Coloniality or pluriversality: what do we learn from the ecological transition of NGOs?

Post-colonialism, decolonial approaches and neocolonialism: when we consider the legacy of the fact of colonialism in history, and in the modern world order and its organisational structures, we cannot fail to conclude that a plurality of approaches and concepts occupy a common space, related to each other but often poorly understood, or even categorically rejected by parts of the academic and political community, especially in France¹. This semantic plurality discloses an abundance of different perspectives, which have both left their mark within academia – in different regions of the world – and also fostered associative movements, activism, social trends, etc.

Some trends, such as decolonial approaches, were created within institutions with both more and less formal structures. Other approaches – such as those described as postcolonial – are really an attempt to rationalise, after the fact, work and ideas that have attracted criticisms like those that are made of western colonialism. Interventions differ too in the type of contribution they make, with some simply feeding into academic debate, and others trying to diversify, by learning lessons from art, or from what are known as endogenous practices, etc. Some terms or expressions are more expressive of social dynamics and social processes, such as neocolonialism, than they are of analytical concepts.

All these approaches basically have as their analytical starting point a criticism of Eurocentrism, and its epistemic and ontological hegemony: the way in which the West produces and legitimises knowledge, and shapes the connection with the world, both human and non-human, which surrounds us. Such approaches illustrate on the one hand the way the West was, and continues to be, inclined to depict itself as the sole driving force behind world history, to the detriment of the historical processes specific to each geographical era. On the other hand, they challenge the western model (political, social, economic and cultural) as the only possible way forward for non-western countries, at the expense of each of those countries’ social and cultural heterogeneity. This criticism is currently particularly lively, especially within the sector of international solidarity. Where does it come from, and what are the challenges?

Between colonialism and pluralism, the NGOs as avatars of the modern world

Several noted authors writing on decolonisation, such as the anthropologists Arturo Escobar and Eduardo Restrepo, who belong to the South American collective Modernidad/Colonialidad/Decolonialidad (M/C/D)², became interested in the different development policies within the multilateral community that emerged at the end of the second world war. They tried – by analysing political history, and its organisational and management characteristics, which are deeply imbued with the fact of colonialism – to reposition, on several different levels, its multidimensional (cultural, social, economic, etc.,) legacy.

International aid provides a model of social engineering that illustrates both western influence on the overall conception of the world and the criticisms that are made of it. If we consider a social intervention as ‘a mechanism of planned intervention, developed by experts, aiming to set up or to modify institutions and behaviours in different contexts’³, we are constrained to conclude that international aid since the 1950s has taken the form of a plethora of standardised programmes and projects – full of management processes and ‘travelling models’⁴ – which have enjoyed some success, especially in the countries known as the Global South.

In parallel, there has been much criticism of the various public policies that have been adopted. Relatively speaking, we have failed to meet certain fixed objectives (a world without poverty or a world which ‘leaves no one behind’⁵). Policies adopted have – to say the least – frequently experienced gaps between expected and actual outcomes (Olivier de Sardan calls this the implementation gap). Arturo Escobar takes the view that development, and policies associated with it, is nothing more than a cultural invention on the part of the western world, which originated in coloniality and shaped (and continues to shape) the modern world. It aims, by setting up specific economic, social and political mechanisms in poor countries, to perpetuate an ethnocentric and imperialistic concept of the world⁶. By extension, western NGOs – whether their focus is humanitarian or developmental – born in a contemporary world coloured by the fact of colonisation, may themselves be purveyors of coloniality.

