Chemical colonialism
December 15, 2023 5:09 AM Subscribe
After publishing her thesis on agrotoxins, brasilian researcher Larissa Bombardi had to self-exile. In a recent interview, Bombardi declared that she's still afraid to return: after being threatened, hacked and having her house robbed, it is safer to stay in Paris [portuguese], where she can continue to research and safely raise her two kids.
The chemical colonialism debate is an ongoing crisis which does not only involve Brazil's unrestrained use of agropesticides, but a more intricate network of global agents. In this quasi invisible form of political domination, chemicals and natural resources combine into new forms of economic control, populational displacement and technological dependency. As Bombardi and her co-authors call, the deliberate exposure of humans to toxic pesticides is a new form of colonial violence.
The chemical colonialism debate is an ongoing crisis which does not only involve Brazil's unrestrained use of agropesticides, but a more intricate network of global agents. In this quasi invisible form of political domination, chemicals and natural resources combine into new forms of economic control, populational displacement and technological dependency. As Bombardi and her co-authors call, the deliberate exposure of humans to toxic pesticides is a new form of colonial violence.
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Though, as your link says, not necessarily from the Green Revolution. From the Why do famines happen? section, the main causes of improvements are through better international food transportation and the coordination of aid efforts. The main causes of famine — poverty, failed governments and war — still exist. It is, unfortunately, still possible for a government to annex an area and deny it food and aid, and the rest of the world would be compelled to watch the people starve.
It is not the facts of Bombardi's publications that have taken her country away from her. As she notes in her Marie Claire interview, Brazil continues to be the world leader for murdering environmental defenders.
posted by scruss at 8:15 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
the melting away of famines; hundreds of millions of lives saved.
Though, as your link says, not necessarily from the Green Revolution. From the Why do famines happen? section, the main causes of improvements are through better international food transportation and the coordination of aid efforts. The main causes of famine — poverty, failed governments and war — still exist. It is, unfortunately, still possible for a government to annex an area and deny it food and aid, and the rest of the world would be compelled to watch the people starve.
It is not the facts of Bombardi's publications that have taken her country away from her. As she notes in her Marie Claire interview, Brazil continues to be the world leader for murdering environmental defenders.
posted by scruss at 8:15 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
As she notes in her Marie Claire interview, Brazil continues to be the world leader for murdering environmental defenders.
It's also leading the chart for murders in general, and puts in solid work on the per capita basis as well.
posted by pwnguin at 9:05 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's also leading the chart for murders in general, and puts in solid work on the per capita basis as well.
posted by pwnguin at 9:05 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
It is not the facts of Bombardi's publications that have taken her country away from her. As she notes in her Marie Claire interview, Brazil continues to be the world leader for murdering environmental defenders.
Oh, no arguments against that analysis from me at all! Decades and decades of that hideousness.
posted by lalochezia at 10:28 AM on December 15, 2023
Agricuture, food, and mining businesses murder enviormental and health activist routinely, roughly 200 per year more if you count health. It's afaik typically lower level thugs though, so more like the assasinations of Dian Fossey and Guy Bradley in the 80s, so then asylum protects people like Bombardi.
We've diverse technoogies in different flavors of modern agriculture, including myriad pests management techniques, but pests develop tollerance for pesticides, so really fertilizer remains much more important than pesticides. As an example, the WHO tried malaria control by DDT spraying, but ended up worsening malaria after the mosquetos adapted, maybe because the mosquetos' preditors never adapted. And transport matters even more than both, like scruss cites.
It's worth watching the PFAS episode from Kristine Vike. It'll likely wind up vaguely like DDT if your pesticide has similar organo-halogen structure. "This was chimically predictable!"
posted by jeffburdges at 6:17 PM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
We've diverse technoogies in different flavors of modern agriculture, including myriad pests management techniques, but pests develop tollerance for pesticides, so really fertilizer remains much more important than pesticides. As an example, the WHO tried malaria control by DDT spraying, but ended up worsening malaria after the mosquetos adapted, maybe because the mosquetos' preditors never adapted. And transport matters even more than both, like scruss cites.
It's worth watching the PFAS episode from Kristine Vike. It'll likely wind up vaguely like DDT if your pesticide has similar organo-halogen structure. "This was chimically predictable!"
posted by jeffburdges at 6:17 PM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
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From the last link on "colonial violence":
Unfortunately, more than half a century has passed since the inception of “Green Revolution” technologies and world hunger persists.1, 2, 3
The author cites the same 3 articles for the entire introduction to this article - all on pesticides. The idea the Green Revolution did nothing- "hunger still persists" as a measure of success, and that the green revolution was just colonialist extractive violence is false.
Here is data on worldwide famine. You can literally see the melting away of famines; hundreds of millions of lives saved.
There are good arguments about power structures, about sustainability of this system, about downstream pollution, about NIMBYism, but much like the author's critique of how on a half-billion-plus planet we moved to mining phosphorous:
"the sanitation revolution killed access to human sources of phosphorous – literally flushing it down the toilet into the sea, where it becomes inaccessible for recapture. This is part of a larger tendency of industrialized humans to take from the earth without giving back, creating what Marx called the “metabolic rift” – the short-circuiting of circular material economies."
they throw the baby out with the (non-recycled) bathwater.
posted by lalochezia at 6:55 AM on December 15, 2023 [16 favorites]