Justice P2 Barbados' Water problems

 

Student ID 201441970

Word count 575

 

Barbados is a country with a complex, disturbing history that has resulted in a plethora of problems for the Island’s coastline and its population (Rambarran,  2018). With debt beyond 90% of its GDP (Rambarran, 2018), inadequate sewerage treatment plants, a high threat of water scarcity and 14% of children living in poverty, one begins to question how the wealthiest and one of the most developed countries in the Eastern Caribbean (Gehring, 2024) is in this precarious position? A brief history of Barbados before the justice concept is identified will help to explain why this concept is relevant. Barbados was a British colony from 1625 until 1966. It was a victim of the first ‘black slave society’, experiencing what has been described as the most systematically violent and brutal society of modernity (Beckles, 2016). The exploitation of the African slaves and the land resulted in the creation of and the reliance on the sugar monoculture for the Island’s prosperity (Drummond and Marsden, 1995). Barbados gained independence in 1966 but the result of high-interest loans from Britain to support growth, paired with sugar prices and demand falling, meant a need for diversification in their industry to maintain economic success was needed and tourism was deemed the answer(Potter, 1983). Post independence, the monoculture of the sugar industry left Barbados reliant on food imports, with 80% of their food currently imported and 60% claiming food scarcity (The Borgen Project, 2024). Chase (2019), states Barbados was left ‘independent in name but dependent on paper’. The accumulating, overbearing debt that resulted in challenges governing the country and consequent socio-economic and environmental problems demonstrates why a decoloniality justice framework is relevant to this case study. Having the conversation about decolonial justice is crucial in the context of Barbados as their current debt for nature swap, which saw $50 million of debt converted into funds to facilitate their marine conservation and water projects, means Barbados is finally receiving some form of reparations from their colonial past (Rambarran, 2018). The colonial matrix of power is a mechanism used to describe the current exploitative relationship between the Global North (GN) and the Global South (GS) (Waldmueller, 2015). In 2015, the GN was responsible for 92% of excess emissions contributing towards climate change. The impacts of this disproportionately affect low-lying GS nations, such as Barbados, that have contributed the least to global warming (Hickel, 2020). Global warming has resulted in more frequent and destructive hurricanes in the Caribbean region which leave Barbados’ already 120-year-old fragile and not fully functioning water infrastructure susceptible to destruction and more leakage, and with as much as 60% of the domestic water supply leaking out and 100% of groundwater sources utilised, Barbados isn’t in the position to deal with the fall out of these powerful hurricanes (Rambarran, 2018). For ex-colonised countries experiencing these intense weather events, they will feel helpless and unheard as they try to spread awareness and enact change to protect themselves, as Sultana, F (2022), remarks ‘we are still colonised, but this time through climate change’. To apply only the decolonial framework to Barbados would be narrow-sighted as we know that it has ripple effect injustices such as distribution. For example, the tourism industry in Barbados is largely run by foreign companies and workers who then funnel their profits back out of the country, resulting in locals not reaping the benefits of increased cash flow, resulting in a disproportionate distrubution of wealth (Moore and Pascal, 2024).

 

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Beckles, H. 2016. The first black slave society: Britain’s Barbados, 1636-1876. Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press

Drummond, I. and Marsden, T. 1995. A case study of unsustainability: The Barbados sugar industry. Geography. 80(4), pp.342–354.

Potter, R, B. 1983. Tourism and Development: the case of Barbados, West Indies. Geography. 68 (1), pp 46-50

The Borgen Project 2024. The World Food Program in the Caribbean. BORGEN. [Online]. [Accessed 6 November 2024]. Available from: https://www.borgenmagazine.com/world-food-program-in-the-caribbean/.

Chase, N. 2019. Barbados’ Debt Crisis: the effects of colonialism and neoliberalism. Latin American, Caribbean and US Latino Studies.

Rambarran, J. 2018. Debt for climate swaps: Lessons for Caribbean SIDS from the Seychelles’ experience. Social and economic studies. 67(2/3), pp.261–291.

Waldmueller, J.M. 2015. Agriculture, knowledge and the ‘colonial matrix of power’: approaching sustainabilities from the Global South. Journal of global ethics. 11(3), pp.294–302

Hickel, J. 2020. Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown: an equality-based attribution approach for carbon dioxide emissions in excess of the planetary boundary. The lancet. Planetary health. 4(9), pp.399–404

Moore, W. and Pascal, S. 2024. The determinants of job losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic in small Island developing states. Cogent economics & finance. 12(1).

Gehring, A . Worldfoodprize.org. [Online]. [Accessed 6 November 2024]. Available from: https://www.worldfoodprize.org/documents/filelibrary/youth_programs/2019_gyi_papers/GehringAmber_9AA1A8EEC1AF5.pdf