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SUNDAY SCIENCE: CLIMATE CHANGE HAS DEEP HISTORICAL ROOTS – AMITAV
GHOSH EXPLORES HOW CAPITALISM AND COLONIALISM FIT IN  
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Julia Taylor, Imraan Valodia
August 30, 2024
The Conversation
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_ The discussion of climate change, as of every aspect of the
planetary crisis, tends to be dominated by the question of capitalism
and other economic issues; geopolitics, empire, and questions of power
figure in it far less. _

Amitav Ghosh sheds light on the links between exploitation of people
and the planet and climate change., Mathieu Genon

 

Julia Taylor
[[link removed]],
_University of the Witwatersrand
[[link removed]]_
and Imraan Valodia
[[link removed]],
_University of the Witwatersrand
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_Amitav Ghosh [[link removed]] is an internationally
celebrated author of 20 historical fiction and non-fiction books. The
Indian thinker and writer has written extensively on the legacies of
colonialism, violence and extractivism. His most famous works explore
migration, globalisation and commercial violence and conquest during
the colonial period, against the backdrop of the opium trade in the
1800s
[[link removed]]._

_Caroline Southey, from The Conversation Africa, asked economics
professor Imraan Valodia and climate and inequality researcher Julia
Taylor about the significance of his work._

What has Ghosh contributed to our understanding about the root causes
of climate change?

JULIA TAYLOR: In Ghosh’s recent non-fiction book, The Nutmeg’s
Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis
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he used his storytelling prowess to outline the roots of climate
change within two systems of power and oppression: imperialism and
capitalism.

Imperialism is the expansion of influence over other countries through
military force and colonisation. It usually entails the destruction of
the environment to support imperial interests.

Capitalism is the dominant economic system where ownership of the
means of production (industry) is private. Private actors are driven
by profit and growth, which has relied on combustion of fossil fuels.

What Ghosh makes clear is that violence and destruction of the
environment are key to capitalism, as they were to colonialism.

IMRAAN VALODIA: Ghosh challenges us to think more deeply about the
role of conquest and violence in shaping the planetary crisis we’re
facing. And the need to reshape our economic and social relations to
address climate change. He does this with remarkable acumen and
clarity in another of his works of non-fiction, The Great Derangement
[[link removed]].
In the book he seeks to explain our failure to address the urgency of
climate change. He asks very powerfully whether the current generation
is deranged by our inability to grasp the scale, violence and urgency
of climate change.

He uses the history of nutmeg to illustrate some of his main points.
What does he draw from this history?

JULIA TAYLOR: The story of the nutmeg is one among many of conquest of
both people and land during colonisation which led to the industrial
revolution and the explosion of greenhouse gas emissions.

In the present day these conquests take different forms. But they
continue, particularly in the context of mining and extractivism.

IMRAAN VALODIA: Ghosh traces the history of the household spice –
nutmeg – all the way to its origins in the Banda Islands of
Indonesia. He uses the analogy of the nutmeg to explain how
colonisation of land and people has led to the climate disaster.

The nutmeg was harvested from trees in the Banda Islands and traded by
the Bandanese for centuries. With the growth in value of spices,
various European countries sought to claim exclusive rights to the
nutmeg trade in the Banda Islands. The local population resisted.
However, in 1621, representatives of the Dutch East India Company
chose to destroy the settlements of the Bandanese population and
massacre or enslave anyone who could not escape, to gain control over
the nutmeg trade.

Ghosh explains these horrifying events in the context of Anglo-Dutch
tensions and the trend of empire in Europe, sanctioned by religious
beliefs of racial superiority.

A major theme of his work is the link between imperialism and the
planetary crisis. What’s his main line of argument?

JULIA TAYLOR: Ghosh argues in The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a
Planet in Crisis
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that

the discussion of climate change, as of every aspect of the planetary
crisis, tends to be dominated by the question of capitalism and other
economic issues; geopolitics, empire, and questions of power figure in
it far less. (p116)

However, he highlights that

the era of Western military conquests predates the emergence of
capitalism by centuries. Indeed, it was these conquests, and the
imperial systems that arose in their wake, that fostered and made
possible the rise to dominance of what we now call capitalism …
colonialism, genocide and structures of organised violence were the
foundations on which industrial modernity was built. (p116)

IMRAAN VALODIA: This argument forces us to grapple with both
capitalism and the dominance of the west in our understanding of
climate change. It highlights the power dynamics and violence which
enabled the destruction of many lands in the form of deforestation,
industrial agriculture, mining and more.

To respond to climate change, we need to rethink these dominant
systems and relationships with land and the environment. This can be
linked to the need to address inequality and power dynamics if we are
to have any hope of addressing climate change.

_Professor Valodia will be hosting Amitav Ghosh for a series of events
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of the Witwatersrand in South Africa from 10 to 12 September 2024. The
university has partnered with the Presidential Climate Commission, the
Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER) and the
University of Pretoria to host the sessions._[The Conversation]

Julia Taylor
[[link removed]],
Researcher: Climate and Inequality, _University of the Witwatersrand
[[link removed]]_
and Imraan Valodia
[[link removed]], Pro
Vice-Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality and Director:
Southern Centre for Inequality Studies., _University of the
Witwatersrand
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This article is republished from The Conversation
[[link removed]] under a Creative Commons license. Read
the original article
[[link removed]].

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