A decolonial ecology

Thinking about emancipatory futures in a world-ship capable of gathering, listening and celebrating meetings

Abstract

We would like to provide a review of the work Uma Ecologia Decolonial: Pensar a partir do mundo caribenho, by the Martinican researcher, political scientist and environmental engineer Malcom Ferdinand. Launched in Portuguese in Brazil, in 2022, by the publishing house Ubu, the book translated by Letícia Mei has a preface by the American philosopher Angela Davis, known for her activism in anti-racist, feminist agendas. We seek to bring to light the main contributions of Ferdinand's work, who proposes a way of world-making within a critical decolonial perspective that – considering colonial history and its effects on human and non-human populations – envisions another viable way of living and inhabit the world. The author starts from the assumption that ecology is primarily a matter of justice and that the ecological crisis, therefore, is a crisis of justice. From his Caribbean perspective and experience, Ferdinand challenges us to think about the colonial project considering, above all, the promotion of environmental destruction, situating the ecological issues as an essential dimension for thinking about world politics anchored in relations of coloniality today.