The Ledger That Still Bleeds

Environmental Ruin & Colonial Extraction — Tobago (1800s–2025)

The empire took not only labor, but land. Tobago’s hills were stripped for cane, its forests cleared, its soil exhausted. Centuries of extraction weakened reefs, deepened erosion, and made the island vulnerable to the climate crisis it did not cause. Today, rising seas gnaw at old plantation walls, flooding the ruins of an economy built on human suffering. The environment stands as testimony: colonialism lives not only in memory, but in the shape of the land itself.