Environmental injustice and colonial and post-colonial cultures : the case of Indian Ocean World (1740-1940)

Overview & Synopsis

The lock-down and confinement of the economy for months due to the COVID-19 has shown the necessity of autonomy on islands. Reunion Island (France), as remote and Sub-National Island Jurisdiction (SNIJs), must deal with a number of historical situations: ultra-peripheral and insularstatus and mainland supply dependency (energy, food and materials). Despite the extractive past as 'sugar Islands' (Moore 2000), this island is a biodiversity hotspot and World Heritage Site. Nowadays, these islands try to balance between residual colonial economies, tourism developmentand food security which is difficult to reconcile with cutting-edge biodiversity conservation programs. From an environmental history perspective, to increase island resistance/resilience and to enhance socio-ecological transitions respecting history and cultural traditions we analyze here thehistorical metabolic balances on this SNIJ island and how can they inform socio-ecological transition, based on their own past. In this paper, we will analyze what environmental and social metabolic injustices existed and persisted in Reunion Island. We pretend to respond to two questions: how was established the hierarchy between the profitability of the plantation system over food sovereignty and welfare of the island population and, secondly, what environmental and food measures were implemented to establish a balance between making an economic profit and feed the people. For this, we will review environmental tropical historiography and we will focus on the comparison of new sources for the years between 1930 and after the departmentalization (1946). Our archives are the Departmental Archives of La Réunion (henceforth ADR), the NationalArchives of Outermost (ANOM) and the French National Library (BNF).