The Resource Curse

AMITAV GHOSH is one of the world's most celebrated and awarded authors and thinkers. In conversation with TARA KHANDELWAL and MICHELLE D'COSTA, he talks about his latest book, The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, a non-fiction story highlighting the origins of our current climate crisis.

- TARA KHANDELWAL and MICHELLE D'COSTA

Thank you for your very generous words of welcome.

TK: Your latest book, The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, weaves history, colonialism, migration, superstition, and much more, to tell us an origin story of our current climate crisis. As a millennial, I am really interested in this very urgent issue. Why did you choose the lens of the nutmeg to tell this story?

The story of the nutmeg I take as an analogy for what is happening in the world right now. The nutmeg tree was a miraculous plant that existed only on the tiny Banda Islands and their surroundings in the Maluku province of Indonesia. For millennia, the nutmeg tree brought wealth and prosperity to these islands and the islanders. They became great entrepreneurs sailing across the Indian Ocean. Ultimately, the Dutch arrived and wanted to gain complete control of the nutmeg trade. So, what did they do? They wiped out the islanders.

The islanders were destroyed because of their miraculous tree.

It is an analogy for what has happened to our planet. We were given a beautiful planet full of all kinds of miraculous things. And now we have set about destroying this gift. The story of the nutmeg and the Banda Islands is one of the earliest examples of what's now known as the resource curse, that is, a resource that ultimately creates devastation around it. Another example is oil in Iraq or Libya. In the same way, the vast gifts of the Earth have now been exploited to the point where the whole Earth is becoming subject to the resource curse.