Climate change is a ‘hot topic’ in more ways than one. I was able to contribute to the debate recently, in two different ways.
On 20 October 2018, I gave a talk at the study day of the Dutch Society for African Studies, giving a short presentation on the work that Friends of the Earth groups in Africa are doing on climate justice and climate change. On 21 December, a blog post based on that talk was published on ‘Africa is a Country‘. The blog post foregrounds the work that African intellectuals and activists are playing, both in combating dirty energy schemes in their countries and in helping local people to prepare for the effects of climate change. It shows that African NGOs are playing an active part in this and are more than only passive victims of climate change.
On 8 January 2019, Harry Wels of the African Studies Centre in Leiden published a blog post stating that climate change supports the appeal that he and others in his Research Group on ‘Trans-species perspectives on African Studies‘ make for what they call ‘a radical decentring of the human in African studies’. I argue that their reasoning is flawed and that if they want to study animal-human relationships, then the role of the Netherlands would be the most appropriate way to start. The full comment is here.
africanations 