Semantic influences on NGOs’ management practices – their management language⁷– are remarkably normative (to ‘support’ countries that were formerly colonies in trying to achieve a certain type of western modernity). Decolonial approaches help us understand how this type of language can sometimes sustain certain types of coloniality, consisting of ‘a planet-wide expression of a system of ‘western’ power […], assuming what is claimed to be the natural inferiority of non-western places, population groups, types of knowledge, or subjectivities’⁸. This coloniality allows the West – and, by extension, western organisations, such as NGOs – to be thought of not as a geographical zone but as a spatial articulation of power, which cannot be distinguished from the fact of colonialism, constituting western modernity. Coloniality is a plural concept, covering knowledge, power, being, gender and nature; it is the ‘the most widespread mode of domination in the world today’⁹, recognisable in the various inequalities and processes of domination of which the international architecture is constructed: inequality of access to resources, inequality in the sharing of political and economic power, inequality in terms of access to rights, etc.

Decolonial approaches offer a positive agenda: they assert that there is no single western form of reasoning, but several different forms, bound up with differences in historical experiences or in social and cultural dynamics. Without attempting to insist on the separate identities of cultures or of groups of individuals, these approaches propound the theory of pluriversality, by which different worlds are not ‘completely separate, […] (but) are, on the contrary, fully interconnected, despite their inequalities of power’¹⁰. Pluriversality is interesting and relevant because it questions the way western universality shapes the way organisations work, and raises questions about the norms this dominance constructs and applies. The concept assists us in better understanding different ethical standpoints and different ways of thinking; and enables us to analyse social dynamics through the prism of non-western epistemologies: ‘an epistemology of the south (which entails) producing and evaluating new knowledge and understanding, valid in their own right, whether scientific or not’¹¹.

This ecology of knowledge, whether scientific or non-scientific, ‘based on the idea that there is no such thing as either absolute knowledge or absolute ignorance’¹², suggests that different types of knowledge and skill are interdependent, and often complementary. Becoming aware of this pluriversality as seen in management practice is to understand how ‘knowledge imposed by the west is combined with diverse indigenous knowledge, leading to the creation of a hybrid version which demonstrates simultaneously the force of the dominant power and resistance to it’¹³. To put it another way, this is how NGOs can be at one and the same time purveyors of colonialities and of pluriversality.

There are several fascinating examples from South America. Some writers show¹⁴ how movements such as the Processus of Black Communities (PCN) in Colombia, by drawing on the philosophy of buen vivir¹⁵, have successfully constructed pluriversal organisations and communities in lands historically marked by colonial violence. These organisations and communities do not operate in reductive fashion via a simple exploitative relationship with people or with the natural world. By means of a long dialogue with developmental actors¹⁶, PCN’s activists, during the 1990s, achieved formal recognition of their land rights and cultural rights within their own territories. This recognition, by protecting their way of life and their resources, enables them to construct a geographical entity¹⁷, with a narrative – el proyecto de vida – that ‘allows them to promote development that is compatible with the surrounding environment’¹⁸.

Progress towards a pluriversal management by NGOs of the ecological transition?

It seems to us especially relevant to invoke decolonial approaches, and the different concepts associated with them, when attempting to figure out the management of ecological and social transitions needed as a response to what is known as anthropic climate change – caused by humans – and its consequences. The countries most acutely affected are, and will be, those that were formerly colonised¹⁹, and hence those which have the most to do with international aid. That being the case, and recalling that international NGOs originate for the most part in countries which historically have the greatest responsibility for climate change, it might be helpful to imagine a decolonial ecology which makes ‘the colonial gap into the central challenge of the ecological crisis, […], noting that pollution of various kinds, the loss of biodiversity and even global heating are the material traces left by the colonial occupation of Earth, which also comprises global social inequalities’²⁰.

Decolonial ecology treats Earth as ‘the basis of a world where physical and chemical systems, […], are inherent in the colonial, racist and misogynist domination of humans and non-humans, as well as in the different struggles to overcome it’²¹. By linking analysis of environmental change to the inequalities bequeathed by the colonial constitution of western modernity, we arrive at a better understanding of the way forms of resistance to the latter are constructed outside of the West, including alternative ways of managing ecological challenges. It is helpful to analyse organisational models used in contexts which particularly reveal the ‘two-fold gap, colonial and environmental, of our times’²², such as those used by NGOs who are marked by their colonial history and very much impacted by anthropic climate change. This makes it possible to identify potentially pluriversal management practices, which can integrate non-western ontologies: practices not characterised simply by exploitative, life-destroying relations with humans and non-humans, and thus more sustainable.

