Conditionalized Realities: The X-Press Pearl Fire and the Sri Lankan State
12 nautical miles off the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo fire engulfed a Singaporean container ship. After smoking out the nearby city for twelve days, the tail of the ship sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mannar. The ecological and social devastation was immense, but it all began with a small nitric acid leak on that container ship, the X-Press Pearl.
The nitric-acid-leaking ship began its journey sailing to port of Hazira in India. As they sailed into the port, they thought that they could finally offload the leaking cargo. But upon entry, Hazira officials denied offloading at the port. Carrying its ticking time bomb, crews tried again in Sri Lankan waters withholding information about the leak. By the time the ship got to port however, Colombo port crews similarly denied the ship and neglected to supply its crew with the necessary carbon stocks to address the leak. The next day the ship sailed out of the port, the nitric acid reacted with metals on-board, and an explosion occurred sparking the fire.
On the first day of the fire, firefighting and navy teams were placed on standby, but by the next day, firefighters were deployed to respond to the burning ship. After days of attempting to quell the flames, a second explosion erupted causing a release of microplastics into the ocean. For days, Sri Lankan forces worked to suppress the larger fire, but eventually two Indian Coast guard vessels were called to help manage the fire. Efforts ultimately failed, and the ship’s tail sank to the bottom of the ocean. Independent estimates report almost 75 billion plastic pellets, 348 tons of oil, and 25 tons of nitric acid were spilled from the distressed vessel. In its irreparable devastation of fishing and marine communities, the X-Press Pearl fire is sighted as the worst environmental disaster in the country’s history.
The X-Press Pearl disaster, however, is not an isolated incident within Sri Lanka’s environmental history but represents a convergence of the environmental state perspectives as they relate to world systems positionality. The connectedness between worlds systems positioning and environmental governance gives context to the disaster and ultimately provides insight into the embedded ways countries develop environmental policy and deal with environmental disasters.
To highlight the world systems embeddedness of the environmental state, I will start by explaining the environmental state. Then, I will integrate the Sri Lankan environmental state. Next, I will discuss how the environmental state, specifically peripheral states, are embedded by world systems positioning. Finally, I will broadly trace world systems processes onto Sri Lanka’s modern history to show how peripheral states become quantified environmental states that substantiate environmental disasters.
The Environmental State and Sri Lanka
The terms of the environmental state provide the policy frame that facilitated the governmental negligence within this event. The environmental state describes the culminating regulatory and legislative patterns that protect or devalue the environment. A country’s environmental state and its position on the continuum from weak to strong also describes the many ways countries contend with social, political, and economic bodies for the advocacy of the environment. The environmental state perspective finally discusses the practical enforcement of such policies within embedded relationships between stake holding groups. Ultimately, it is through the lens of the environmental state that disasters occur, from the creation of preemptive policy measures to the closing litigations after a disaster.
In the same way, Sri Lanka’s environmental state frames the X-Press Pearl disaster. Environmental policies are cited in the country’s 1978 constitution as duties of the state and further outline that those national policies should be based on “technical aspects”. This hallmark policy effort, however, contrast significantly with actualized policies as they arise in the X-Press Pearl case.
The first disconnect within the Sri Lankan case was the nitric acid leaking ship itself as it was allowed to leave the Colombo port without redress. Even though the officers were initially unaware of the ship’s leak upon its entrance into Sri Lankan waters, local officials at the port of Colombo were aware and should have worked to fill carbon dioxide stocks that were used at sea to neutralize the effects of the leak.
The second failure of the state occurred amid fire management. Historically, barricades are created around ships, and items are offloaded to prevent spills. However, these traditional procedures were not followed resulting in the spill of 1,680 tons of spherical microplastics that continue to litter the Sri Lankan coastline.
The final main negligence found in the case reveals the overall tone in the management of the fire. In an oil tanker fire only months earlier, Indian teams were called in to help with fire management. However, when the final settlement came in, compensation was split with the Indian government. In the X-Press Pearl case, Sri Lanka delayed calls to surrounding governments until after the second explosion worsening the effects of the fire and causing the further spilling of microplastics. Writers from the Colombo telegraphy suspect that the delayed calls were the governments’ attempt at obtaining full compensation. Though speculative, this example reveals not only patterned shipping fires, but also patterned negligence endorsed by non-environmentally focused aims.
