I’m not sure if this term has been coined before, but there’s an article in Slate about how the WSJ profiles a Swedish multimillionaire who has bought up 700,000 acres of Brazilian forest; his altruistic intentions have been thus criticized as ‘green colonialism’.
Really? My first thought is to sprout off all kinds of arguments against using the idea of colonialism in this way but I have to admit that it does need some more thought before I put my foot in my mouth.
The cgharges of green colonialism are not really warranted for what Johan Eliasch is trying t do. The Charity he founded, (see http://www.coolearth.org) secures the land in trust for the local people and with the local people. Money goes into to assisting them with projects that they set up to derive sustainable income from the rainforest (without logging it!). This makes the rainforest more valuable standing than cut down. The locals also set up ranger patrols to protect it from the unscrupulous. This is not about colonialsm, it is about partnership and the rich taking responsibility for the economic pressures they put on the poor to exploit the very environment that systains us all.