Short Abstract

This panel approaches environmental policies as a prism, both to examine how they are shaped by the multiple actors, levels, interests and negotiations constituting African states “in action” and to analyse how these policies, in turn, reshape states.

Long Abstract

With intensifying deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution, environmental policy is an increasingly prominent domain of state action across Africa. This panel approaches environmental policy as a prism through which to examine the actors, levels, interests, and negotiations that constitute African states. First, it asks how different configurations of political power, past and present, shape environmental policy. Under what conditions does the environment become a priority for African elites? In what ways do transnational actors and institutions influence national-level environmental politics? To what extent do domestic or sub-national pressures "from below" encourage African elites to implement, or indeed resist, environmental policy? And in all of this, what role do ideas and ideology play? Second, it asks how environmental policies reshape dynamics of power within and around African states. How do they create or transform coalitions between elites, their followers, and transnational actors? When do environmental policies strengthen or undermine particular state institutions? And under what conditions might these changes have durable consequences for how African states operate? By bringing these dynamics into discussion, the panel contributes to debates about the co-evolution of state power, the environment, and its management in Africa.

This Panel has 1 pending paper proposal.
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