Browsing by Subject "Environmental Humanities"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    An Inquiry Into the Diverse Modes of Caring in Khayelitsha Wetlands Parks World of Many Worlds
    (2023) Sibango, Asemahle; Solomon, Nikiwe; Abrams, Amber
    The management and governance of wetlands in Cape Town is largely informed by economic, techno-scientific, and engineering approaches which are deeply rooted in discourses of “Earth mastery”. Earth mastery aims to command, predict, and control the Earth's natural processes to access ecosystem services to benefit humans. When wetland management is solely informed by logics of domination and extraction for humans, then other ways of knowing, being, being with, and caring for spaces such as the Khayelitsha Wetlands Park (KWP) are often overlooked and overshadowed. Using Maria Puig de la Bellacasa's (2011:90) work on ‘Matters of Care in Technoscience' where the notion of care is viewed as “an affective state, a material vital doing, and an ethico-political obligation”, this thesis draws attention to meanings, practices, and enactment of care through thinking with people and the more-than-human worlds in the KWP. Based on eight months of research in the KWP which involved looking at this space's associated landscapes and multispecies communities, this thesis explores ways of living with and relating to the KWP in Cape Town, South Africa, which do not subscribe to logics of domination. This is done by highlighting the often overshadowed and taken for granted forms of care and reciprocity that do not fall into the realm of the “advanced”, “technical”, and “objective” approaches in techno-scientific and engineering practices. In this thesis, I argue that people who live with urban wetlands practise their more-than-techno-scientific approaches and versions of care in these spaces. The evidence basis for these more-than-techno-scientific and more-than-engineering approaches of care are drawn from firstly, people's stories and experiences of relating to and living with the KWP and secondly, an analysis of care, coexistence, and co-becoming among more-than-human species in KWP. This thesis then suggests the importance of deconstructing and queering the understandings of care practices in wetland spaces by arguing that the government and institutions responsible for wetlands could draw on decolonial approaches in managing and practising care in these spaces, shifting from logics of control and domination to relational and historicised interactions with wetlands to address environmental injustices of the past and of the present. Queer theory is often associated with gender and sexuality where it means diverging from what is normalised, for instance, understanding that there are other ways of being outside heteronormative binaries. For this thesis I conceive queering beyond the context of gender and sexuality, for instance, I suggest the importance of being aware that KWP and wetlands in general host multiple worlds. Thus, governmental approaches of managing and caring for these waterbodies should not only conform to the techno-scientific and engineering notions of care. I suggest that these governmental approaches should be democratized and open a space to be informed by citizen science as well. They should understand that their approaches should not be a “one size fits all” as modes of being and of living differ from space to space. This thesis therefore uses the concept of queering as a way to suggest that techno-scientific governmental approaches of caring for wetlands must recognize the efforts of care that are practised by people and multispecies who live with these waterbodies and to start co-existing with them instead of overlooking and overshadowing them. This thesis, drew from the environmental humanities, environmental anthropology, and queer conceptual and theoretical schools of thought to achieve its purpose. 
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    Assisting Africa: a critical analysis of technical assistance in low carbon development practice
    (2019) du Toit, Michelle; Chitonge, Horman; Winkler, Harald
    Climate change mitigation efforts are increasingly forming part of the agendas of African nations, particularly since the inclusion of voluntary targets for these countries within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Paris Agreement of 2015. This focus towards the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, together with the need to achieve development objectives, has become combined in the practice of ‘low carbon development’ within developing countries. Technical assistance programmes have been set up to support the achievement of low carbon development, and these activities typically flow from the global North to Africa. However the power structures and flows of benefit that underlie these practices have not been the subject of much enquiry and are largely occluded within the climate change mitigation community of practice. With the inclusion of climate change mitigation targets for developing countries together with a direct call for increased capacity building within the Paris Agreement, the volume of technical assistance support focused towards Africa is likely to increase. As such the need to consider what effective technical assistance, that is both equitable and appropriate to the African context, might look like becomes a priority. This study engages with these issues. By considering the literature arising from decolonial studies and development theory together with bringing to the fore the perceptions of African climate change mitigation professionals, it provides a critical analysis of the tacit assumptions that are legitimated within the technical assistance practice in climate change mitigation. The study finds that current modes of technical assistance practice within low carbon development continues to entrench the hegemonic nature of knowledge of the global North, and perpetuates the placement of Africa in a position of extraversion towards the North, assuming African government and climate change practitioners as lacking in knowledge and expertise. The study advocates for a more equal and bilateral flow of knowledge between the two regions in order for African nations to faster and more effectively reach the twin goals of development and mitigation within Africa. It considers the lack of the critical theories of decolonial studies and development theory in climate change scholarship (particularly the absence of African voices in the debate) and brings these alternative voices and theories into low carbon development technical assistance practice.
