From Exploitation to Inundation

This chapter critically examines the historiography and policy discourse of Bonaire's saltworks landscapes, tracing how colonial and post-colonial narratives shape their representation, management, and decisions concerning their anticipated future under climate-induced threats. In January 2024, Greenpeace and eight Bonaire residents sued the Dutch government for failing to mitigate climate impacts, highlighting the vulnerability of the island's cultural heritage—especially the iconic slave huts—to sea-level rise. The framing of these sites in Dutch media reflects a broader issue of climate coloniality, wherein colonial histories, places of memory related to slavery pasts, and contemporary climate injustices remain intertwined. Utilizing visual historiography and policy discourse analysis, this study reconstructs key moments in the saltworks’ past, exploring how historical maps, photographs, and documents have shaped their representation. Colonial and post-colonial discourses emphasize resource extraction while marginalizing the experiences of enslaved people and broader ecological narratives. Contemporary policies fail to adopt an integrated landscape approach in the face of unavoidable heritage loss and damage, further fragmenting heritage management and erasing connections between environmental degradation, slavery, and colonial legacies. The study proposes alternative means of anticipating the future through curating decay and adaptive release as decolonial strategies to cope with climate-induced heritage loss and damage, embracing natural decay while ensuring historical narratives persist beyond material loss. By centring community-led decision-making and recognizing alternative knowledge systems, it calls for a more just and inclusive approach to decision-making concerning heritage management and adaptation to climate change hazards in the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire.