Envisioning Non-elite and More-Than-Colonial Environmentalisms

Abstract

Mainstream environmentalism remains tethered to Malthusian overpopulation scenarios, authoritarian protectionism through exclusionary conservation policies, and ecomodernist climate adaptation/mitigation projects. Therefore, hegemonic mainstream environmentalism (HME) in many ways fails to address its colonial, authoritarian, essentializing overtures, which continue to insidiously motivate much of environmentalism and environmental policy. But there are also ongoing challenges to this by the work of indigenous, feminist, anti-racist, anti-casteist, and anti/de/post-colonial thinkers and doers. In this work we build upon such provocations to challenge the problematic roots of modern, mainstream environmentalism and its role in supporting certain visions of the Anthropocene. We propose a temporary analytical frame that advocates for non-elite visions of environmentalism—non-elite and more-than-colonial environmentalisms (NEMCE). Our analytical offering highlights three processes which non-elite communities are involved in from across the majority world. These are attempting to domesticate capitalism, mobilize plurinational placemaking, and finally challenge the algorithmic thinking of digital environmental governance. Taken together the three processes above present a powerful response to HME, revealing its insidious reproduction of certain elite subjectivities, ideologies, and institutions, while claiming to support planetary visions of ecological wellbeing.