The session will host a range of themes on environmental issues and changes in Africa explored and reviewed using political ecology as an approach and theoretical lens. The main thrust of presentations in this session is the nexus between power, discourse and political struggle in framing environmental changes and issues of environmental justices in the African context, while the focus spread from the local to the national and international levels.

FRAMING THE SEARCH FOR GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE IN POLITICAL ECOLOGY: NOTES FROM AFRICA AS THE GLOBAL MARGIN

This paper proposes the need to frame these multilateral processes within political ecology; thus, the need to problematize the contexts and dynamics of these initiatives geared towards establishing global environmental governance mechanism (GEGM). Thus, we appraise African states and organisations’ participation, positions, interests and ability to set agendas in these initiatives. This paper reviews to what extent African states and organisations as a collective and individually have sought to influence and shape global environmental governance mechanisms (GEGM). Though appear to be ostensibly innocuous global environmental concerns/projects, these represent sites of intense struggle in global power politics, competition and economic interests. Discourse on the global environment and its governance, or lack thereof, have essentially been framed by the global political economy, and often marked by major power competitions. Tussles among global giants play out in most, if not all, GEG summits seeking to find answers to a variety of present-day questions. In addition to this, almost all attempts at these were mobilized and organized by global North, with much of the concerns and agenda effectively set to reflect their interest. This paper explores possibilities of African states (individually or collectively) as well as African civil societies to negotiate and clearly formulate their positions in the discourses and platforms dominated by powerful global players. Finally, we propose the need to rethink African states, regional bodies and organization outlook of and roles in these initiatives.

Africa; Global Environmental Governance; Political Ecology

Individual Presentation Session

The gatekeeper state, through the human-environment dichotomization, has imposed specific discourse and practice of an environmental conservation (Garrick et al., 2006). Such impositions lend themselves not only to forms of state control of resources but also displacement of local practices and discourses. Khula Village conservation project located in Mtubatubal Local Municipality represents one such modernist state-controlled conservation project. The following questions are crucial to my earliest conception of this project: What are constitutive elements of traditional and modern conservation practices and discourses? What are the tensions between these two practices and discourses? What are the attempts made to incorporate IEK into modern conservation practices? Given its colonial and violent past, how accommodative have modern conservation practices and discourses been? In an attempt to closely engage with these questions, I picked the role of IEK in the evolving nature conservation systems as a topic of interest, more generally, and, specifically, its implication/application to the South African context. This paper begins with the impulse to problematize such dichotomization and critically appraise local practices, interests as well as what is often referred to as indigenous environmental knowledge (IEK). This paper explores existing indigenous ecological knowledge and their appropriation and use in guiding specific environmental practices and discourses in Khula Village. In this, I sought to pay attention to the basics of IEK, its dynamics, and the mechanism through which it is constituted. Here, oral history and oral tradition feature as crucial components of IEK and any other traditional knowledge systems. This paper also evaluates the role and relevance of indigenous knowledge in modern environmental conservation systems in Khula Village.

KEYWORDS

Indigenous Ecological Knowledge, Morden Conservation Practices, Gatekeeper State.

Political ecology holds that environmental challenges within any region can be extrapolated to its economic and political structures, which generate and exacerbate such problems. Third World political ecology is often linked to the impacts of colonial legacies, extreme poverty and lack of spatial transformation. The South Durban Basin (SDB) in South Africa is no exception to this, being home to one of the most toxic environments in the world. The SDB contains two of the country’s major petrochemical plants – Engen refinery and SAPREF, South Africa's largest crude oil refinery. Consequently, there have been numerous industrial accidents such as flaring, explosions and odours with over 180 refinery-related incidents recorded between 1998 - 2022. Such incidents remain on the increase despite the existing institutional frameworks of local government, including the Offsite Emergency Plan for the SDB and eThekwini Disaster Management Sector Plan, which have been ineffective. Given the spatial vulnerability of the South Durban residents, community-based organizations such as the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) and Merewest Community Forum (MCF) have resorted to developing their own community-based disaster management plans (CBDMPs) to mitigate, prepare, respond and recover from petrochemical accidents, after decades of fighting for environmental justice. This paper will assess the CBDMPs of SDCEA and MCF in response to the refinery accidents, and demonstrate the inefficiency of the eThekwini Municipality’s disaster management governance as an infringement on the community’s rights to live in a safe environment – enshrined in Section 24 of the South African Constitution.

Individual Presentation Submission.

Title: POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF A PETRO-METROPOLIS: COMMUNITY-BASED DISASTER MANAGEMENT PLANS IN THE SOUTH DURBAN BASIN.

Abstract: This presentation will analyse the Community-Based Disaster Management Plans of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance and Merewest Community Forum in response to the refinery accidents, and demonstrate the inefficiency of the eThekwini Municipality’s disaster management governance as an infringement on the community’s rights to live in a safe environment – enshrined in Section 24 of the South African Constitution.

Keywords: Political Ecology; Disaster Management; Environmental Justice; South Durban