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    Community-based natural resource management: The case of Community Forest Management Areas in Pete, Zanzibar
    (2017) Dabo, Dina; Matose, Frank
    The shift from centralised conservation to Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) was the highlight of the conservation discourse across the world during the late 1980s and early 1990s. CBNRM efforts were believed to have the potential of successfully merging biodiversity conservation simultaneously with local development efforts. However, the increasing critiques against the applicability of CBNRM interventions in different contexts is threatening the viability of the approach. Extant literature on CBNRM interventions focuses on the theoretical aspects of such efforts at the expense of the practical and context specific elements. This thesis intends to fill such a gap in literature by focusing on the practical and contextual elements of an example of this approach in Zanzibar. In an attempt to conserve the isles' natural forests, Zanzibar has adopted Community-Forest Management Areas (CoFMAs) bordering its natural forests. In this study, focus is placed on Pete's CoFMA, a village bordering the isles' last remaining natural forests- Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park (JCBNP). Pete provides an ideal site due to the conflict that exists between residents and the CoFMA intervention. By using the political ecological framework, this study is able to examine the political, social, historical and economic elements that play a significant role in the practice of CBNRM efforts. Narratives from residents are relied on to elucidate on such elements in relation to the existence of the CoFMA in Pete Village. Narratives gathered through interviews and participant observation concluded that while CoFMAs have been set up with the optimistic goal of conserving the forest and providing development to community members; in practice, the conservation intervention has proved otherwise. In spite of the achievement of some developmental goals, the overall findings indicate that the CoFMA has failed to protect the forests and its natural resources from degradation. At the same time, community members are facing difficulties to live a sustainable life.
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    Hippopotami in a liminal space: a multi-species ethnography of Lake Tanganyika in Bujumbura
    (2022) Maksudi, Bakenga; Solomon, Nikiwe; Matose, Frank
    This thesis explores how human encroachment has significantly altered Lake Tanganyika's freshwater ecosystem and riparian zone in Bujumbura, the capital city of Burundi, which affects the daily life and interactions between humans and hippopotami (hippo). Societal development agendas have favoured economic growth and infrastructural development with little regard for the well-being of multi-species communities. The study contrasts the ideas that drive economy-based approaches to development and environmental management with the many engagements with the lake, and how this in turn affects human-hippo relations on Lake Tanganyika's riparian zone. Environmental protection and management discourses are frequently portrayed as a unified, single, objectivist practice, however, their contextual enactment differs from discipline to discipline and across municipal interventions and service delivery. The study investigates how the current settlement developments affect human-hippo relations. Specific research questions include, what are the intersecting human-hippo interactions that exist in Bujumbura's lakeshore neighbourhoods? What impacts do these interactions have on people and hippos? What interventions can help restore the degraded environment and foster kinship? I respond to these questions by engaging with current debates in environmental humanities, cultural, and environmental anthropology on human-multi-species entanglements. Both grounded theory and multi-species ethnography approaches were used as data collection and analytic tools in this study. I trace nutrient and energy flows to foreground the interdependencies between the “human world” and “natural world”, a separation that is no longer viable in the time of the Anthropocene. Triangulated data sets are used to narrate stories and critically discuss the current environmental challenges using ecocentric, and actor-network theory as the conceptual frameworks. Although population growth is considered a key factor in environmental degradation, I argue that the deterioration of the environment, particularly the coastal landscape, may be attributed to improper and unclear land-water management. The findings of this study indicate that land acquisition on the riparian zone for settlement development in the Gisyo and Kibenga is associated with power and affluence by some members of society. Potential land-water insights and spatial planning approaches for a human-and-hippo-friendly riparian zone are proposed.