To illustrate the relevance of these decolonial approaches in transition management, we offer here some results of research on NGO capacity to reconcile the human imperative with the ecological transition²³. Aware that they needed to transform their organisational models, in December 2020 several large French NGOs made a commitment to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 50 % by 2030, arguing that ‘the actions of organisations in the sector of solidarity, crucial though these actions may be, can have environmental and climatic consequences’²⁴. From our study of specific management practices of several NGOs working in Burkina Faso and Senegal (both former French colonies), we shall show how decolonial approaches reveal their coloniality, and reveal in turn the twofold gap of modernity, colonial and environmental, and at the same time their pluriversal character.

On the one hand, the different tools and modalities of these NGOs are, some would say, purveyors of strong colonialities. They are deeply rooted in a western concept of management, expressed, for example, in the quantitative indicators applied to processes and to norms, devised in western headquarters and applied in both the countries studied. They are problematic to apply in practice, because of the difficulty of getting the non-western staff of the NGOs to accept them, and because the data required may not be easily available; or, if available, not necessarily reliable. On the other hand, we find coloniality in certain attitudes adopted by the NGOs, particularly the disparagement – invoking western scientific rationalism – of comments, observations, or attitudes expressed by non-western employees. The NGOs actively disqualify types of knowledge which they judge a priori to be invalid. The research we did nevertheless showed that the new approaches we are proposing here – decolonial approaches – are relevant, being used whenever local teams are given the possibility of developing their own organisational tools based on pre-existing endogenous practice and knowledge²⁵. These tools may be described as pluriversal templates for management. Non-western local practices are used, for example, in the adaptation of some resource management projects to improve their sustainability. Management regulations may be drafted to distinguish the responsibilities of westerners from those of non-westerners in certain areas, for example, aeroplane use. Most radically, organisational modalities may be developed to actively resist the normative demands of aid: for example, the establishment of ‘paper services’, to deal with the excessive administration typical of the [aid] sector, out of all proportion to the scale of the organisation. The western management modality is thereby reduced to a simple, unique tool for dealing with donors (which does not say much about what the NGOs actually do).

Numerous calls to ‘decolonise international aid’²⁶ are emerging across the sector. Decolonial approaches may help us understand how NGO management is both a purveyor of eurocentrism and its related colonialities, and a source of practical alternatives. They enable us to contextualise management theories – which tend to put forward concepts (competition, profitability, efficiency) as though they were obvious – by bringing to the table cultural values with specific historical and geographical provenance; and they often simplify ‘socio-economic realities that are not western’²⁷. They also encourage us to imagine, as the Zapatist slogan has it, un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos²⁸, that is, a world that, faced as it is with multiple crises, ‘(entails) collaboration between divergent voices about the alternative types of world that we want to create’²⁹. This is particularly true of western NGO practice in ecological transition, which reveals a twofold colonial and environmental imperative that needs to be overcome. From experience of these organisations’ capacity to reinvent themselves, there seems to us little doubt that they will respond.

Vincent Pradier (doctoral research student and associate researcher at the Canadian Observatory for Crises and Humanitarian Action (OCCAH).

