Caring for the Environment
Resistance in the Plantationocene
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60162/swamphen.11.19747Abstract
The agricultural modernisation programmes introduced in the 1980s by the IMF to Monaragala, Sri Lanka, in the Plantationocen wielded a profound impact on women's subsistence agriculture. The impacts include the destruction of forests, water bodies and the agroecology of the area, leading to a dependence on synthetic agrochemicals for farming, water scarcity, heightened human-elephant conflict and the spread of Chronic Kidney Disease of an Unknown etiology (CKDu).
Today, women who engage in subsistence agriculture to mitigate the negative impacts of neoliberalism by engaging in agroecological farming concentrate on the protection of the environment. The core tenet of their agroecological farming revolves around environmental protection, underscored by the various methods used in cultivation ranging from maintaining seed banks and making organic fertiliser to ways of pest control. There is care in the relationship between the women and the environment. I conceptualise these acts as care, leading to women's resistance to fight the impacts of neoliberalism.
This paper delves into women’s agroecological farming techniques, which I conceptualise under "Care". I look at their care for the environment, building on the idea that "environment as kin" made through relations of care. I argue that the protection of the environment is an act of resistance in the Plantationocen.
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