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    Living with water: An Ethnographic Study Relating to Water and Infrastructure Entanglements, in the Hout Bay Suburb of Cape Town, for a Water Sensitive Designed "Liveable" Neighbourhood
    (2021) Gara, Faith; Solomon, Nikiwe
    Inclusive water management implies considering the diverse relationships different people have with water, other values that people assign to water, and the ecological impacts of employed strategies. Faced with increasing water scarcity and environmental degradation, it has become critical that we look for alternative ways of managing essential natural resources, including using different approaches to resource management. Water management is mainly dominated by technical and natural scientists, with designs motivated by water supply costs and benefits. This neglects to consider other dimensions associated with water use and access, such as social, cultural and histories that inform how people are situated at different resource allocation intervals. Moreover, how we relate to water affects our environment, from soils, plants and other non-human species, and this, in turn, affects our wellbeing as all the processes that are entangled with life making. For these reasons, social scientists must take part in all water management processes to bring forth other neglected aspects of people's relationship with water and ecologies that are usually overlooked by hard sciences. My research forms part of the Liveable Neighbourhood project, which seeks to redesign the existing neighbourhood of Hangberg in Hout Bay using a Water Sensitive Design. Thus, my study's role is to provide ethnographic data to a field dominated by bureaucratic structures, engineers; urban planners; urban designers and architects; to add the ways of knowing and understand better the diverse relations various communities in Hout Bay have with water. This is essential to enable the formulation of Water Sensitive Designs (WSDs) that include residents' inputs in what they consider 'liveable'. Most interventions that do not consider context-specific needs and dynamics often fail to have relevance and end up unsustainable.
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    Sonic Apartheid: ecoracism, apartheid geographics and noise pollution in Cape Town's Blikkiesdorp
    (University of Cape Town, 2020) Watkins, Alexandra; Selmeczi Anna; Green, Lesley
    In Sonic Apartheid: Ecoracism, Apartheid Geographies, and Noise Pollution in Cape Town's Blikkiesdorp, Alexandra Downing Watkins begins a project of mapping geographies of dispossession and abandonment in Blikkiesdorp (Afrikaans for "Tin Can Town"), a Temporary Relocation Area on the margins of Cape Town created in 2007 following a wake of mass evictions for the 2010 World Cup. After being created as a "temporary" solution, Blikkiesdorp remained a site of abandonment where evicted peoples, refugees, and other "undesirables" were sent to live. Seven years later, the City of Cape Town and the Airports Company of South Africa signed a Memorandum of Understanding agreeing to realign one of the airport's runways, which would serve to relocate the community. Following the story of strategic organising by the Blikkiesdorp community to be included in the Environmental Impact Assessment that was being instrumentalized to further displace them, this work examines the community's struggle against conditions of abandonment through complicating the division of humans and the environment. This project engages with the mechanics of bio-, necro-, and geontopower, in contemporary South African environmental governance as an afterlife of apartheid spatial planning. The project features environmental research that was completed in cooperation with community members who shared their experiential environmental knowledge through interviews and diary entries as well as compiling decibel readings of excessive noise pollution. This data along with noise pollution diaries, photographs, and interviews has been compiled and placed in a digital archive in the form of an open-source ArchGIS Story Map. Combining theory and research contributed by the Blikkiesdorp community with the contemporary theoretical language of new materialism and critical race theory, this work engages with the porosity of bodies, the co-imbrication of bodies and landscape, how the creation of an "alternative social project" can serve to disturb and resist evidence-based technoscience and processes of ecoracist governance.