Adaptation in the Plantationocene

Abstract

Plantation logics have been responsible for devastating transformations of the planet including climate change. While they have shaped the current social and ecological conditions we live with today, they also shape the way we choose to live with those conditions. Among these choices are a set of strategies broadly referred to as climate change adaptation. I describe here how climate change adaptation is shaped by plantation logics through spatially uneven development, dispossession, and racialization. I develop these arguments through an examination of the adaptation regime and its uneven manifestation across the Global South and North. In the end, I turn to an examination of the fundamental limitations of the Plantationocene in capturing contingency, resistance, and alternatives to plantation logics shaping climate change adaptation.