Decolonial Environmentalism

A Palestinian policeman uses a flap to put out a fire in an olive grove and field, which according to the local Palestinian villagers was started by settlers from a near by Jewish settlement close to the West Bank village of Burin on September 5, 2011 [Wagdi Eshtayah / ApaImages] Source: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180630-jewish-settlers-burn-dozens-of-olive-trees-in-occupied-west-bank/

 

“the struggle to defend the trees & forests is above all a struggle against imperialism, because imperialism is the arsonist setting fire to our forests” - Thomas Sankara 

Greta Thunberg and the Mistakes of Mainstream Environmentalism

On May 11th, as Israeli forces continued their relentless attacks against Palestinians, Greta Thunberg took to twitter to tweet the following:

Greta Thunberg is 18 years old, and propelled onto the global political landscape at this age, she has plenty of time for her politics to transform. Yet, true as this may be, Thunberg has 4.9 million followers on twitter, and has become the face of youth environmental struggle worldwide. The tweet has since been deleted, but no follow-up has been posted. I am drawing attention to what may appear as an isolated incident, or a young person’s mistake, as it is in fact indicative of a much wider problem. Simply, the problem of colonialism, and how mainstream environmentalism repeatedly fails at stepping up to the challenge that saving the earth poses.

Settler Colonialism

The US and Israel are both settler colonial states. They can be defined by their commitment to dominate through the disruption of human relationships with their environment. They aim to make Indigenous life impossible, with an overriding strategy to undermine the ability for native peoples to subside, at any ecological cost. Settler colonial forces rely on the invention of a boundary between humans and nature. The binary of the Civilised and the Savage emerged simultaneously with the binaries of Man and Woman and Nature and Society. For this reason, no movement that seeks an environmentally just future could outwardly take a “neutral” take on colonial projects.

Palestine’s ‘Fertile Crescent’,  A Desert made to Bloom?

The environmental landscape of the Israeli occupation of Palestine has been widely documented as central to colonising Palestinian land. 2020 was one of the harshest years for Palestinian farmers, with over 8,400 olive trees uprooted or burned. Olive trees are planted on 80% of cultivated land in Gaza and the West Bank. Olive groves are often passed down between generations, and the olive harvests make up up to 50% of Palestinian farmer’s income. The olive oil industry accounts for a quarter of Palestine’s gross agricultural income. Research conducted by the Applied Institute of Jerusalem shows that more than 800,000 olive trees have been uprooted by the Israeli authorities since 1967. This is not to mention the violent settler attacks against Palestinians specifically targets farmers. The olive tree is more than a source of income, it is representative of Palestinian history, culture and way of life. It is said to represent Palestinian’s ‘steadfastness’ and ability to nurture deep roots in land on which water is hard to come by. In this way, the destruction of olive trees is the annihilation of Palestinian life itself.

In order to resolve attacks on Palestinian olive trees, so-called ‘friction areas’ are restricted during periods that are designated by the Israeli Army. However, this process limits the farmers’ access to the harvests and does nothing to hold settlers accountable for their violence. Simply, destruction of ecological life in Palestine is central to its colonisation. After all, the infrastructure of the Separation Wall and designated ‘settler-only’ areas were made possible by the destruction of 800,000 olive trees. The burning and uprooting of olive trees is a violence that continues to this day. It is not only performed systematically by the state, but by settlers in random attacks. Palestinian lives are threatened by the force of settler colonialism that necessitates the violent disruption of Indigenous people’s relationship to the earth. Colonialism relies upon maintaining a separation of humans from nature, cultivating instead an attitude that nature - and the Indigenous people who are tied to it - must be dominated. The burning Palestinian olive tree can speak to the fact that it is colonial logics have brought us climate change, as they seek to dominate, extract and exploit by any means necessary.

The Tale of Settler Colonialism and the National Animal of the US

The aforementioned plowing down of 800,000 olive trees in Palestine is said to be the equivalent of bulldozing the entirety of Central Park 33 times over. This is a notable comparison, given that the construction of Central Park was enabled by the displacing of the African American and Irish community, Seneca Village. New York’s merchants and landowners wanted green space for their families that could provide an escape from the dirty industrial city. As we will go on to see, this is a familiar story within a settler colonial script that plays out from Palestine to the US. 

As the Olive Tree represents so much of the violence of colonialism in Palestine, we might take the bison as our starting point in the United States. In May 2016, President Obama signed the National Bison Legacy Act, making the American bison - also known as the buffalo - the national mammal. It is the second animal representative of the US, after the nation’s well-known bald eagle. It is somewhat fitting to choose the bison as the nation’s symbol, considering that it simultaneously exists as a symbol of the violence against the earth and its Indigenous people by the US state.