Amid the faults of Sri Lanka’s government within the X-Press Pearl and oil tanker incidents, defining Sri Lanka’s environmental state would seem relatively straightforward. However, the context of Sri Lanka’s environmental state is not that simple and works interconnected with world systems positioning.
World Systems and the Environmental State
As we now know, the environmental state describes the culminating policies with environmental focus. But within the case, we also see that policy backing alone does not make a strong environmental state. In “Power and Politics in World-System: A Cross-National Analysis of Environmental Governance”, Sommer and Hargrove similarly take the concept of the environmental state beyond policy measures by emphasizing the importance of government spending. They argue that countries with more environmental spending have stronger environmental states. In this lens, the environmental state is not just about policies and their enforcement, but the economic backing of those policies through expenditure. The rationale behind how an environmental state is developed becoming increasingly complex because it’s not just about a government’s policy, but also a country’s fiscal position.
Sommer and Hargrove contend that because of the connections between the environmental state and fiscal positioning, governing bodies are increasingly restructured by the most overarching stakeholder, world system positioning. Because of the impact world systems position has on social, political, and economic stakeholders as well as its ability to manipulate a country’s fiscal position, world-systems theory becomes an integral part of how a government develops their environmental state. Ultimately, the authors argue that world-systems positioning impacts the strength of a country’s environmental state. But what is the world-systems theory?
In “The World System and Hollowing Out of State Capacity”, world-systems theory is described as a system where, “countries interact in a hierarchical global economic architecture”. Within this economical construction, the authors note how the countries connect, “economic penetration of developing countries by advanced countries — in the form of exploitative trade and investments in natural resources”. Further in “Routledge’s Handbook of World-Systems Analysis”, he explains,” the structural foundation of the world-economy was deemed to be the division of labor between its three constituent zones crisscrossed by systemic commodity chains along which ‘surplus’ was transferred from periphery to center, transitioning through the semi-periphery.” As the authors highlight, global divisions of labor through cyclical economic roles connect and position countries into the three groups that establish cross-border inequalities. Countries in world systems are given peripheral, semi-peripheral, or core status where core countries control international economic relations and set the structural economies of peripheral countries. Peripheral countries are thus trapped in exploitative economic roles that have punishing environmental effects.
World Systems Environmental Impact
The exploitative relationships perpetuated by core countries onto peripheral countries have detrimental environmental effects. Traditionally, peripheral countries like Sri Lanka, relinquish their ecological wealth to the core or semi-peripheral countries for financial gain in one of the beginning economic and environmental relations of world systems. In this relationship of dominance and subservience, peripheral countries, already at a low level of industry development, attempt to jumpstart their economies by selling accessible natural resources to core countries. This leads to financial dependence where peripheral countries’ revenue streams are centered on extraction that is often undervalued. This is the first-way world systems works to encourage ecological degradation in peripheral states.
World-systems positioning impacts environmental degradation secondly as countries work to escape from financial dependence on core countries. Ecological degradation is often the basis for capital development and such patterns of initial environmental degradation to jumpstart capital wealth are often origin stories for today’s core countries. However, peripheral countries begin domestic ecological degradation from a lower level of ecological wealth. Because of the forementioned extractive core and semi-peripheral relationships where again ecological wealth is transferred, countries are in less of a position to leverage their natural resources. Without the resources to revive economies beyond world-systems exploitative relationships of ecological trade, countries find themselves stuck in environmentally destructive, exploitative revenue streams for financial support.
The story of destruction continues as a country’s effort toward financial independence and efforts usually focus on attracting foreign investment. Attraction efforts, especially in global capital, prompt austerity measures that include deregulation of environmental protection measures. This financial effort, however, entrenches periphery countries further into their positioning and the resulting environmental realities. At every turn, periphery countries are demanded to relinquish their ecological wealth within global systems to core countries and core-based institutions.
One can expect devastation of the environmental state as countries fold under world-systems pressures. Sommer and Hargrove highlight the idea by noting, “These findings support the idea that the capacity for reducing environmental harms is unequally distributed across the global hierarchy and is therefore linked to the historical and current asymmetrical distribution of power.” Environmental states made within periphery countries are as a result stifled by world-systems positioning that promotes initial degradation and then the stripping of financial means and policy measures. Ultimately, a story is crafted about the ways peripheral countries and their environmental states are significantly and consistently quantified by world-systems disempowering.
