This presentation shares the ecological and social ramifications of bauxite mining in Jamaica through the emerging legal lens of ecocide. Through a multilayered methodological approach this lecture examines the ways in which Jamaica's bauxite mining communities bear severe ecological, social, and health harms despite Jamaica’s longstanding legislative frameworks. Prof. Samuels-Jones argues that Jamaican bauxite extraction, as practiced by multinational corporations with state complicity, may constitute ecocide: acts of grave and long-term destruction to ecosystems and the well-being of local communities. This work situates Jamaican bauxite mining within broader structures of coloniality, global commodity chains, and environmental injustice. It challenges existing domestic legal provisions for environmental protection, particularly their reluctance to criminalize corporate environmental harms. Finally, policy reforms, corporate accountability mechanisms, and grassroots mobilizations are weighed as potential pathways to mitigate and redress enduring harms, and concludes that ecological self-determination for Jamaica requires recalibrating environmental protection from regulatory compliance to criminal accountability for severe ecological harm.

Dr. Tameka Samuels-Jones is an Associate Professor at York University and Director of the Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean (CERLAC). She teaches Corporate Social Responsibility & Sustainability and Justice, Governance & Accountability in the Global South. Her research explores the implications of Canadian Extractivism in the Caribbean, environmental crime & (in)justice, and Afro-Indigeneity in the Caribbean. She is dedicated to research which emphasizes inclusivity in the development of environmental policies and laws particularly in Afro-Indigenous countries in the Global South. Dr. Samuels-Jones has received numerous awards for her work in equity including the Canada Research Chairs' Robbins- Ollivier Award for Excellence in Equity.

‍

‍