This wide-ranging and ambitious book takes up the story of a quest for a new relation with the Earth, one that uproots the violence inherited from slavery and colonization, and it begins in the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. In these former French colonies, now overseas departments of France, the use of organic pollutants and endocrine disruptors such as pesticides after the Second World War led to widespread environmental contamination and devastating outcomes for the local population. Malcom Ferdinand focuses on one pesticide in particular, which was used extensively in the growing of bananas for European consumers and is now found in the blood of over ninety per cent of Antilleans, and is associated with severe health risks.

Ferdinand's analysis of chlordecone shows how, in modernity, colonization and environmental destruction were falsely treated as separate issues. His mode of inquiry is truly interdisciplinary, bringing together a wealth of historical, philosophical, scientific, epidemiological, legal, economic and sociological perspectives. Loving the Earth also contains narratives of decolonial revolts – political, legal, scientific and artistic – in the face of this lasting injustice. In the wake of centuries of dehumanization and renewed environmental damage, this book offers an emancipating horizon based on the principles of justice and dignity, and grounded in a politics of love of the Earth.

Malcom Ferdinand is a researcher in political ecology and environmental humanities at the CNRS and Université Paris Dauphine-PSL.