Concrete Jungles: Urban Pollution and the Politics of Difference in the Caribbean

This book tackles class, race and other differences in the Caribbean environmental movement, based on analysis of Willemstad, Curaçao and Kingston, Jamaica. Jaffe differentiates between the “uptown environmentalism” borne of privilege and the “downtown environmentalism” that speaks to the concerns of low-income groups. The former is associated with environmental professionals, while the latter is linked to people from neighbourhoods affected by air pollution. Thus the stakes are different for these two groups, and mobilizing around specific concerns may entrench urban and divisions.

In Jaffe’s classification, these differences have spatial components as well. This is not simply a matter of the wealthier and lighter-skinned living in more luxurious neighbourhoods. The book presents higher-income environmentalists as being preoccupied with Caribbean “nature” (biodiversity, marine conservation, etc.), while the urban environment (flooding, waste, etc.) matters more to lower-income activists. According to Jaffe, the former perspective frames “dirty” low-income residents as threats to the purity of nature; the latter perspective treats these residents as victims of urban threats.

Jaffe explains how these inequalities are rooted in historical patterns of colonialism and colourism. There is nothing new about cultural associations of dirt and disease with race and skin colour, and the book’s analysis shows that “pollution” is both literal and symbolic in these contexts. These terms and divisions are also invoked by the people Jaffe speaks to in the course of her ethnographic work. That is, social realities are constructed in terms of “nasty people” and those who speak “proper English”, and these kinds of identities often map onto place.

Surely the two broad categories of environmentalists Jaffe sketches are not monolithic categories. Indeed, the book's conclusion points to a few examples of people reaching across the divide. And Jaffe points out that in small Caribbean islands, uptown and downtown concerns are inextricably linked; marine pollution and urban waste management clearly affect each other, for instance in the production of sewage.

One example of environmentalists possibly bridging the divide came from a successful NGO lawsuit in 2011 against the Curaçao government, which was planning a housing development in a conservation area. The NGO argued that the government was responsible for improving housing and infrastructure conditions in barrios rather than building new homes for the middle class. In Jaffe’s analysis (page 158),

“Such new narratives are promising in their recognition of first, the interconnectedness of various environmental problems, and second, the relation between environmental and socio-political issues. They demonstrate the compatibility of green and brown issues, and of the concerns of elites and those of the urban poor.”

Clearly more of these narratives are needed to combat inequality in urban environmental organizing.

Further reading:

Geoghegan, Tighe, Vijay Krishnarayan, Dennis Pantin and Stephen Bass (2003), “Incentives for watershed management in the Caribbean: diagnostic studies in Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia and Trinidad”, Discussion paper, The Caribbean Natural Resources Institute and International Institute for Environment and Development, Laventille and London, available at http://pubs.iied.org/G00307.html?k=jamaica.

Henry-Lee, Aldrie (2005), “The nature of poverty in the garrison constituencies in Jamaica”, Environment and Urbanization Vol 17, No 2, pages 83–99, available at http://eau.sagepub.com/content/17/2/83.abstract.

Jaffe, Rivke (2008), “ ‘As Lion Rule the Jungle, So Man Rule the Earth’: Perceptions of Nature and the Environment in Two Caribbean Cities”, Wadabagei Vol 11, No 3, pages 46–69, available at https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/16487/Jaffe%202008%20Wadabagei.pdf?sequence=2.

Book note prepared by Christine Ro