While Kofi Awoonor's "The Sea Eats the Land at Home" can be read literally, as a straightforward story of natural disaster, it can also be understood as an allegorical story of colonialism and the damage it wreaks. Yet it is also increasingly clear, in the twenty-first century, that the issues of colonialism and climate change are not unrelated, and that colonialism has directly and indirectly worsened the effects of climate change in formerly colonized nations. This is partially due to the distribution of carbon emissions worldwide and partially due to the colonial destruction of sustainable practices oriented towards withstanding natural disaster. At the same time, many activists fighting climate change are committed to addressing both of these problems at once, arguing that intertwined problems need intertwined solutions.
Many areas of the postcolonial world, from much of Africa to Polynesia, are bracing for the most devastating effects of climate change. As hurricanes increase in intensity and frequency, islands like the Bahamas have borne some of the greatest consequences. Ironically, though, it is not these formerly colonized nations that tend to actually cause climate disaster. Rather, the parts of the world that overwhelmingly emit carbon dioxide, causing climate change, are former colonizing powers. The richest 10% of the world's population emitted over half of its carbon between 1990 and 2015, in part because emissions are linked to expensive habits like air travel and car ownership. North America, where 5% of the world lives, produces 18% of its carbon emissions. Meanwhile, Africa houses 16% of the world's population but produces only 4% of its carbon emissions.
Meanwhile, wealthier nations like the United States are relatively well-positioned to relocate and protect communities affected by climate change (though unequal vulnerability to climate change remains a problem in wealthy countries as well, creating different outcomes for people depending on race, class, and region). In many poorer countries, now bearing the worst of the global north's carbon emissions, once-robust defenses against natural threats have been nullified by colonial policies. For instance, traditional Caribbean architecture offered defense against hurricanes with rounded buildings and thatched roofs. European colonialism, replacing this architecture with concrete-walled European-style buildings, has made the infrastructure in many Caribbean islands far more vulnerable to flooding and high winds. Meanwhile, colonizing powers sometimes sought to alter and "improve" the climates of their colonial possessions by introducing invasive species—for instance, planting forests in treeless landscapes.
Perhaps because of these inequalities, countries in the global South have in many cases been the source of especially ambitious and innovative climate plans. Barbados, for instance, has one of the world's earliest targets for carbon neutrality, while Morocco now contains the world's biggest concentrated facility for the production of solar energy. Indigenous activists, noting the vulnerabilities their communities face from the climate crisis, have been some of the most prominent voices when it comes to addressing climate change. Xiye Bastida, an indigenous youth activist from Mexico, has addressed the United Nations on the subject of indigenous cosmologies, linking the colonial disruption of traditional ways of thinking to the effects of climate change.
Today, decades after most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' colonies gained independence, it appears that vulnerability to climate change and natural disaster may be one of the greatest and most harmful legacies of colonialism in those countries. At the same time, it seems that the urgency of the climate crisis has ignited an impassioned and effective response from members of communities most affected by colonialism. When colonialism and climate change are viewed as two inextricable issues, the literal and allegorical readings of Awoonor's poem begin to appear not merely reconcilable, but indistinguishable: the flood itself is a result of, rather than a mere symbol of, colonialism.
