefits and bads/costs

  • fair allocation of env goods

  • asks if its dis eqitably

• THEN environmental justice (EJ) = fair distribution of environmental goods/benefits and bads/costs

• Distributive EJ asks whether environmental goods and bads are allocated fairly and, if not, calls for fair re-allocation

  • divided up fairly

• Informed by unfairness of ecologically unequal exchange

• Linked to legacies of environmental colonialism and racism

Critique of Distributive EJ: 1

• Universalizes what is a particular view of the environment

• Views nature as a collection of inert material to be divided

• But some peoples and cultures may see nature very differently (e.g., as a force, entity, or being of its own, including one that humans have duties toward)

• Obliging all to “speak” the language of distributive environmental justice may mean that some justice claims are “lost in translation,” which may be an injustice in itself

Critique of Distributive EJ: 1

• Universalizes what is a particular view of the environment

• Views nature as a collection of inert material to be divided

• But some peoples and cultures may see nature very differently (e.g., as a force, entity, or being of its own, including one that humans have duties toward)

  • thinking abt env justice in this way is far from universal

  • the ntural world may not be anything like a mass of things to be divided up instead it might be a entitiy in its own right

• Obliging all to “speak” the language of distributive environmental justice may mean that some justice claims are “lost in translation,” which may be an injustice in itself

  • indigenous views conceptualize nature not as acitive himan agents but as a force, being, entitiy in itself where ppl haeva. duty tiwards

  • Doesnt make sense to form it in the context of distribution

  • distributive approach in places where this isnt the nderstanding may amount to env injustice

    • pppl may relate to nature in some other way

    • may be a disservice to those who think of it another way

Critique of Distributive EJ: 2

• Why should there be so many environmental bads that need to be fairly allocated to begin with?

  • what abt the production of env bads in the first place?

  • why should there be env bads in the first place?

  • pushes back on the gorunfs that doesnt go deeper enough and interrogate the root cause

  • what about focusing where we dont produce that much garbage ?

• Distributive EJ doesn’t dig deep enough into and interrogate the root causes behind the existence of environmental bads

• More robust EJ would entail environmentally sustainable forms of production and consumption that either minimize or eliminate negative distributive concerns

  • not abt fauly dividing but organize it in a away that there isnt that much env bads

  • produce and ocnsuming w/o destroying teh env