Issue 5: Ecocide

Guest edited by Leniqueca Welcome

In this issue of PREE, we looked for explorations of what ecocide – crimes against nature — means to the Caribbean, including its non-human inhabitants. Must ecocide be permanent? Vast? If a waterfall dries up, does it matter, once the rain starts again one day? What value is created by natural places that arouse joy and awe in people and is that value confined to those who see them? Or are such locations merely commodities to be assessed by the entrance cashier? What about hidden things – like coral reefs? If they become rubble, will that matter if the sea remains those multitudinous colours of blue, providing a suitable background for selfies? What about the reptiles most of us hate?

Does ecocide require human intent or is the damage done to a reef by dredging for a cruise ship pier no different to that wrought by a hurricane? Are our island homes going to remain habitable long into the future or will the names of hurricanes become the same kind of marker as wars in our history books – the Hundred Year Hurricane, perhaps? Are there places we remember, already lost, and do we mourn? We have conferred legal rights on our own non-living creations – corporations – why not on rivers or beaches or mountain ranges?

Send us your anger, your grief, your indifference, your uncertainty, your memories, your argument and your elegies for the Caribbean, now, in the era of the climate crisis. As always, we seek fiction, non-fiction, poetry, images and new narrative approaches.

Anchor image: Sheena Rose – “The Hurricane” ( 42 inches x 48 inches, acrylic on canvas), 2019.