Environmental thought in Africa cannot be separated from power and lived realities, Future Africa webinar hears

Environmental challenges in Africa cannot be understood through science alone. They are shaped by power, history and lived realities, requiring a broader way of thinking about sustainability.

This is one of the key messages from a recent webinar hosted by Future Africa at the University of Pretoria (UP). The discussion formed part of the African Political Ecology learning lab, an initiative led by Professor Maano Ramutsindela, UP-UCT Future Africa Research Chair in Sustainability Transformations (a joint initiative of UP and the University of Cape Town (UCT).

Opening the session, Prof Ramutsindela reflected on how dominant histories of environmental thought often trace their origins to Western scholarship from the 1960s onwards. He argued that such framings overlook long-standing African ways of understanding and responding to environmental challenges. He positioned the discussion as an effort to recover and foreground African perspectives and to situate them within broader environmental knowledge

The session, chaired by Dr Tafadzwa Mushonga, Research Fellow at UP’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, featured anthropology scholar Dr Anselmo Matusse from UCT as the guest speaker.

Dr Matusse explored how contemporary environmental crises in Africa are linked not only to ecological change, but also to ways of being, knowing and relating to the world. He noted that the dominant environmentalism on the continent emerged through colonial conservation systems that separated people from land, redefined local landscapes and marginalised existing knowledge systems.

His presentation traced how these histories continue to shape present-day environmental governance. He pointed to forms of neoliberal environmentalism that operate through carbon markets, conservation programmes and green growth agendas.

In his analysis, these approaches often reduce complex environments to measurable units, while giving limited attention to local relationships with land, forests and water. He also discussed how these systems can deepen inequalities when they privilege external priorities over local needs.

Dr Matusse drew attention to African environmental knowledge systems rooted in connection, care and reciprocity, referring to practices linked to sacred landscapes, totemic systems, soil management and community-led governance. He positioned these as important foundations for shaping more grounded and contextually relevant environmental responses.

The discussion extended these themes with online attendees raising questions on how indigenous knowledge can be more meaningfully integrated into policy and how to balance scientific approaches with community-based understandings of the environment. Others questioned whether current global sustainability frameworks adequately reflect African realities.

The conversation highlighted the dilemma of how to engage with global environmental agendas while remaining grounded in local contexts.

The African Political Ecology learning lab, as part of Future Africa’s broader work, provides a space to explore these questions. By bringing together different perspectives, it contributes to a growing effort to rethink environmental thought in ways that are more inclusive, contextually grounded and responsive to the realities of the continent.