Caribbean Review: The Island Paradise in Peril
AFP
Across the globe, multinational corporations have repeatedly leveraged their power to bypass regulations and tighten their hold on legislative bodies—often at the cost of human lives. In the case of Martinique and Guadeloupe, two of the French Antilles territories, this sentiment rings true. Citizens of these isles who worked in agricultural settings and on the vast banana plantations, making up the backbone of the Antilles’ economies, have been impacted forever due to the greed of corporations and the willful ignorance of the French government.
The Court Ruling
Yet, there is a sign of hope for progress in the reparation process for victims of Chlordecone—the harmful pesticide used in the French Antilles—after a French court ruled that eleven victims be compensated for the health effects they suffered. This ruling came earlier this month after the French Administrative Court of Appeals ruled, “the State committed errors in granting authorizations for the sale of chlordecone-based insecticides…in assessing the pollution linked to this use…” The Court’s decision includes the affirmation that the State illegally authorized the use of Chlordecone in 1972 and renewed its authorizations in 1974 and beyond. It also includes that the French state deliberately and knowingly ignored the adverse health effects published in several scientific publications in 1990 and 1993 that endangered public safety.
The Damage Done
During this period, employees of the banana plantations would work regularly with the chlordecone-sprinkled vegetation, often without any protective equipment such as gloves or masks. The fine white powder would transfer to the workers’ bodies, and without washing the chlordecone off of their hands and clothes,they would eat lunch, thus contaminating their food and ingesting the toxic substance. The workers would return home at the end of the day, their clothes covered in chlordecone, contaminating their household’s laundry and unintentionally spreading it to their families. According to a report by The Guardian, some workers even reported feeling body aches and light-headedness during their shifts, symptoms that only scratch the surface of the real damage done.
Chlordecone’s impacts on the environment are detrimental to the health and survival of Martinique and Guadeloupe’s food and ecosystems. As the white powder seeps into the soil and groundwater, it contaminates basic resources for the population and travels to other environments by way of rivers, rain and erosion to spread its effects across the islands. According to the World Health Organization, chlordecone exhibits, “a major hazard for aquatic ecosystems because of its stability and persistence in sediments” and for its “chronic toxicity.” Chemicals like chlordecone, can also stay in the environment as a persistent toxin for six hundred years producing long-term effects that are not easily amenable for a French government looking to end this scandal quickly and painlessly.
A French Fiasco
In the 1960s, the French Parliament repeatedly blocked the use of chlordecone for both private and public purposes, even though the chemical—marketed as 'Kepone'—was already being used as a commercial pesticide in the United States. Yet, in 1972, to compete with the Latin American market, the French revisited chlordecone and allowed for its use even though Parliament had not approved it in its official capacity until 1981. To kill the banana weevil pest and make French bananas more competitive, they chose the interests of a handful of landowners and companies without executing a proper review of safety standards. In 1975, the Allied Chemical Corporation in the U.S. stopped using the chemical after scientific studies published the negative effects that Kepone or Chlordecone can have on humans. The French government continued to look the other way.
Protesters, activists and workers looking for justice from the French government before this year’s appellate court ruling, had continually organized protests looking for adequate compensation for victims, apologies and increased support to investigate the contamination. Signs from protesters that read, “They’re poisoning us” and “They’re killing us” were a symbol of Martinique and Guadeloupe’s disdain for the French government. Yet, after years of abuse and neglect, continual activism has slowly brought compensation and recognition from the French government not only through court rulings but also from the words of French President Emmanuel Macron who acknowledges the French use of chlordecone at the end of the 20th century as an “environmental scandal”.
The Chlordecone Plans
As a way to combat the further spread of toxins into the environment and bring awareness to the citizens of Martinique and Guadeloupe, the French government in 2008 launched the first of a series of national strategic plans called the “National Chlordecone Plans”. They were formed under the guidance of the French Parliament to undertake health and safety measures on the islands to reduce exposure to harmful chemicals as well as provide funding for research and investigative operations to analyze the breadth of the environmental effects of chlordecone. Currently, the French government is undertaking the implementation of “Chlordecone VI Plan” (2021-2027) which includes a call for research on chlordecone pollution through a “one health” approach that holistically encompasses human, animal and environmental effects. The plan is also being instituted as a supplement for outreach campaigns, monitoring of chlordecone contamination, and the subsidization of health services to meet common citizen needs.
Cancer as a Consequence
As far as harmful effects, workers’ and their families face some of the most harmful consequences in the world. The chemical itself, chlordecone, is an endocrine disruptor and is recognized as neurotoxic and reprotoxic, which has contributed to the highest rates of prostate cancer in the world as measured in 2018. For Martinique, the rate hovered around 158 per 100,000, while Guadeloupe’s rate was 189 per 100,000, in addition to prostate cancer mortality rates being twice that in mainland France. An alarming crisis requires the support of the French government even as many patients face a lower survival rate because of environmental factors, including economic status, quality of food and water, and access to services. Not to mention that for some men in Martinique and Guadeloupe, discussing their condition is stigmatized and uncomfortable.
Adjacent to the activism for the appropriate compensation for victims of chlordecone in Martinique and Guadeloupe are those suffering from “environmental anxiety”. A growing issue recognized by international organizations like the WHO, UN Environment Programme, and the Division for Inclusive Social Development signals a possible shift in how courts and compensation in environmental cases could be ruled on.
Environmental anxiety materializes the idea that people directly or indirectly affected by the results of an environmental disaster or climate change develop anxiety about the prospects of living in their newly affected environment. While the French Court of Appeals has not ruled in favor of victims of environmental anxiety so far, momentum in awarding victims of chlordecone might break an impasse in recognizing the relationship between one’s mental health and their natural environment. Fearing that water, food, and soil may be contaminated and impossible to use has imparted a sense of unrelenting anxiety which has dominated the quality of life in the French Antilles.
The reality for people in Martinique and Guadeloupe is this: Chlordecone has destroyed their environment, health, and food systems, casting the small island into a state of peril. While the French government is shifting to an increasingly reparational approach to fixing the situation, years of abuse and neglect are impossible to be immediately reversed. People in the French Antilles are experiencing progress but it is slow and lugubrious, putting victims and their way of life in danger. However, their activism is an example of the successful opposition to colonial legacies and an example for the international community in addressing the aftereffects of climate change.
