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- Convenors:
-
Cyrus Samimi
(University of Bayreuth)
Heila Lotz-Sisitka (Rhodes University)
Nelson Odume (Rhodes University)
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- Discussant:
-
Asaf Augusto
(Bayreuth University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Ecology and planetary consciousness
- Location:
- H21 (RW II)
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 2 October, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
Humanity is at many planetary boundaries resulting in ecological crisis. The panels asks what it means to centred Ecologies in Africa studies, debating emerging and novel perspectives that contribute to responding to ecological challenges and advancing the theoretical underpinning of Africa studies.
Long Abstract:
Environmental extractivism and over-exploitation have been causing destructions of ecosystems in many parts of Africa. The global climate crisis may exaggerate the processes and will affect the wellbeing of current and future generations. Already today Africa’s people are faced with challenges such as climate change, land and water degradation, and biodiversity loss. These issues contribute to forced migration, intra- and inter-communal conflicts, ecological regime shifts, insecurity, and the transformation of the food, energy, and water systems. Institutions with inadequate capacity to respond to contemporary challenges and inequalities (historical and contemporary) at all scales exacerbate these challenges.
On the other hand, many African societies have traditional but also novel adaptation strategies for living with uncertainty, variability, and change. These are often marginalized or even neglected in scientific discourses as well as mitigation and adaptation projects. Therefore, traditional, and locally embedded knowledge systems are underutilized, leading to knowledge gaps, misunderstanding of environmental change impacts and failures of projects.
Hence, recovering, regenerating and learning from the many examples of traditional and novel strategies is urgently needed as well as the re-imagining and reconstituting nature-culture relations to be less damaging and exploitative, leading to alternative options for more sustainable livelihoods and futures in Africa for both current and future generations.
The panels asks what it means to centred Ecologies in re-configuring Africa studies, debating emerging and novel perspectives and insights that contribute to responding to emerging ecological challenges and advancing the theoretical underpinning of Africa studies.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 2 October, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
We show that high temperature is a threat to individuals' wellbeing. The negative effect of temperature on wellbeing is more pronounced in SSA where there is evidence of geographic exposure with temperature almost twice the global rate and weak capacity to adapt to the temperature variability.
Paper long abstract:
There has been a notable increase in interest in temperature and deprivation in SSA. High temperature is seen to weaken living conditions through several pathways such as agriculture productivity; health; and labour productivity among others. Given the agrarian nature of most African economies, more the 60 percent of the labour force relies heavily on nature for their subsistence, and unfavourable temperature conditions make them vulnerable to fluctuations and this in turn adversely affects their livelihood. Although conceptual links can be drawn to explain the effect of temperature on deprivation given the diverse components of literature, limited evidence exists on the magnitude of the effect of high temperature on deprivation in SSA. We assess wellbeing by employing different subjective measures and we constructed a deprivation index which measures the frequency with which an individual or household suffers insufficiency in basic domains such as food, water, medical care, or cash income. Further, we measure individual deprivation within a non-income context considering the propensity of policymakers to use subjective welfare indicators to assess policy progress and impact. Using the Afrobarometer survey data, our findings show that temperature is positively correlated with deprivation and that high temperature increases the risk of deprivation. Our results also highlight the role of urbanization, institutions and infrastructural attributes in explaining within-country variations in individual deprivation.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores sacred forests conservation in Northern Tanzania, highlighting the significance of local beliefs and worldviews in redefining nature-culture relationships for sustainable biodiversity and forest conservation.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focus on sacred forests in the North Pare Mountains of Tanzania, which are recognised as biodiversity hotspots and play a vital, yet often underestimated role in biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. While the impact of Western-oriented mechanistic worldviews is evident worldwide, this paper emphasises the need to explore specific African worldviews promoting ecologically sustainable outcomes to comprehend and shape future Anthropocene dynamics. There is indeed a general consensus in the literature that sacred forests’ conservation is the result of people pursuing traditions and are not primarily conserved for their ecological services. This paper originates from my Master thesis and fieldwork in North Pare and argues that, although younger generations are disinterested in the non-material benefits of sacred forests conservation, other ways of knowing, which acknowledge the interconnectedness between the physical environment and the (invisible) spirit world, persist and continue to inform (positive environmental) behaviour and practices. Highlighting that the illusionary divide between humans and the environment contributes to the Anthropocene and current ecological crisis, the article questions if integrating non-human-centred perspectives into climate action efforts can help transcend short-term, market-driven and externally imposed rational approaches to conservation which have no legitimacy to instigate behavioural change among residents living in proximity to sacred forests.
Paper short abstract:
The earth environment is threatened by all kinds of environmental pollution. Yet, indigenous ecological measures are fast diminishing. Using Gaard’s integral ecofeminist theory, this paper demonstrates the efficacy of traditional festivals and women participation in environmental sustainability.
