In my previous essay, I explained how the hegemony of the West manifests in invasion science, the field of Western science that studies these biological invasions.[1] This second essay follows up by explaining how the hegemony of the West also manifests in the process of biological invasion itself.
Currently, a significant part of the environmental science community considers the agents that undergo biological invasions (i.e., invasive species) as among the five direct drivers of global biodiversity change.[2] But what is “biological invasion”? As defined by the Unified Framework for Biological Invasions, it is a complex process whereby species introduced to a place that they could not have reached without human aid establish self-sustaining, viable populations and spread profusely.[3] Invasive species are complex agents, but in policy-making circles, scientists and science communicators often place strategic emphasis on these species’ negative impacts.[4]
A striking realization hit me years ago when doing my PhD research. The process of biological invasion and the field of science studying and attempting to “solve” it are trapped in the same conceptual loop insofar as neither unsettles the hegemony of the West. This tacitly forces one to accept an internal contradiction, as both the problem and its solution stem from the same epistemic root. It is a paradox, but not an atypical one. Many examples come to mind where responses to problems stemming from capitalist Western hegemony reproduce the basic assumptions of a hegemonic Western worldview. For example, I think of the conservation schemes in Southern Africa that displace, alienate, and marginalize Indigenous and local people while profiting from luxurious tourism for the benefit of an international elite, or the ‘green’ economy idea that transnational corporations are using to entrench their control over natural resources in a continuous marginalization of local communities.[5]
Humans have moved species globally since ancient times.[6] However, European colonialism marked a milestone, not only for the global rise of the West and capitalism but also for the establishment of introduced species, some of which are classified as invasive now, across subject territories.[7] Analyzing Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonial empires, one study shows a consistency in the variety of alien (non-native or introduced) flora in the regions historically occupied by one or another of these empires.[8] This pattern of consistency increases with the duration of colonial occupation. In addition, centres of similarity coincide with economic and administrative hubs (e.g., South Africa and the Indo-Malay region for the Dutch empire, Mexico for the Spanish empire). As the study illustrates, European colonialism—an accelerator of the hegemony of the West with its associated “modernity”—redistributed humans and other species globally, having a profound agency in the process of biological invasion.
Settler colonialism, forced displacement and migration, slavery, urbanization, industrialization, and related processes of enduring exploitation and extraction have modified the socio-ecological systems of both metropoles and colonies, shaping the territories that we see today and their species assemblages. One study accounts for the influence of colonial settlers in the environmental history of Chiloé (present-day Chile), describing the dynamics of bio-cultural introductions, assimilations, exploitations, and appropriations, where a “new” socio-ecological system of uneven coexistence between species evolved.[9] Likewise, two other studies reflect on the rapid bio-cultural assimilation of feral pigs on the part of Indigenous people in Hawai’i after European colonial settlers introduced the pigs in the nineteenth century, a process bound up with other drastic socio-ecological changes that are still unfolding.[10] In South Africa (and more broadly in Southern Africa) too, colonial settler histories have strongly influenced the relations between people and other species, resulting in changing hegemonic views and approaches towards non-native and native species throughout time.
