50 K Grove
devices, contracts, regulations and development consultants that structure
triggering mechanisms.
Second, insurantialisation also reconfigures the relation between the state,
donors, markets, the public, and the earth. Rather than a stable backdrop
on which sovereignty is performatively enacted, the earth itself becomes an
active limit on sovereignty: it is what the post-independence Caribbean state
must abide by and respond to. EARM effectively renaturalises sovereignty
in the Caribbean. Instead of signalling a capacity to transcend the earth,
in the Anthropocene, the use of triggers to determine when and how state
resources can be accessed and how they can be used immerses the state
within planetary dynamics that can disrupt its core biopolitical functions.
The insurantialisation of disaster governance is thus a moral response to the
challenge of earthly excess in the Anthropocene that intensifies rather than
ameliorates colonial-style geopolitical dependencies, for it makes the state’s
ability to sense and respond to planetary dynamics contingent on its adoption of EARM strategies and techniques. Set in the context of 400 years of
plantation violence, the cost of these novel sensory and response capacities is incalculable, for it requires Caribbean states to sacrifice the limited
and precarious forms of autonomy won through centuries of anti-colonial
struggle.
Conclusions
In the Anthropocene, experiences of excessive earthly powers have been
animating transformations in political subjectivity as well governance
strategies and tactics. This chapter has explored how the conjunction of
asymmetrical planetary excess and insurantial strategies are reconfiguring
state-society-economy relations in the Anthropocene. More intense tropical
cyclones, and the increasingly excessive disaster losses, threaten SIDS, such
as Dominica, with fiscal insolvency. Development economists have seized
on these conditions to critique ex-post disaster relief, and instead advocate
for EARM measures that enable states to ‘prepare like an insurer.’ EARM
initiatives attempt to make disaster budgeting more reflexive and responsive
to emerging planetary dynamics, and thus maintain economic independence and manage the costs of disaster events without relying on foreign aid.
However, as the example of Dominican disaster budgeting demonstrates, in
practice, EARM renaturalises sovereignty as it attempts to recalibrate how
states utilise financial resources to prepare for and respond to emergency
and excessive planetary forces. The formalised rationality of EARM prioritises future economic self-sufficiency over present autonomy. In Dominica,
EARM initiatives such as the VRRF reconfigure the government’s budgeting practices around insurantialised governance strategies that further
distance the GCD from decisions on when and how to use its limited
government revenues. In effect, the moral imperative to become economically self-sufficient in the face of mounting climate change impacts presents
devices, contracts, regulations and development consultants that structure
triggering mechanisms.
Second, insurantialisation also reconfigures the relation between the state,
donors, markets, the public, and the earth. Rather than a stable backdrop
on which sovereignty is performatively enacted, the earth itself becomes an
active limit on sovereignty: it is what the post-independence Caribbean state
must abide by and respond to. EARM effectively renaturalises sovereignty
in the Caribbean. Instead of signalling a capacity to transcend the earth,
in the Anthropocene, the use of triggers to determine when and how state
resources can be accessed and how they can be used immerses the state
within planetary dynamics that can disrupt its core biopolitical functions.
The insurantialisation of disaster governance is thus a moral response to the
challenge of earthly excess in the Anthropocene that intensifies rather than
ameliorates colonial-style geopolitical dependencies, for it makes the state’s
ability to sense and respond to planetary dynamics contingent on its adoption of EARM strategies and techniques. Set in the context of 400 years of
plantation violence, the cost of these novel sensory and response capacities is incalculable, for it requires Caribbean states to sacrifice the limited
and precarious forms of autonomy won through centuries of anti-colonial
struggle.
Conclusions
In the Anthropocene, experiences of excessive earthly powers have been
animating transformations in political subjectivity as well governance
strategies and tactics. This chapter has explored how the conjunction of
asymmetrical planetary excess and insurantial strategies are reconfiguring
state-society-economy relations in the Anthropocene. More intense tropical
cyclones, and the increasingly excessive disaster losses, threaten SIDS, such
as Dominica, with fiscal insolvency. Development economists have seized
on these conditions to critique ex-post disaster relief, and instead advocate
for EARM measures that enable states to ‘prepare like an insurer.’ EARM
initiatives attempt to make disaster budgeting more reflexive and responsive
to emerging planetary dynamics, and thus maintain economic independence and manage the costs of disaster events without relying on foreign aid.
However, as the example of Dominican disaster budgeting demonstrates, in
practice, EARM renaturalises sovereignty as it attempts to recalibrate how
states utilise financial resources to prepare for and respond to emergency
and excessive planetary forces. The formalised rationality of EARM prioritises future economic self-sufficiency over present autonomy. In Dominica,
EARM initiatives such as the VRRF reconfigure the government’s budgeting practices around insurantialised governance strategies that further
distance the GCD from decisions on when and how to use its limited
government revenues. In effect, the moral imperative to become economically self-sufficient in the face of mounting climate change impacts presents