Colonialism and its impact on the environment both positive and negative?

Question

Colonialism and its impact on the environment both positive and negative?

Answer 1

Essentially none, at least not directly.

China and Greece were destroying their environments by clear cutting forests long before colonialism, and most of the recent environmental damage has occurred after the imperialist powers relinquished political control.

It is the case that many crops were deliberately introduced to places far from their origins as part of the colonial administration: tomatoes, corn, tobacco, coffee, tea, etc. But the introduction of alien species since then (both deliberate and inadvertent) has had an even greater effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_sp...

Some people blame the colonial administrations for destroying native cultures and would argue that the native cultures tended to conserve the environment while the colonialists wanted to exploit it.

While this may be true, it is hard to prove. And those areas which were not colonized but did learn about modern technology seem to have been just as abusive of their environment as those which were.

For example, Thailand was never colonized - being left as a buffer state between the French in Vietnam and the English in Burma, etc. Yet the Thais are destroying their forests as fast, if not faster, than their neighbors.

Similarly for Japan and its adjacent seas.