Paper long abstract:
Globally, the earth environment is threatened by all kinds of environmental pollution and degradation. This however, increasing the demand for environmental safety and sustainability. In contemporary Nigerian literature, ecological writings are dominated by postcolonial eco-critique of socio-economic and political marginalization of the oil rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. While flooding and erosion are ignored as they wipe farms, bring down houses and split roads in very many African communities including Nigeria. From studies, indigenous environmental measures are largely abandoned for unattainable ecological policies. This paper argues that Egba-ala festival of the earth goddess in various communities of Nsukka Igbo is a celebration of the centrality of life which includes soil and waters and the women who share with the environment in life giving and sustenance. In Nsukka Igbo, women environmental relationship is institutionalized in the title of traditional council of women (umuada-oha, umuada-ideke and ndiomu-oha). These titled women were the eye of the earth. Culturally, they are the gods and the earth is their domain. Thus, the keepers of the environment. Using Greta Gaard’s integral ecofeminist theory and life interconnectedness, this paper applies participant observation and narrative technique to demonstrate the efficacy of traditional festivals and women participation in environmental sustainability. It further interrogates the role of Western religion and patriarchy to argue that the fast diminishing tradition of the annual festival of the earth Goddess opens the area to environmental disaster such as erosion, flooding and soil depletion.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses what Ubuntu has offer to questions of sustainable development – or rather the survival of our shared planet – in Southern Africa and beyond and argues for an approach of dialogue and two-eyed seeing.
Paper long abstract:
Ubuntu, here understood as a lived philosophy of "humble togetherness" (Swanson, 2009) among Africa's Bantu people, recognises the interconnectedness of all parts of creation. It refers to humble togetherness of humans but extends beyond the anthropocentric in that humans as one part of nature are interconnected with all other parts of the universe. Thus, Ubuntu embraces caring relationships among humans (including the ancestral world) as well as among humans and other species, the surrounding environment and the universe. In short, Ubuntu's humble togetherness includes ecological togetherness (Murove, 2009). In this paper, we, four African and European academics and practitioners from the field of international politics and development, discuss Ubuntu and ecological togetherness. We focus on what Ubuntu has offer to questions of sustainable development – or rather the survival of our shared planet – in Southern Africa and beyond. After laying a philosophical foundation by accounting for Ubuntu’s vital force which is inherent in Ubuntu through the suffix -ntu, we focus on the role which Ubuntu (could have) played for the current sustainable development goals (SDGs). Moving to an even more practical level, we offer experience of opportunities and challenges of Ubuntu in the field of "sustainable development". Bringing these strands together, we argue for Ubuntu as a suitable paradigm to consider “sustainability”. We further argue for a two-eyed seeing approach in which indigenous knowledge systems as well as so-called Western knowledge enter into dialogue to develop strategies for more sustainable livelihoods.
Paper short abstract:
Focusing on contemporary art projects from Angola, the DRC and Puerto Rico, this paper investigates the ways how plants have been used by artists to investigate the stratigraphies of the everyday, revealing the toxicity of colonial regimes and coloniality, while pointing at possible futures.
Paper long abstract:
Art history has been increasingly dealing with issues related to the environment and the Anthropocene in recent years, forming part of the environmental humanities, and plants have found much renewed scholarly attention in art historical scholarship. Even more, however, plants have come to play key roles in the art world. This paper focuses on case studies and contemporary art projects from Africa and the Caribbean, particularly Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Puerto Rico in which plants take center stage. It interrogates how contemporary artists draw on plants to discuss colonial layers, and complex intersections between the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial. It investigates the ways how plants have been used by artists to investigate the stratigraphies of the everyday cultures of modernity in Africa and the Caribbean, but also how their deceitful display by colonial powers has been negotiated in these works, revealing the toxicity and tropical falsehoods of colonial regimes and coloniality that is on-going, while also pointing at possible futures.
Paper short abstract:
This study focuses on a documentary premiered by Bus Stop TV in 2020, and a collaborative exhibition by Kiluanji Kia Henda from Angola and Felix Shumba from Zimbabwe from 2023, to explore the role art and artists play in engaging and addressing the exploitation of communities for resources.
Paper long abstract:
Section 13 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe clearly states that communities should and must benefit from the extraction of natural resources within their area. Section 332 of the said constitution is clear on what communal land is, and on the rights the community and the individual have over the land. The same section clearly spells out the role of the traditional chiefs on the governance and distribution of the land. Yet with the surge in the number of European and Chinese companies extracting mineral resources in Zimbabwe, the communities find themselves losing everything to the foreign mining entities. They are being displaced from their ancestral lands and they are losing their farmlands. Livelihoods are being destroyed. Worst of all, they are witnessing the exhumation of the buried relatives, which is more of a taboo to them. Operating between these transnational mining entities and the communities are corrupt local chiefs and government officials whose hands are greased by the extractors. This study focuses on 'Black granite quarrying take toll on Mutoko communities', a documentary premiered by Bus Stop TV (via YouTube in 2020), and 'Memories of the Poisoned River', a collaborative exhibition by Kiluanji Kia Henda from Angola and Felix Shumba from Zimbabwe (at the National History Museum in Luanda in 2023) to explore the role art and artists can play in engaging and addressing the exploitation of communities for resources.