Episode 04 – Neo-colonisation: How do we move from extinction to inclusion?

In this enlightening episode with Caroline, Cindy gives the context of post-colonial geopolitics based on continuing control of resources and ideology, and the devastating environmental consequences of the corruption and under-development that ensued from the puppet governments set up to replace direct colonial rule. Cindy outlines how the extraction continues today and how economic colonisation is accelerating in Africa with, alongside the West, countries such as Korea, Saudi Arabia and China buying land and assets well below their worth from some of the most impoverished countries with devastating climatic and social effects for all.

This conversation looks at green colonisation, where land is bought and people displaced for, for example carbon offsets, and corporate colonisation where the new global empires in the form of transnational corporates, continue the practice of dispossessing indigenous and marginalised populations of their land for minerals, oil, gas and other resources, further destabilising native economies and cultures.

This illuminating discussion explores how colonialism has ravaged indigenous peoples through dispossession of traditional lands, systemic racism, poverty, overincarceration. As exploitation of their remaining territories escalates, indigenous environmental rights defenders suffer appalling rates of murder, and further critical wisdom from our human family is lost.

We hear Caroline explain the importance of understanding this legacy of underdevelopment and the ensuing migration in terms of diversity, inclusion what the history is behind majority world communities living in the global north. She gives extraordinary insight into the richness we gain with inclusion and how this can authentically be implemented by organisations. From her immense experience as an international environmental lawyer and representative of indigenous communities at the UN, she outlines why protecting indigenous lands and knowledge is critical to our effective stewardship of Earth, how this can be done at local, organisational and international policy level.