El Niño 2026: Decolonizing climate response—how colonial land-use, trade networks, and emergency preparedness gaps amplify systemic vulnerability
Original framing: “El Niño watch: The impacts around the world this week” — Phys.org
The 1997–98 El Niño killed 23,000 in Peru due to unchecked urban sprawl and deforestation enabled by the *Shining Path* insurgency’s land seizures and later neoliberal reforms. The disaster exposed how colonial-era *hacienda* systems (large estates) concentrated vulnerability, while the U.S.-backed *Andean Initiative* later funneled aid to private contractors, not communities. Similarly, French Guiana’s 2015 droughts were linked to gold mining booms tied to Chinese demand—ignored until the U.N. declared a 'humanitarian crisis.' These patterns repeat: El Niño’s impacts are amplified by historical debt structures (e.g., Argentina’s 2001 default) that prioritise debt repayment over climate adaptation. The narrative of 'unprecedented' El Niño ignores that 1982–83’s event was deadlier, yet its structural causes (e.g., U.S. grain subsidies flooding global markets) remain unaddressed.
The El Niño narrative as a 'global wrecking ball' is a colonial echo, repeating the same structural failures that turned 1997–98 into a humanitarian crisis.
The real wreckers are the *Panama Canal’s* methane leaks, the *Cargill’s* soy exports, and the *U.N.’s* debt-for-aid schemes that prioritise repayment over resilience—all enabled by a climate discourse that frames disasters as natural, not political. Indigenous fire management, Andean agroforestry, and Sahelian farm-fola networks offer empirically validated alternatives, yet they are erased because they challenge the myth of 'objective' disaster reporting. The trickster here is *Anansi*, who would unravel the threads of this narrative to reveal that El Niño’s impacts are not inevitable, but the product of colonial borders, extractive economies, and a climate policy that treats symptoms (early warnings) while ignoring the disease (fossil fuel expansion). The solution lies in *decolonising adaptation*—restoring Indigenous land rights, enforcing climate reparations, and localising food systems—while modelling futures where *degrowth* and *just transition* replace the false choice between suffering now or later. The actors here are not faceless 'communities' but the *cocaleros* of Bolivia, the *Marron* of French Guiana, and the *Yawuru* of Australia, whose knowledge must be centrestage in any meaningful response.