The eco-political wrongs of colonialism

The main accounts of the wrongs of colonialism in political philosophy and political theory conceptualize colonialist wrongs in purely political terms and fail to consider their environmental or ecological dimensions. Building off the insights of Indigenous scholars and communities, I develop an eco-political principle of self-determination to explain many central wrongs of colonialism as at once political and environmental. I argue that a people’s right to self-determination over a given territory is normatively linked to a duty of ecological sustainability and a right to ecological integrity. A people has a duty to ecologically sustain the material prerequisites for human life, political society, and its capacities to exercise self-determination, as otherwise it would undercut the very preconditions of its self-determination and territorial rights. However, ecological sustainability is not simply an internal constraint on a people’s self-determination but rather how exactly ecological sustainability is conceptualized and realized in each geographical location should be determined by a people for itself. Likewise, the external dimension of self-determination (the right to be free from illegitimate outside interference) and the right to territorial integrity should be understood not simply in political terms, as protecting against border changes for instance, but environmentally as encompassing a right to ecological integrity. This eco-political principle of self-determination unifies and explains many central wrongs of colonialism, which include but are not limited to the taking of territory: such as forced displacement, the spread of infectious diseases, extractive industries, settler containment strategies, and climate change. I end by responding to the objection that my view could license a kind of green colonialism on the basis that new settlers could ecologically sustain a territory better than Indigenous peoples.