Resisting the crisis of ecological imperialism in the Caribbean: beyond neoliberal tricks and fixes towards reparative ecologies and communal freedom with Keston K. Perry

The School of the Enviornment and the Centre for Caribbean Studies invite you to join us for 'Resisting the crisis of ecological imperialism in the Caribbean: beyond neoliberal tricks and fixes towards reparative ecologies and communal freedom' with Keston K. Perry, a Political Economist and Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.

The talk will take place on Thursday, April 24, 2025, from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM in ES 1042 (5 Bancroft Avenue, Toronto, ON M5S 3J1) and virtually on Zoom (meeting details sent to participants the week of event).

Registration is required.

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Speaker Bio

Keston K. Perry is a political economist and current Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Previously, he held faculty and academic positions at Williams College, USA, as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Economics at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK, and at the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University. His scholarship examines how colonialism, imperialism, and racial inequality structure the geopolitical, socio-ecological, and economic dynamics of climate change and development finance related to ongoing political, economic, and ecological crises and futures facing Caribbean communities. His work is published in several international leading academic journals and popular media. His current book project, tentatively titled Black Livingness After Disaster: the Caribbean’s Struggle Against Ecological Imperialism, with Columbia University Press, examines how the legacies of colonialism and the plantation economy contribute to the region’s uneven socio-ecological vulnerabilities, scrutinizes climate finance and reparations proposals for the Caribbean, and engages how marginalized communities in Barbuda, Dominica, Haiti, and Sint Maarten resist and enact communal repair and reparative ecologies. He teaches courses on political ecology, Caribbean economic history, the political economy of finance and development, Black queer ecologies, reparations, as well as how colonialism and the plantation economy intersect with environmental injustices, global finance, and governance. In 2017, he earned a PhD from SOAS, University of London. 

Seminar Abstract

Caribbean societies are facing existential socio-ecological threats or what I have called ‘a crisis of ecological imperialism’ characterized by debt, displacement, dispossession, disenfranchisement and disaster. As imperialist structures are increasingly under intense pressure from “man-made” intersecting and cascading ecological, political, and economic crises, to understand the implications of the current conjuncture, engage its histories and implications, and proffer alternative emancipatory and reparative routes, we must recenter the plantation economy in our analyses of the Caribbean region. With a deep engagement with Caribbean scholarly and subaltern perspectives on economic and ecological dependence, and present-day examples of communal struggles, popular knowledge, cultural formations, and unorthodox governance structures and resistance, this talk invites us to think, act, and deepen our engagement with forgotten and marginalized territories and communities in the region. Drawing upon insights from Barbuda, Sint Maarten, and Dominica, I challenge mainstream economic and ecological models, neoliberal climate governance, financialized solutions, and anthropocentric thinking to highlight the ways in which these neglected communities offer alternative routes to freedom or what I term 'reparative ecologies'. Consequently, as the crisis of ecological imperialism deepens with great uncertainty, these communities resist through collective efforts and resource-pooling, alternative economic arrangements, epistemic frameworks, and transnational and local solidarity to envision alternative equitable and just futures, practices of freedom, and new socio-ecological relations to ensure future survival, belonging, and liberation.