Presentation short abstract

In 2022, a dam-related flood inundated Saramaka Maroon lands in Suriname. Centuries of colonial and neo-colonial processes of vulnerabilisation underlie this flood. However, ahistorical, climate-focused explanations propagated by the state can deflect responsibility from dominant actors.

Presentation long abstract

Extreme rainfall landed in the Surinamese Amazon at the beginning of 2022. Much of this water flowed into the reservoir of the Afobaka hydroelectricity dam. The state-owned company managing the dam decided to spill water in order to protect the dam’s integrity, leading to the three month-long inundation of downstream Saramaka Maroon’s houses and lands—lands that the Maroons were forcibly relocated to due to the very construction of the Afobaka dam in 1964. Now, four years later, the flood’s impacts are still visible in destroyed houses and subsistence farming lands. The Saramaka Maroons, whose ontologies are rooted in centuries of anti-colonial and state resistance and trauma from the 1964 forced relocation, see the recent flood as an intended ‘second relocation’ initiated by state and continuation of history. In contrast, the state speak of an unprecedented ‘climate disaster’. This paper traces the historical processes of marginalisation and vulnerabilisation that underlie the 2022 flood, from Dutch colonial violence in response to marronage to neocolonial, extractive development strategies that led to the construction of the Afobaka dam. It shows how the state’s climate change narrative, supported by technical data and reports, obscures these historical processes and deflect responsibility away from the state. This analysis challenges the notion of the (neo-colonial) state as a legitimate advocate of climate justice, as often portrayed in global climate governance. Instead, it reveals how dominant actors can exploit climate change to evade accountability and impede equitable restitution that could lead to justice.