As I reflect on colonialism, pollution, and productivity, I am struck by how interconnected these forces are and how their impacts still determine the world we live in today.
First, colonialism was as much a quest to conquer land as to extract resources and exploit labor to fuel systems of production (that privileged profit over sustainability). Colonizers carried with them, systems that transformed ecosystems, disrupted indigenous knowledge, and introduced exploitative economies that still reverberate through modern industries.
Then, pollution is a legacy of this colonial past. The pursuit of maximum productivity in agriculture, mining, and industrialization was often at the cost of environmental degradation. Colonial powers extracted raw materials from colonized lands, leaving behind polluted landscapes and degraded ecosystems. The search for productivity was framed as progress, but it was at the expense of ecological and human costs. Indigenous individuals, who had lived in harmony with their ecosystems for centuries, were dispossessed and marginalized, and their sustainable modes of living were replaced by extractive systems that treated nature as a disposable resource.
Finally, productivity remains a dominant variable in global economies today, and it is routinely measured in terms of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth or industrial production. And this pursuit of efficiency and profitability is still a cause of pollution and environmental degradation. Waste flows from the centers of power to the periphery, reinforcing colonial hierarchies in a new form.
The reality is that pollution is not just an environmental issue alone but an extension of colonial violence; in the contemporary setting, the most significant contributor to pollution and destruction in areas like toxic wasteland, industrial runoff, or deforestation occurred where once exploited communities existed under colonial powers. Environmental justice cannot and should not be separated from social justice. Cleanup efforts of pollution entail confronting and eliminating structures of power and exploitation that rendered human beings disposable.
As I consider these questions, I reach the realization that the road to sustainability requires a redefinition of productivity. It is not simply a question of doing more with less, but of questioning what we are producing, for whom, and at what cost? True progress is a matter of restoring balance—between people and nature, economies and ecosystems—and bringing the voices of those disproportionately affected by environmental change to the forefront of the debate.