At one time in the US, the number of Buffalo was over 30 million, but by the end of the 19th century there were only a few hundred left to roam the wild. A letter sent between settlers in the US reveals that in 1867, the strategy was to destroy the stock of Native Americans - the bison - and force them onto the land allotted to them. The aim was simple: kill every buffalo they could, and in doing so, exert control over the starving Native American. As with Palestine’s olive groves, the settler authorities could not understand the symbolic meaning of the bison. Indigenous scholar, Tasha Hubbard has noted that analyses into the bison and settler colonialism overlook the important role the bison played as “guide, teacher and relative”. The binaries of Humans and Nature that colonialism and capitalism depend upon could never accommodate this understanding of the environment. 

Greenwashing and Otherwise

The extermination of the American bison is in this way remarkably similar to the burning of olive trees in Palestine. Palestinian olive trees must be set alight and buffalos brought to the edge of extinction, all in order to alienate Indigenous people from the land and in doing so reinforce the power of the coloniser. But since we are talking about settler colonialism, it is important to note that the aim is not only to end the means of survival for Indigenous people, but to replace it with their own destructive ecology. In the US this has most prominently been facilitated by water. The authorities industrialised and deforested the Great Lakes in order to facilitate its own transportation and water use. In doing so, US settlers killed off native species and made way for the development of commercial agriculture and military and fossil fuel industries. In Palestine, the ‘settler’ in colonial ecology has been facilitated through the planting of European Pine and Eucalyptus trees in the land that once provided the roots of native olive, carob and pistachio trees. 

What has aided this settler colonial regime is a process of ‘greenwashing’.  Colonialism has always been led by “moral narratives”. That is, the idea that the uncivilised, savage Other must be civilised by the naturally superior Western force. “A green-tinted utopia”, Israel boasts of its eco credentials to the world. The Jewish National Front, an environmentalist NGO, proclaimed with pride that Israel would be the only country in the world entering the 21st century with a net gain in numbers of trees. In the name of “green” or “conservation” plans, Palestinian people are confiscated from their lands, and years later, the villages and forests are turned into Jewish settlements.

The fact is that Israel has never been concerned with reaching an environmentally secure future, for anyone. Polluting corporations have been sanctioned to base themselves on Palestinian land, excessive pesticide and fertiliser use threatens Palestinian communities, and Israeli settlers use occupied territory as their dumping ground for toxic waste. All of this contributes to an environmental crisis that is increasingly threatening to Palestinian human and non-human lives. As this crisis encroaches into Israel’s settler ecology, it maintains the facade that it is simply “making the desert bloom”.  It is always the settler’s aspiration to portray themself as the saviour of a desolate land, whilst destroying the Indigenous ecology.

The process of ‘greenwashing’ might appear somewhat alien from the US case. After all, Donald Trump spent his time in office fueling climate denial, promoting big business and undermining climate negotiations. The 45th President of the United States made his stance clear, claiming, “this very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.” The Biden administration, in contrast, promises “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050 and throws around phrases such as the “existential threat” of rising temperatures. It is often tempting to lead with examples of outwardly anti-environmentalist decisions or legislation (of which there are many in Biden’s case), but as this article purports to show, what is most important is that whilst states continue to support colonialism both domestically and abroad, any environmental pledge they could make is empty. 

This week marked the start of the G7 Summit in which leaders of settler colonial states such as the US and Canada or the empires of Britain and France gathered to discuss the environmental policies that will guide our way towards building a  “sustainable” future after COVID-19. For the ruling class, whether it is Biden, Trump, Netanyahu, or whichever coloniser follows him, this is a question of aesthetics. It is not life or death as it is for Palestinians, or Native Americans, or Indigenous people anywhere. It is a question of which ideological projection will allow them to exert more power, and save settler colonialism from itself. 

The Path Towards Decolonial Environmentalism

It is not my wish to turn this article into another personal damnation of Thunberg and other environmental activist groups, it is my intention to instead provide an instruction. We must hold groups that whitewash environmentalism to account. We must make our own spaces in which we make clear that colonialism must be the central focus of any environmental movement that takes seriously the threat of climate breakdown. Join the Decolonise campaigns on your university campus, reach out to activist groups, environmental or otherwise, and let your voice be heard: We cannot save this planet unless we put an end to ongoing colonisation and repair the historic damage it has done. When you say Black Lives Matter, say that anything above 1.5 degrees of warming is entirely unacceptable to that cause. When you say Defund the Police, say that net carbon emissions by 2050 compromises lives. When you say Palestinian Lives Matter, say no end to climate change without an end to settler colonialism. When you say Palestine will be free, say that this earth will be saved.

The uneven weight of ecological crises that occur today align, not naturally, but purposefully within the deadly marks that imperialism has scored upon the earth’s surface. The violence that we inflict upon the earth is inextricable from the violence inflicted upon the humans that inhabit it. Decolonisation is the biggest threat to racial capitalism and all of its necessary colonial endeavors today. Decolonisation will save Palestinian lives, Native American lives and the lives of all precarious peoples. More than this, decolonisation is the path to saving all of our lives.

By Tallulah Brennan