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Paper short abstract

The paper argues that Cultural Heritage Impact Assessments (CHIAs), offer a critical space for exposing and contextualising polarised knowledge systems in ocean development. the study advocates for an ocean and energy governance that moves towards recognition, dialogue, and co-existence.

Paper long abstract

Africa’s proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) developments exemplify deepening polarisation between economic growth imperatives, climate commitments, and the constitutional rights of coastal communities to culture, environment, and heritage. This paper situates ethnographic research within the framework of Cultural Heritage Impact Assessments (CHIAs), examining their role in making visible, legible, and contestable diverse forms of ocean-related knowledge within energy decision-making processes.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2020 and 2022 along the Northern, Western, and Eastern Cape coastlines, the study documents varied human–ocean relations, including fishing, foraging, ritual practice, and leisure. These engagements reveal the ocean as a living cultural landscape central to identity, social cohesion, and intergenerational ecological knowledge. When assessed through CHIAs, such practices expose epistemic dissonance between LNG development logics that are rooted in technocratic, extractive, and economic rationalities; and Indigenous and local knowledge systems grounded in relational, ethical, and place-based understandings of the sea.

The paper argues that CHIAs offer a critical space for exposing and contextualising these polarised knowledge systems, while also holding potential to bridge them by reframing energy transitions as socio-cultural, not merely technical, transformations. By foregrounding cultural relations to the ocean within governance processes, the study advocates for decolonised, inclusive approaches to ocean and energy governance that move beyond mitigation towards recognition, dialogue, and co-existence. In a polarised world of competing interests, anthropology (working through CHIAs) can play a vital role in resolving epistemic conflict and imagining socially and ecologically just futures for contested ocean spaces.