Green Colonialism
Isabel Wences
Colonialism exerts its power across multiple dimensions – political, economic, subjective and epistemic – causing profound and devastating consequences for Nature.
Colonialism, argues Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, is embedded in “structures and grammars that underlie a multitude of stratifications, exclusions and antagonisms” (2010, p. 37), which today are reflected in multiple legacies of domination, some directly linked to acts of appropriation, extraction, imposition, expulsion and destruction related to the environment. Two logics underpin these actions: on the one hand, restructuring and accumulating capital; on the other, operating colonially on the assumption that there are territories, bodies and populations that exist to serve the interests of a few (Lang et al., 2023).
When these actions and logics are deployed through the intensification of imperial dynamics of appropriation and accumulation, legitimised by a rhetoric of sustainability, environmental conservation, decarbonisation, compensation and energy or ecological transition, we are faced with what has been labelled ‘green colonialism’. This label can be configured as an analytical category that designates the renewed reproduction of colonial or neocolonial power relations and allows us to examine policies, projects, practices and discourses which, under the umbrella of environmental language and rhetoric about protecting the planet, entail colonial patterns of domination. The category of green colonialism is analytically useful for addressing questions related to power asymmetries, such as: for whom is it green? Who decides? Who is rendered invisible? Who benefits? And who bears the burdens?
In this way, green colonialism manifests itself in various ways and takes on multiple dimensions. Some of these manifestations are listed below and illustrated with current examples.
1.- Green colonialism and extractivism
One of the ways in which green colonialism manifests itself is through extractivism, a powerful pattern of accumulation directly linked to the advent of modern capitalism (see Green Capitalism and Capitalism and the Eco-social Crisis). Extractivism has been and remains – from the colonial era to the neo-colonialism of our times – a process of plundering and appropriation of natural resources “in large volumes and/or with high intensity, which are exported as raw materials or commodities” (Gudynas 2021, p. 26) and whose commercialisation is in the hands of some states, but particularly of transnational corporate conglomerates.
The environmental scale of some of the “local impacts” and “spillover effects” of extractivism is such that Gudynas describes them as “ecological amputations” and as “predatory extractivism” (2021, p. 31). The intensification of extraction in recent decades and the rapid expansion of the territories subjected to exploitation are leaving an immense mark on ecological collapse (Svampa and Viale, 2020).
This extractivist green colonialism can be illustrated by two manifestations. Firstly, in the name of the energy transition and with the aim of producing batteries, electric cars, wind turbines or solar panels, vast quantities of minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper are plundered in the Global South, and balsa wood is extracted. Far from diminishing, intense international demand is increasing and exploring new areas, such as deep-sea mining in international waters. When the Global North’s ‘green’ transition is corporate, colonial and unsustainable, and geared towards maintaining the consumption levels of wealthy economies—that is, when the decarbonisation process occurs through dispossession—enormous ‘sacrifice zones’—toxic, polluted and poisoned—are created in regions of the Global South (Hamouchene and Sandwell, 2023). Secondly, agribusiness, and in particular genetically modified soya, is a devastating form of extractivism, and its cultivation has led, on the one hand, to a socio-environmental crisis of enormous proportions, resulting from the destruction of millions of hectares of native forests (especially in the Southern Cone of Latin America); and, on the other, to the displacement and criminalisation of millions of small farmers, a disproportionate increase in the use of glyphosate and agrochemicals, and the concentration of land in fewer and fewer hands (see “20 years of genetically modified soya in the Southern Cone”).
2.- Green colonialism and conservationism
“As in colonial times, conservation does not challenge destructive extraction, but is associated with it,” denounces the organisation Survival (see “Indigenous Voice – Testimonies on the impact of conservation”). Conservationism seeks to protect ecosystems, species, landscapes and biodiversity from environmental degradation. Its link to green colonialism arises when the creation of nature parks, reserves or protected areas is carried out through land appropriation, the expulsion and displacement of Indigenous peoples, peasant communities or local populations, thereby restricting their ways of life; when external models of environmental management are imposed; when a narrative of protecting ‘Nature’ is employed as if human beings were not an integral part of it.
The field of political ecology has coined the term ‘fortress conservation’ to criticise a conservation model which, based on a binary view of nature and society, justifies the creation of protected areas devoid of people. Dan Brockington (2002) questions whether a natural environment must be uninhabited in order to be “saved” and argues, on the one hand, that the dominant approaches to wildlife conservation are more closely tied to the Western view of the environment than to what African peoples and communities consider most appropriate; and, on the other hand, points out that fortress conservationism justifies, for the creation of nature reserves, the restriction, expulsion and displacement of local peoples and communities. Mark Dowie (2009) demonstrates how indigenous peoples—from the Miwok of Yosemite to the Maasai of East Africa—have been displaced from their lands in the name of the more than one hundred thousand protected conservation areas worldwide. Approximately half of these areas, Dowie asserts, were inhabited by indigenous peoples.