Sri Lankan Conceptual Application
By understanding the ways peripheral environmental states are quantified, we can examine broadly the path Sri Lanka followed through its peripheral status to the ultimate degradation of its environmental state, the X-Press Pearl fire. Sri Lanka, like other peripheral countries, began its process of embeddedness surviving on its industries, here rice and tea, that exacerbate arable land. Even today, 30% of Sri Lanka’s people work in agricultural industries demonstrating the countries continued connectedness to peripheral, natural resources-based processes.
The country is also currently experiencing economic disaster under unsustainable International Monetary Fund debt and a ballooning trade deficit. The International Monetary fund is one of the many global financial organizations facilitating global economic processes and controlling international debt.
Continuing to follow the world system processes, countries begin to try alternative revenue generating efforts that come with environmental cost. In Sri Lanka, the development occurred through shipping where Sri Lanka aims to leverage its geographic maritime connectedness to world powers like China and India to create financial independence. Since the creation of its five-hub strategy in 2010, the country’s port at Colombo has become India’s second largest container port and opened what was then the regions only deep-water facility in 2013. In March 2021, the country approved the development of the West Container Terminal with investors nominated by Indian and Japanese governments. However, the maritime development did come with ecological consequences as we see with the X-Press Pearl fire that forever changed the Sri Lankan coastline, marine communities, and fishing industries.
Ultimately, it through the peripheral lens that these problems arise. Within Sri Lanka, the lack of regulatory supports and increases in shipping activities create the ecological cost. But ultimately, the negligence of these efforts is associated with the need for maritime development to address mounting IMF debt and create financial independence from extractive industries, the world systems processes. Shipping development was the governments answer and the X-Press Pearl is the exemplification of the cost.
My claim is not that the world-systems processes substantiate all the environmental disasters within all peripheral countries. I also recognize the potential application of other macro-structures like the treadmill of production as they may be applicable in examining the embeddedness of the environmental state. However, I do extend that the environmental state does not act independently and is quantified by the exploitative relationships between core and peripheral nations. In Sri Lanka, the tensions arise most presently in its with relationship the IMF, and the core-peripheral dynamics with the IMF facilitated the further examination of world-systems processes. However, the dynamics certainly actualize differently as countries contend with their resources and other geopolitical forces.
Marine and Fishing Communities
Ultimately, the quantified nature of Sri Lanka’s environmental state has the most effects on fishing and marine communities. Ultimately, the effects of Sri Lanka’s quantified environmental state are felt most by fishing and marine communities. 251 turtles, 33 marine mammals, 28 dolphins, and 5 whales were found washed ashore on July 17th. Initial carcasses were traced to annual monsoon and rough seas, but the drastic increase in carcasses leads many to believe that the deaths are related to the ship. Entire coastal communities centered in fishing and tourism have also been destroyed as many beaches stand littered with micro-plastics and long stretches of coral reef sit at continued risk. With the initial ban on fishing after the fire, regional fishermen’s traditionally stable income was completely disrupted. Suddath Fernando, a fisherman from the neighboring city Negombo, said, “a ship carrying chemicals from nowhere has destroyed our livelihoods…. the government should take responsibility for this”, highlighting the dire situation many regional fishermen persist in. Impacted families were awarded 5,000 Sir Lankan Rupees in a one-time payment, but fishermen are demanding a settlement of 3,000 to 4,000 rupees per day to compensate for continuing losses.
The two communities, fishing, and marine, continue to experience the effects of the ship where many assume that effects will linger for years to come. Unlike any other stakeholder in the May 20th fire and unlike the invisible workings of world-systems processes, marine and fishing communities directly contend with the long-lasting effects of the fire. How do these communities find space as their livelihoods are juggled on world stages? Where lives the environmental state? Even after examination, I remain unsure. However, recognizing the role world-systems has in quantifying ability of the environmental state is a strong place to start. As Sri Lanka continues to grapple with its role in shipping, we need to give name to illusive process like world systems to equally give name to faces lost in its manipulative efforts. In what other way can we even attempt to recognize the devastation, irreparable and experienced.
By: Amelia G
