This panel explores Africa's ecological futures by unpacking contestations on the "resource curse" discourse and its competing alternative of the “Africa rising” mantra in reflexive ways that call for a nuanced understanding of Africa’s conflicts and how its resources can be sustainably utilised.
Long Abstract:
Africa has seen a new wave of land grabbing prompted by an increased demand for land investment post world financial crisis of 2008. These land grabs have created a lot of tensions and re-ignited the “resource curse” debates where Africa’s resources are linked to its conflicts. Alongside the resource curse discourse is its competing “Africa rising” mantra which has sought to place Africa as a continent with vast potential encompassed in its young population and natural resources. Tensions arise from these ideals over who and under what circumstances can Africa's resource be optimised. Violent conflicts linked to capital exploitation over agrarian and extractive sectors. These conflicts offer lenses to discourses about the economic and political power which challenge unequal access to resources and exclusive economic enclaves. Resource conflicts equally propel thinking about Africa’s ecological futures in reflexive ways that call for a nuanced understanding of how Africa’s resources can be best utilised for the benefit of its habitants. This panel seeks to explore future visions for Africa, to navigate both conflict lines and opportunities for transformation. The panel invites papers that speak to politics of violent resource conflicts, livelihood vulnerabilities, agrarian politics, rural development, and climate induced migrations. Discussions articulating sustainability discourses as part of climate change debate and wider future ecologies are encouraged. Papers that are grounded in empirical evidence from the lived realities of struggles and localised agency of those impacted by current ecological crises will be prioritised.
Key words ecological crisis, climate change, resource conflict, sustainability,
Oil and gas development has promoted the lives of the elite in Uganda, at the extent of poor. These extractive industries have affected both host communities and the environment. Community resilience gives communities the capacity to cope with social and environmental injustice.
Paper long abstract:
Oil and gas development has promoted the lives of the elite in Uganda. Most of them seized land in the Albertine Graben to share in the economic gains of shale oil and gas at the extent of the people at the grassroot. Those at the grassroot are the primary stakeholders in the oil and gas resource whose voices have been silenced by the unjust situations they are experiencing. They are the silent voices who have not been involved in the whole process of oil and gas development, yet the resources have existed in their ethnic region for ages. In addition to land grabbing, which has left most host community members homeless, the few scattered patches of land are infertile and not suitable for farming activities due to the decommissioning activities which were haphazardly done. The future of the host communities looks bleak because the exploration activities downstream have perturbed the ecosystem services. Despite being primary stakeholders, they are never involved in the decision-making of their ethnically natural resources (Gwayaka, 2014). Since the 2008 Petroleum Policy well stipulated how the primary stakeholders and the environment will be protected, the implementation and enforcement are poor. Consequently, using the grounded theory (Creswell, 2002) the paper sought to find ways in which host communities can build resilience using the perspective of environmental justice by claiming their autonomy as primary stakeholders and making the government accountable for its actions within the region.
This proposal aims to study Cameroonian rice farmer's resistance to various crises they are facing throughout conflicts and the question of the sustainability of the first so-called "modernization" project of rice cultivation in the country.
Paper long abstract:
More than five decades after the creation of the SEMRY (Société d'Expansion et de Modernization de la Riziculture de Yagoua) its objective of food self-sufficiency in Cameroon and the Lake Chad Basin has remained an utopia. Despite the creation of infrastructures, the local assets and the active participation of population, the locality has become a field of confrontations. The national market is dominated by imported rice and the vulnerability of some rice farmers who are struggling to meet their basic needs is increasing. Moreover, the degradation of local agro-ecosystems and the natural disasters of the last two decades raise questions in terms of the impact of the hydro-rice project on social actors. Analyze the sustainability of the SEMRY program in this context of confrontations which generates resistance but also a reflection on the criteria for evaluating such sustainability is the main objective of this paper. We use a sustainability analysis grid inspired by the work of Adamczewski & al. (2011, 2012) and Garambois & al. (2018), distinguishing the three usual dimensions of the sustainability on the economic, environmental and social levels. The production of data involves a systemic approach, linking observations, individual and collective interviews, and consultations of archives and institutional documents in order to emphasize the trajectories of vulnerabilities, the various conflicts linked to the project and the sustainability of the livelihoods of the SEMRY rice farmers.
This paper discusses the intricacies of resource development for all through capitalist reorganisation of salt mining in Ghana’s eastern coast as women artisanal salt miners confront the state, traditional authorities and private companies in defence of mining salt as a commons.
Paper long abstract:
Salt mining is an economic mainstay of communities along Ghana’s eastern coast where traditionally, salt is mined as a common resource and women dominate as artisanal salt miners. In the last two decades, state policies and endorsement of large-scale industrial salt mining has culminated into private companies taking over such commons as concessions. This has displaced women artisanal salt miners and resulted in women’s struggles to reclaim “the commons”. In this paper, we triangulate data from content analysis of policy documents and media reports, observations, focus group discussions and interviews, to understand the current struggles, their linkages to past processes, and their changing forms in relation to changing social provisioning in this rural landscape and climate variability. We present the intricacies of women’s encounters with displacement, dispossession and unemployment and highlight how they use both confrontational and compromising stands to tackle different threats from private companies, the state and traditional authorities. We highlight how women’s defence of the commons is anchored in the protection of a shared identity through which different categories of women secured their livelihoods, while the state’s defence of large-scale industrial salt mining is anchored in the logic of improving livelihoods for these women through “development” of salt resources. By defying the state, traditional authorities and companies amidst violence, the women demonstrate their demand for economic inclusion and hold the state to uphold the constitutional rights of socio-economic freedom. This paper speaks to the peculiarities of the rhetoric of resource development for the benefit of all.
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