Linked to the above, another manifestation of green colonialism is land grabbing, that is, the appropriation of vast tracts of land and resources in the name of the environment through alienation, commodification, expulsion and displacement. Hidden beneath the narrative of ‘saving the planet’, many ecological agendas become the main drivers and objectives of green land grabs (Fairhead et al., 2012). Some widely known examples are the forest reserves and wind farms that accompany renewable energy projects. These ecological agendas are presented as clean and sustainable projects promoting a just energy transition, but their massive scale and new forms of commodification can, on the one hand, restrict local access to land, water, pastures or forests and, on the other, damage the environment. When this happens, they fall within the logic of green colonialism (see “We Are Wind. Resistance in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, Mexico, against a wind farm project”).
3. Green colonialism, pollution and “waste dumps”
Many industrialised countries, which maintain high levels of consumption, generate enormous quantities of electronic waste, plastics, textile waste, ferrous waste, toxic products or materials that are difficult to recycle. Instead of fully bearing the cost of treating this waste safely within their own territories (where regulations are becoming increasingly strict), they export this waste to lower-income countries, despite the fact that these countries are ill-equipped to properly dispose of and manage such waste and to protect the health of people and the environment. Several factors, characteristic of ‘neo-colonial patterns’ (Das et al., 2022, p. 22), ‘including differences in disposal costs, tax rates, environmental regulations, shipping costs, technological capabilities and illegal criminal activities, are major drivers of the international trade in waste’ (p. 9).
The fact that the poorest countries have become “waste dumps” is due not only to low shipping costs – particularly when compared with the high costs of disposal – but also to weaker environmental regulations, fewer controls, or an economic necessity that leads to the acceptance of polluting activities. In many cases, this waste is formally presented as “recyclable material” or as part of a “circular economy”, but in practice it ends up in landfills, informal incinerators or highly dangerous recycling chains.
This results in a grave environmental injustice (Robert Bullard, 1990) because the benefits of consumption are concentrated in rich countries, whilst the harms—soil, water and air pollution, disease, ecosystem degradation and precarious working conditions—fall upon poor communities, largely racialised Black or Indigenous people. This demonstrates that green colonialism is also racist. Ferdinand Malcom (2019) proposes the concept of the ‘Negrocene’ to denounce how a minority exploits the rest in order to maintain its unsustainable way of life; that is, it exposes Black and Indigenous peoples to disproportionate levels of pollution and global warming (see ‘Report on fast fashion and Ghana’, Programme 1: junk clothing).
4. Green colonialism and carbon
There are colossal differences between rich and poor in relation to carbon emissions. “The average emissions of someone in the richest 10% of the world’s population are probably around 20 times the average of someone in the poorest 50%” (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2022, p. 14). An Oxfam report put it even more bluntly: the richest 1% of the world’s population generates the same amount of carbon emissions as the 5 billion people who make up the poorest two-thirds of humanity (Oxfam, 2023).
Carbon markets were created as instruments designed to reduce emissions efficiently, allowing states or companies to offset their emissions by funding carbon reduction or capture projects elsewhere. The problem arises when these carbon markets or offset mechanisms become strategies for capital accumulation (Bumpus and Liverman, 2009); when they transform ecosystems, forests and soils into quantifiable and tradable units. Territories that hold cultural, spiritual or collective value for many historically marginalised communities are not only treated as ‘carbon sinks’ serving the economic objectives of high-emitting companies or countries, but other ways of relating to the land and to Nature are rendered invisible.
The underlying issue is not just carbon capture, but who decides, who benefits, and who bears the burdens, and whether the mechanism effectively contributes to climate justice or simply greenwashes global relations of dependency and inequality.
5. Exclusionary eco-tourism and the “Wildlife Republics”
In the early 1970s, Walter Rodney drew attention to wildlife conservation as a new form of imperialist exploitation and domination within the global capitalist economy. He denounced that:
International imperialism threatens to transform Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania into ‘Wildlife Republics’. Every effort was made to attract tourists to observe the animals, and the animals were given higher priority than human beings […], tourism in all its aspects is proving to be one of the new areas of expansion of the imperialist economy. It is a new way of confirming the dependence and subjugation of Third World economies (1972, p. 32).
Fifty years later, Aby Sène confirms that Rodney was right: the “Wildlife Republics” are protected areas, largely managed by people from outside the local community, which include national parks, game reserves and a myriad of other places and spaces preserved on the basis of evicting the original inhabitants and under the guise of wildlife and nature conservation.
The Global South accounts for two-thirds of the world’s protected areas, which cover almost 16 per cent of the Earth’s land surface. African countries such as the Republic of the Congo, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Guinea have each set aside between 35 and 42 per cent of their national territories exclusively for the conservation of wildlife and biodiversity. They provide a place for the middle class and the elite of the Global North to revel in African nature (2022).
Thus, green colonialism also manifests itself in certain forms of exclusionary eco-tourism. This becomes evident when ecotourism or so-called ‘sustainable tourism’ projects commodify natural environments and turn local territories into spaces of consumption for the enjoyment of domestic or foreign visitors with high purchasing power, whilst indigenous communities lose access, control or decision-making power over these sites.
In short, green colonialism reproduces, through new mechanisms and narratives, the same logics of domination, dispossession and inequality that have historically accompanied colonialism.
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