UU

Footprints of Colonialism – by Linu Danielkutty (2024-2028)

A PhD project on “The Footprint of Colonialism: Attributing Biodiversity Loss and GHG Emissions from Colonial Land Change Processes”, started  in 2024.  This project will use HYDE (among other) data to quantify the consequences of past (colonial) land use changes in various former colonies of The Netherlands, and probably others as well. Quantifying the cumulative attribution of countries to biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions arising from land change is of critical importance to achieve global environmental justice. Attribution of individual countries to past land change in an objective manner gives clear information for negotiations around loss and damage finances, as recently debated at United Nations conference on climate Change (COP27) and biodiversity (COP15).

The aim of this project is to quantify the relative attribution of different countries to biodiversity loss and GHG emissions arising from land change since the colonial period using footprint analysis. This will illustrate to what extent the burden of resource extraction has shifted over time and how colonial legacies impact environmental footprints in present day. We will use an approach that integrates the HYDE database of historical landcover change with reconstructions of resource flows based on historical data and footprint modeling techniques.

WUR

‘Tragedy of the Tropics: Colonialism, Commodities, and Commons in Southeast Asian Deforestation since 1850’.