Although waves of species introductions by colonial administrations came to fulfill different economic and societal roles, depending on the “developmental” purpose of the moment, colonial attitudes towards those once (and still) useful introduced species and native biodiversity shifted with time across Southern Africa.[11] For instance, by the end of the First World War, an increasing identification of colonial settlers and their descendants with native biodiversity occurred as one of the many ways to legitimize their belonging and to entrench their power at the expense of the many Indigenous people in Southern Africa.[12] Similarly, in Laikipia (present-day Kenya), colonial settlers justified their continued ownership of the land in part by using the concepts of biological invasion and conservation to their advantage.[13]
The hegemony of the West is an over-arching cause of global environmental issues like biological invasions. But Western hegemony also structures the conservation and environmental practices that have arisen in response to these invasions, as critical scholars within Western science have pointed out in their calls to move toward transformative solutions.[14] Meanwhile, the Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessment of invasive species warns of increased biological invasions and derived negative impacts in the future if drivers are not tackled and if practices are not changed.[15] A promising example of change comes to mind: a Massai Conservation Vision of the space they have co-habited for hundreds of years.[16] Five hundred and twenty Massai elders, women, and youth from 26 villages united to envision “an alternative to the colonial, fortress, violent and capitalistic conservation model that is imposed on [our] Massai community, leading to the alienation of [our] land.” In their vision, “Land, people and livestock cannot be separated. Massai [We] have traditional knowledge and skills to manage the [our] land and deal with invasive plant species.” Their vision is a beacon of hope, reminding us that the environmental issues of our time—biological invasions among them—can and have to be addressed differently.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Samia Cohen for her thorough and comprehensive editorial work on this second essay. Also, thanks to the editorial team from EHN, especially Genie, Deniz and Teja. Finally, thanks to Jana Fried, John R.U. Wilson and Katharina Dehnen-Schmutz for their comments and suggestions.
[1] Diana Rodríguez-Cala, “The Hegemony of the West in Invasion Science: present conditions and paths to change,” Environmental History Now (2025).
[2] Sandra Díaz, et al., “Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change,” Science, 366 no. 6471 (2019).
[3] The Unified Framework is one of the most influential frameworks for studying and understanding biological invasions, i.e., invasion science, developed by Blackburn et al. (2011); Tim M. Blackburn, et al. “A proposed unified framework for biological invasions,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 26 no. 7 (2011), 333-339.
[4] The definition used in the IPBES report on the topic defines that invasive species are “a subset of established alien species that spread and have a negative impact on biodiversity, local ecosystems and species”; IPBES, “Summary for Policymakers of the Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services” edited by Helen E. Roy, et al. (IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany, 2023).
[5] Bram Büscher, and Lerato Thakholi, “Convivial fences? Property, ‘right to wildlife’ and the need for redistributive justice in South African conservation,” Land Use Policy, 141 (2024), 107-134; Bernard Moore, and Luregn Lenggenhager, “Space is the Ultimate Luxury: Capitalists, Conservationists, and Ancestral Land in Namibia” edited by Preben Kaarsholm, and Jeremy Prestholdt (African Social Studies Series, vol 49, Brill, 2025); “Green Economy” theme from the Transnational Institute; Democracy Now!, “Criminalizing Dissent: Greenpeace Ordered to Pay $667M to Dakota Access Pipeline Firm over Protests,” 2025.
[6] Jodie Frawley and Ian McCalman, eds., Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities (London: Routledge, 2014).
[7] Alexander Anievas, and Kerem Nişancioğlu, How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism (Pluto Press, 2015); Frawley, and McCalman, Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities; Kūpa‘a K. Luat-Hū‘eu, et. al., “Understanding the co-evolutionary relationships between Indigenous cultures and non-native species can inform more effective approaches to conservation: the example of pigs (pua’a; Sus scrofa) in Hawai’i,” Pacific Conservation Biology 27 (2021), 442-450; Bernd Lenzner, et al., “Naturalized alien floras still carry the legacy of European colonialism,” Nature Ecology and Evolution, 6 no.11 (2022), 1723-1732; Wehi et al., “Contribution of Indigenous Peoples’ understandings and relational frameworks to invasive alien species management“; Nussaïbah B. Raja, “Colonialism shaped today’s biodiversity,” Nature Ecology and Evolution, 6 no. 11 (2022), 1597-1598.
[8] Bernd Lenzner et al., “Naturalized alien floras still carry the legacy of European colonialism,” Nat Ecol Evol., 6/11 (2022) :1723-1732.
[9] Fernando Torrejón, Marco Cisternas, and Alberto Araneda, “Efectos ambientales de la colonización española desde el río Maullín al archipiélago de Chiloé, sur de Chile,” Revista Chilena de Historia Natural, 77 (2004), 661-677.