1. Readers looking for proof of this point are invited to explore the publications of the ‘Observatoire d’éthique universitaire’, a small research body which is relatively ‘allergic’ to the concepts presented in this article.
2. M/C/D is a multidisciplinary and intergenerational research network of South American intellectuals. It was set up at the end of the 1990s, linking Escobar and Restrepo and others such as the philosopher Enrique Dussel and the semiologist Walter Mignolo (both from Argentina) and the Peruvian sociologists Aníbal Quijano and Catherine Walsh.
3. Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan. 2021. La revanche des contextes. Des mésaventures en ingénierie sociale en Afrique et au-delà. No. 7 Paris : Karthala. https://www.cairn.info/la-revanche-des-contextes-9782811123628.htm
4. The anthropologist Olivier Sardan describes ‘travelling models’ as follows: ‘any standardised institutional intervention […] aiming to produce some kind of social change, based on ‘mechanisms’ that are considered to embody intrinsic qualities that will enable changes to be introduced in different implementation contexts’.
5. This is the objective of Agenda 2030, a programme of goals for sustainable development, to be achieved by 2030, which was adopted in September 2015 by the UN’s 193 member-states. The programme consists of seventeen sustainable development goals.
6. Arturo Escobar. 1995. Encountering Development. STU-Student Edition. Princeton University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.cct7rtgw
7. For example, management tools such as the ‘project cycle’ or the ‘logical framework’, etc.
8. Arturo Escobar and Eduardo Restrepo. 2009. ‘Anthropologies hégémoniques et colonialité’. In Cahiers des Amériques Latines. No. 62,8. https://doi.org/10.4000/cal.1550
9. Aníbal Quijano. 1992. ‘Colonialidad y modernidad/racionalidad’. In Peru Indigena, 13, no. 29. (Author’s translation).
10. Arturo Escobar. 2020. Arturo Escobar. 2018. Designs for the Pluriverse. Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822371816
11. Boaventura de Sousa Santos. 2011. ‘Epistémologies du Sud’. In Etudes Rurales. No. 187:38. https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesrurales.9351
12. Ibid, p.39.
13. Héla Yousfi. « International Management, Should We Abandon the Myth of Cultural Hybridity? A Re-examination of the Contribution of Postcolonial and Decolonial Approaches ». M@n@gement, 2021/1 Vol. 24, 2021. p.80-89. CAIRN.INFO, shs.cairn.info/revue-management-2021-1-page-80?lang=fr
14. Philippe Colin and Lissel Quiroz. 2023. Pensées décoloniales. Une introduction aux théories critiques d’Amérique latine. Zones. La Découverte, https://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/pensees_decoloniales-9782355221538
15. Alberto Acosta. 2018. Le Buen Vivir: Pour imaginer d’autres mondes. Les Editions Utopia.
16. NGOs, public authorities, international organisations, etc.
17. The Pacific region.
18. Proceso de Comunidades Negras. ‘Territorio y conflicto desde la perspectiva del Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN)’. In Cali: Otros Saberes, February 2008 :11. https://otrossaberes.lasaweb.org/uploads/colombia-report_001.pdf (Author’s translation.)
19. IPPC. ‘Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896
20. Malcolm Ferdinand. 2019. Une écologie décoloniale: penser l’écologie depuis le monde caribéen. Anthropocène. Paris : Editions du Seuil. p.298.
21. Ibid, p.305.
22. Ibid, p.14.
23. More information on this doctoral thesis work is available at https://cv.hal.science/vincent-pradier
24. Statement of Commitment on Climate by Humanitarian Organisations, December 2020. https://www.environnementhumanitaire.org/en/ressource/statement-of-commitment-on-climate-by-humanitarian-organisations-december-2020/
25. Op.cit.
26. Peace Direct et al. 2021. Time to Decolonise Aid. Insights and Lessons from a Global Consultation. https://www.peacedirect.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/PD-Decolonising-Aid_Second-Edition.pdf
27. Alexandre Wong. 2020. ‘Chapitre 5. Singularisation et universalisation des pratiques de RSE et de développement durable en Afrique.’ In La recherche enracinée en management. EMS Editions. P.87. https://doi.org/10.3917/ems.kamde.2020.01.0083
28. While several translations exist, this phrase is most often translated in French as ‘un monde où cohabitent plusieurs mondes’ (‘a world in which several worlds live together, or co-habit’).
29. Ashish Kotari et al. 2019. Pluriverse. A Post-Development Dictionary. Tulika Books and Authorsupfront.