[10] Luat-Hū‘eu, et. al., “Understanding the co-evolutionary relationships between Indigenous cultures and non-native species can inform more effective approaches to conservation: the example of pigs (pua‘a; Sus scrofa) in Hawai’i“; Kūpa‘a K. Luat-Hū‘eu, Mehana BlaichVaughan, and Melissa R. Price, “Understanding local pig hunter values and practices as a means toward co-management of feral pigs (Sus scrofa; pua’a) in the Hawaiian Islands,” Ecology and Society 28, no. 2 (2023).
[11] Brett M. Bennett, “Model invasions and the development of national concerns over invasive introduced trees: Insights from South African history,” Biological Invasions, 16 no. 3 (2014), 499-512; Brett M. Bennett, and Frederick J. Kruger, “Forestry in reconstruction South Africa: Imperial visions, colonial realities,” Britain and the World, 8 no. 2 (2015), 225-245; Brett M. Bennett, and Lance van Sittert, “Historicising perceptions and the national management framework for invasive alien plants in South Africa,” Journal of Environmental Management, 229 (2019), 174-181; Susan Canavan, et al., “Alien Bamboos in South Africa: a Socio-Historical Perspective,” Human Ecology, 47 no. 1 (2019), 121-133.
[12] Bennett, and van Sittert, “Historicising perceptions and the national management framework for invasive alien plants in South Africa“; Jean Comaroff, and John L. Comaroff, “Naturing the Nation: Aliens, Apocalypse and the Postcolonial State,” Journal of Southern African Studies, 27 no. 3 (2001), 627-651; Lance van Sittert, “Making the Cape Floral Kingdom: The discovery and defence of indigenous flora at the Cape ca. 1890-1939,” Landscape Research, 28 no. 1 (2003), 113-129; Marja Spierenburg, and Harry Wels, “Conservative philanthropists, royalty and business elites in nature conservation in Southern Africa,” Antipode, 42 no. 3 (2010), 647-670; Luregn Lenggenhager, et al., eds., The Lower!Garib-Orange River: Pasts and presents of a southern African border region (Transcript Verlag, 2023); Bernard Moore, and Luregn Lenggenhager, “Space is the Ultimate Luxury: Capitalists, Conservationists, and Ancestral Land in Namibia“.
[13] Charis Enns and Brock Bersaglio, Settler ecologies: The enduring nature of settler colonialism in Kenya (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2024).
[14] Convivial Conservation, “Our manifesto,” (2024); Unai Pascual, et al., “Biodiversity and the challenge of pluralism,” Nature Sustainability, 4, no. 7 (2021); Wehi et. al., “Contribution of Indigenous Peoples’ understandings and relational frameworks to invasive alien species management“; Sussana Lidström, et al., “Invasive Narratives and the Inverse of Slow Violence: Alien Species in Science and Society,” Environmental Humanities, 7 no. 1 (2015), 1-40; Luat-Hū’eu et al., “Understanding local pig hunter values and practices as a means toward co-management of feral pigs (Sus scrofa; pua’a) in the Hawaiian Islands”; Priscilla Ana Powell, et. al., “Insights from experiences comanaging woody invasive alien plants in Argentina,” Ecological Solutions and Evidence 4, no. 4 (2023); Rodríguez Cala, “The Hegemony of the West in Invasion Science: present conditions and paths to change”.
[15] IPBES, “Summary for Policymakers of the Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services“
[16] Massai Community Members, and The Massai International Solidarity Association, A Massai Conservation Vision (2024).
*Cover Image: Image made on Canvas by the author.
[Cover image description: An infographic with a central title, “Biological Invasions,” surrounded by five boxes with visuals and titles: “Introduction Purposes,” “Establishment,” “Spread,” “Global Movement,” and “Impacts.”]
Edited by Samia Cohen; reviewed by Katherine Cheung.